What Makes Excellent Chiefs of Staff

Laura Mae Martin has a fascinating role as the Executive Productivity Advisor at Google in the Office of the CEO—one that she helped create six years ago (with big thanks to Jenny Wood for introducing us!). ****She coaches Google’s top executives on the best ways to manage their time and energy and sends out a weekly productivity newsletter that reaches over fifty thousand employees.

Today we’re talking about her forthcoming book, Uptime: A Practical Guide to Personal Productivity and Wellbeing. We discuss what the most senior-level executives do differently when it comes to time management (and what they still struggle with), five strategies for saying no, taming inbox stress with The Laundry Method, cozy corners, pairing activities with certain locations (hot spots and not spots), and what differentiates truly excellent executive assistants.

More About Laura: During her nearly fourteen-year tenure at Google, Laura Mae Martin has worked in sales, product operations, event planning, and now executive coaching. She holds a bachelor of science in business administration from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and lives in Charlotte, North Carolina, with her husband and three children under five.

🌟 3 Key Takeaways

• Laura’s 5 C’s of Productivity: Calm, Create, Capture, Consolidate, Close. Create a system that you truly trust: where new tasks get captured and where you know you will see them again. No matter when or where a loop comes from (i.e. on a walk), ensure you have systems in place for the entire loop lifecycle from capturing to closing.
• Five Ways to Say No to Incoming Requests: ask more questions to better understand the time commitment and see if it aligns with your top three priorities; say you’ll think about it or don’t respond right away to buy yourself time and prevent a knee-jerk response; imagine two scenarios playing out for yes and for no (to help you decide); say no, but _______ (send helpful resources); say no, because _______ (give a little context).
• The Laundry Method: Think about your inbox the way you think about your dryer. You would never process clothes one item at a time—whether drying, folding or putting away—and yet that’s how many people tackle email. Process in batches instead. Treat sorting, reading, and answering as separate activities. If you have only twenty minutes, pick one of those activities.

📝 Permission

Give yourself plenty of down time in order to have highly productive uptime; drop the guilt! Rest leads to better overall productivity.

✅ Do (or Delegate) This Next

Stop wasting energy points! Eliminate any emails from your inbox that you don’t need to see: the unread, notifications, newsletters (Jenny uses SaneBox for this), and make sure you help the things you need to see stick out.

🔗 Resources Mentioned

• Laura on the web, IG, LinkedIn
• Articles: Business Insider—6 tips a productivity advisor gives Google executives to better manage their email, meetings, and workload
• Google Blog—5 things I learned from Google’s productivity expert
• CNN—She helps Google workers be productive. Here are her pro tips.
• Video: Top 3 Google Workspace tips
• Apps: SaneBox, TextExpander, HelpScout

📚 Books Mentioned

• Uptime: A Practical Guide to Personal Productivity and Wellbeing
• Free Time: Lose the Busywork, Love Your Business
• Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One
• Life After College

🎧 Related Episodes

• Free Time: 019: Most Valuable Activities with Dave Crenshaw
• 154: The Hard No
• 027: Time Management for Mortals with Oliver Burkeman
• Pivot: 289: Stealing Wi-Fi as Career Strategy with Jenny Wood
• 307: Pivoting from Google to Launching People Playbook with Tony McGaharan
• 318: The Beauty of Late Bloomers with Jenna Valovic
• 309: Wayfinding and Developing Identity Agency with Ciela Hartanov

📝 Check out full show notes and share with friends: https://itsfreetime.com/episodes/267

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