Busy does not equal productive. In fact, how often have you watched as someone who was too busy to get the important things done accomplished ever irrelevant task on their mile-long list? Sadly, we’re addicted to the to-do list but not addicted enough to processes that actually increase our happiness, creativity, or effectiveness. True productivity begins with CALM, according to today’s mentor, Laura Martin. She created the productivity expert role at Google, and joins us today to share hints and tips to make you not only more relaxed, but also a fountain of productivity, no matter what you want to do.
Beyond that, we have an amazing headline, Joe & OG share the biggest laughs of their lives, and Doug FINALLY gives maybe his best advice ever.
Oh, and former President Barack Obama stops by.
Deeper dives with curated links, topics, and discussions are in our newsletter, The 201, available at https://www.stackingbenjamins.com/201
Enjoy!
Our Headlines
- Online shoppers are feeling frustrated. Blame it on the ‘Amazon effect’? (MarketWatch)
- 10 ways to spend less when shopping online (Fidelity Investments)
Laura Martin
Big thanks to Laura Martin for joining us today. To learn more about Laura, visit Laura Mae Martin | Author + Speaker | Do Less. Accomplish More. Grab yourself a copy of the book Uptime: A Practical Guide to Personal Productivity and Wellbeing.
Watch on our YouTube channel:
Doug’s Steve’s Trivia
- In what state did the 1974 Huntsville prison break take place?
Have a question for the show?
Want more than just the show notes? How about our newsletter with STACKS of related, deeper links?
- Check out The 201, our email that comes with every Monday and Wednesday episode, PLUS a list of more than 19 of the top money lessons Joe’s learned over his own life about money. From credit to cash reserves, and insurance to investing, we’ll tackle all of these. Head to StackingBenjamins.com/the201 to sign up (it’s free and we will never give away your email to others).
Other Mentions
- 5 Financial Skills You Should Have In 2020 (plus an intro to Qube Money)
- Take better control of your spending by signing up for Qube Money. By signing up for Qube Money using our affiliate link, you’ll also help support the show. TIA!
- Qube Money: Comprehensive Walkthru #fintech (youtube.com)
Join Us Wednesday
Tune in on Wednesday we’re talking FEES! If using indexes for your investments is a proven winner…why is Wall Street obsessed with driving you toward other options? We’ll talk about investing strategy, advertising, and more!
Written by: Kevin Bailey
Miss our last show? Listen here: Our List of the Biggest “Gotchas” in Popular Financial Investments.
Episode transcript
It is Monday morning. It’s April 1st, but we’re not playing that game guys. We’re playing a straightforward game of let’s bring the best financial advice possible. Straightforward, absolutely. Which means we start every Monday the way we do. You know what? There’s no joking around here because the men and women supporting us, keeping us safe, they’re not joking around either.
So we’re gonna raise our motives. Definitely not April Fool’s Day. Definitely not. So you don’t even need me. We don’t need you. Of course we need you.
If you’re not joking around, you’re not gonna have any fun. Oh, what am I here
for? Well, I mean, it’s more of the same. And the way we start the same. Same. Is this Doug with a toast to our troops.
Here’s to the men and women keeping us safe. On behalf of the men and women at Navy Federal Credit Union and the men and women make a podcast to Mom’s basement, cheers. Here’s to a normal, fantastic week. Let’s go stack some.
Thanks everybody.
Live from Joe’s mom’s basement. It’s
the Stacking Benjamin
Show.
I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug, and today you’ll learn how to get more out of your career and. Each day with Google’s productivity expert Laura Martin in our headlines, Chinese Company, bite Dance has six months to sell TikTok before it’s banned in the us. Learn those dances while you can, kids. Plus we’ll take a call from one stacker who said I’d better call Saul.
See hi an OG for advice. And finally, of course, I’ll share some breaking trivia. And now two guys who are fools for personal finance. It’s Joe and oh,
as they say. Not today, Satan. You may not recognize my voice, but today you get the real brains behind the operation. I’m Tina Eikenberg, and like Doug says, we do have a great show with our Monday mentor, Laura May Martin.
She’s the executive productivity advisor at Google who’s gonna teach you how to manage your time and energy, but it’s not just me and Laura Mae Martin. Today joining me across the card table is Stacking Benjamins, producer Karen. Repine. How are you? Karen? I’m good, Tina. How are you today? I’m good. I’m good.
I must say. Oh,
geez. Chair is mighty
comfy. I, I bet it’s super cushiony. Yes. Very fancy. Yes. Joe’s standing desk is quite nice too. Maybe I should get one. Yeah, maybe we should both
get a comfy chair
and a standing desk. I don’t know. Karen, do you think that was enough? Since our pay
depends on it. Here’s another sponsor.
We got a great show today with Laura May Martin, but first a headline, so let’s get into it. Hello darlings, and now it’s time for your favorite part of the show, our Stacking Benjamins headlines. We’ve got a headline that’s way better than what Doug picked. This one comes to us from Market Watch. It’s written by Charles Passey.
Online shoppers are feeling frustrated. Blame it on the Amazon effect, while many consumers now do a large portion of their shopping online. The era of digital commerce is also becoming the era of digital disappointment. According to a new study, the survey from automation platforms, aligo found that 88% of US shoppers and 79% of United Kingdom shoppers reported having at least one instance of online retailer failing to meet expectations in the past year.
Key concerns among shoppers higher prices. Late deliveries and high shipping costs. I don’t know. Karen, I feel frustrated because this article is saying we wanna buy more and faster. Do you think the Amazon effect has something to do with it, with the fast free shipping and the one click buy? Oh, for sure.
I mean,
I can remember at least on two occasions, the one click buy doing that from my bed at like midnight. Like, oh yeah, I totally need that. And then of course you’re like. I didn’t really need that.
So yeah, they make it way easy. Yeah. Little bonus tip from a mom. Turn the one click buy off. If your children play with your phone or have access to your Amazon account, oh, you’re gonna get deliveries faster than you knew.
Well, I’ve noticed though
on Amazon that my delivery is like a couple days. I do not get any or more than a couple days. I don’t get anything, two
day shipping anymore at all. You’re a Prime member.
I’m a Prime member, but I’m in BFE Montana, so maybe
that’s why maybe I’m a Prime member. And it used to be the two day shipping.
It seems like I, there’s a lot of things that are still two day shipping, but the strange thing that happens to me is sometimes it’ll tell me two days, it’ll be here two days from now, which is, you know, whatever date it is, two days from now. But then once I check out. The screen changes after I check out, and then it’s always another day or so later.
Once I’ve gone through checkout. I have no idea why. And it does that even if I don’t delay my purchase. ’cause sometimes, sometimes I’ll delay, I’ll put something in my cart and let it sit there and delay, but so I don’t know. There’s a fact, that’s a whole other thing if you wanna talk about Amazon Prime, but the shipping is not as fast as it used to be, which for me is probably a little bit better because.
It used to be, well, if I wanted it fast, I could go on Amazon and it’ll be here in two days. Saves me a trip from having to go to the store shop around, figure out what store might carry it actually in person. So it was super easy and convenient. So I don’t know, in a way, is Amazon putting friction there for me without me having that choice?
Because now it takes longer, right? I don’t think they’re doing that on purpose by any means, but. They make it real convenient to shop, don’t they? For sure. Yeah. Yeah. I was
just buying, getting something. I forget what it was I was gonna purchase and it didn’t have, it was on my personal computer, so I didn’t have my credit card saved in there yet.
And. It made it have so much friction that I just didn’t even purchase whatever I was going to purchase because I had to go walk and get my purse and put in my credit card numbers.
Oh, that’s good. If you had to have the effort to get up and go do the thing, then it became not worth it to you. Right. I do the same thing.
I don’t have any credit cards linked to my online shopping. The only accounts that I have linked to my credit cards are my bills, my utilities, things like that. But when it comes to shopping, I want to have to physically get up and go get it, because then, you know, I might decide, do I really wanna get up because, you know, maybe I don’t want this thing that bad.
I don’t know. Yeah. On the topic of putting friction in between yourself and shopping, one of the things that I do when I’m online shopping, because I am super frugal, I want the best deal. So I will spend a ton of time researching an item that I’m interested in and go to however many online retailers I feel the need to go to and research and find the best price I can possibly get.
But on the plus side of that, without me realizing what it did, was by me taking the time to do all of that research to, to find the best prices, it gave me time for my brain to think about it. And, and I, it’s almost as if it tricks me into. Thinking about, do I really need this item? The longer it takes me to research it, the longer time I have to talk myself out of buying that item, and lots of times I’ll end up not purchasing it at all.
You said you
compare the price online. Do you ever go into stores and compare the price versus online versus retail? Because
I do that I will avoid in-person shopping as much as possible because people, Ew. So, no, I’m kidding. No, I’ll avoid in-person shopping as much as possible just because the time that it takes me to drive to the store, to search for the item, like I don’t enjoy shopping.
It’s not something that I want to do. I’m not typical in that fashion. So if I go to a store, I don’t wanna. Research. I don’t wanna shop around. I wanna go in, know what I want, know where it’s at, get it, get out and I’m done. I, I don’t enjoy shopping at all, so I don’t compare the in-store shopping unless the app tells me the in-store shopping price.
Otherwise, oh, I would much prefer to do it online. They have that where like it’s
online and in store and the in store one is
cheaper. Sometimes Sam’s Club has that. So with Sam’s Club, I am the. Whatever the higher membership is, I don’t know what they call it, but. There’s a certain price for an in-store thing sometimes, and then there’s a different price for online.
And so with the membership that I have, I get free shipping and all that stuff, but they sometimes add a dollar onto the online price, which I’m sure probably it’s to help offset their shipping maybe since they’re giving me free shipping. Right. You know, if it’s really free, I don’t know, but. I do know specifically that Sam’s Club does offer that.
That’s cool. Two priced tier. Yeah. Yeah. But I guess Costco probably would do it too ’cause they’re kind of similar. Yeah.
I just now, being in the big city of Helena, Montana, it’s easier to go to the stores. It’s not 90 miles away
anymore. Do you do more in-person shopping than online? Oh, for sure.
Yeah. I mean, I have Amazon Prime mostly for
the um, TV now.
Hmm. So, but, okay, so tell me this one thing that I run into when I go into, say, the grocery store, because it’s super easy and convenient to order your stuff online. Pull up, open your trunk, have them load your stuff, and you got exactly what you wanted off of your list. Now, if I go into the store for milk, I’m coming out with.
Milk, ice cream, 50 other things. Right. You know? Mm-Hmm. You go in thinking you’re spending $5 and you spend 50 or you know, whatever. Because you do in-person shopping more than online. Do you find you spend more or less,
oh, I’m sure I spend more, but to me being. Away from the city for 18 years. It’s nice to actually shop in person at times.
You like people? Yes, I do. That helps. Right? That helps. Yeah.
My kids are always like, mom, did you know that person? No. I was just talking to somebody in line at the grocery store. Yeah, but the one thing is, is dog food. Right now Amazon, it’s like ridiculously expensive for the dog, food for my dog. And now.
I’m trying to find it at a local
retailer, I guess like Murdoch’s or PetSmart or Petco, like, I don’t know which one has the better deal and I just keep going back and forth. Obviously that’s something that I need for my dog, so it’s not like I’m not going to buy it. I’m just, I wish there was a app that would.
Say, here’s the best price for this item everywhere, you know, online or in a re retailer if you’re
nearby. That would be very helpful. Speaking of apps though, are there any apps like say budgeting apps or anything that you use that might help you when it comes to your shopping to keep your budget in check?
Yeah, so I’ve signed up for cube money, and so that makes you have to take from your main cube. Well, you can do it however you want each month, each week. If you run outta money in a cube, you can quickly go into the main cube and add more money to the dog food cube or the shopping cube.
And so that’s been really helpful too, to try
and also see where you’re spending your money.
You’re like, wait, every month I have to go and put more money into this one cube. So next month I need to make sure I fund that cube,
um, properly. That would be super helpful to keep track of everything. Then I. Yeah, so I know that, that, you know, those, those guys that sometimes host this podcast, they’ve had Cube on the show.
So we’ll link to the episode with Cube on the show. And then if you head over to our YouTube video, Joe’s done a walkthrough of his demonstration of Cube, how the app works, how he’s used it, and you know, all of his great advice on that. And so we’ll also link to our YouTube page in the, in the show notes as well.
But Karen, I’ve got another article here we, if we wanna pivot over to, I found an article from Fidelity, um, written by Fidelity Smart Money, and they’ve got 10 ways to spend less when shopping online. So they’ve got some suggestions here and I’m almost wondering if, if any of these pop out to you as good ones.
Like, I like number five, if you don’t need it immediately. Wait. That’s one of the things that I will often do. I know OG has said it in the show many, many times, talked about putting stuff in his Amazon cart, letting it just sit there and wait and simmer on it to see tomorrow. If he sees it again, does he still actually want it or does he remove it out of the cart?
Mm-Hmm. That
is helpful. I do the save
for later on the Amazon and I’ve also done that like Land’s End. Always buy my bathing suits from Land’s End for. And the whole family, they’re just great quality. And so then I’ll put it in the cart, and then sometimes you get an email that says, Hey, you left something in the cart.
Do you still want it? And you’re like,
eh, maybe not. And when you do that sometimes too, I’ve found, not with any particular retailer, but there have been lots of times I put something in my cart and abandoned it. And with those emails, sometimes I’ll get, you know, oh, you left something behind. Here’s a 20% off discount to use.
Yeah, because that’s one thing that, especially online shopping, I will search for coupons, any kind of discount code I can find before I log out. I always make sure I can find a discount code. I’m not so good about that with in-store shopping, but luckily I don’t do much of that myself. Oh yeah. So the coupon clay, I will use the digital coupons at my grocery store though in the app there are digital coupons.
I will take the time to do that. But paper coupons, honestly, I don’t even know that I really get those anymore in the mail. I don’t subscribe to a newspaper anymore. Sorry, to the newspaper companies. Um, yeah, it’s just not something I do. Another one on here that I really like, treat your credit card like real money because it is right.
Buying things can make us happy and spending with a credit card can make us happier. Thanks to the Russia dopamines, our brains get when we pay for something. That causes a lot of problems. I have had struggles in my own past of credit card usage that, you know, if you’re having a glum day and you just wanna go shopping, and Hmm, yeah, it solves that problem and then could potentially create another.
So treat it like it’s real money because Mm-hmm. You have to pay for that.
Well, and I’ve started my kids on a debit card and not using real money because when they would do the chores, I’m like. Uh, I don’t have any cash around. Mm-Hmm. So I just start transferring it from my bank account to their bank account and then they’ll go up to the ski hill and buy a $15 burger.
And I’m like, use your card, not mine. And then they saw it dwindle down and they’re like, what did I spend my money on? And I was like, five times at the ski hill at $15. That adds up their generation. I don’t think money’s gonna be around for very much longer. Paper money. Coin money. Just like we had on the, in the basement about your change jar Mm-Hmm.
To go buy, uh, Joe’s book. I was like, well, there’s your PayPal and your Apple Pay is your change jar now. Like it makes it so easy to spend money. You really have to put in the safeguards to figure out what you can’t spend the money on. You can’t just keep going. But I don’t think my kids are gonna have paper money for.
I was thinking the same thing with their generation. Credit cards are money to them, that is their form of money. Cash is not as prevalent as it used to be. Maybe for my generation, you know, everything was cash and I just don’t recall. If my parents even had credit cards, quite honestly, I don’t know if they did when I was younger.
If they did, they didn’t share that information with me. My parents were a lot like Joe’s parents where there was a money conversation happening and I walked in the room, I was told to leave. They did not share that kind of stuff in front of me whatsoever. But, uh, you know, this is why I have to learn from shows like Stacking Benjamins, how to Do Better With My Money Instead, right?
Mm-Hmm. Well, I think that’s a great place to leave it Karen, and we’ll link to both of these articles in our show notes page at Stacking Benjamins dot com. Plus Kevin Bailey, who writes our wonderful 2 0 1 he’ll dive deeper into this topic in the newsletter that comes out every Tuesday and Thursday after the Monday Wednesday episodes.
I. Coming up next, we’re gonna be talking to Laura May Martin. She’s the Executive productivity advisor in the office of the CEO at Google. She coaches Google’s top executives on the best ways to manage their time and energy. Laura found out that she was coming into work later and finishing earlier. And getting more done.
She’s here today to teach you some of those systems, but before that, Karen, maybe you should take the duct tape off of Doug’s mouth so he can do the trivia for us. Okay, I guess I can do that.
Hey there, stackers on.
Nope. Nope, not today.
Hey there, stackers. I’m Joe’s mom’s pseudo neighbor, Steve. Well, it finally happened. Joe let his guard down for one minute. And now Karen and Tina have orchestrated a coup. I tried to warn him after I heard him talking about podcast equipment, but no, Joe was all like, they would never, well, look at us now, Joe.
This sort of thing happens all the time, even outside of the world of podcasting. In 19 74, 3 inmates at the Huntsville Prison only a slight upgrade from this show had been sneaking weapons into their cells. It took several guards hostage and demanded things like tailored suits, dress shoes, and cologne.
Who doesn’t like to get up, dressed up and smell good when they bust out? They finally made a break for it on the 11th day, 11 days. That’s too long for a hostile takeover if Joe doesn’t give them what they want and get back here by Wednesday. I’m making my own break. Alright, back to trivia. Prisoners have escaped in all kinds of creative ways.
Frank Abagnale Jr. Made famous by the movie Catch Me. If You Can Reentered the Free World with the help of prison guards who bought his story, that he was a prison inspector who was working undercover and only disguised as a prisoner. That’s exactly the type of thing I’d do if I were ever locked up.
Just make up a story like I’m actually undercover, or I think I left the stove on. Today’s trivia question is in what state did the 1974 Huntsville prison break take place? I’ll be back right after I make sure Joe’s not being held hostage somewhere.
Hey, there, stackers. I’m Woodby Prison, escapee and unwitting member of a podcast coup. The guy who Joe’s mom wishes was her neighbor, Steve. After the dust settled in the 1974 Huntsville Prison Siege, it was discovered that the convicts had smuggled in the weapons inside cans of peaches and ham. After that, I bet the prison probably tried to trick perspective guards during interviews by asking exactly how much do peaches weigh?
Today’s trivia question is, in what state did the 1974 Huntsville Prison break take place? The answer just outside of Houston, here in beautiful Texas, and that’s no April Fool’s joke. And now here to teach you how to make your own jailbreak from hellish work days. It’s today’s mentor, Laura Martin,
and I’m super happy she’s joining us at the card table. Laura May Martin is here. How are you?
Good.
Excited to be here. Thanks for
having me. Well, I don’t know
many companies, Laura, that have a productivity. Expert. I remember when I was at American Express, we had this awesome woman, Lisa, who like created a new position, like went to her bus and said, I think that we really need this.
W Was there already a productivity expert at Google or did you
create this role? I.
Yes, I did create it. I was doing what we call G two G Googler to Googler trainings. On the side of my sales role, I was in sales product event planning, and I, you know, people were just like, how do you set up your inbox this way?
How are you managing your calendar this way? And so I just started teaching these classes on the side and it led me to work with executives, one-on-one on the same tactics, and then eventually. Make that into a full-time role where I work with executives. I do a scalable program called Productivity at Google, which is trainings and newsletters, and then I work with our product teams on, you know, our workspace products and, and making sure those are productive.
What’s
funny is I hear
all that, I’m like, so what do you do in your free time? Yeah. But, but you make the point, you have plenty of free time. Like I feel like if you and I sat next to each other in offices. I would show up at work 30 minutes before you, I’d be at work an hour after you and Laura’s my nemesis ’cause she’s getting stuff done way
quicker.
You
know, I, I like to give the example that I have a stationary bike and I usually do a 45 minute regular classic ride. But actually my best overall score, my best output is from my 30 minute interval ride. And so if you were to watch those two side to side. You might think, oh, she was taking a lot of breaks.
She didn’t stay on the bike as long as, you know, the 45 minute. But the fact is that when you take some downtime and when you’re balanced and you carve out that time in your schedule, you actually are able to work harder in the times that you are work, kind of like interval working.
So.
Well, well, and, and this is kind of the mind flip that you begin this project with Laura, which is you begin by talking about how I, I think it’s a weekend and you’re sitting on the sofa and you like binge watch.
I think all of Hartland in one day.
One day I love Heartland. And, and everybody’s like, this is
so non-productive. And you’re like, no, no, no. This is incredibly productive. Talk about this mind shift in productivity through Heartland.
Yeah.
So when I. Do a speaking event. I start by saying, you know, close your eyes.
Think of your most productive day ever. And then I say, raise your hand if it was a day where you were binge watching TV the entire day. And of course, no one raises their hand. But my argument is that if your intention was to relax and watch your favorite show, you set aside the time to do it, and you executed and you felt like at the end of it that you did it well and it achieved its goal of relaxing you and entertaining you.
Then that was a productive day. So I think people think of this churn as productive, but that doesn’t always mean we’re doing the right things. And so, you know, I like to think of productivity more like intention. What
are you intending to do? And then did you do it well?
Well, and it’s funny because one of my favorite, um, philosophies is around this idea outta the University of Chicago called Flow.
I love this idea of flow and you talk about when you’re really productive, you’re actually in this flow state. So that day. You’re on the sofa, maybe in your pajamas. Mm-hmm. But you’re
totally in this flow state. Like you, you lose
time. Right? And like I’m really intentional about not using my phone when I watch tv, which is kind of crazy, but that’s just not intentional because now I’m kind of splitting my energy between what’s happening in Heartland and what’s happening on social media.
And that wasn’t my attention. So whatever you’re choosing to do, having that intention and having the distractions away helps you drop into that flow state.
You
focus first on these five Cs of, of productivity, and I’d like to just bring each of these up and can you kind of give us some context around them?
So, so you start with calm Mm-Hmm. Why do we start
there?
Because I think with the, you know, busy is not important, which we kind of touched on. When you’re filling your time so much, you don’t realize the value of that downtime, of the calm time. So again, if I’m doing a speaking event and I say, when do you, where do you think of your best ideas?
Answers are in the shower, in a commute, um, on a walk with the dog. Answers are never in my 10th meeting of the day, all these knee deep in my email, you know? So I think when we think about calm, that’s actually when a lot of the creativity happens. It’s when we decompress. I talk about thinking of it like batch brew coffee.
You’re letting it drip through so that it’s really rich, really bold ideas that are coming out of it. So you wanna start with that Calm. Those down times, those moments of, you know, non-active brain moments. And then that’s when you actually are gonna spark a new idea, which leads to the next C Yeah.
And the next one
create.
But, but, but I wanna stick with calm for just one more second, because I feel like in all of this, as I was reading through uptime, Laura, that, you know, people think productivity means I shove more, in which we already talked about a little bit. But to truly be productive, there has to be just this. A little more time between signal and response, you know what I mean?
Mm-Hmm. Like you give yourself time to make the right decision about is this actually important? When do I do it? Which list does it go on? And we’ll get to some of that for all of our stackers. But I feel like that calm is to create this just a little bit more space so I can make better decisions. Is
that
true?
Yes. ’cause I think we’re constantly like on, on, on, on, on. And I talk about it like walkie talkies. If you’re. In the email, in the, in the meeting, in the, you know, talking, talking, solving, solving, solving. That’s you holding your button on the walkie-talkie. But the other end is those ideas and creativity.
But if you never take your hand off the button, you can never hear those other things that are coming in those reflections of, maybe I should be spending so much time on this, or, that’s actually a good idea, I should. Some more time on this. So I just had a friend, she told me that she had meetings all day and it was four o’clock and she kind of wanted to do some stuff, but she felt like she was exhausted.
So her kids were coming home at five and she said, I just laid on the couch. Literally stared into space for like 45 minutes. And the funny thing is, is that was probably more productive than her six hours previously worth of meetings, because she was taking in all that information. She just had that time to say, oh, you know what?
Something happened in that second meeting. I didn’t actually take time to reflect on, and now I have a little action item I wanna do later on. And so we don’t think of that as productive. We kind of think, oh, I should just take that hour to send a little more emails where it’s like, no, that was probably the best thing she could have done.
Yeah, I mean, you use this concept of a battery, right? We only have so much
battery. Exactly, and I feel like we only have so much energy. So I think when we get confused with time versus energy, if you have a nine to one summit that you’re in all day, and then you have a one 30 to four big meeting you have to go to, it’s like technically you have one to one 30 free.
Like if I look at your calendar, that time quote was there. But you really have to think about the energy piece of it. Do I have the energy? Spend on that. And so that’s where you’re, you know, always doing that trade off of where is my energy? And she might have had the time to do something from four to five, but instead she knew she didn’t have the energy.
I’m gonna promise everybody, I’m gonna get back to these five C’s, the second C, but I love this idea calm, and it brings up something that you talk about in the second chapter of your book. Which is this idea of saying no. Mm-Hmm. To things. And, and I have so many problems with this, and by the way, as I was reading, I, and I think a lot of our stackers will identify with this.
You talk about so many meetings that you have where people are like, I don’t know when I’m gonna find time because I’ve got six meetings. Today. Mm-Hmm. I’ll do more work at night. And I, right. I actually, I say I, I laughed out loud a lot, but I actually did
laugh out loud everybody. Oh, good. When, when, when you said like, who wants
to take more work home and do stuff?
Nobody wants to do that. Yes. So I gotta learn to say no to some of these meetings. Yes. What’s the first step here then? In saying no, so I can create some of this calm that I really want in my
life. Yeah,
so I was a recovering say, yes, sir. It was feedback I had gotten from managers. You know, you say yes to a lot.
You really need to be strategic about what you’re saying yes to. And so when I wrote the book, I wanted to include actual sentences, like things you can copy paste into an email if you need to say no, not just, oh, you should say no because that’s really hard for some people. And so I gave. Strategies that can help you feel like you’re softening the no, if you feel like it’s, you know, something that you wanna say no to.
So some examples include, um, envisioning yourself doing it and envisioning yourself not doing it, and seeing how you feel in both those situations. So, for example, I got invited to do a huge talk. I was super excited when I saw the email come through. It was all these women. And then it was, I saw it was on Halloween and I have three kids under five, so, you know.
Nope, they’re, well, I, I had to think because I was like, this is a huge opportunity. So I imagined myself on Halloween getting on a plane, you know, and then I imagined myself the day after the conference if I hadn’t gone. I see the summary of the conference and I feeling like, oh, I really wish I was there.
And so I used that energy from that exercise to say, no, I feel actually convicted in my no. And then when you go to say the no to the person. You can say no because, and share some of your priorities. No. But here are some other things that might help you. No, for right now, so I’m not able to speak, but do you have other conferences or, A lot of times when people ask to take a meeting with me, I say no, let’s start over email.
So, you know, I think there’s actual tactical things you can do. But later in the book, I think you will see that I talk about setting positive boundaries because it makes saying no easier. So instead of saying. I don’t take meetings after five. I take meetings from eight to five. I don’t work on the weekends.
Oh, I work Monday through Friday. And so, you know, it helps people to say, I don’t really know if she’s saying no to me. She’s just saying that she takes meetings until five. But I feel good about it because she’s just kind of stating what she does. Do, you know, I take meetings that have an agenda. I didn’t necessarily say I don’t take meetings without an agenda, but that’s what I’m insinuating.
So it’s, you know, some actual things that you can do when you’re looking at your calendar to say, I’ve been wanting to say no to that for a while. And that starts with kind of that mindset of that zero based mindset. So obviously in finance you have zero based accounting. This is zero based calendaring.
You’re saying, if I got invited to this meeting right now, would I take it? Would I start taking it today? And so that’s a good lens to go into your calendar and look, you know, if I’m in my closet, what, and it’s a store, what would I actually shop for right now? And so asking yourself that about your current commitments and your calendar events, and then using those, say no tactics to shake some of them off.
Well, I love the idea of, I only do meetings that have an agenda because Mm-hmm. I mean, that does two things. A it, it says, let’s make sure we have an agenda. Your time is important. My time’s important. Right. But it also then Laura probably shortens the meeting, right? Oh yeah. Instead of being in the meeting
for an hour, I might be in the meeting for 15 minutes.
Yes.
And I use the office rule so everybody knows the office loves the office, and I ask myself, when I see an item come in and say, we need to talk about this. I say to myself, do I need a entire episode of the office plus commercials? To discuss this because that’s what, that’s how I think of 30 minutes.
That’s what you know in my head. I know what that is. So I, I ask myself that and a lot of times the answer is no. That’s actually a pretty long time to discuss one thing. And so that’s when I’m, I’m all about 15 minute meetings, 10 minutes, like, let’s get it in. We don’t need a whole episode of the office.
I think we
just got a collective hoorah from
all of our, all the office fans, all of our stackers.
And I know it’s funny because. You know, saying no initially seems like conflict, but you just avoided a lot of conflict by using positivity and also created that calm that we need. The second one of your CS then is create
Mm-Hmm.
So again, when you have those calm moments, when do you think of your best ideas? You know, you have that walk with your dog, you have that workout, you have that meditation, you have that, you know, whatever that downtime is for you. That’s when you do come up with your ideas. So you say, oh, I’ve been meeting to do this, or, you know what I should do?
I should ask this person to do this, or I should do this for my client, or whatever it is, it, it comes to you. It’s that inspiration because you’ve let your brain rest. It’s that really rich, rich coffee that’s now dripped through the batch brew, and you have those ideas. Some of times the best thing you can do is have those calm moments.
If you need to be more creative, need to think bigger picture, need to have more vision for your organization, whatever that is. The calm moves to the create.
That’s fabulous. And you’re right, it’s always on my morning run. Mm-Hmm. In the shower, in these calm periods when I get my best ideas. It’s never in the fifth meeting of the day, to your point, right.
Third then is to capture them. This is the frustrating thing. I remember. This is how bad I am at this, Laura. I had this awesome idea for an Instagram reel. Just a fantastic idea. This is six months ago and it still drives me crazy. And I captured it and I put Taco Bell idea. And I remember it was something funny about Taco Bell, about like fourth meal and comparing it to financial planning.
I remember it was hilarious. I don’t remember what was funny about it. I didn’t capture enough of it to make it actionable
and now I’m pissed that I have no idea what the Taco Bell idea was. In fact, I told this woman on our team Tina about it, she doesn’t remember ‘
cause neither of us. Captured it. Yes.
So how do we, how do we grab
it more than just Taco Bell idea? Right. I hate that for you. I hope it comes to you in one of those moments on your run someday.
But I think a lot of people, whether they capture part of it or they think of it and they leave it looping in their head, they don’t take the time.
I, I talk about great ideas. They’re like a piece of gum. Once they, once they’re there, you have to take them out and stick them somewhere, because otherwise you just. Swallow them and they’re gone forever. So, you know, when you have those good ideas. The main thing is I have a system where I can capture the idea in the right way so that when I get back into my workflow, I know what it was and how to execute.
Because an idea that comes to you is only as good as what you do with it after that. Yeah. And so when you have a good capture system, so I use voiceless, so I’m on a run, you know, I can tell my wearable device, okay, add this to my list. And I use my voice to create an audio note of what I’m thinking. Or when I’m in the kitchen and my hands are totally covered in my last egg, I can say to my Google Nest device, add eggs to my grocery list.
So it has to be available anytime. It can’t be like one piece of paper that’s on your desk at work. It has to be something where you can constantly funnel in the things that you’re thinking of. No need to kind of organize them at that point. This is just to get them out of your head. In a way that you can understand.
So a lot, I do that sometimes where I say, add cheese to my grocery list. I ask myself like, what type of cheese was I even talking about? So I’ve learned over time to get more and more specific, like what is future me gonna need to see on that list in order to remember what to buy? So I think you get better over time with how you’re classifying
your ideas.
I love
that. And I watched a, a pretty badass video of yours too, where you talked about not just the grocery list, but now with technology. And I think a lot of our stackers don’t know this. You can put a, uh, a, I’m gonna use the wrong terminology, but, but a tag so that it reminds you at the grocery store Mm-hmm.
To get more, more eggs. Like how do I, how do I do
that in
Google? Yeah. So within Google Keep, which is where I, that’s where I use my voice to add to those lists. So I say, okay, add this to the grocery list. And then I have a little setting under that note where you click the three dots you can say. Pop this list up on my phone when I hit, and then you put in the GPS location.
So when I get to the grocery store that pops up. I even just did, um, I had some ideas of what I wanted to give my kids in their Easter baskets this year. I had that idea last year. I made a Google Keep note of it. I set it to pop back up onto my phone a month before Easter this year. I actually surprised myself.
I was like, wow, that was really cool. I’m so impressed with myself because now I have all these ideas and I did it, you know? Exactly when I was sitting there thinking, what should I get for Easter baskets this year? So, you know, there’s a lot of customization, which the book talks about too. You gotta know your tools, let them work for you.
And so within Google Keep, you know, I’ve messed with the settings and said like, how can I make this a power tool, make it work for me? And that’s one of the examples.
Well, this
is really cool because, you know, we started this off. You started this off with calm. And I feel like that calms my brain down because my brain consistently, and I think this is an analogy from David Allen’s book, where he’s like, my brain reminds me that I need milk on my run.
Right? When I generally think I can do nothing about that, you know? Yeah. And so my brain calms down once I put it there. And I know I’ll be notified at the grocery store when I need to
know that I
need milk. Exactly. And then it leaves so much more room in your brain. So it’s like all the things that are coming to you, like I need to get that.
Birthday party gift. I need to send that email for work. I need to buy that at the grocery store. I need batteries. You know, so it’s like if you’re not doing anything with that, that’s just so much mental noise. And that’s where people get bogged down in the mental load because it’s like, I see this, I see this, I get this email, I have all these things I need to do, and I just feel overwhelmed.
And so that’s where I really go into like a, a true system that your brain can trust because that’s what gets that out of your brain and it leaves room for more. Good
ideas.
I wanna begin diving into, into this system here in a second, but before that, I had a mentor. I got very lucky in one space. I had a mentor early in my career.
Talk to me about something I don’t hear enough about that. I found in this project of yours, I. Which is this idea of urgent versus important, and you attack this right away, right? Because so many of the executives that you deal with, the people that you coach are like, no, I have way too many urgent things to get to this important thing.
Mm-Hmm. Can you walk through this? ’cause I have to tell all of our stackers when I got this matrix in my head, like, I consistently use this as, as my, my filter. Mm-Hmm. Like, this is my top filter. Is this urgent? Or is this important? Can you
walk us through that? Yeah. And
I think the. Thought behind it is if you have some language around it, instead of everything being urgent, it’s kind of like if you can name your feelings instead of just, I’m overwhelmed.
If you can say, no, I’m mad and I’m frustrated, it starts to compartmentalize it so that you know how to deal with it. Yeah, so the Matrix talks about that. It says if everything that comes up is just urgent, then you feel like I’m blowing through my schedule and, but if you can say, okay, this is urgent. And it’s important, meaning that it really fits into one of my top three priorities, or it’s something I truly are am okay with blowing my schedule out.
Then you have that commitment where you’ve labeled it and now you can do whatever you need to do, but when you ask yourself, is this urgent and not important, that’s where you really start to say, all right. My gut instinct was to kind of. Say, I’m gonna deal with this. It’s coming up, I’m, it’s blow.
Everything’s blowing up. But now I’m asking myself like, is this really important or is there something else I can do? Like delegate or schedule the time I’m gonna deal with it, but not deal with it right now. And so then there’s, you know, obviously urgent and not important, which those are usually easily labeled.
And then. When things are important but not urgent, that’s where you should be spending most of your time. Because in the book I say urgent, once it’s urgent, urgent, 17 times, something’s wrong with the system. So if you constantly, you know, you really wanna get out of the urgent quadrant by getting ahead of it.
And I talk about how I’ve seen executives do that as well, like creating time in their day for urgent things. So I like to give the example of the ER doctor, no ER doctor is taking regular patients because what would happen is. They have somebody come in at 8:00 AM from an accident and they would have to say, alright, I gotta cancel my 10:00 AM 11:00 AM No, they’re just leaving room for urgent.
They know that that’s part of their job. And so if that’s the case for you, then you might turn down a commitment and say, actually, I gotta leave room in my schedule for these things that always come up because I’m a journalist, or I’m somebody who deals with urgent bug fixes and stuff like that. So I think that there’s tactics in there where if urgent happens.
There is some ways to deal with it, including that chart.
I feel like a lot of us let our technology control us instead of us controlling our technology. I know people that check their email consistently throughout the day, about 50 times a day. I have a friend that during a conversation, Laura, every time his watch gives him a new notification, he will look down the middle of a, there’s nothing more annoying, by the way, if you’re one of these people, there’s nothing more annoying
and there’s, it’s you.
There’s, yeah, there’s nothing that tells
me that I’m not important to you. Right? Like you consistently looking. At your watch in the middle of my fascinating story. Yes. How do we attack email? Maybe what? Maybe let’s just start with that one. ’cause I think you’ve got a great analogy for email about how we attack email to maybe take this thing we think is urgent and put it back
in its place.
Yes. So the first thing I would say is I tell people to treat work. As if it’s your in-laws in your house. So would you invite your in-laws if they were staying with you, would you invite them into your bed at 6:00 AM? No. Would you hang out with them all the way until the absolute last minute before you go to sleep?
No. Would you be talking to ’em constantly throughout the day? The whole time. Every time you’re eating, you know? No, you would get space from them. I love my in-laws. I, I happen to love them, but if you have work constantly, your email, you wake up, it’s the first thing you do, go to bed. It’s the last thing you do.
You’re checking it hundreds of times when there’s nothing. It’s kind of that video game, dopamine mentality where we like to just see and see. Yeah. But if you’re, you’re not planning on addressing it. You know, you can keep an eye on it and you can customize your technology. Like, I get updates just from a specific subset of my emails.
So if my manager emails me directly or certain individuals that I know I wanna see, that’s what shows up on my phone. Again, customizing your tools, but I don’t see everything so that your friend should do that with, with their watch. Because there are some situations with, you know, kids in school, you might wanna get the call, but that’s not everything.
So you gotta take that time. But secondly, I think when we think about email. You know, the first thing I do with people is get out whatever they don’t need to see. So we talked about you only have so many energy coins to hand out all day, and when you’re seeing a bunch of email that you don’t actually need to do something with, you’re actually still using an energy coin just to read that subject line and decide you don’t need to do anything with it.
So when people come to me, they’re like, Ugh, I have 11,000 emails. They feel like that’s, you know, some badge of honor and I’m thinking in my head. You either have 11,000 really important emails that you haven’t gotten back to, in which case you probably wouldn’t have a job or two. You’re subscribed to a lot of things you don’t actually need to see in your inbox.
So that’s the first step getting out. I, I set an egg timer for 20 minutes and we just play a, a video game style. Let’s just look for things that we can search for. The word unsubscribe, that’s typically the fastest way of seeing things that are not sent directly to you. ’cause they all have the word unsubscribe.
So that’s an easy way just starting to create filters, rules, get the stuff out. The second step is getting things that you need to see important. So if my manager emails me directly, that should look different than him emailing the entire org because if I’m in a meeting or something, I wanna see that. I wanna be able to open it right away.
If I have important clients, ’cause I’m in sales, their emails should look different in my inbox. And so. You wanna set those rules up one time to say, if it’s from them to me, I need it to stick out. So that way it’s not just all unread or bold. The third piece is thinking of your email, like laundry. So we all know how to do laundry, but if I, it’s my favorite analogy,
by the way.
Oh, good. I love this analogy when you talked about it like laundry. I’m like, oh my God, I do, I do not do this. Yeah. Which is your analogy is I, I fold one piece of laundry, I take it to the closet, then I walk all the way back. Then I fold another piece, and then I take it to the, like, nobody
does. Does that.
Exactly, exactly.
So if you, if I told you this is how you’re doing your laundry, oh, then you, then you take out one stock, you don’t feel like finding the other stock. So you put it away, you find, this is my favorite. You find a pair of wet pants. You say, uh, I don’t want to deal with this. I’m gonna throw it back in with the dry clothes.
That’s what you do when you mark something as unread. When you’ve already seen it, you’re telling yourself, I’m gonna throw it back in there. Then two seconds later, you grab the same pair of pants. You’re like, wait a second. I already touched that. Think of how much energy that’s being wasted there. And so I feel like if you think about your laundry, you know, you take everything out.
You put it into piles based on what you need to do, fold, hang and match your socks. I don’t call inbox zero, meaning that you’ve answered every email. No, it means everything’s in piles and you’ve set your future self up. What to do with those piles. And so you know where that pink shirt is, because you know what?
You touched it once. It’s in the fold pile. You haven’t gotten to it yet. Then you take the time to fold, fold, fold, fold, fold, fold, fold. You find, you know, obviously efficiencies and folding all at one time. And then you take one pile and walk it up to your dresser. And so when you think of your email, you should have the read basket, review, respond, and then those should be the things that your respond, respond, respond all at once.
You’re not. You’re not taking one item here and there. And what people, most people do, they open their dryer 50 times throughout the day to tell themselves, oh my gosh, I just have so many clothes that I haven’t dealt with. And then at the end of the night, they turn it back on with wet clothes and they’re like, I’ll deal with it tomorrow.
That is so true. Uh, I feel like you’re looking at me. Are you looking at me? Are you gonna feel like No, no, no.
You have a list system, and I just wanna go briefly into this because a lot of us have lists, we have an efficient list, you have a list
funnel. Can you walk through how your list funnel works?
Yeah, so that was something I’ve been doing for probably five years. So there’s summer camp and there’s, you know, things for work and there’s returns I needed to do. And so I’ve been using this system and the idea of it is that lists are great. But how do they interact? How do they work with deadlines? If you have, like, I just thought of something in my head that I wanted to do in the school year, starting in the fall.
So it’s like, am I gonna put that on my list of things that I wanted to do today? You know, that’s not, that doesn’t make sense that, so you can’t really just have one list. And so. It’s hard to describe, I think verbally. So I have all these templates on my website, but you start with what I call like a dashboard list, a main list.
It has everything that you could and want to do in your life into categories. And the reason you put ’em in, it feels
like, it feels like
Laura, like kind
of just a puke it out
list. Exactly. Exactly. It’s like everything. I’ve been meaning to learn piano. I also need to do this next. Week. You know, it’s just, and the reason it’s put into categories is because it’s the type of action.
So I had all the calls I need to make. That’s one section of it. And the other day I got somewhere early, I pulled up that on my phone and said, oh, here are the three calls I got 15 minutes. I’ll start going through them. Or you have things that are on the computer, so if you have a few extra minutes, you can go to the computer list and find it.
So you start with that, but you don’t wanna look at that list all the time because how stressful for me to constantly be looking at things that I need to do in the fall. That’s not helpful for my brain to see those things constantly. So what you do is you take that top of the funnel, that main list, and you start funneling down each Sunday.
You say, all right, these are the things that I realistically can accomplish from this list this week. It also helps you see those things with deadlines. Like, I have something coming up in two months. I’m gonna see it each Sunday at the beginning of the week. It’s never gonna get ahead of me. I’m never gonna say, oh gosh, I forgot no.
Every Sunday I am gonna see it, and I’m gonna ask myself, is this the time where I need to start prepping for it? From there, you actually create a daily list each day. So you have your things that you hope to accomplish this week and then the night before you say, here is what I accomplish the next day.
So I think one of the downfalls of productivity is having all these things we wanna do. And sometimes I’ll, I’ll do this in my coaching sessions. So I’ll say, show me your to-do list. And then I’ll point to them and say, okay, when do you plan to do that? And when do you plan to do that? And the answer is a lot of the times.
I don’t know when I get to it, which ends up being at night. And so you wanna actually treat those items like scheduling. You wanna say, okay, I have to do this. It’s gonna take an hour and I’m gonna do it from 10 to 11 tomorrow. And that means you’re so much more likely to do that, and at 10:00 AM you don’t have to decide.
Oh, what should I do? Let me go back to my giant list of things that I need, you know, in the fall. So it’s a really focused way of making sure that everything you have to do stays in this ironclad closed system so your brain knows exactly what it needs to do and what it doesn’t need to do, which is equally as important.
And that is the beginning stackers of the last two on the list, which is consolidating and closing loops. Mm-hmm. And then that leads us to more calm and then back into
the, back into the cycle again. Exactly.
The book is called Uptime, A Practical Guide to Personal Productivity and Wellbeing. As you can hear, there’s really nothing in it.
No, I’m kidding. We,
we, I think we went through like the first 15 pages of like 200 and something pages, but it’s available everywhere tomorrow, right?
Yes. Tomorrow and, and like you said, there’s a lot of information, so at the end I talk about just take what you need. You might have a good list system, but you need help saying no.
You might have too many meetings, but you feel on top of your email. So every chapter has little pieces that anyone can pick through based on what you need in your productivity
life.
You
said there’s also some help on your website? What’s the URL of the website?
Yes.
So Laura May. Martin may with an e.com.
That’s where I have all the resources, the templates. Yep.
Yeah, and what we’ll do then, stackers,
we’ll put that if you’re walking the dog or you know out in your calm time, we’ll, we’ll, we’ll link to it in our show notes at stacky Benjamins dot com. Laura, thank you so much for joining us and helping
make us more productive.
I appreciate it. Thank
you so much.
This is
Erin from Colorado Springs, and when I’m not teaching three boys how to patch hockey, stick holes, and drywall, I’m Stacking Benjamins. Thanks again to Laura for stopping by. Hey Karen, you wanna head out to the back porch? Sure. That sounds good. In this last segment of the show, we call the back porch.
The guys typically talk about the terrible movies or TV shows that they watch, the worst golf courses they’ve golfed on lately. Or some awful place that Joe’s traveled to. Oh, like Bali? Yeah, like Bali Awful. Must be terrible to have to go there. Mm-Hmm. But since many of you don’t know much about us, we thought maybe we’ll share what we do for the show.
Karen, why don’t we start with you? Do you wanna share a little bit behind the scenes on what it’s like to be the producer of Stacking Benjamins? Sure. We get a ton of
pitches weekly from all sorts of people, and we only have room for one or two guests on the show, so it’s pretty hard to pick and choose which ones we want to go through.
I sometimes do that and then run them by Joe and be like, yay, nay. We now have a system for doing that, so it makes it a little bit easier. Most of the pitches that we get are from authors that have a book coming out because that’s when we get them to talk to us. Otherwise, they don’t really have anything or need to talk to us.
What we try and do is give our listeners actionable tips from each of the authors and not just
talk about their books. Oh, you mean we’re not just a bookseller, we’re not a Barnes and Noble. No. No, we’re not. That’s good. We’ve been accused of that before and I did not agree with that review whatsoever.
Yeah. So when you’re doing these guest pitches, do you and Joe agree. On the guests that you pick or do you guys have, you know, any kind of tiff about that? We have differing
opinions,
of course. Yes. That cannot be, Joe is a very agreeable person. That cannot be possible. We come from different places,
just like everyone of our listeners, you know, Joe has his background, I have my background.
We have our different lenses that we look through at life. Yeah. And at what needs to
be on the show. I think you guys do a really good job at picking guests that have great stories. I think that the mentors that you guys pick to be on the show, even if they’re not financial related, I find them fascinating.
The, the, the experience that they’ve had in life, the stories that they’ve told, the things that they’ve accomplished. I just find them so incredibly inspiring and, and I have learned so much from them. I’ve learned personal growth and man, you name it, I, I don’t know. I’ve just, I get a lot out of them, so I think you guys do an excellent job at picking the mentors for the show.
So thanks Karen. Thanks Joe. I guess, but thanks Karen. Thank you. Thanks. We try hard. It’s difficult. It shows You guys do a good job. You, you, it shows for sure. Tina,
I know that you’ve done everything on this show. Except maybe host a show. Until today.
Until today. So what, what do you do for the show now?
Currently now I’m the video editor of the show. In the past I have helped Gertrude do social media and sometimes I, well, I guess still currently, not sometimes, but I might manage like the website, trying to keep it up to date and running and online. But my main role now currently is video editing and.
Managing our YouTube channel. We put our shows up in segments usually throughout the week, except on Fridays. We put the entire episode out. The Friday round tables are always start to finish the whole show on Fridays. Otherwise, throughout the week, we’re just sprinkling smaller. Maybe it might be a headline, maybe it might be a better call.
So, and OG segment, you know, sprinkled throughout the thing. So. People get a little bit of a taste of everything on there, and now we’re starting to do more lives, right? We are doing more lives. We’ve done a couple round table recordings live, which have been a ton of fun because we’re able to get audience participation while they might record the show.
Normally, like they do talking to each other, they’re still reading the comments and when they can throw a comment in there throughout, they do, they absolutely throw the comments throughout. And then they also stay on at the end and answer a lot of questions that might have come up, you know, once they’re recording, I.
For the, for the podcast is over with, so that’s always a ton of fun. The Stacking Benjamins audience is just, they’re fun. They are fun, and so I, I don’t know, I’m always monitoring the comments during the lives, so I get to see everything that everybody says. Mm-Hmm. It’s a good time. It seems like our audience does really enjoy the lives.
Speaking of the lives on YouTube, our next one is actually on April 3rd, two days after this goes
live. That’s awesome, Karen. I’m glad to hear that. Who’s gonna be the guest on that episode? So
we’re gonna have Doug, of course, and then Paula and Len, and then the special guest will be Eric Braman.
Oh, Eric Braman.
He’s fun. He’s been on our show many times before. In fact, he’s even done our lives before. Yep. Yeah, that’s great. Okay, so you guys can see that one. Then if you go to youtube.com, subscribe, hit the notification so you get reminded when we go live. Are there other
videos that we have on
the
YouTube channel?
Actually, we do shorts now. We’ve started to incorporate shorts. Those are being very well received. We have Dan Tristan Reyes, who helps us do the shorts. He does a fabulous job on them. He helps us with the shorts form. I do more of the longer form, and together we’re able to just hammer out all this content for everybody.
Nice. It’s fun. I like it. This is a good position. While I’ve enjoyed everything I’ve done, I think I am enjoying this the most. Hmm. Let’s knock on wood that I can stay in this position for a while. So this has been fun, Karen, but not nearly as hard as what we usually do. So I think maybe we go back to running the place and we give the guys back the easy job of talking on the mics.
That sounds good to me. All right, Doug, what are our takeaways from today? Well,
what’s stacked up on our to-do list today? First, take some advice from Laura Martin. Wanna be more productive at work? Create systems and processes, and you’ll be focused on your goals and not working at the whim of everyone else’s priorities.
Second, take some advice from Tina and Karen shopping. Oh, stores have a priority for you. Focus on apps, tools, and systems so that you can do what’s right for you and your family. But what’s the biggest to do? I gotta buy Joe some better locks for this studio. I can’t go through this emotional again.
Thanks to Laura Martin for joining us today. You can find her new book Uptime wherever books are sold. We’ll also include links in our show notes at Stacking Benjamins dot com. This show is the Property of SB podcasts LLC, copyright 2024, and is created by Joe Saul Sea. Hi. Our producer is Karen, Repine.
Karen and Joe. Get help from a few of our neighborhood friends. You’ll find out about our awesome team at Stacking Benjamins dot com, along with the show notes and how you can find us on YouTube and all the usual social media spots. Come say hello. Oh yeah, and before I go. Not only should you not take advice from these nerds, don’t take advice from people you don’t know.
This show is for entertainment purposes only. Before making any financial decisions, speak with a real financial advisor. I’m Joe’s Mom’s Neighbor, Duggan. We’ll see you next time back here at the Stacking Benjamin Show.
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