Rebecca:

Today's guest is the wonderful Donna McGeorge. Now, Donna is passionate about enhancing the large amount of time we spend in our workplaces because for a lot of us, it's way too much time to ensure that it's effective and productive as well as enjoyable, because work should be fun. Donna believes that workplaces are complex, but are not hard and more often than not is about getting simple things right consistently. I could think of no better person to talk all about time. She is known as the productivity coach. I cannot wait to dive into this conversation. Let's do it. 

Rebecca: 

Hello and welcome to the Rebecca Saunders Show your place to discover how to build resilience, craft confidence, and have a huge impact on the world. This podcast is for female business owners wanting the skills and knowledge they need to show up and stand out in a noisy digital world. Over the last decade, I've called global seven figure production company and worked with organisations both big and small to great impact for video content. For business growth. I have a purpose-built film studio in Sydney, Australia, and my team and I produced live virtual events and I run my signature online programme, The Video Accelerator twice a year to help make that scary video journey just that little bit easier. Recently, after 25 years of wearing a wig in public, I took my first step out into the world hair-free in a bold move to encourage confidence in front of the camera and ownership of individual uniqueness. Every week on this podcast, you'll hear honest, insightful and practical conversations with successful business owners, entrepreneurs, and video specialists, which will give you the tools and knowledge you need to step into your power on the small screen described by my clients as a video ninja. I'm your host, Rebecca Saunders. And I cannot wait to dive into this episode with you. Let's do it.

Rebecca:

Donna, welcome to the show. 

Donna:

Hi, thanks for having me. 

Rebecca: 

For all my wonderful Watchers and listeners that don't know you’re a productivity coach. Donna walk us through what you do. What does that mean?

Donna: 

Well, essentially I help people get out of overwhelm, get back on control and make sure that they're focused on the important things. And partly it's because I think it's a crime that we spend all day, some of us spend all day in back-to-back meaningless meetings, and then we're doing our email in the gaps. And then when we get home at night, we have to kind of do our real work, when we should be spending time with the people or doing the activities that bring us joy. So ultimately I'm about giving people back their joy

Rebecca:

Hundred percent and you know what, I've got something that ought to share with you that the reason I keep my podcast to around 25 minutes is because of your 25 meeting rule. 

Donna: 

No, I love that. Totally love that.

Rebecca: 

So Donna taught me how to keep meetings down to being productive. And so I'm hoping that through doing 25 minute podcast each week, that it's enough time that people still have, you know, time in their day to do all the fun stuff. And it fits nicely into a chunk of the day without taking up too much time. 

Donna:

It's actually the perfect number. So 25 minutes is a great number from a focus perspective. It doesn't feel like a lot of time and there's still five minutes or so if people need a break between listening to your podcast or being in a meeting and getting to their, whatever their next thing is. So it's the perfect number, 

Rebecca: 

Even down to that bathroom break, right. Or filling up the cup of tea. 

Donna:

Totally. And you know, it actually I find it quite. Hmm. I don't know. I have, I do it frankly. Uh, people who say their calendars are back-to-back all day. When do they go to the bathroom? Enquiring minds want to know, I'm asking for a friend, I guess. And when do they get their fresh cuppa? 

Rebecca: 

It's a beautiful cup today. Donna, how many cups are you up to now in terms of your cup collection?

Donna: 

I think it's about 127. That sounds like a very precise number, but I think it could be about 127.

Rebecca: 

I love it. Donna has the most wonderful teacup collection and is the biggest tea drinker I know. And that's saying something coming from the UK! So you know, we're all coming back now from, hopefully most of us across the world are coming back out of any restrictions and lockdowns, and the idea of going back into the workplace is a little bit of a scary one. We've kind of all got into our own routines. Where are you sitting with with your clients and the people that you work with in getting people ready to get back into a more structured way of working in an office?

Donna: 

First of all, everyone is ready, right? It's almost like their champing at the bit. They're on the edge of their working from home seats and they're dying to get back into offices. But I think in terms of structuring their days, there's a real revolution that's happening around how people are thinking about their work. And I think that one of the positive aspects that's come out of the whole lockdown working from home bizzo is that people now have a little bit more choice about how they want to go about doing their work. So it's really these hybrid models that are the ones that are very interesting, and the most interesting thing I heard recently from a client was that they said, they were going back into the office. I can't remember under what circumstances, they've obviously got a permit, that we're going back into their office for the day and they were leaving their laptop at home because they knew when they got into the office, they'd be having too busy, having conversations and meetings and catch ups and all that face-to-face collaboration and their laptop was for like the work that happens at home. 

Donna: 

And I thought, gee, isn't that an interesting flip, because in the old you'd be trying to leave your laptop at work. Right? So you could have your own time. I just thought that was a fascinating flip on and off model. 

Rebecca: 

Yeah, that's fascinating. I know that, you know, I've only just put a computer in my home this lockdown, you know, first time in, well, the pandemic has been what 18 months, we've all been from home. And I've only just caved to putting that computer in the house because it has been that differentiation for me, between work is in the studio where, you know, trying not to keep my boundaries, I guess. So on that note of boundaries, you know how I know you've got a lot of top tips and a lot of resources that people can come down to can download and access as well as obviously your beautiful selection of books that you've got. How would you approach or recommend that people approach putting the boundaries around their time when, you know, the pressures of potentially those back-to-back meetings come or, you know, the extended days that maybe when not wanting to go back to what are your recommendations there?

Donna: 

Well, I do think boundaries is the right word for this. Um, because by, you know, by now being in lockdown, many people have put in place what we call contextual markers around their days. And so what these are, you know, back in, back in 2019, when, you know, the olden days, when people used to go into the office, I can text your marker was something that indicated that I'm moving from one context to another, okay. I'm to work and it can be getting up, having a shower, having brekkie, heading out the door and whatever my commute was. And they would be the markers, even just pulling the door behind you, as you walked out was a marker that said, I'm done with home now. And then my attention is to work and then vice versa. And so lots of people to put stuff in place to protect that because in the beginning, that was the toughest thing.

Donna: 

It was, we didn't have those contextual markers. There was a lot of blurring and a lot of poor boundary management. So rather than having what I would say a one day refund, you know, of your commute time, because let's say it's an hour each way. And so technically people got 10 hours a week back to themselves. If you had a regular phone, I know it's my line. And you know, when you say, but what did you do with that just about everyone looks at me sheepishly and goes, or, or certainly, you know, a while ago they'd go, oh, you know, I just did my emails and my work and stuff. So others though got really good at it. A guy was telling me the other day that he would, at the end of the free day, he shuts his laptop. 

Donna: 

He puts it in his laptop bag. He puts the laptop bag over his shoulder, goes to the front door. It goes out, does a walk around the block, comes back to the house, puts his key in the door opens up and pops the laptop at the front door. And that's his contextual marker that now I'm home. And he does the reverse in the morning, gets up in the morning, goes out for a walk around the block with his laptop bag comes back and now he started work. So I think going back into the office, people will have the benefit of those contextual markers again. So, and they'll have their commutes back. And I'm now curious about what are people going to do on their commute. So they're going to go back to listening to podcasts and reading books and reading the paper or whatever, and get some of that. You know what I like to think of as thinking and breathing space back that got a bit subsumed. So you're absolutely right around the boundaries. How do you just decide that I start work at this time? And I finished work at this time. And outside of that is my personal time. Cause it can be a real challenge,

Rebecca: 

A hundred percent, very much so. And the idea of any form of commuting time, I guess can be quite a scary one. I know an hour each day, each way, I suppose that's two hours a day. That's an incredible amount of time that people listening right now. Some people might be going, oh, what have I done with that 10 hours? Where has that 10 hours actually gone for the last year and a half? Every week? Which is a scary thing to think about the time wasted. 

Donna:

Yeah. And you know, if I'd said to you or any of your listeners back in, or viewers back in, not 2019, if I gave you a whole day back in your week, get a whole extra day. That was just for you. What would you do with it? I don't reckon anyone would have said, I'll do a few emails. I'll make sure I finish off some projects. I'll keep on top of my work. They would've all said things like, I'll exercise more, I'll spend time with my kids. I'll read more, I'll do a hobby or do the things that nourish my soul, all that sort of stuff. And yet we just had, you know, depending on where you live almost two years of opportunity there, and you're absolutely right. I think we can, now there's another opportunity to reset again, what am I going to do now that I recognise there's this 10 hours that I have, what could I use that for as I head back into the office every month, hot tip from your Aunty Donna, don't just do emails, right? Like listen to podcasts, read books, look at the view, you know, all those things that you should do.

Rebecca: 

Yeah, it is a good thing. It's one of the reasons that I love driving to the studio. We've got a really old car and there's no Bluetooth in it at all. So either have to, I know, shock! We either have to put the headphones in to listen to the podcast or I just drive to old fashioned music and just bop around. And it's a nice free time that's completely tech and device-free.

Donna:

Yeah. I really love that. I read something recently and I actually did include this in my new book, short plug coming out in January, details later... And I talked about something called a tech Shabbat and it has its roots in the notion of a Shabbat, which is the Judaic religions, that said that at five o'clock every Friday for 24 hours, you turn off tech. That's kind of where the idea is, and that isn't full tech. It's more turning off devices. So it's no computers, no phones, no iPods, none of that. You can watch telly if you really want to. Or there's, some people get very specific and say, no, not even any tele. And I reckon that's the new - for want of a better word, the new rich. Do you know what I mean by that is that rich people can afford to not have to look at their devices and not have to be available 24/7. 

Donna:

They've got the luxury of being able to switch off. And it's interesting because, I've been alive long enough and holidaying long enough that I've seen resorts go from - Hey, we have wifi available - to now I'm sorry, we don't have any wifi when you come to our resort, you're completely switching off and they're more expensive. The ones that have the no wifi and switching off so very interesting about. So you're in an old fashioned car, but you've got then the luxury of not having to be fully connected and you can listen to your probably AM radio all the way through.

Rebecca:

I love it. I absolutely love it. And you know what that tech free piece is something that I've trained myself to do over the last five years. I think in terms of, you know, I'm going to have a weekend without my phone and not look at devices because how many devices on average, I don't know if you know the stat off the top of my head, but are people watching and playing with in front of TVs when they're actually trying to watch TV? You know, you've got the laptop coming, the phone, going the tablet on, there's so many.

Donna:

I don't have a stat about how many devices, but I have a stat that says that we can't go more than, the research says, we can't go more than about six or seven minutes before we get the urge to pick up our device. And so let's say you're watching your favourite movie, which is probably Shawshank Redemption that's everyone's favourite movie. And so say you're watching, Shawshank Redemption and you love this movie, but still, you know, by six, the six minute point, you probably picking up your phone and having a bit of a scroll. And I noticed this, and I'm a bit terrible at this. I noticed this when I'm out to dinner, I have to make a really conscious decision when I'm out, at a restaurant to not even have my phone on the table, because it to some respects what that says to the people I'm at dinner with, usually my husband, is that at any moment, something more important than you could come up, and I need to have my phone there to attend to that. So there's this really horrible subliminal message that sends having said that the moment he gets up to go to the bathroom I'll just have a quick look to put it away when he comes back.

Rebecca: 

I was just going to ask you that question of, are you though, one of those people that will look at the phone when the other person's gone to the bathroom? And that's something I've trained myself to do. I know when I worked in hospitality and I would watch these business, people come in and sit and read books and just enjoy their own company. Just very quiet. And I thought, oh, I've never been able to go out for dinner just by myself. That's a really scary notion. And you watch people are all around you in restaurants straightaway. They're picking up that device as soon as someone else leaves the table or they're by themselves. And they're just glued to it. 

Donna: 

I used to travel a lot for myself and actually you've just reminded me. I always used to take a book and I would always I'm one of those that can go out for dinner on my own and read a book. And I used to do that a lot, but now I wouldn't, I'd be just, I'll be honest on the phone. I think there's a revolution coming and I know you're not hearing it here first. I do think that we are getting a bit over that. And one of the things I find is I do go and have a quick scroll while Steves popped off to the bathroom and nothing much has changed. And so I'm kind of just still looking at the same half a dozen posts that I looked at an hour and a half ago when he last went to the loo or whatever break I got in the dinner. So I do think this, you almost find yourself looking at it and going, why, why am I even looking at this?

Rebecca: 

Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. And the amount of work I think people may have got done on the day where Facebook and Instagram went down and there wasn't anything to check.

Donna: 

And a lot of us thinking, gee, you know, and for both of us that are in business for ourselves, we have to find our clients. And we use a lot of social media to promote what we do. I had a big moment around, right. Well, what if this was a more permanent arrangement? How, how do I now get my message out to people? Are we going to see the yellow pages get a resurgence again, right. Or a new version of whatever that might be. Certainly I think LinkedIn really liked it. LinkedIn got a heap of action over there.

Rebecca: 

Yeah, for sure. For sure. Now Donna, you mentioned it before we were talking about books, sitting at dinner, you have a new one coming out and I cannot wait to get my hands on it to add it to my collection and put probably my first purple book on my colourful bookshelf. Actually.

Donna: 

Yes. I love that. Cause when the publishers sent them through to me, cause I'd said, oh, I said, what colour do you want? I said, oh, I don't know green. And they said, Hey, how do you feel about like this pinky-mauve, the purple-y colour? I went alright I'll have a crack at that. So this is the third book in a series I've been doing that we've called It's About Time. And so you mentioned the first one, which is the 25 minute meeting which is blue. The second one is called The First 2 Hours, which is around how we structure our days to be more aligned with the clock in our bodies rather than the clock on the wall. And then this third one's called the one day refund where we really work towards the magic number is 15%. How do we strip 15% out of our day to create adaptive capacity, which gives us more thinking, breathing, living, and working space. And so that's what this third one's about, which is due out in January, I think January the 5th to be precise.

Rebecca: 

I'm writing a new year, new book, new way of working. Yeah. Walk us through it. What kind of things are we talking about when you're getting that 15% back? What tangibly can that look like for someone? 

Donna: 

Sure. So a lot of us don't really think about capacity until we've got none. And then often we'll be complaining and we'll say things like, I don't have the bandwidth for this. I need more thinking space. I don't have any breathing space. I'm feeling piled on, on drowning, all that stuff. All of those are indications that you're at max capacity. And when we are there and any of you who are watching or listening now will know that you do just do not have the room for anything else. And of course the risk of that is that a great opportunity, a change may happen, something comes up and you just can't take advantage of that. And so that ability to take advantage of change or respond, to change in a positive way is called adaptive capacity, and it's found in physics, in nature, in all sorts of places, but in the human head, it means that when something goes wrong, you don't immediately lose it and snap and yell at all the people that you shouldn't snap and yell at, and that you can stop and think and go, actually - What does this mean for me, and how might I be able to either take advantage of this or react positively to this? Now during the beginnings of when the COVID, when the pandemic happened around March last year, for those of us in Australia, the word pivot got used a lot, didn't it?

Donna:

And so I was really observing how people pivoted, what did that mean? And how did that look? And there was a couple of people I watched that had great adaptive capacity. So rather than an urgent, what I would call surge capacity pivot, oh my God, I've got to change everything otherwise I'm going to lose money, and I'm panicking, and I'm really not thinking strategically. I'm just going to shift everything I do for face-to-face to now shifted online. That's what I would call surge capacity response and pivot people who had the capacity, and it was multiple things. They had the resources, they maybe had money in the bank. I'm not a financial planner, disclosure, disclosure, disclosure, but they had the capacity to stop and go, all right, what does this actually mean? And what are people actually going to need? And I think that ability to stop and do that is something we need every day, not just when a pandemic happens.

Donna:

And so our ability to react and respond positively to when change occurs, massive change like a pandemic or even just small change. Like I'm just thinking of something that happened this week. My hubby was doing some taxes and stuff and he found an error and he didn't yet know it was an error, but it looked like we were going to end up paying twice what we thought we're going to pay in tax. And normally that might trigger me into a bit of a panic and what would've been a freak out. But when you've got adaptive capacity, you have the capacity to stop there and go, okay, well, that just doesn't sound right. So let's investigate a little bit, let's just stop and think what this means and how are we going to cope with this? And what's going to be our plan.

Donna:

And you just can't do that when you're, when you really haven't got much left in the tank. So this book is all about that. It's around, how do you create that adaptive capacity in those four thinking spaces. So how do I use it to be able to give myself more mental capacity in my professional life? Breathing space is mental capacity in my personal life, making sure that I'm spending my valuable resources of both time and attention on the right people. And then of course we have physical capacity like living space. So again no judgement , but if you're living in a house where you kind of tripping over things and there's stuff everywhere and you can't find stuff, and every time you go to go out, there's a big uproar because we can't find keys and glasses and sunscreen and whatever we need. And you might want to look at, you're just creating a bit of 15% room around that. And then of course the physical capacity at work in our professional life is, am I just taking on too much? And I don't know if I'm allowed to do this, but I know Rebecca you, and I've had conversations about your capacity for work and how we really needed to free some of that up for you. 

Rebecca: 

Hugely, hugely, because we're just taking on so much content and so much work and having to - so bring everyone up to speed with where we're at. I wrote down a list of all the tasks I was doing in the business. And I think there was what 8 A4 pages worth of lists

Donna: 

Probably the longest list I've seen, and frankly I've seen some lists in my time.

Rebecca: 

Very detailed lists, but very long list. Let's swiftly say, I did hire an EA and she's been the best thing ever since that conversation to get that done. But you're right taking on. You just sort of say yes and do things in the slightest change in things. So for us, it was, we were able to just adapt into the virtual world because we'd been doing it. And we were in a position to help a lot of people. But the capacity thing came at when everything had to get restructured and reorganised and reshoot dates and remembering the projects that we were talking about in March coming up in August, it was just mind blowing. It's definitely something that I'm taking on in planning next year. You know, we talk about this a lot. You and I do catch up regularly.

Rebecca: 

So from this, I can't wait to get my hands on the book, but I've been putting out, I'm going to take a day a week to just have creative time so that I can actually think because I haven't had that and I've lost that creative flow for us. And I've loved it. I've loved putting it in just a couple of weeks. It makes such a difference to my energy levels and the energy around me and the energy of the team. So highly recommend putting in some of that 15% time, for sure.

Donna: 

I reckon the thing is a lot of people, they always wait until that happens. So a meeting gets cancelled at the last minute and anytime that happens, most of us just go - oh yes, a whole hour I have! Now there's some meetings we might be disappointed in, I understand that. But for the most part meeting gets cancelled at the last minute, we go, yes, a whole hour to myself. And that feeling, that feeling of freedom, of not being beholden of getting to choose what I do. Now, I'm not saying we all goof off. It's not like just put the feet up on the desk and just grab a cup of tea and just ponder for an hour. If you want to, you can, I hardly encourage it. But for the most part it's that I don't have to be on or beholden to anyone else.

Donna: 

And so I'm with you on this. So that one day that you schedule, it may not necessarily be that you do nothing all day, but it will mean that you get to choose and you get to go with where your energies taking you that day, rather than I've got to do meeting after meeting, after meeting or work on project after project after project. So I love that. I call them purple patches. Purple patches, where you say, rather than have them accidental - block them out. So 15%, for example, could be one and a half or just under one and a half hours a day that you block, you just don't basically just don't accept any meetings. Or if it's a week, it could be a six hours. If it's a seven day model, it is a whole day. Um, but yeah, figure out figuring out what works for you. And as you say, lots of organisations these days are saying, you know, we have no meetings, Wednesdays, but don't wait for your organisation to do that. Do it for yourself. No meeting Wednesday.

Rebecca: 

Yes. Yes. On that Donna, we've given some actionable tips and I love it. Where can people find you? Where can they, pre-order your book? Where are you?

Donna:

Okay. The easiest way to pre-order the book is just go direct to Booktopia, and if you go to Booktopia and either search for me, Donna McGeorge, or put in The One Day Refund, you'll find it's already available now for pre-order. Do you want to know more about me and how I help people? You might want to visit theproductivitycoach.com.au. And that has my productivity products and services that I help people with everything from books through to - And you can, you can, pre-order the book there, if you want to as well - from books to coaching, online programmes, all the stuff that I do to help people work smarter and be their productive self, really productive best.

Rebecca: 

Fantastic. And on social media, Donna , have you got a handle? People can come follow you on

Donna:

Honey. I'm on all the good social media platforms. You'll find me Donna McGeorge on LinkedIn, D McGeorge on Twitter, Donna McGeorge on Insta and Making Work Work on Facebook.

Rebecca: 

Amazing. And we all put all of those links into the show notes, so you can just click away. Donna, thank you so much for coming on the show. I really appreciate it. I cannot wait to share this with the listeners and the readers, and I really hope that listening you've taken away some golden nuggets and are able to have one step closer to having a little bit more time back in your day so that you can go and have a huge impact on the world.

That's a wrap on another episode of the Rebecca Saunders show. Thank you so much for tuning in. I really hope you've taken some golden nuggets away from today's show and are one step closer to having a huge impact on the world. If you've loved this episode, please share it on Instagram and Facebook with your friends or on LinkedIn, with your colleagues and business network. And if you've really like to make my day, you can pop a review on iTunes. If you have any questions about today's episode, come on over to Instagram for a chat. You can find me at the handle @ThRebecca Saunders. And if you'd like to know more about what I can do for you, check me out at RebeccaSaunders.com. I'll see you next time on the Rebecca Saunders Show.