249 - Scheduling and Productivity
Productivity and useful scheduling tips are all over the internet, but not all of them are actually effective, and sometimes they do more harm than good. Different people benefit from different ways of scheduling their time. There’s a range of methods, some that may work great for you and others that might not be as effective.
“There is this central idea behind scheduling and efficiency that it should be there to improve the quality of life for everyone involved.”
Emily
Evaluate where you’re spending your time, figure out what you want the purpose of your schedule to be or how productive you want to be, and you’re in a great place to start improving the quality of your life by scheduling (or not scheduling!)
Four of the most important game changers when it comes to productivity are:
Sleep: Getting a full 7-9 hours of sleep each night has insurmountable benefits, and increasing productivity, staving off depression, and maintaining a healthy immune system are just a few of them.
Reading and exercise: This includes audio books! Reading or listening to books helps keep your brain active and healthy, and physical exercise both benefits your body and has the added benefit of releasing endorphins for better mental and emotional health.
Place boundaries around your personal (unstructured) time: Sometimes not sharing your calendar with friends or partners makes this easier, even though prioritizing communication is still important. Ensuring you have some free time to do with as you please is crucial to maintaining a good productive mindset.
Get over the glory of being busy: In our current society and especially within the American culture, being busy is sometimes seen as a “social badge of honor,” even though there isn’t any reward from it beyond bragging. Figuring out how to do your work more quickly and smartly as opposed to the longevity of it can be a more healthy mindset when taking a look at how busy you are versus how busy you want to be.
Listen to the full episode to get the scoop on all the specific tips for how to effectively schedule your time and maximize productivity in a way that makes you feel good!
Transcript
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Jase: On this episode of the Multiamory podcast, we're tackling something a little different for our show, but that's still connected to relationships, and that is scheduling productivity and intentionality. It's so common to hear polyamorous people say that scheduling is the hardest part of their relationships. In monogamous relationships, scheduling can still be a point of contention or stress. In this episode, we're going to talk about some of our favorite scheduling and productivity hacks, while also exploring ways to do this by prioritizing what actually matters to us and not just getting sucked into the cult of productivity.
Dedeker: The cult of productivity, did you come up with that turn of phrase?
Jase: I did. Yes. Thank you.
Emily: Wow.
Dedeker: Wow.
Emily: That's impressive. Well done.
Dedeker: That's hard hitting. I do feel that many of us could probably be in therapy for years just talking about scheduling and our feelings about productivity personally.
Emily: It always become a big thing these days. I feel as though there's a lot of podcasts and books written about productivity and how to be more productive. If you're not productive, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, then you're a bad person.
Dedeker: Well, it's like a push pull now between-- I do feel that our generation is pulled toward, "Yes, be productive, maximize efficiency," but then also pulled toward, "No, you need to have self-care. You need to take a break. You need to relax. It's okay." I don't get a sense from our culture that we found a good balance with that yet. I just see a kind of us constantly being pulled back and forth between those two extremes, personally.
Jase: Yes, definitely. What about our personal experiences with scheduling?
Dedeker: To talk about schedules-- Times that I've been frustrated. Let's start with when I've been frustrated with other people's schedules, shall we?
Jase: Yes. Blame it on us.
Dedeker: What comes to mind for me is, I'm a very schedule-oriented person, very, very much so. That was very much my family of origin. The patriarch of my family was very German, and so it was like everything is on time. Half an hour before time is all on time. Showing up somewhere on time means that you're late. The number of hours of my life in my childhood spent sitting in a car because we showed up to an event an hour ahead of time, and now we're just going to sit in the parking lot before the doors even open, I can't even tell you. Probably entire years of my life spent that way. That's who I am.
That means the times that I get the most frustrated are any times I've dated a partner who's not a schedule-oriented person and someone who's very much like, "Hey, you want to hang out this afternoon," and they messaged me two hours beforehand, and that I just can't handle. That's when I tend to get frustrated, is when I can't fly, I can't jive with someone who's not a schedule-oriented as I am.
Jase: It's funny because--
Dedeker: Jase, you're looking at me in a very confused sort of way.
Emily: He has done to me a couple of times that before.
Jase: No. I know I'm giving you a look at because I remember in the early days of us dating, that it was very much like I had to wait for you to be like, "Hey, I've got an evening free." It was kind of had to be ready for those last minute things. Were you just hating it?
Dedeker: Well, I guess I was probably just more of an asshole back then. I don't know. Were you really?
Jase: Yes. I have just of memories of having to like, that I couldn't really plan ahead, you were always like, "Well, I've got see when I'm available."
Dedeker: Geez, well, I don't know. What excuses can I come up with?
Jase: Quick.
Dedeker: I don't know. Honestly, probably the main excuse being that I was in a much more hierarchical relationship back then where I was much more expected that the leftover time is what goes to the secondary partner.
Emily: I'm pretty sure that's what it was.
Dedeker: It was probably mostly that of like, "I'm going to nail down the time that I need to give to my primary partner and then I can tell you." That's probably what it was.
Jase: I think that sounds about right.
Dedeker: Which is me partially shifting the blame onto my primary partner at the time.
Emily: That's all right. We can blame him.
Dedeker: Emily, what baggage you got to work out with me?
Emily: No. It was just funny that you said that because I do remember fairly recently, when you were like, "Hey, I've got some time and I'm working from home today. Do you want to come up and work with me?" We ended up actually just going to a bar/food place and-
Dedeker: We just ended up drinking beer.
Emily: -hanging out and drinking for a couple hours, which was actually awesome and much preferred to working. Maybe not the most productive thing, but I really enjoyed that. That was fairly spontaneous. I think for you to say like, "I am so rigid in this and I hate being spontaneous or whatever." I'm like, "You're not as rigid as you think you are."
Dedeker: All right. I'll take that.
Emily: I guess for myself when I've been a little upset, it's mostly when I'm upset with partners when their schedule is so hectic that it makes them down or upset or overwhelmed when they get home and I'm like, "Well, okay, it seems like you don't want to be around me or do much with me or whatever." Then I'm like, well-- That sucks. That's more when my partner schedules have frustrated me in the past. How about you, Jase?
Jase: I think all of those things. I was going to move on to the next one about other scheduling frustrations of being frustrated with your own schedule, because for me, it's the opposite of Dedeker in a way that oftentimes when I'm most frustrated with my schedule is when it's too scheduled. Is when I don't have the flexibility to-- This thing came up. Sure. I can shift things around and do that or I can-- The times in my life when I'm so wall-to-wall scheduled with commitments that I just don't have that flexibility, or don't have enough time for myself, that then it's also probably leads to what Emily was talking about of that just like, I can't bring as much of myself to my relationships or to my friendships or anything because I'm just like, "Ah." Anytime I spare time I have I'm like, "What can I cram into this time instead of getting to actually enjoy it?" That's something that I feel like at least for me in recent memory comes up more often, is when I'm too scheduled where I don't have unscheduled time.
Emily: There was a time in my life a couple years ago, I'm sure that I talked about it on the podcast, but I had three restaurant jobs. I was working like a job for this guy where I was doing personal assistant work for him. I would sometimes do jobs for Nintendo. I was caroling during this at one point too, and it was just so unbelievably much that-- Then also Multiamory on top of that. I remember basically having time for nothing else ever, and it did put a big strain on my relationship and definitely also made me feel as though I was being-- I was working so hard and doing so much and had time for nothing else, but overall it was just a stupid waste of time and not what I really needed to be doing. It was too bad that I decided like-- I just didn't utilize the word no in the way in which I should have. I kept saying yes to a bunch of different jobs, and it just was not good for my mental health at the time.
Dedeker: You've gotten way better at that though, I think.
Emily: Yes, I have. How about the other-- Let's see. Just how is poor scheduling in general, whether it's ours, or someone else's? How has it negatively affected our lives overall? I guess for me, as I just said, poor scheduling in terms of over scheduling has made me feel way too stressed and upset and exhausted and not able to think or function properly.
Dedeker: I think that the funny thing is that when I hear poor scheduling, my initial reaction is, or the initial thing that I think of is someone who doesn't schedule anything or doesn't manage their schedule. That's poor scheduling. I think we've hit upon this point that poor scheduling can be scheduling too much. It doesn't necessarily mean that you're just like so great at scheduling that you schedule everything down to a tee, but it can be that you don't take care of yourself within that scheduling. That's definitely where it's fallen, for me for sure, is that I tend to schedule too much, I tend to bite off too much or I tend to project having much more energy than I actually am going to have on a particular day and just fill up a day and just run myself ragged by the end of the day or the end of the week.
Jase: I wish the listeners could hear me just rolling my eyes as like, "That's so classic Dedeker."
Emily: Oh my gosh, yes.
Dedeker: We've been working on that together. You've been helping me, it's been good.
Jase: We have. Yes. It's been getting better, it's great.
Emily: I think for myself, I'm on the extreme ends of both of these things. Because I do find myself like I'm getting ready to go to Shanghai, by the time this episode comes out, I'll already have been there. I'm trying to remember because I don't write it down generally. I'm trying to remember all of the things that I need to get done before I leave, and I don't really write it down.
I'm just sitting there being like, okay. I have the Trello board for my Multiamory tasks, but then the extraneous tasks that I have on my own, I need to just figure out what they are. It does tend to make me more anxious. I'm either like I fill up my day with work, or I don't know what I'm supposed to do. Then I have to try to figure it out by going back in my brain and figuring it out somehow. It's terrible.
Dedeker: I don't know, how can you live that way? Just hearing that makes me anxious.
Emily: I've done it for years. I know.
Dedeker: My partner, Alex, I saw his Google Calendar the other day, and there's like nothing on it. I was just like, "How do you do this?" He has to-do lists.
Emily: I'm really good at remembering dates.
Dedeker: You are good at remembering dates, that's true.
Emily: I'm phenomenal at remembering dates, and so I remember specific days of things or like my other partners have told me. That Josh is like, "I'm doing this thing on this day. My mother is coming into town on this day." I'm like, "I've got it. Don't worry. When you forget, because you will, I will remember." I remember things like that, but my own shit that I need to figure out, I'm like, I'll remember it sometime.
Dedeker: I have to-do lists and an entire trailer board just for organizing my life. It's a good thing actually, incorporating the trailer board really helped me to not just have one single long to-do list that's always there. Still I just, I don't know how people do it without writing it down.
Jase: I feel like what's cool about this is just from sharing our personal experiences, I feel like we've already covered a lot of the range. Where it's not just saying like this one way of scheduling is good, or that scheduling always has to look a certain way, or that bad scheduling is always X. There is a range, and that's what we want to get into in this episode. That's why I was excited to propose this topic for this episode. Because it's something that I feel like it takes a balance and it takes learning about a lot of different things, to figure out like, how does this schedule serve you?
Dedeker: Yes, definitely. This topic in general is really popular. Of course, we're not the first people to ever cover this. If you do a search for scheduling or productivity, you're going to find zillions of articles and apps and books just on that subject alone. The trap is that you can sometimes prioritize efficiency or productivity for it's own sake. Falling into that cult of productivity, as Jase mentioned at the beginning.
Emily: That's amazing.
Dedeker: I think it is important that we should step back and take a look at the bigger picture.
Emily: Yes, this is really important because there is this central idea behind scheduling and efficiency. That it should be there to improve the quality of life for everyone involved. You have to ask yourself when you look at something like this, what does quality of life actually look like for you? What is important? This is question--
Jase: I just want to be like, amen. Yes.
Emily: Yes. Maybe my semi-schedule being written down to a tee is actually not that important to me. Maybe just trying to figure it out and try to implement it in the ways that I do is more important. I don't know, productivity, and that seems like something that's really important to you, Dedeker, or like a good, healthy well nuanced schedule.
Dedeker: Well nuanced schedule.
Emily: Jase, I've seen your bullet journal. Damn, that thing's super impressive too. I feel like you're really impressive at scheduling as well.
Jase: We're going to get to that later, toward the end of the episode. We're going to talk more about those specific tools.
Emily: What else are things that are important to you all that improve your quality of life?
Jase: Like for mine, the unstructured time. Having free time, having the flexibility to say yes to opportunities that come along. That's something that's important for me. If I were listening to some scheduling guru who's telling me to schedule every minute of my day to be the most productive, that's not going to serve that goal.
Dedeker: Yes, that makes sense. Okay, to me what's really important to me in my life is, it's really important for me to have clear leisure time. Which is different from necessarily free time, but just like clear leisure time. Have to be clear to me when my working hours end. Because something that I find myself actually getting envious of pretty frequently among my friends or partners who have more traditional 9:00 to 5:00 jobs, is that often for these people, they go to work and they're there at work eight hours a day, and then when they come home, it's very clear, okay, that's whatever time. It's relaxing time, it's leisure time. I leave my work at work and then I come home.
Of course, not everyone has a job, a 9:00 to 5:00 where they can leave their work at work. For those of us like myself who are self employed or an entrepreneur, you can't always leave your work at work. Because your success of your business, or your project, or whatever is directly tied to how much work you're putting into it. For me, it is really important to give myself that gift of, okay, this is the time, whether it's the weekend or after six o'clock or whatever it is, where it's okay to just relax and feel okay about it. That's part of having a high quality of life for me. What else?
Emily: I think it's really important to do-- you put this on yours like self improvement time, but for instance, it's incredibly important for me to go to yoga at least two to three times a week. To me, that is my, I don't have a regularly scheduled meditation, but that is my meditation time to me. It always has been basically for the entire time that I've known you, Dedeker, like the last six years.
Today for example, I had a rough day at work at my restaurant job yesterday. I was hemming and hawing like should I go to yoga today, should I go? I went, and I felt so much better. It was amazing. I knew that yes, this is the time for me to decompress. Not only decompress, but also do some exercise which raises your endorphins and makes you feel better in a variety of ways. All of those things are really important to me. There are like very specific times within the week where I know that I can make that a priority.
Jase: With all of this, the message here is to evaluate where you're spending your time. What is it that you want your schedule to give you. What is the purpose of your scheduling or your productivity or any of this. Part of that might be being willing to let go off some things. Being willing to--
Emily: Yes. Like free restaurant jobs.
Jase: Right. Like being willing to say no to some things, might be it for you, or it could be making it so you're able to say yes to more things. It really depends, and it's important to just be honest with yourself. Really get honest with yourself about, what do I want? What's the purpose of this? Rather than just going, "Someone says I should do this thing to be productive, I should do that."
With that in mind, later on in the episode, we're going to cover some specific tools and things like bullet journal, that we've personally found to be really helpful. First, we want to talk about four big game changing topics in terms of productivity. The first of those may surprise you, is sleep.
Dedeker: Sacrifice sleep, right? Sleep is the first thing to go.
Jase: I think for a lot of people it is, myself included. That's the easy thing to be like, "Well, I'll just sacrifice that by getting up a little earlier staying up late."
Dedeker: For me, I noticed that when I'm getting less sleep, that's a clear indicator to me that I need to be better about my schedule. Not just in the sense of like, I need to get to bed on time. It's more of looking at it holistically that for me, it's like if I'm have getting to bed late that usually probably means that I've worked too late. Then I've been like, "I want to do something fun for a change today, or I want my decompression time or whatever. I don't want to just go straight to bed after working all day." Then I stay up a little too late decompressing. Then it's like this domino effect where everything continues to just get knocked over. I've been trying to be better about that recently of like, when I'm consistently not getting enough sleep knowing that okay, that's a clue I need to sit down and rearrange my schedule or refigure out my schedule so that this doesn't just keep happening. I need to reprioritize like quitting work earlier or playing more video games or something like that. That's my very circuitous way of justifying that playing more video games will equal higher quality sleep for myself.
Emily: I don't know about that, nor where the research is there, but yes, by all means.
Dedeker: It's research body of one.
Jase:
Dedeker: Benefits of sleep, of course, sleep is so important. I know everyone wants to tune this out. Everyone's rolling their eyes, but seriously, it's just so many more things than you even realize. It's not even just your energy throughout the day or your zest for life. It's also your ability to learn things, your ability to memorize things, your metabolism, your weight. Your ability to keep yourself safe and be vigilant. Your mood, huge one, your mood, your cardiovascular health, your immune system, everything is so tied to sleep. It's a really frustrating thing because sleep researchers cave and give us a clear answer as to why all these things are tied up in your sleep.
Jase: Yes.
Emily: We need to recharge.
Dedeker: They just know that we do. All we know is, we need to recharge our batteries. It's not good that we don't.
Emily: You need your brain to shut the fuck up for a while?
Jase: Let's be really real about what getting enough sleep means. Enough can vary from person to person, but it's probably more than you think it is time, number one. Then basically, the range for adults is seven to nine hours, somewhere in that range. It's definitely not less than seven. I want to be clear on that. There is in this seven to nine range, and what's interesting is, if you're younger, it's more actually. Like teenagers should be getting like 8 to 10, which is-
Emily: I used to go to bed at 3:00 AM or 2:00 AM and then get up at 6:00 or 7:00 .
Jase: When I was in high school, I got up at 5:30 in the morning to go to jazz band before school. I would still stay up late in the evening because I would also have rehearsal after school. Then if I played a sport during certain seasons, would do that and then come home and have to do homework, have some relaxing time.
Emily: You played sports?
Jase: I played a little bit of sports. I did some track and field and some soccer.
I did those things and then would go home and I need to have homework time and then relaxation time and then get to sleep. I was probably getting maybe six hours of sleep a night, on a good day. I was probably usually getting less than that. In high school, was when I first started being like, ''I think I might have depression.'' I had a hard time at times. Even though I was doing stuff I loved and had a good family situation and a lot of stuff was going for me, but just really would struggle sometimes. Looking back on it, I'm just like, ''God, I wish someone had been like, stop.'' You just have to sleep more.
Dedeker: Get your butt in bed.
Jase: It makes a difference. I don't want to say sleep is the cure for depression, but not sleeping can cause it, or anxiety or other things. That's been shown, that is very clear. Then the other thing I wanted to cover too about sleep research is that, some of you may have heard, there's this thing, the term is super sleeper, is the term that gets thrown around.
Emily: It's like the opposite of being a super sleeper. You sleep less if you're a super sleeper.
Jase: A super sleeper is this term for people who have genetically been shown they only actually need four or five hours of sleep at night. It's very rare. This is a very rare trait to have. The researchers have found that actually the majority of people who self identify as one of these super sleepers are not actually. Actually they're just operating on a daily basis in an impaired state and they're not aware of it because the thing that's measuring if they're impaired, their brain is impaired.
It's like that, ''No I'm not drunk, I'm fine.'' Because your drunk brain is trying to tell if you're drunk or not, right? It's that kind of thing. Basically, the way they put this out there to tell is, if you say, ''I'm fine on five hours of sleep a night or four hours of sleep a night.'' If you ever have a night where you do sleep 9 hours or 10 hours, like if you ever have a day where you sleep in a bunch, you're not a super sleeper. It literally having that genetic trait means you never need more than that much sleep. That's very few of us. Even you who think you don't need that much sleep, I would bet a lot of money, that if you actually did some tests and measured that, and then started getting more sleep, that the increase in productivity and mood and functioning and health and everything would be so much greater than what you think you're gaining by not sleeping, by spending that extra time doing something else.
Emily: The next productivity hack. It's not even a hack, it's just a thing that you need to be doing.
Jase:
Emily: Is reading and exercise. Jase wanted me to talk about this because he was like, ''You're really good at both of these things", which I very much appreciate. I do try to prioritize reading and exercise.
Dedeker: Do you do it at the same time? Then I would say you're really good at that.
Jase:
Emily: I read every day before bed. Pretty much without fail.
Dedeker: No, but I mean, do you read and do yoga at the same time?
Jase: While you're exercising.
Emily: No, I do not. That would be-- I don't know how you would--
Dedeker: That's the next item. That's the next thing to aspire to.
Emily: No, I'm not going to aspire to that.
Dedeker:
Emily: Your brain needs to do things fully and separately.
Dedeker: Thank you.
Emily: I firmly believe in that. I do really try to read before bed every single night, and it's so fantastic. It helps you get to bed. It also helps you just learn new things. I think both of you are great about reading as well, and that's wonderful. If it's a novel, if it's a memoir, if its something else in nonfiction book or something along those lines, just read. It's amazing for your brain. It's amazing for your whole, holistic and happiness and everything. It's great.
Dedeker: I have a quick question about this. Jase, maybe you found more about this in your research. Because I know for some people who are maybe not neurotypical or maybe have dyslexia, stuff like that, reading is not necessarily the super-easy leisure activity that a lot of people have. Is it more about just getting the knowledge or getting the information, or what's the key about this?
Jase: Yes, actually, this is something that's really cool. I was actually very excited to find out about this. But there was some research done and I, unfortunately, did not plan for you to ask that question. I didn't write down who this research was done by. There has been research about the-- there's lots of studies showing the positive effects of reading. In terms of things like they help us with our social relationships. They help us with various intellectual processing and problems and things like that. One of the potential explanations for that is, and this is specifically reading, actually, fiction is what these studies are about.
Reading fiction, part of what might be giving us those benefits, is putting ourselves in the shoes of the characters in the book, as well as keeping track of the different social relationships between that person and the other people in the book, like between all of those people. What they found in this research is that the benefits are exactly the same as listening to an audiobook versus reading a book. There's not this magic thing that-
Dedeker: Just like your brain keeping track of this information is specifically the socially relevant information.
Jase: The imagining that goes with it. Imagining yourself In those situations or trying to imagine the feelings or the situations and things like that. That's the key part of it. Whether that's an audiobook or a written book, it doesn't matter, you get the same benefits.
Emily: That's awesome.
Dedeker: Okay, good to know that if you really want to do gold medal level, try reading The Tale of Genji because there's like over 100 characters in that freaking book.
Emily: Even reading Game of Thrones.
Dedeker: Yes, that too.
Emily: Any of those. There are a ton of people in it, and that's huge. As we talked about before, exercise is a big one. I do believe that research has shown that it really is a cure, not a cure, but it helps get people out of depression and out of times in their life or they're just in a slump and not happy with themselves or not happy with what's going on, and it can relate turn things around in that manner, just simply from the physical benefits of it. It leads into the mental benefits as well.
Dedeker: Whatever exercise works for your body also.
Emily: Exactly. I mean, if you want to swim, if you want to do yoga, if you want to hike, if you just want to do circuit training or weight training. Anything can be huge. I used to be a figure skater, and it was big for me when I was a kid. It was wonderful, like getting to go on the ice and stuff and do that and now its yoga.
Dedeker: Also if you're dealing with injury or illness, or disability or things like that, just like whatever exercise it is that works for you.
Emily: Absolutely.
Jase: Yes, we want to be clear with all of this. What I was saying about sleep and what Emily is saying about exercise. This is not to say, if you have any kind of depression or anxiety or something, that this is the cure, and you shouldn't be doing something else. That's not what we're saying. But we're saying that, that this would be something that would help in addition to other things if you need those. I just want to be clear about that.
This is something my mom and I were talking about just recently. For her with her health conditions right now, a lot of exercise she used to like to do is more difficult. It's kind of coming up with like, "Well, what does that look like then?" It doesn't have to be hitting the gym, it doesn't have to be running, but just something to engage your physical body in whatever way that is for you.
Then I also had one little quote that I wanted to leave us with here, which was something that actually my voice teacher in high school said to me once where I was just really stressed about, because I was in the musical and also was in my AP classes. It was just doing too much, like I said. He asked me, he's like, "Are you reading? Are you making time to read?" I was like, "No, I don't have time. I like reading. I just don't have time to do it." What he said is, he's like, "The times when you don't have time to read are the times that the most important to make time to read." I was just like, yes. That goes with lots of sleeping.
Emily: That goes with most of the stuff.
Dedeker: Sleeping, we talked about, on our previous episode, about date night, not meditating about, I would say honestly, even with therapy, things like that. That is the times when business is getting in the way of these things, that's an indicator that you need to make an extra effort to do these things.
Another one of the big four to bear in mind when you're figuring out your schedule, figuring out your productivity, is to place boundaries around your personal time or around your personal unstructured time. Now, this is actually a compelling reason to choose to not share calendars with your partners.
I know that another part of polyamory PR is all about sharing Google calendars and we're all slaved to Google Calendar and stuff like that, but you may choose not to share your calendars with your partner, if that makes it easier for you to be able to protect your own personal time. There are some companies that are moving toward discouraging calendar sharing between employees or coworkers because they understand the importance of being able to have that undistracted, unstructured time to get your work done instead of it just being on display for anyone to make a meeting.
Emily: Yes, in the mean time I'm going to use them.
Jase: Right, exactly.
Dedeker: I ran into this years ago when I was still playing around with monogamous dating, still kind of. This guy that I was dating where yes, we got into a lot of conflict over the fact that I really valued a lot of free personal time and unstructured personal time. For him, it was the opposite of like, well, if you have free time, we're going to spend that together. I don't want to have to ask for your time, which I understand where he's coming from. Sure, maybe it's annoying to always constantly having to reschedule with your partner. I just had a hard time feeling like okay, now that we're in a relationship, my schedule is just like, I'll hand it over to you and then I have to try to ask back for my own alone time or free time or stuff like that. That was a rough lesson for me to learn.
Emily: Yes, absolutely.
Dedeker: Although now I do share calendars with my partners, and so far it hasn't turned into an issue of people trying to take all my free time necessarily.
Emily: You could put in big block letters me time only on someday. Get out of here.
Jase: I did want to say that I've come across a couple different philosophies for that. It depends on what works for you when you look at your own schedule, your own calendar, and also how you negotiate that with the people in your life, but for some people, it is like, I put a block of schedule in my calendar. That is, this is my time that's not structured. I'm structuring the fact that this is not structured time, and this is my time. For some people, that really helps. It can also help for yourself. I won't schedule things during my unstructured time, that can be really helpful.
For other people, it's kind of the opposite, where it's more I like to have chunks in my schedule that don't have anything written in them, and that's important to me. With them, it's like, you've got to educate people in your life. Just because there's a block here doesn't mean it's yours. I like these. I need these to be here. If you ever look at my schedule, and you see there's not big chunks of not stuff scheduled, then realize that's a problem and be like, hey, I want to help you get some of those back. It really varies kind of whatever works for you.
Dedeker: I will say that since-- I share my calendar with both Jase and Alex. Alex, as previously mentioned, doesn't use Google Calendar all that much, but Jase does, and so I think that has been helpful actually, in the sense that you notice when I seem to be over-scheduled.
Jase: I do, yes.
Dedeker: You know that you're going to be like, "Woo boy baby, what's going on here?" That does help me to also be aware of it that you're-- I never intentionally set you up to be my accountability buddy on that, and I wouldn't want you to have that job necessarily, but I do appreciate that you're able to be a little bit of a voice of reason sometimes to least just observe like, oh yes, it looks like you got a real busy week there.
Emily: This next one is one that is a real kick in the face for me, but one that maybe I'm better about now, but definitely, in the past I should have used in taking this advice, which is get over the glory of being busy. Especially I feel in our current society, so many people just love to be like, I'm so busy all the time. I can't do anything ever, and I just seem like work and class. I'm trying to get my PhD at the same time and also maintaining seven different relationships. Wow, look at how amazing I am. This book, The Company of One, which the two of you have read, which I still need to, says this, "The social badge of honor for always being busy and always working, has no rewards past bragging rights.
What you should be bragging about is figuring out how to get your work done quicker and more productively." It's funny. Our friend, the three of us, our friend who was a patron of ours is at my house right now talking to my partner, and she has said, "Yes, I have a couple of clients a month that I'm hoping to eventually get to a point where I have one a month and it pays all my bills and everything and I don't have to do anything more than that." I'm like, wow, that is impressive and awesome. Then she can just do what she wants the rest of the time. That's really cool.
Dedeker: That's well, yes. That makes my palms sweat a little bit. Well, okay, just busy. I think there's a couple of factors here that can really suck us into this idea of the glory of being busy. One of them being that I think in Western culture, and especially American culture, we're so taught that our productivity reflects our social worth, really, that if you're not being productive, you're not worthy of love or affection or attention or stuff like that. You need to earn your place in society. That means you need to be being productive all the time. Which is capitalism and all that stuff. We can talk about that another time.
I've also realized that busyness, it does serve as a little bit of this insulator where if you're busy, it becomes easier to not have people ask things of you. Something that has definitely happened to me. I've definitely observed it in friends and family members of mine, that if my story about you is you are just busy and stressed out all the time, I'm not going to come to you to ask for a favor or to ask for help on something. That does benefit you to a certain extent, that if you can always hide behind, I'm too busy, I'm too busy, I'm too busy, it does help you that instead of having to just say, "No, I don't want to do that", or "No, I'm not interested in that", that you can just be, "I'm too busy. I'm too busy. I'm too busy", I don't even have to navigate that. Busyness can serve us like a really good insulator for us to a certain extent.
Jase: I can't remember who it was, but it was like someone else guesting on another podcast. I don't remember the chain of custody for who actually said this, but basically, they were talking about this idea. It was the first time I had heard this, and this was a couple of years ago, of this idea that I think the way that he put it was, if you're busy all the time, that's not a marker that you're successful. If you're busy all the time, it means that you're actually failing at planning. I was just like, whoa, reframing being busy as a failure rather than being busy as a marker of success. That's not to say if you're busy right now I think you're a failure. For me--
Dedeker: I was going to say I don't want anyone to get the message that busyness is like I don't want victim blame on busyness either.
Jase: For sure, yes. I do know that for myself at the time hearing that, I was like, "Shit, you're right. I will seek out busyness because I think I have to, because that's going to make me more successful." Like Emily read in this quote, I think this is a better way to say it, but this idea of the bragging about being busy is often that's the only value to it, and that really if you can brag about finding ways to get stuff done more quickly, more productively and have less time that you're having to do stuff done more quickly, more productively and have less time that you're having to do stuff. That's something to really be like, "Wow, I figured that out." That's amazing and something we should look at and go, "That's so cool." I love that. Instead, I think it's- we judge it. I've done it and I feel like a lot of people do that where we're like, "Okay." We're like, "You must be lazy," or, "You must be too privileged," or, "You must have something that gave you that that's not fair." Anyway, that's--
Emily: Yes. It's not the case at all.
Jase: That for me was a big thing. Anyway, on this podcast, the person talking about it was saying, he's like, I get a lot of emails saying, "Hey, I'm sure you're really busy," whatever, "I have this question," or, "I'd like help with this thing." He said that his responses usually like, "No, actually, no, I'm not busy. I can surely help you out." Or, "Sure, I'll help you out a little bit with this, but I've got to do these other things."
It brings you to that point like Dedecker was saying of, then if you just want to say no to something, you have to be honest, and actually say no to the thing, as opposed to falling back on business as an excuse. I think there's advantages to both. Sometimes it's convenient to say, "I'm really busy," when you're not.
Emily: It's also good to be like, "No, I don't want to do this thing. No, it's not worth my time."
Jase: I think there's value in both.
Emily: That's an important distinction to make.
Jase: I would say maybe like--
Dedeker: 100%
Jase: Maybe the distinction would be about what is that relationship. Is this some co-worker or some random person coming to you asking for your time and for your favor? They're all like, "Can I pick your brain about this." To maybe like, "I'm so busy, I--"
Emily: Can I get you a coffee?
Jase: Maybe it is I'm just really busy. I don't have time for that because you don't want to get into it. If it's with your friends or your romantic partners or something, then yes, I think it's worth having a real conversation about, "I'm not busy, but that's the point." Is that I'm not busy and I want to keep it that way, or just I don't want to do that thing.
Dedeker: Yes, definitely. Well, let's talk about some of our favorite tools for not only being productive but also a little bit of schedule hacking. Just having your time, be something that supports the life that you want to have like we talked about very early on in this episode, that it's not just about productivity for productivity sake, is not just about freeing up time to squeeze in as much things as possible.
It's about being able to focus so that you can focus on a particular project that you want to get done or on self-improvement or on deepening the relationships with your partner or with your partners or things like that. We have a couple of tools here. This is definitely not an exhaustive list of tools for focus, for productivity, for scheduling. There so many more. We definitely love to hear from all of you about your favorite tools. I'm going to start in talking about Pomodoro tomatoes.
Emily: What is this?
Dedeker: Have you ever heard of this Em?
Emily: No, I don't know what this is. Please enlighten me.
Dedeker: Do you know what a Pomodoro tomato is?
Emily: I don't like tomatoes.
Dedeker: I don't like tomatoes either.
Emily: Well, here we are two tomato hating people.
Dedeker: Well, the Pomodoro Technique, it was developed several years ago. It's basically just the idea that you set a timer and traditionally, it's a 25-minute timer. There is research around that in terms of time.
Emily: We did this.
Dedeker: You did this? We did this?
Jase: Yes, we did this really planning our keynote talk in-
Dedeker: Yes, that's right.
Jase: -in Minneapolis.
Dedeker: We did a couple of Pomodoros. That you set a timer for 25 minutes, and then during that 25 minutes, you're only going to focus on one task. Whether it's writing a thing or like us when we were writing our keynote speech or working on clearing out your inbox or whatever it is and putting away your phone, putting away any other tabs or distractions or things like that and that is just for 25 minutes. You give your sole focus to what it is that you want to do. Then you get a little break like a three to five-minute break to get up, go to the bathroom, get a glass of water, get a snack, move around, whatever, and then you can go back for your 25.
Jase: Check your text messages, do your social media.
Dedeker: Check if you want to, yes, and then you go back for another 25. You can play with the numbers, you can play with the timing. This is a technique I actually used in college a ton for writing papers. I actually split it up into 15-minute chunks of focus with two or three-minute breaks in between. There is research around the 25-minute interval. Unfortunately, since Jase, you were the one doing most the research for this episode, I don't have sources necessarily right in front of me.
I can probably look them up later. There has been research around. There're something a little magical about 20 to 25 minutes for your brain, essentially, as far as the amount of focus that you can give. They find in conversations, topics tend to naturally change around the 20 to 25-minute mark that that's when there might be a long conversation that then moves on to something else. They find that meditating for 20 to 25 minutes that maximizes the theta waves that you would get during the meditation session.
Like we talked about a few episodes back with the halting, how the Gottman found that it takes 20 to 25 minutes for your physiological manifestations of anger or sadness or frustration. It takes that long for that to come back down. There's something about 20 to 25 minutes that has to do with just like I don't know something about just like your circadian rhythm or something like that.
I don't know what it is, but it's like a good chunk of time for focus. It's a lot easier to focus for 20 to 25 minutes than to be, "Okay, I'm going to focus for an hour with no distractions unbroken." That's a lot harder for us to do. I guess unless it may be a really compelling TV show, and even then we still tend to check our phones.
Anyway, I love that especially because I have found ironically, that if you get distracted by something in the middle of a task, if you're working on a paper or a project and you get distracted by a text by checking Twitter or by checking Facebook by even going over and checking your email, instead, it takes your brain 20 to 25 minutes to get fully focused back to what you were initially doing. That's really how long it takes to get your brain back on track and fully focus again and back up to speed.
Emily: Brains so slow.
Dedeker: That is going to flow. I know. That's why I think it's great for if you're trying to just buckle down and get something done that often you can get tasks done way faster than you normally do just when you dedicate actual chunks of focus to it, instead of being distracted the entire time.
Jase: Pomodoro is something that I don't use on a regular daily basis. I find that like we did with the keynote where it's just like, I have to get this thing done whether I'm in the mood to do it, or whether I'm in the right headspace to do it or not. The Pomodoro is a really nice way to just be like, it's 25 minutes. I can handle 25 minutes. I have to write this paper. I don't want to, but okay, I can do it for 25 minutes. Then I'll take a little break and then come back and be like, "Okay, I can do one more 25 minutes." That, for me, is when this tool is really helpful.
Dedeker: Also, with the stuff, we were talking about earlier with reading and with exercise, that it can be harder to squeeze into your schedule. I'll sit down and read for an hour or exercise for an hour but sometimes 20 minutes.
Jase: That's a pretty example.
Dedeker: A lot of people can do.
Emily: Sometimes I'll just do a little circuit training while watching a YouTube funny video or something in the middle of the day when I'm working on Multiamory stuff and it breaks up my day again. That's great. We read 20 minutes before I go to bed and help me fall asleep. That was my sentence. All right, What's the next one Jase?
Jase: The next one is bullet journals. This is something you mentioned earlier in the episode, Emily, about looking at my bullet journals.
Emily: I still also don't know what it is. You're alone.
Jase: Dedeker, actually introduced me to bullet journals a year or two ago, something like that. Originally this is something that you would do in a paper journal.
Emily: Yes, that's where I saw you do it initially back at the old house that we used to have, Jase. You had a bullet journal way back then, but it was like right before the paper one.
Jase: That was a different kind of journal. That wasn't a bullet journal. I don't remember what that was.
Emily: Isn't that called a bullet journal?
Jase: It was something else.
Emily: Or a six-minute journal or something.
Jase: Yes, that was different. Six Minute Journal was different, also great. Do recommend. Check that out if you're into that. Now, the bullet journal originally started on paper journals, but now there's a lot of different electronic ways to do it as well. What's cool about it is that the premise of it, is simple enough that really anyway you want to do it works, whether that's in a spreadsheet or a document.
Dedeker does hers on a Trello board, which is a free service trello.com. I do mine on a workflowy journal which is workflowy.com, also a thing that's free for most users. The basically the way it goes is, you just make one list or one page or one bullet or whatever for each day in a month. For every day, you have one page in your journal say and then in that day, you put bullet points that are your things are going to do that day. The difference between this and a normal just to-do-list is that a to-do-list-- I fell into this trap very badly-- is that your to-do-list goes on forever. You never get the feeling of finishing your to-do-list because you're always adding stuff to it. It's everyday, it's like, "Oh, yes, right, I got to do this too. Oh, I might schedule that for next week. Let me put that on my to-do-list," whatever it is.
There's always something to do and it's hard, like Dedeker said, "It's hard to feel like I can stop now." I can leave my work at work now and just have my day, that that's really hard to do because there's always something else on the to-do-list. The idea with the bullet journal is, as those things come up, you put them on a backlog and then you look through your bullet journal and you go, "Huh, what day could I fit this into?"
You look through your bullet journal and go, "Oh, you know what? I actually don't have a lot of things going on this Friday, let me add it there." Or, "Oh gosh, this week, I've got a lot of stuff. I know it'd be cool to get this done, but if I schedule this for next Monday or next Friday or whatever, then I know I'll have time for it." Basically, the idea is you learn to schedule an amount of things each day that you can actually get done.
Maybe you won't always and you've got to move things to the next day, but the goal is to get good enough at knowing what you can get done so that everyday you get to finish it. What's so cool about it, for me, as someone who can fall into that trap of just like, "Oh, getting productivity and getting stuff done is more important than my well-being." What's so great about is, when I finished that bullet journal, I'm like, "Well, I could start doing stuff for days later."
Or, "Now I could play video games," or, "I could go work out," or, "I can just take a nap," whatever it is, that this is my time now. I find for people who don't have just that nine-to-five, or even if you do and you end up getting bogged down with household chores, it's a way to give yourself a set amount. Anyway, this one for me has been life changing. I can't even exaggerate that. This has been so significant for me.
Dedeker: It's legitimately has, because for me as someone who really wraps up their self-worth and productivity and it feels guilty about not being productive, it really has changed my life. In the sense that instead of it being, this endless to-do-list, where I could always be doing something more, I could always be doing something more. I could always be doing something more instead of relaxing. It's really helped me to be able to set it and forget it to a certain extent and compartmentalize it so that it frees me up to then be able to relax and be present when I'm with my partners especially.
Jase: Emily was saying that thing about like, "Oh gosh, wait, what do I have to do still?" That it's like, "I've got it done." Or if it's not today, I'm like, "Okay," I've put it somewhere so I know it's taken care of so I don't have to have that extra mental load of stressing about, "What else do I have to do?" You just put it on a day.
Dedeker: Yes, but don't take our word for it. Go to your Google machine and look up bullet journal or bullet journal Trello and see if this is a good option for you. I highly recommend it.
Emily: We're going to move onto single tasking. This one is not just about efficiency, but it's also about quality of life. Research shows that up to 40% of a person's productive time is spent on switching between tasks and not actually doing them. I did want to say one specific thing regarding-- Yes, I know. Crazy, right? Yes, amazing.
I did want to say some specific thing about single tasking, is that I've heard a way of doing this, which may be slightly different than bullet journals or various other things, but that is to write down the six tasks that you need to do in a day. You start with the number one task, goes at the top and then you do the next six or whatever for the day. You don't move on to the next task until the first one is done.
If you don't get all of them finished in a day, that's okay. It can move on to the next day. Kind of like what you were saying about the bullet journal, but if you at least have that one very important task that needs to get done and that one will happen and you need to finish that before you move on to any of the other ones. I think that that does go along with this thing of single-tasking because you make sure, at least, that your main focus occurs during that day when you need it to.
Jase: Yes, I love that. That's a great technique. The idea of forcing yourself into single tasking by being like, "Yes, I can't move to this thing yet until I finished this first thing." That could be a good way to do that.
Dedeker: Yes, it's an interesting way of doing it. I think that you can utilize things like Pomodoros or various other methods with this one, but in order to get you through that task, especially if it's a potentially daunting one or you need to write whatever. I spent maybe an hour and a half or so writing out copy for something that we're doing in the near future and I just had to get it done. I was like, "Okay, this is the first thing on my to-do-list." I just kind of barreled through it, and I didn't move on from that until I got it finished. It was productive because I knew I could singly focus on that one thing before moving on.
Jase: I know that like busyness, multitasking is also something that I think carries a lot of bragging rights or people will have a lot of pride in their ability to multi-task. The thing is, unfortunately, for those people, and I was one of these people, the research just doesn't back it up. It just doesn't.
Dedeker was saying about taking so long to get back to the task that you were working on when you get distracted by a text message or by social media or something like that. Like Emily said, "Research showing up to 40% of a person's productive time is spent on switching between tasks rather than actually doing them." What was really interesting in looking into this research a little bit more for this episode is that there's two different things that take up a lot of your time and also your mental energy.
One of them is the one that I think is more understandable, which is, I'm working on writing a paper and then I'm multi-tasking by also cleaning my room, or I'm also texting, or I'm also trying to plan date night for this week, whatever it is, I'm also doing another thing. There's time that your brain takes to reset the rule set that it's working in. I'm writing the paper and my brains in, "These are the things I'm thinking about. This is the research I have." I've got that and my brain's in the shape of a paper as it was.
Dedeker: Science.
Jase: That's science, yes. Then, I switched to scheduling something, texting and scheduling something, that now my brain has to switch to like, "Now, let's unload those thoughts and reload." Like, "Okay, this is my schedule coming up. This is the goal I'm trying to achieve. This is who I'm talking to, this is the relationship, this is how I'm talking to them," all that.
It's like you have to unload the one program and load up the other to start working on that, and then you're switching back and forth that loading time is ended up taking up your time. That's the one I think that most people get. They're like, "Yes, I've had that experience of like takes a second to get into the mindset."
Research has shown that another big time sink that gets missed in a lot of the research because the research will dictate, "You do this task. Then, okay, now, stop. Do this other task, "Okay, now, stop. Go back to that other task; Okay, now, stop. Do this other thing." They're measuring that and seeing that time. What they're missing is that in real life, we're the ones deciding when to switch tasks.
We're deciding, "I get this text. Do I respond now or do I respond later? I see this email. Do I answer this now or do I schedule it for later?" If we're allowing ourselves to multitask, we're not only switching between the tasks, but we're also doing this managerial overhead of deciding when and if to switch tasks. Which I have found that once I've learned that, I was like, "Oh my gosh, now it makes sense."
I found that maybe I am good at multitasking. Research says, I'm not. Say, even if I am, I find that when I multi-task, my quality of life goes down significantly. After an eight-hour workday of also trying to text with people and schedule things and respond to emails and plan a Multiamory episode while I also doing like a normal nine-to-five type job. I leave that time feeling mentally exhausted and emotionally exhausted, and just worn down from it and probably also, not getting all of those things done or at least not as well. As opposed to those times where I really like get in the zone on something, whether I'm programming or I'm writing something, or I'm doing something, when I'm just in the zone, and I get done with that and I'm pumped. I feel energized from that singular focus, and that for me was this like, "It's that. It's the overhead." It's like the manager brain that's getting tired from having to make those decisions.
Dedeker: Yes, that makes total sense. It's like that mental load that is really not serving us or helping us. Wow. Geez. well, I'm depressed.
Emily: It's going to be all right.
Dedeker: It's true though. I have been in the last few months really been trying to push myself toward less multitasking and more focusing. I get that same thing, like that rush, that flow. It does feel really, really nice. The last-
Jase: Yes. It's sometimes hard to find those moments, but when you do, it's great.
Dedeker: Like butter. The last tool or practice that we're going to throw at you, again, this is not a comprehensive list, but the last one we got here is to turn off your notifications, or batch them on your phone, essentially. As in if you're in the middle of either a task or something like a date night or time with your partner, switch on "do not disturb" switch. Go on to airplane mode, or whatever, provided that the people in your life understand that this is a thing that's going to be happening.
Or if you have notifications that are coming in during the day while you're trying to work, find time to batch them all together. Sometimes during a work day, what I'll do is, any message I get through Facebook Messenger, unless it's from a partner of mine, who's about to go to bed or something like that, I just snooze all those notifications until the end of the day. Then I sit down and respond to them all at once.
It just makes it a lot easier. There's less mental load because my brain is not juggling all these different conversations while also trying to figure out my own tasks and stuff like that. Bear in mind the purpose of this is to maximize your focus. Especially though, to maximize your quality time with your partners, not just to be more productive. I think that this can be so important, even with something as simple as just hanging out with your partner and watching a movie.
I know it's so easy these days. Actually, a friend of mine who worked in marketing was talking about-- I forget what-- There's a fancy marketing term for it, but it's basically the phenomenon of watching a show while also being on your phone. Consuming dual media at the same time. That this person that I knew in his marketing job was saying that research is showing that this is happening more and more and more and more and more.
That's why marketers are learning to take advantage of that in a certain way, either in the way they design their ads to dry your eye. Or even trying to have synchronized ads, things that pop up on your phone and on the TV screen at the same time. We're going to start seeing more of that, but basically you don't have to do that.
Especially when it's quality time with your partner, even if the two of you are focusing on something like a TV show or Netflix, or whatever, you can also turn off your phone. Avoiding the dual media consumption, I think is huge as well. Because you're probably going to enjoy your media that you are consuming much more, than two forms of media half-assedly enjoying at the same time.