Running in the Rain with Time Freedom Coach and Author, Paul Weston

Jenn DeWall:

Hi, everyone. It’s Jenn DeWall, and on this week’s episode of The Leadership Habit podcast, I sat down with Paul Weston. Paul grew up in Yorkshire, England, and after a youth absorbed in music and sport- at the age of 16, joined the Royal Marines band service. And over the next 26 years, his duties took him around the globe. And on completion of his military career, he immigrated to Canada, where he joined the North American corporate world, consulting in leadership development and sales. He also coaches executives and corporations as well as individuals in time-freedom techniques. Who doesn’t want to have more freedom with their time? Paul’s a multiple Ironman triathlete, an international duathlete. His mantra is not to find time to do things but to plan it. His Energy Zone theory adopts the principle that too much of our effort is wasted on pointless distractions and too many people make terrible excuses rather than getting on with life. I hope you enjoy this conversation as I sit down with Paul Weston and discuss his newest book, Running in the Rain.

Meet Paul Weston, Time Freedom Coach

Jenn DeWall:

Hi, everyone. On this week’s episode of The Leadership Habit, I am sitting down with Time Freedom Coach Paul Weston. Some of you might be thinking, what does a time freedom coach do? Well, I want to hear from Paul. For those that may be unfamiliar with Paul— Paul, why don’t you just go ahead and introduce yourself to The Leadership Habit audience?

Paul Weston:

Yeah. Thanks, Jenn. Great to see you. So a Time-Freedom Coach. This is something that’s evolved over many years. As you gather, I’m from the UK. I was a Royal Marines officer for many years and came to North America in 2005. I’ve worked with Crestcom, I’ve facilitated many Crestcom classes or with lots of clients sold some of the programs. But my main focus now, while still being attached to Crestcom, is to help people create time. I free them up because I’m quite good at freeing up time. I’m an Ironman triathlete, which takes a lot of time to prepare and train and getting in the swimming pool, and getting long bike rides and run and eat. You can’t just decide one day; I’m going to do a little bit of this, a little bit of that. You have to plan it. So I free time up, but I help people free their time up as well. By being more efficient, more productive, more functional, and more effective so that you know, we can spend more time doing the things we love with the people we really enjoy being with. And that’s really what my role is in life is to help people free up time to do more things they enjoy.

Jenn DeWall:

So instead of people saying, can you give me an extra hour on this day? You can say no, but I can help you manage your time better, so it feels like you have an extra hour.

Paul Weston:

Yeah, exactly. That. So, you know, let’s stop, let’s not around and dig around. Let’s get on me, what we need to do, get it finished and then do something which is much more fun than actually what we’re paid to do- really enjoy life. So, yeah, that’s what it’s all about.

What Inspired Your New Book, Running in the Rain?

Jenn DeWall:

What kind of inspired you to want to bring this message forward? I mean, I know that you just published your first book, Running in the Rain. What inspired you to bring this message to people? Why now?

Paul Weston:

Well, I’ve always been a very organized person. I think I got that from my parents. You know, I’m an only child, and I would only say every minute of every day was structured, but we, you know, we were very organized. And I was taught to be very organized. And I joined the military, which is one very organized environment that you’re in. You know, it’s not a lot of freedom there, but actually, you can create freedom in the military. And then when I, when I got into the business, I found that I was very effective. When I got into triathlons a few years ago, I found out why, if I’m going to be doing these really long races where I do a lot of training, I have to sort of schedule my time to do it. And people say, wow, you know, you’re very efficient in what you do.

I see you enjoying time off. You’re going to play golf, go on bike rides, all the things that I’d love to do more of. How do you find the time? And I said I don’t find the time. I schedule it. I plan the time. And people said, Oh, you should, you should write a book about that because you seem very good at doing these things and had been kind of percolating in my mind. And I figured I better take my own advice and write a book. If I’m going to do it, stop messing around and get on and actually write to a book. And that’s really where the book came from. It’s all about getting stuff done, really. I, you know, it’s time to do it. So I started writing about a year ago and went with that, and it’s getting great feedback.

Jenn DeWall:

Yeah. Well, congratulations on a first book that requires an extreme amount of dedication and obviously time management to be able to get it through to a complete and finished product. When you were writing this book, who did you really want to pick up and read it? Who was this for?

Paul Weston:

Well, that’s really interesting, actually, because I didn’t really have a target in mind. I just started writing one day. I mean, the book Running in the Rain is a metaphor for life. I hear people say, Oh, we didn’t go for a run today because it was raining. And that’s a really poor excuse going for not going on a run. Because if you go for a run, as long as you put enough effort in, you’re probably going to have to have a shower when you get back and put clean clothes on and everything like that. So what difference does a bit of rain make? You know, so to me, running is like life. We’re always moving forward from the day we’re born to the day, you know, we move on.

We kind of move forward. We move quickly, and we move slowly. We moved spiritually, educationally. We moved emotionally. We’re always moving forward rather than like running. And sometimes, we make excuses for not doing things. And rain is a poor excuse for not going for a run. So running in the range of metaphor for life for me, but as I’ve sort of developed the book, and I worked with my editors, been fantastic and my publisher also been great. And I’ve put the book out to a number of people. Who’s, you know, senior executives in major corporations and friends and family. And so on that go back to me with some great reviews and said, you know, this would really help business leaders who are stalling with various things. And they’re sitting strategically on things they’re not moving forward, busy professionals. I think that’s a really target people who feel that their day is getting longer and longer and longer, certainly, human resource professionals who see that people may be sort of approaching burnout at times and too much going on and want to be more functional the way they do things.

My oldest stepdaughter’s about to graduate from university. She went into investment banking. A lot of what is in the book is stuff I’ve helped her with over the years on being more practical. And when she was in the hall of residence in year one, she used to go off to the laundry room without her phone to work on projects—so ambitious students, couch potatoes that want to get up and get more things done. And really, anybody that wants to get more out of life would probably benefit from having a read of some of them, some of the things in the book.

The Biggest Challenge to Time Management- Distractions

Jenn DeWall:

Yeah. Managing our time. Because if we don’t manage it, it’s still ticking. Before we jump more into your book, running in the rain. I just want to ask a question from your perspective, why do you think people don’t manage their time? I know you said there are excuses, and I know I might be one of those people that probably make some excuse like that when it comes to running. Absolutely. But why do you think that people don’t manage their time well?

Paul Weston:

The biggest one is distractions. Without a doubt, I did a lot of research. Way more research just for the book, but in a whole variety of other things, I’ve talked to hundreds and hundreds of senior business executives over the last couple of years with regards to what’s stopping them from being functional. And the number one thing that floated to the top was distractions, the constant distractions in the workplace, which is the biggest thing. And those, we can turn those extra distractions into excuses. We become addicted to them, and we look for them because we’re doing something we don’t really want to do with trouble. Having trouble focusing on it on a distraction will pull us away from it. So a phone or an email, or an instant message or a chat message. There’s an excuse to go and do that.

And, you know, I’ve talked to a lot of people in the last year who are working from home, and they say, I’m working in the kitchen. I’m looking at the fridge. And the fridge is calling me in. I’ve put on 15 pounds just to be working from home, because that fridge is looking at me, calling out to me. And that’s a distraction. And so shall I write a bit more of this report or should I go and have a cup of tea, make a sandwich? We take that alternative. So without a doubt, distractions for me have been the biggest thing that stood out from all my research and why people don’t get things done. It’s because they get distracted away from it. It’s huge. It’s massive. And there are all sorts of health implications to that as well.

Jenn DeWall:

No, but I mean, it’s so true. I like to identify myself, as I would say, as a fairly productive person, but all of a sudden, let’s see, there’s a glitch in an app like I had this morning, and it wasn’t a pressing thing, but I somehow subconsciously made it a priority. And I would say that was actually a distraction, not something that needed to be done, but yet I gave it all of my attention.

Stop Letting Email Distract You

Paul Weston:

You know, we sort of- the average response time to an email is about six minutes. And we, you know, there’s very, very, very few that we have to respond to within six minutes; we could leave them for several hours. Most of them, probably 99% of the emails we get, no, probably leave several hours, get the job done, then go and prioritize your emails. Then do the next task. Don’t keep responding to your emails. There’s a part of the book where I talk about mailrooms. If you imagine a downtown business years ago, there would be a mailroom, and the mail would arrive once a day. It would be sorted by the team who was passed up the line to the offices, and the executive would have the mail arrived on the desk once a day, and they wouldn’t stop everything to read the mail that put some time aside later to go through it.

And maybe their executive assistant would filter some of it. And then we have more phone calls, and then we had a fax machine, and it’d be one fax machine in the office. And now we have emails. Now, could you imagine if people responded to a fax machine as they respond to email, which is almost instantaneously? Can you imagine if there’s 30 people working in an office and the fax machine buzz and started clicking out paper, and everybody ran across to it to see what it was? We wouldn’t do that back to the mailroom as soon as an envelope arrived through the Alexa with a name on it. No, but that’s how people respond to emails. They feel like they have to be constantly ready to receive them. And, you know, managers, leaders, and managers almost expect the teams to be available for emails. And they send something out to the team saying, Hey guys, what do you think of this? And that generates an hour of reply-all messages going around the team. And then they say, Hey guys, have you finished this work yet? No. Well, why not? Because she keeps sending us to reply, all emails that we do, what we’re doing to get on with it. And it’s a vicious circle that goes round and round and round. So even emails, we can, we can cut down so many emails if we just manage our teams better.

Jenn DeWall:

Oh my gosh. I love that perspective too. Just about the mailroom, because it is true. I think that when we had mail, even, you know, when we still were probably getting into more email usage, but we still relied on mail. It’s not like I jumped on it when the mail came and I felt like I actively had to do something, but that is the pressure that people put, Oh my gosh, there’s something, something came into my email box may be important because someone chose to send it and, or we put the pressure that, Oh my gosh, someone’s going to think that I’m not paying attention if I don’t respond right away. But really, that’s just your own pressure that you’re putting in. It’s also causing you to goof up or essentially mismanage your time and how productive you can be.

Paul Weston:

It is. And if you think about emails, I mean, I’m sure you’re like me, that you’ve sent an email to somebody kind of hoping they don’t reply for a day or so, because you’ve got other work to do and they still don’t reply to you. And now it’s like, oh, I better get back to them. And they’re probably thinking, leave me alone. You know, I’ve sent it back to you. I passed it over to you. You work with it now. And suddenly, we’ve taken all the time on these emails. And the funny thing is you actually pick the phone up and talk to them. You could probably save 20 emails in like two minutes or something like that. There’s so much work that can be done. Just actually talking to people instead of actually going backward and forwards with emails, we start to become addicted to them. You know, they pull us in, and they suck us in, and we wait for that little dot to pop up on the edge of your screen. Oh, there’s an email better go and do that.

Manage Your Energy Zones

Jenn DeWall:

Perfect. Gosh. Yeah, no, absolutely. I want to dive into your book now and talk about a few of the concepts that are from your book, Running in the Rain. And one of those is the energy zones principle. Can you explain that concept to me?

Paul Weston:

Yeah, sure. So I have a theory that we spend every minute of our lives in one of three energy zones. The first one is Professional. So it’s doing stuff that gives us money, got this revenue. Anything we do that we’re paid to do either as an employee or as a business owner, entrepreneur, anything that generates revenue. A job, effectively. So the second one is what I call Personal. And this is a zone where we’re doing “me” stuff. So it could be going to a yoga class. With me, it would be training, swimming, cycling, running, I’m a musician, so I could be playing a musical instrument. It could be sitting, reading a book, or just on your own totally on your own time is personal time. And the last one is the Social Energy zone where we’re with our family, with our friends, even with our work colleagues, when we’re not doing specific work things, we could be at lunch with your team, those sorts of things, Social Energy Zone.

Now when I talk about energy zones, we get the most energy from that, and we put the most energy into those. If we’re only doing activities that are unique to that, and if we start to dilute them, it really drains our energy away. Let me give you an example. If I’m working on a project on my laptop and I have to get a report done or proposal or some invoicing or something like that for a client and my phone buzzes, and it’s a Facebook message as somebody commented on something I was doing at the weekend and I stopped, I’ve now diluted my social energy zone. Because this could be a group thing, I’m involved in with my personal, not professional, energy zone. So now it starts to put me back. I’ve diluted something. If I turned my phone off and got what I was working on finished, I can then take a five-minute break and go into my social energies to check social media.

And it zaps your energy. You know, if you’re sitting in the evening on your deck with a glass of wine, reading a book in your “me” zone, your personal zone and your phone buzzes, and it’s, it’s your manager saying, Hey, did you finish this off today? You’ve now got your professional energy zone diluting with your personal energy zone. And that starts to suck away your personal energy zone. Okay. And that detracts from what you’re trying to achieve as well. I know there’s an impact on it, us, you know, we want to meet Tom. We have to have our own time. Okay. And finally, our Social Energy zone. There’s a lot of families who, you know, moms and dads who are listening to this will probably agree with me that if you have teenagers and you sit and having a family dinner and one of the kids, or all the kids are on their phone doing Snapchat and Instagram and those sorts of things, that’s really bad for the family dynamics.

Same as if mum or dad are answering work emails, while they’re sitting around the dinner table, it needs to be phones away, really enjoy that social energy time. So those are the three energy zones, and we’re more productive if we can just stay within those zones and then do what we need to do in those zones rather than diluting them because that really zaps our energy away. So that’s really a theory I have. And more and more people start to realize now that I need to block these zones off to get more things done and be more productive.

Jenn DeWall:

So it’s essentially like a way of just saying that if I want to be as productive in each of these three areas, whether that be personal, professional, or social, I’ve got to manage my time and give them their own due time. It’s not blending or diluting them, as you would say, what would, is it supposed to have them be maybe an equal amount throughout your day? Or what would you say is the recommendation for where to spend your time, or does that depend on your own goals? And I guess what you want personally.

One Energy Zone at a Time

Paul Weston:

Yeah, it goes, and I like to sort of schedule, so, you know, I, I’m not a great fan of Facebook, but being an ex-pat Brit living in North America is a great way for me to keep in touch with family and friends in the UK. But I do three minutes on Facebook in the morning, three minutes on Facebook in the evening, that’s it, six minutes a day. I’ve managed to bring that down from like an hour a day. I didn’t realize how much time I’m spending on Facebook. And it’s quite frightening. So I will look at that in the morning. I look at it and evening, and that’s it. That’s all I do. Obviously, Monday to Friday, you’re going to be predominantly in your professional energy. So, but if you can get everything done, you shouldn’t have to go back there in the evenings and weekends.

And obviously, in the evening, it’s fine to say, Hey, I just block an hour on my own to read a book, or it depends on what your social situation is, your family environment, those sorts of things. But the key is to schedule it, you know, obviously during the, during the working day, you need to be scheduling your prime sort of professional energy zones, but you know, why not schedule, but you do it naturally if you’re in a yoga class. So you go in for a run or something, not I, you schedule it naturally, but Hey, why not? On Sunday afternoon, schedule two hours of social energy time and the whole family together doing something, going for a walk or going to the movie, or, you know, doing something together as a group, you schedule that real social energy time, leave all the phones switched off. You’ll get so much more value from that. Then letting things dilute inside it.

Goals Stink. Wait, What?

Jenn DeWall:

I, gosh, I struggle a lot from diluting. I think I probably have a lot in the professional area, but then yes, I know that the second that I might get a ping or I guess whether it could be a notification from Instagram, or it’s a poll from Facebook, someone wants you to do whatever. But I know that I absolutely just, I’m sure that a lot of people are even listening to this now. And they’re like, I’m probably diluting a lot of my time. So, I’m definitely wasting it, right? There’s not a better way to say that. Like we’re just wasting it, and then we’re wasting that return on investment. We’re just not getting that true achievement or end goal that we say, which leads me into my next question, about goals, you make a bold statement, a bold statement, especially for a leadership habit or leadership podcast, that Goals Stink. What do you mean by that?

Paul Weston:

Well, there’s a whole chapter. This is chapter three of the book, called Goals Really, Really Stink. Okay. So let’s think about goals for a few minutes. And if you imagine again, a football game, a hockey game, the basketball, whatever, there’s two teams, what do they have in common? They both have the same goal, and for every game, one of them is successful, and one of them fails. Okay. So goals kind of stink. Let me give you an analogy of a good goal—say the goal is a marathon, somebody wants to run a marathon. Maybe early thirties, I left high school, left college had not really done any exercise. They might have a couple of young kids, and they’ve, you know, they’re not the fittest and healthiest and want to run around and be healthy and say, okay, I’m going to run a marathon in six months’ time.

So that’s their goal to run the marathon. So you do the marathon, and you know they lose some weight and they feel good about things, and they finish it, they get the medal and the t-shirt, and they put it all over social media and the family there and great they’ve done their goal. The following day, they go back to the burgers and the beer and the sofa, and three or four months later, they are back right where they were when they started. What does that goal actually achieve? It has achieved nothing, okay. Yeah, they’ve done the marathon, but how has that changed them as a person? It really hasn’t. They’ve checked one box, and that’s it, the first thing I say to somebody who says, Oh, I want to run a marathon. I’ll say, why? Why do you want to run a marathon? And they’ll say, oh, I want to get fit. I want to get healthy or have a better diet. I want to feel good about myself and look really great.

You Need a Better System

Paul Weston:

Okay. So the marathon is just a stepping stone to get there. What you really want, what you really want to achieve is a better lifestyle? You want to eat healthily. You want to sort of, you know, feel good, more energy and you know, your family looking and go, wow, they look terrific or really fit and great. So that’s the kind of routine, the lifestyle if you like in order to achieve that, you, therefore, need a system. So if you do actually want to run a marathon and you want to feel great, then you’re probably going to need to get a running coach. If you’ve never done it before, get running shoes, talk to a dietician, maybe go and get registered massage therapists and all these sorts of things.

But what happens is it’s the system that really counts. Because of the marathon, the goal is simply a measurement tool to see if your system works. So maybe in a year’s time, you look back and say, my routine is to be fit and healthy. I have a system. I do this, this, this, and this, and the marathon is part of it. Now, am I actually better? Yes. Am I sticking with it? Yes. Am I feeling good? Yes. Your system works. The goal is just a measurement tool to see if the system is working, and you know, it’s rather like yoga. I hear people say. I want to do more yoga. Why? Because I want to feel good and want to be more energetic and more supple. Okay. So you don’t just want to do yoga. You want to actually be, have a better lifestyle. It’s your lifestyle. Or do you just want to do yoga because you want to give the guy who owns the yoga center down the road 200 bucks a month? No, that’s not the reason for doing it. The reason is I want to feel good. Definitely need a system. What’s your system? Probably pay for a month in advance, book the classes, and finish work early to make sure you’re there at six o’clock, three evenings a week. So, you know, in a month’s time, you test the system. Am I doing more yoga? Yes. Your goal tells you, your system is now working. To me, systems are more important than goals. Goals are just a measurement tool to see if your system works. The book is all about systems, creating systems to build a more fulfilling and functional life.

Jenn DeWall:

So essentially, if we want to start with a goal or something that we want to achieve, start with the system of how you’re going to achieve it instead of the goal. So making the plan well out of curiosity, why are systems so important to you? You know, to write a book on systems and to also make that, Hey, goals, that’s not our starting place, right? The counterpoint there, but why are systems so important?

Paul Weston:

Well, systems are really the methodology that we use to be successful and be happy. And even people who adopt a free and flexible lifestyle rather than being restricted by rules and laws still create some sort of a system in order to live in that way. It isn’t just as formulated or structured as others might be. So, you know, we will have a system in our life, but I just think you get so much more out of life if you do have that system. And the goal is just a test point to see if your system is actually working or not. Because like I said, two teams, competing in a game of sport. One has both have the same goal. The team that wins probably wins because they have a better system. It could be player recruitment, could be coaching, could be training. It could be facilities, whatever it’s the system that actually proves whether or not you’re working. That’s why they’re so important. We naturally do it. But if you purely focused on the goals, that really starts to break down because, you know, if you don’t get that, it’s part of the system that’s failed you. That’s the thing you need to change. Not the goals.

What if You Don’t Feel Like Running in the Rain?

Jenn DeWall:

Well, it sounds like what you’re saying, too, is that people have a goal, but they completely forget about the how. Like, how are you going to do that? And that’s why you need to have the system there. And I know for me, it’s, it’s, you know, sometimes, and I’m sure some people can relate to this. It’s completely unintentional but had I had a system. Right. And I’m sure a lot of people experienced this from shifting from a face-to-face work environment to the home office. They lost the system that they had or in that routine. And, you know, by bringing that back, it can help boost their productivity engagement, so on and so forth. But it’s easy to lose your system. Like sometimes it’s really like, what do you say when, you know, Oh, what if I just have a bad day? I might have a system. And I’m like, I know that goal is to be healthy, but I don’t want to today. Like, what do you say when sometimes that self-talk will come up?

Paul Weston:

No, that could be fine. I mean, one of the great things about systems is there will be a glitch. There will be a slight glitch in the system, and you overcome that to move forward. I mean, we talk about working from home now. And when I talk to business executives and knowledge workers, when people used to commute to work, I say to them, you know, when this all kicked off, you know, almost a year ago, now. I say, have a system for working at home, have a very important system for working at home. And the first thing is, okay, not only are you working at home, you’re actually living at work. Okay. You’re now living in the workspace. You need to cut off. And a lot of people I spoke to, I said, okay, how long is your commute? It’s an hour each way. What are you going to do in the hour in the morning now, or what are you going to do with an hour in the evening?

That’s 10 hours a week. What are you doing with that time? So you need to have a system to use that time. Otherwise, it would dilute into your working day. And a lot of people took it on and said. I’ve got a 10 hour a week project. Now that’s the system they created to get more after that time, because otherwise I’ll end up doing an extra two hours work a day, or their work will stretch out because there are distractions that affect them during the day and so on. And you know, when they go back to commuting, they’re going to have to really find out and plot out what they were doing because suddenly they got to find 10 hours from somewhere if they’ve allowed that to be diluted. And also another great example of having a system, how am I now going to manage my days when I’m not commuting and use that time wisely? Create a system to manage that time that you used to have for commuting for something constructive.

Jenn DeWall:

Don’t let the time just pass you by or lose that time. You touched on distractions again. And to someone listening, they might say, Paul, I mean, I work from home. The kids are running around. The dog is barking. Distractions are just a normal part of life. How do you respond to that? When someone’s like, I can’t, you know, they’re at the mercy of the distraction because they’re just there.

Paul Weston:

Yeah. Well, they are a distraction. They are a way of life if you allow them to be a way of life. And you know, the trick is to be disciplined enough to realize that we are not a, it’s not a fact of life. That we can easily manage and control them if we simply have a system in place to deal with them. We have a distraction freedom program, which has gotten a lot of steam, becoming very, very popular. And we talk about focus zones.

Create a Focus Zone

Jenn DeWall:

Oh yeah, what are focus zones?

Paul Weston:

Focus Zones. You have to read the book to really find out all about it, but basically, it’s creating a sanctuary. It’s a. It’s a place of peace and quiet. And even if you have kids in the house, that may be eight o’clock at night. When you know, when, when your partner is looking after the kids or vice versa, it’s scheduling that time. And it was sending out a do not disturb signal to the community. In other words, leave me alone. This is what I’m doing, why I’m doing it, what the benefits will be. And funny thing, if you tell your team that I’m going to be doing this, you know, it’s maybe gathering leads for a new sales incentive that’s coming up, they’ll go, okay, that’s good. We need that. We’re going to leave you in peace to do it. So there’s a reason why you’re creating this sanctuary. It’s building communication, operates standard operating procedures, things like turning off email, actually using your Out of Office message to say, today is whatever date I will not be available between 10 and 11 and three and four to answer emails. If your, if your message is urgent, please text me. And then the only thing you have switched on is your text so that you’re not reacting to instant message to chat, to email, to anything else that’s going on, Slack, or any apps.

The only thing that’s going to happen is your phone will buzz if it’s critical. And the companies that we work with, when we look at those communications, we discover actually very, very, very few things are actually critical. They have to be dealt with immediately. Unless, of course, you’re customer-facing is a little bit different. It’s creating a clear and cognitively challenging task, no going to focus on doing routine work, or as much as I want to do, or as much as I can do. It has to be a specific challenging task, so you can focus on it and execute profound work. There needs to be a toolkit. So what you need, I mean, if you remember back in the day, if you shut your door to get some work done in the office and suddenly realized after 10 minutes, you needed to print something, what happens?

You walk to the printer, and three or four people will stop you. You start talking, okay? Just saying now,  you’re going to go into your focus zone or to do some work and you realize you need an attachment to an email, you open your inbox, and what’s happened? Three or four emails pop up. You then get distracted and start answering the emails. You need to make sure you’ve got everything. We call it the Castaway scenario. You’re on an island with no wifi, no printer. You’ve got to take everything you need to do that job in your focus. So otherwise, you got to swim with the shop to get it. It’s a great idea. One of our clients came up with this. It’s like a Castaway syndrome. Schedule your time. When are you going to do it? And for how long come up with an exit strategy to come out of the focus zone and say, did it work? Did I execute what I needed to?

If I did give myself a reward, and that could be a social media break, or it could be a walk around the block or a coffee, or I’ll have a little bit of chocolate. If I’ve done a focus zone and I managed to get everything done that I need. And what we find is this becomes contagious as certain individuals in a team start to do it more, more people start to do it. People often say, well, my boss won’t let me. I said, well, tell your boss that you’re doing this for this reason. We’re finishing this report. So we can get back to the customer by five o’clock today. I need to be left alone for an hour. I’ve never heard anybody say, Oh, my boss won’t let me. They’ve said that sounds like a great idea. And the more people that do it, it starts to become a team culture. And the team starts to create focus zones. It’s really, really interesting, that dynamic. And we do it at the time you, we talked about personal energy zone. Could you imagine going to a yoga class and somebody’s phone keeps beeping, and they keep answering texts in the yoga class?

Jenn DeWall:

That’s the opposite of what I want when I walk out of yoga,

Paul Weston:

Exactly that. And we do it in yoga classes because we’re focused on doing yoga. Why can’t we do it once or twice a day in the work environment to get stuff done?

Jenn DeWall:

So my question then is, is this because I think there might be some people and I know I’ve had this experience. You can, so this is maybe advice. What would you say to like these two groups? What would you say to the manager that just cannot let their employees work because they feel like they instantly need to tell them or do this or that? They exist, right? They might say, so happy that you’re so productive, but then here you go, here are 20 things that I want you to focus on. Even after they said, Hey, could you give me a minute? And so what would you say to the leader to be able to support and really let go and allow people to have focus time? Because I think leaders sometimes can be at fault for really causing distractions. And then, what advice would you have for the individual to also maintain those boundaries to their leader? You know, how would you, what would you recommend? Because I think that’s an issue that some people face.

Paul Weston:

Yeah, it’s, it’s a really important point and a very important question as well. In the research we did for the book and for the program, we found that leaders and managers are about 70% of the distractions that people have to face. They cause distractions. We used to call it in the military, mission creep. You’re executing a mission, and the leader suddenly shifts in a different direction. And you move that, and he moves again. And when I talked to sort of frontline staff and say, what’s the biggest distraction you have to face. They kind of say our manager really, they never sort of stopped interacting with us. It’s constant, constant, constant all the time. And there’s a great technique that I used years ago. And I’ve used it when I was working in a management position in corporate and when I’ve been in the military.

And it’s a little, just have a huddle just to have a get together in the morning with the team and say, okay guys, this is what we need to execute today. What are your priorities to make sure the team is all on-site? Then I would say to the team who needs me for a one-on-one today who needs a piece of me today, somebody might say, I need you for 15 minutes. Okay. Nine 30. You and they sit down for 15 minutes. Okay. Somebody else’s, I need a half now, 10 o’clock I’ll schedule that. And some also other, a better thing to do this morning, this afternoon. Why don’t we sit down at two o’clock great- half an hour? Now those guys probably won’t connect with me, and you shouldn’t connect with them between now and when you go to meet with them, which cuts out a lot of distractions. Okay. So you have one-on-one time. Yeah, exactly. One-On-One time with those people. When you can go through, I mean, you just think how much you can discuss. Do you think 15 minutes one-on-one rather than emailing and interrupting?

So that’s a great tool. As a manager, a little five-minute huddle, first thing in the morning, do it standing up. Don’t sit down, do it standing up. It’s funny, old thing, you do stand up meeting it’s much quicker and more efficient than sitting down. Okay. And then, in the afternoon, do the same things. They want your quick review of the morning. Who needs a piece of me this afternoon, schedule closing on to the guys who need to be left alone today? So that everybody in the team or tell everybody else, guys are going to be offline from 9:30 to 10:30. I’ve got to finish this project. Okay? So everybody will work around that, 9:30 to 10. For that, you can do this remotely. You could do it with group check-ins on Zoom, you know, 8:30, nine o’clock in the morning. And everybody knows they’re going to go dark at 9:30. And there are more and more people who practice this.

Using the ABC List to Manage Tasks

Paul Weston:

They said, okay, he’s right. Here are our focus zones- 9:30 to 10:30 today, 2:30, 3;30 this afternoon. We’re going to go into a focus zone with no communication. Get on with work. We’re going to finish at five, and he’s done for the day. It makes you way, way more productive and effective. From the other side, from the staff member’s side. If you think you’re working on something, and this is something we talk about in the book, the ABC list, A is the tasks that you have to do today, B is a task that can be done tomorrow or the day after, and C is backlog tasks that will be brought forward later. It’s rather like the Kanban methodology. I’m sure a lot of people know about Kanban. Everybody in our little organization is a Kanban professional. So we actually, that’s great, it’s a great sort of process.

But if my boss came to me and said, Hey, Paul, I need to do this today. I show him my A list and say, boss, this is what I’m working on. Okay. Which of these do you want me to take off? Because I cannot do all of them. And usually, the boss would go, Oh yeah, I see what you’re doing now. Okay. Tell you what, let me take that one off you, you do this. Okay. It’s showing them what you’re doing. And thereby saying, I can’t do all of these things. I can do so many. I can do them well. Which ones do you want me to put into my BOC list to get this done? So they know what you’re working on. And finally, there’s a great technique that I always used to do in a leadership position. I’d write down for each member of my team that started the week the top five priorities that I think they should be working on that week. And I say to them, write down your top five priorities. I want to see if they align. If they don’t align, we’ve got a problem there. Okay. Cause they’re working on stuff that I don’t think they should be working on. Sometimes I’ll look at it and go, actually, you’re right. Yeah. I forgot about that. That does need to be done. They have to align. If you don’t align, how’s it going to work and then give them time to get on with it and focus on it.

Jenn DeWall:

Yes. Well, and it’s people, I love the idea of making the CEO accountable to- the CEO, the managers, the leadership, the directors, whoever is doing that accountable to what they’re delegating. Making sure because I think there are still people that personalize it. You know, they feel like if I say no to this, or I have to do it all because they asked it that, you know, having a list or something that’s outside of themselves can actually be a great guide or help in the conversation instead of feeling like you’re saying no, or in some way, not respecting what they’re asking you to do. I like that approach just because it seems like it’s, yeah, it’s outside of them. Right. It takes a little bit of that fear and intimidation out of, says pushing back, I guess, because we don’t want to push back against our bosses. So I love that technique.

Paul Weston:

Yeah. It’s a really interesting point. And you know, I think the more experienced you become you and the relationship you build with your team and, you know, as a leader to manage it, I wouldn’t say do this. I would say, is there any reason why you’re not able to complete this task over the next two days? If I turn around to me and say, well, actually, I’ve got this, this, this, and this on. Okay, fine. Yeah. I can see what you’re doing. Crack on with that. I’ll find somebody else who needs to do that. Is there any reason why you wouldn’t be able to finish this by Friday? You know, that’s a very different approach to saying do this by Friday because I could be pawning more and more stuff on them. So I need to know where they’re at with stuff. And that’s where the one-on-ones come in.

Little team huddle, we get together. And you say any reason why I can’t get this done by Friday? Or what can I do to help you get this done by Friday? And it could be, you know, there’s a four-hour meeting on Thursday. If you could put me upfront, present my report, I could be done within an hour that frees, you know, three hours. Absolutely. We can do that. What do you need from me to get this done? Because he could be, they’re the only ones with the skills to do it. So those were important little communication techniques that can really help the team cohesiveness.

What Will People Learn from Running in the Rain?

Jenn DeWall:

I love that. I know we have to wrap up the podcast, but before I, before we wrap up, the one thing I wanted to just ask in closing is, you know, when you wrote this book running in the rain, what did you hope that people walk away? You know, what’s the imprint that you want to have from someone that’s read, that’s going to be reading the book. What do you want them to walk away with?

Paul Weston:

I hope it encourages people to really look at what they want to achieve, not only in their careers but in their personal and in their social lives, consider whether they are truly achieving as much as they possibly can. And then create systems to schedule a time to get the things done that they really want to get done. And you know, I’m not saying we should just throw goals away. It’s important to have a goal. You know, I’m hoping we’re back doing racing triathlons this year, hoping to do an Ironman again in August. I am all my training on that. Goals are very, very important. Don’t get me wrong. It’s just that if we just focus on the, on the goal, not the routine, the lifestyle that will lead us to the goal and the system that we need to put in place, then the goals really, you know, they’re not going to fit well with how we want to run our lives. So really, the book, I want people to read the book and say yeah, I really need to get moving. And sometimes I don’t do things because I make a really poor and weak excuse for not doing it. So I should get out there and run, whether it’s raining or not, metaphorically speaking or realistically don’t make excuses out of the rain- go for it.

Where Can People Find Out More?

Jenn DeWall:

That’s so important just to people. You know, I love that you wrote a book that inspires people to, first of all, reflect, create awareness around, really? How are you spending your time, and is it productive, or is it really where you want to be spending your time? And if it’s not, then you’ve got to take your own accountability and start to make some systems to make your goals, make these things, your aspirations, a reality. Where do people get this book? Where can they find Running in the Rain?

Paul Weston:

Well, the book’s available on Amazon. It’s available in hard copy and as an e-book, so Kindle and all the usual places. And you can actually get the link to the book through our website. So AndrewJane.com and AndrewJane, one word, the usual spelling of Andrew and Jane dot com is our company website. And you’ll see it, one of the drop-downs at the top running in the rain, and on that link will be Amazon. Or you could just go into Amazon search, Running in the Rain. The book will pop up. There will be an audiobook out a little bit later in the year. But yeah, for the moment, It’ll be the hard copy, and the e-book will be available online.

Jenn DeWall:

And then how do people get in touch with you? Would you recommend they go into your website? Where do you recommend connecting on LinkedIn, or where do they go if they want to know more about your programs and what you offer?

Paul Weston:

Well, you can find me through Crestcom, first of all, because I’m still involved working with all new franchisees, coaching them in the Crestcom process and everything. Also LinkedIn, you can find me on LinkedIn. And also again, through our website, or paulweston@andrewjane.com. AndrewJane.com is our website. So you can find us there as well. And if you bought the book, there are a couple of little bits in there. And the book also has a little one-minute video QR code at the end of each chapter, a little video of me summarizing the chapter. So you can get to see me do some of that stuff as well. So we’re really excited that we’re getting this book out to everybody.

Jenn DeWall:

Awesome! Well, thank you so much for just taking your time to sit down and talk to our audience about how we can start to take back our life and be more productive just by thinking about how we manage our time—the one thing we all have.

Paul Weston:

Exactly. We certainly do!

Jenn DeWall:

Thank you so much, Paul! It was a great conversation!

Paul Weston:

Thanks, Jenn, it was great talking to you!

Jenn DeWall:

Thank you so much for tuning in on this week’s episode of The Leadership Habit podcast as we sat down and connected with Time Freedom Coach, author, and speaker, Paul Weston. Now, if you want to get his book, Running in the Rain, you can find it on Amazon, or you’ve been connected with him and purchase his book on his website at AndrewJane.com. Now, if you know someone that could benefit from being able to manage their time better, be sure to share this podcast with them. And don’t forget to leave us a review on your favorite podcast streaming service.

 

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