Nir Eyal: belief

Transcript context

…I want to move to a different topic, but before we do, is there one thing or maybe two things that a listener can do, say today or tomorrow or this week, that would make it significant dent on their ability to focus and avoid distraction? I would say understanding these four steps of master the internal triggers, make time for traction, hack back the external triggers, and preventing distraction with pacts. If you can do one small thing in each of those four strategies, one small thing, that's a wonderful, wonderful first step. You don't have to do everything in the book. I'm giving you many of different options, but one small thing in each of those categories is huge. Now, when it comes to the workplace, one of the benefits of making a time box calendar is that you have a physical artifact. You have something that you can print out and show to other people. And so, I hear this a lot when it comes to people who say, "Okay, I'm indistractable but my boss isn't, what do I do? I'm constantly ping and ding from my boss. How do I get control over my time?" Here's what you do. This is called schedule syncing or managing your manager. Here's what happens. You print out your calendar or you show it to them on your screen, and you say, "Hey boss, I need 10 minutes with you, Monday morning. Is that okay? Can I get 10 minutes with you?" And now, what you're going to do is you're going to show them your time box calendar for your working hours. You're going to say, "Okay, boss, you see here's my time for email. Here's my time for that meeting you asked me to go to. Here's time for that big project I'm working on. Now, you see this other piece of paper? Okay, you see this other list here? This is a list of things you've asked me to do that I'm having trouble fitting into my calendar." So, what I'm helping you do here is avoiding the worst piece of personal productivity advice. The worst piece of personal productivity advice is if you want to be better at time management, you need to learn how to say no. What kind of stupid advice is that? Only a tenured professor who can't get fired would give you that kind of stupid advice. If you tell your boss no, you're going to get fired, that's dumb. You don't tell your boss no, you ask your boss to help you prioritize. That is your boss' most important job is to prioritize. So, you're not saying no. You're saying, "Here's my calendar. Here's this list of stuff you've asked me to do. Help me prioritize." And here's what's going to happen. Your boss is going to look at your calendar and say, "You know what? That meeting, you really don't need to be at that meeting. But that thing on that piece of paper that you listed over here, that's way more important. Can you swap that out?" And let me tell you, I've started three companies. I've sold two so far, and bosses, your manager will worship the ground you walk on because we're all wondering, "What is it that you're doing?" And I know we have to trust our employees, et cetera, et cetera. Yes. But we're still wondering, "Hey, that thing that you said was going to be done isn't done. Why not? How are you spending your time?" d I know we have to trust our employees, et cetera, et cetera. Yes. But we're still wondering, "Hey, that thing that you said was going to be done isn't done. Why not? How are you spending your time?" So, if you can proactively sit down with your boss so that they understand how you are spending your time, and again, this takes maybe 10 minutes, you do this schedule sync process that not only works really well in the workplace, it also works really well at home. So, my wife and I used to have conflicts over who's going to pick up our daughter, and why didn't you take out the trash? And we would have these conflicts because we didn't synchronize our schedules. Well, now, we take maybe five minutes a week. Sunday evening, we sit down together. Let me look at your schedule. Let me look at my schedule. "Okay, now we're synchronized. It's amazing." We prevent so many conflicts just by doing this simple schedule sync process.…

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