Prioritizing Time Blocks and Why Multitasking Fails Us

0:00Adam Holbrook: If you've ever worked with someone who creates chaos, plays the victim, and blames everyone else, then this podcast is for you. So here's your host, Adam Holbrook.

0:19Welcome to the Managing Difficult People podcast. I am your host, Adam Holbrook. Today, I'm joining you from Atlantic City. I'm getting ready to speak at the New Jersey School Nutrition Association Conference at the Harrah's Resort in Atlantic City. Super pumped up to do that. Today's episode, we're going to be talking about prioritizing. We're going to be talking about working in time blocks. We're going to be talking about multitasking. But before we get into that, I want to let you know the reason I created the Managing Difficult People podcast. I was noticing that there's so much division in the world.

1:00So many people arguing, fighting, and I said, maybe I can create a place, a safe place where leaders, teams, employees, anybody can listen in. Listen to my story. Listen to my guest stories and gain awareness of what's holding them back in their own life and have a pathway forward. I work with schools and organizations that want to change culture. Because here's the thing. When we stop talking about changing culture and actually do something about it, that's when everything changes. Relationships improve. People are excited to show up for work and the bottom line increases as well. If this is something you want to learn more about, go ahead and reach out to me at adam at leadtolearning.com.

1:47or my other email is info at adam-holbrook.com, or you can reach out to me directly at the managingdifficultpeoplepodcast.com. Today's episode is all about prioritizing, getting multitasking, and getting the most done to move our life forward. And this is a chapter out of my new book, which is coming out November 17th. The new book is gonna be amazing. It's called You're Not For Everyone. I'm super pumped up that You're Not For Everyone is going to be released November 17th. It's a no BS guide to living authentically, trusting yourself and building relationships at home and at work. It's about these masks that we put on.

2:36Sometimes we need those masks, but other times they don't serve us anymore. And it's about recognizing which ones we need and which ones we don't. And if we choose to not wear those masks anymore. how to move forward. So today we're going to be talking about chapter three of my book, which is called Multitasking is a Myth. Have you ever been on a call, half paying attention, while writing an email, all while replaying you and your wife's fight from the other day? That's when you know you're anywhere but the present moment. And in that moment, you put that mask on that says, I got this. I can do it all.

3:15But the results say differently with disconnected relationships, work done, but not good or incomplete work and sitting on the sidelines. When you finally get a chance to breathe, you reach for a drink, you binge watch TV, or you scroll on your phones, not because you're weak, but because you're exhausted from being everywhere at the same time. Still presence isn't about escaping your reality. It's about entering it fully. We have been introduced to this phrase that the most successful people in life are the greatest at multitasking. But I'm here to tell you multitasking is a myth. Multitasking is a lie.

4:05You can't possibly do two things at the same time that require your attention effectively at the same time. What we're really talking about is task switching, where you go from one task to another task, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. And in that back and forth, you lose time, energy, and a little bit of your soul. We try doing everything, but nothing gets done good. In fact, research shows that each person loses over two hours of productivity each day through this task switching. You might be saying to me, well, Adam, this makes a whole lot of sense. You can't do two things at the same time.

4:54I get it. That require your attention effectively, but I can't just ignore my boss, my team members. When they come to me, what am I supposed to do? And I'm not suggesting that you ignore them. I'm suggesting working in dedicated, uninterrupted time blocks. Time blocks, that's how I've wrote all three of my books. That's how the most successful people work. They let their key people know when they're going to be available, when they're not going to be available. And you set that time block. For me, for writing those books, it was I set aside an hour each day to write those books. If I didn't work in time blocks, you wouldn't be reading my books.

5:34You wouldn't be reading You're Not For Everyone coming out November 17th. Dedicate that space. I'd let my key people know, hey, I'm not going to be available until after my time block is up. And after my time block was up, I reward myself because we're not an endless supply of energy and good high brain power. We're exhausted by the end of the day. And the reason is we're going task switching back and forth and we're working throughout the day. Instead of saying we're going to work on something dedicated, uninterrupted, that means we're going to silence our cell phones. That means we're going to silence our email notifications.

6:08That means we're going to let our people know that we're not going to be available until after the time block is up. I like to reward myself after a time block's up. I like to make a cup of coffee. I could just finish drinking my cup of coffee here at the Hard Rock Casino. Not bad. In the room anyway. Sometimes I walk the dog. I'll call my wife back. I'll call the client back. Here's the thing is when we prioritize too, this is very important because when we prioritize our dates, a lot of times we use our brain power incorrectly. When I was writing my book, when I am doing some high level collaboration, I do that stuff in the morning.

6:50When my brain power is the highest. Now, I always thought everyone's brain power was the highest in the morning, but for some people, that's not the case. Some people stay up all night and then they wake up and they're not high brain powered until the afternoon. It's about gaining awareness of when your highest brain power is. For me, it's first thing in the morning. First thing in the morning, I don't schedule anything on the calendar, Zoom calls, any meetings, unless it's going to move my life forward, unless it's at a very important meeting. I'm not going to schedule it before 11 o 'clock in the morning because that's where I'm going to spend my high brain power activities times writing, doing whatever it takes to move my life forward, working on speeches.

7:31That's when my brain is sharp. Now, also I go for my morning walks in the morning. I shut my phone off during my morning walks and I'm working on speeches, dedicated uninterrupted time. Because here's the thing. If you just get interrupted one time, just one simple person coming into the office, Can I just have 30 seconds? It's never just 30 seconds. They come in for 30 seconds and they change your train of thought. Now you have to refocus, re-get into that place again. And it takes time. It takes energy to get back into that place. It's exhausting. Now the low priority items, I send those to the afternoon, those emails that I got to return.

8:13And sometimes I used to, emails were coming in and I was just trying to get it off my plate and just quickly send off a response, hoping that this was good enough, get it out of my face. But then I said, the email can sit. The phone call can sit. What can't sit is this uninterrupted, dedicated spot. Now, a lot of organizations, including a lot of universities, hire their professors and they give them this space to be creative. This isn't space for them to just kind of grade their tests or prepare for lessons, but this is actually a space for them to be creative. Harvard University, Yale University, they all do this with their professors.

8:53This is huge to do that. Now, we got to do the same thing with us. I break my day into priorities. What's the most important thing that I need to do today? I have a list, usually like two or three items that I need to do, and I know I have to work on the most high-priority items. And during that day, I'll notice after I'm done with the time block, I'll check my email, and there's like three or four emails that have come in. And if you're one of the ones that wrote me that email, I love you. But that's just going to sit there for a little while. Unless, of course, I know it's something that I need to respond to right away, but I'm not even going to actually read the emails.

9:26But if I notice it's from somebody that I need to open up right away, I will, but after my time block. Now, organizations that use this, they get done more because they gain back the lost time. They're re-energized because now they have so much more time and the company moves forward, the organization moves forward. But you can use this in your regular life too. Now, one of the exercises I have my classes do, sometimes when I go to organizations, I have them do this exercise. It's called the multitasking is a myth exercise. It's a fun exercise to prove the concept that you can't do two things at the same time effectively.

10:04And what you're really doing is the task switching. So basically, we have the phrase multitasking is a myth, and I get set a timer. And I say, on your market set, go. And they have to rewrite the entire phrase. Multitasking is a myth. But here's the thing. Every time they write a letter in the phrase multitasking is a myth, they must write a number. For example, they're first going to write the letter M in multitasking is a myth. Then they're going to go right below it, write the number one. Come back up, write the letter U in multitasking. come back down, write the number two, come back up, write the letter L, then come back down, write number three, back and forth until the entire phrase multitasking is a myth is written and numbers one through 19 are written.

10:52And then we're going to do the exact same exercise and we're going to time ourselves. And my time I remember was like 43 seconds. And then we're going to do the exact same exercise, but this time we're not going to task switch at all. We're going to write the entire phrase. Multitasking is a myth. And immediately after we're done writing that phrase, we're going to jump down and we're going to write numbers one through 19. And my time was 22 seconds. And the results of this are so clear. Multitasking isn't efficiency. It's loss of time. It's loss of priorities. I know that you say this is a lot easier than it looks.

11:35And it may be just communicating that to your team members, saying, hey, look, I'm going to be working in my time block. Superintendents of schools use this. I know they like to have an open door policy, but then they wonder why they have to work until nine, 10 o 'clock at night. Because when they have an open door policy, they're working. And then even somebody comes in just for a moment, it just takes them completely out of it. But anyone can use this. Now, there's two types of interruptions. There's active interruptions and the active ones that are the ones that we choose. We choose to pick up the phone and make that call.

12:10We choose to check our phones. We choose to do something. And then the ones where we are abruptly interrupted. Now, both of them will take our time away. But when we choose, it's a little bit easier to get back to that task at hand. But either one of them completely takes us out of the task. And we're going to be losing two hours a day, more than two hours a day. What would you do with two hours a day? How would you spend that two hours a day? Hey, then you can start going for your walk. I guarantee if your boss, you showed up and you started getting your work done better because you worked in these time blocks and then you wanted to go for a walk outside or dedicate your time to something else, go make some conversations, get to build some relationships.

12:54I guarantee your boss would love that because you're getting your work done because you're in that time blocks, but you're not an endless supply. You've got to recognize you're not, you can't just grind all day. You can't just go from one thing to another thing. Sometimes what I do is I work really hard for an hour and I play this bouncing game on the computer where you got to stack these balls up. And it just takes my mind off of it for 10 minutes. And then I get back to it. And after I get back to it, I log out of that site. I don't even want that in there. And sometimes it makes me have to take out, silence my email notifications because that dinging is just going to bring anxiety to you.

13:36So how can you prioritize your day? How can you not work on two things at once? Because if you're in a meeting and you say, hey, look, I can multitask. I'm going to do this meeting and I'm going to work on my project at hand. You might be able to get that done. But what's it costing you for that relationship, right? The team members know that you're not fully there, right? So how does that make you look as a leader? You know, because part of leadership, actually the most important part of leadership is influence. And how do we gain influence? By connecting with other people. But if we are so busy on other tasks while those meetings are going on, we're really losing those connections, which are so important.

14:16And sometimes we think that we can get some of this stuff off of our plate. but it's much easier just to work on it all at once. So I want to ask you right now, where is that safe place for you to get your work done? Because a lot of times it's different for everyone. For me, I love my computer desk upstairs. That's where my family knows that that's my spot to not bother me because I'm going to be locked in and working in there, getting the tasks done one at a time. Because here's the thing, we get one task done at a time. We work in time blocks, uninterrupted time. Some school principals now put notes on their doors that said, I am not going to be available until 10 o 'clock.

14:56If this is an emergency, please go to my secretary so they can lock in and get that done. But they still now have more time to see students, be with their teachers. It's just so important. Time blocks are a lifesaver. I didn't know how I would be able to get my book done because it was just, my first book took me 18 months to write and I had to be locked into it. And I was learning this process during that, my first book. And I got to tell you, without it, I wouldn't have been able to get that book done. It's just a beautiful, beautiful thing. And if you're able to not work all night, think about how much time you would be able to get that back.

15:32I told you you're losing two hours per person per day through this. What would you do with that two hours. Now you can start exercising. Maybe you can hang out with your husband or your wife and go for a walk together, hang out with the kids a little bit more. And you're not going to be so burnt out at the end of the day because, oh, I'm just working so hard. And you come home and you want to be there with your kids. You want to be everything. You want to be that a great parent, but you're exhausted. Well, what if I said doing this can take back your life? This chapter is from my book, You Are Not For Everyone.

16:07It's called Multitasking is a Myth. And it comes out November 17th, the greatest day, because it's my birthday. Now, this book, You Are Not For Everyone, you got to get your hands on. You can go ahead and pre-order the e-book right now on Amazon.com. The hardcover book is going to be available November 17th for purchase. Or if you want to wait an additional week, the audio version will be available. This book is going to change your life. This book is going to help you grow. This book is going to help you get everything that you want. And it's also going to connect you to yourself. Give you awareness of areas that you're holding back in your own life.

16:49and have a pathway forward. I'm so grateful that you decided to join me today on the podcast, the Managing Difficult People podcast. Remember, multitasking is a myth. Set aside time blocks. Work on those time blocks every single day. Move your life forward. Till next time. Thank you for joining me. God bless.

17:13Adam Holbrook: So that's it for today's episode of the Managing Difficult People podcast. Head on over to Apple Podcasts or iTunes wherever you listen and subscribe to the show. One lucky listener every single week that posts a review on Apple Podcasts or iTunes will win a chance in the grand prize drawing to win a$10 ,000 private VIP day with Adam Holbrook himself. Be sure to head on over to ManagingDifficultPeoplePodcast.com and pick up a free copy of Adam's gift and join us on the next episode.

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