Teamwork - A Better Way

Christian Napier
00:12 - 00:25
Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of Teamwork, A Better Way. I'm Christian Napier, and I am joined by the amazing, incomparable, unique Spencer Horn. Spencer, how are you

Spencer Horn
00:25 - 00:31
doing? My head's ready to explode. I am not doing well. I mean, geez, thank you for all the beautiful compliments.

Spencer Horn
00:31 - 00:40
I'm so excited to be with you. I was worried that I would have to do today's show alone when I heard you were going to be in, what is it, Amenabad? Where

Christian Napier
00:40 - 00:57
are you? That's true. I'm in Ahmedabad, India this week, so not my usual digs behind me here. And hopefully, the internet connection remains stable and we can create the show because we've got an amazing guest today.

Christian Napier
00:57 - 01:03
But before we get to our guest, what have you been up to? It's been a minute since we last had a conversation.

Spencer Horn
01:03 - 01:14
Yeah. I mean, the last time I was in the hotel, I was, where was I? I was in Phoenix or something like that. So I was at the national speakers association conference in Scottsdale and great, great conference.

Spencer Horn
01:15 - 01:26
Uh, then headed over to Las Vegas and I've been on the road for, for quite a bit. Happy to sleep in my own bed as I'm sure you will in a couple of, uh, by the end of this week. Right. That's a long time being away.

Christian Napier
01:28 - 01:42
Yeah, I will be happy to be back in a softer bed. This one is spacious, so I can't complain about that, but it is a slab of concrete. I'm not going to lie. So what's your

Spencer Horn
01:42 - 01:47
favorite thing about visiting India? I mean, other than, I mean, do you love the food? I

Christian Napier
01:49 - 02:01
do love the food. I have to say the food's amazing. In India, there's a huge variety of food. Whatever region you pick, I think it's awesome.

Christian Napier
02:02 - 02:12
So I'd probably have to say the food. The people that are here that I'm working with, they're fantastic as well. So I gotta give props to the people also.

Spencer Horn
02:12 - 02:23
How about you? I can't wait to hear about it. Well, I haven't been to India, but I do love both the people and the food. So I'm totally aligned with you there.

Christian Napier
02:24 - 02:32
Well, we gotta get you over here, Spencer. You gotta figure that out. All right, enough banter. We got to get to the main event.

Christian Napier
02:32 - 02:39
Absolutely. Because we have a fantastic, I mean, fantastic guest. So Spencer, why don't you do the honors and introduce her to our audience?

Spencer Horn
02:40 - 03:15
Yes, so today we have Rebecca Shaddix, who is a marketing leader. She's a Forbes Big Data contributor. She is the founder and managing partner at Strategic Partners and is a seasoned marketing executive and a go-to market strategist with a proven track record of driving significant revenue growth across various industries. But she's got a unique background, Christian, that combines deep technical expertise, which I know you're going to be excited about, and you'll be able to tap into that, with data-driven marketing and empathetic leadership.

Spencer Horn
03:15 - 03:18
That's a great combination, don't you think? Oh, I

Christian Napier
03:18 - 03:21
think it's fantastic. And it's rare. It's so true.

Spencer Horn
03:26 - 04:11
Well, it's rare, and I know you have that, and so I'm excited for you to really dig into that combination. Rebecca has led high-growth companies in education, healthcare, and SaaS to impressive success. Her approach to the work is really rooted in research, and her background has helped really blend analytical thinking with creative marketing strategies. She's a Forbes contributor and she's a recognized thought leader and she brings insights into the societal impacts of technology, particularly in areas such as AI's role in solving global issues and fostering diversity in tech and her ability to align technology-driven solutions with broader missions with driving substantial business

Spencer Horn
04:11 - 04:26
results really sets her apart in the marketing and leadership landscape. And the thing that I asked of her, that we ask of her, is kind of focus on team performance. That's our focus. And so I just want to set this up.

Spencer Horn
04:26 - 04:37
Do you ever feel, Christian, that you are just maxed out? I mean, here you are on the road, you're juggling consulting and a full-time job. Do you ever feel maxed out for sure?

Christian Napier
04:39 - 04:50
Oh no, I got so much time on my hands, I just feel my thumbs all day. Of course I feel maxed out. And then you've got a podcast on top of it. That's all right, but you do all the hard work, so I'm just here to enjoy.

Christian Napier
04:51 - 04:56
But yes, I feel maxed out, and I'm sure that most of the people that are listening to this podcast feel the same way.

Spencer Horn
04:56 - 05:18
Right. And so if you're listening and you ever feel like you're perpetually behind or that you're not as productive as you want to be, this episode is for you. And we're going to be talking with Rebecca about her idea of this concept called micromoments. And I want her to explain it.

Spencer Horn
05:18 - 05:23
But I'm going to bring her on the screen here. Rebecca, welcome. We're so glad to have you.

Rebecca Shaddix
05:24 - 05:25
Thanks. I'm happy to be here.

Spencer Horn
05:26 - 05:55
Well, so talk to us a little about this idea, because really this comes down to productivity. And I'm really interested to see how you might tie this to team performance. But it sounds like it's going to start with individual performance in improving productivity and getting caught up on everything that you're behind on. So how does embracing micro moments really align with the traditional idea of productivity or those other productivity models?

Rebecca Shaddix
05:56 - 06:31
Yeah, I would say that micromoments are kind of a long-term look at productivity. I define micromoments as the 90-second to 15-minute gaps between the structured parts of your day. So if you had seven minutes between when this podcast recording started and your last meeting, for example, that's a perfect micromoment. And the way that capturing reclaiming them helps with long term productivity is really just by infusing more agency over how we spend our time, which then in turn studies show gives people more confidence in the decisions they make and a better ability to focus, etc. So while I

Rebecca Shaddix
06:31 - 06:54
was coming up with this concept, essentially when COVID hit and I suddenly went from my schedule, which involves a commute and a routine and workout classes and leaving the house and social, suddenly that all went away, right? I just went from my bedroom to my desk and I sat there. And I just felt this constant deluge of digital noise that sort of felt productive. Like I felt like I was responsible for responding to emails really quickly.

Rebecca Shaddix
06:54 - 07:21
I felt like I was responsible for following the news and knowing what was going on. But I realized a couple months in that I was just getting nowhere with it. That just this constantly feeling like I had to prove that I was productive, prove that I was working and reliable and responsive, just wasn't actually moving the needle of what people were paying me for. And so I just started subtly experimenting with listening to audiobooks while I waited for coffee to brew, when I had those seven minute breaks, just standing up from my desk.

Rebecca Shaddix
07:22 - 07:54
And over time, that led to reading hundreds of books in the last four years doing this, and realizing there's a pattern of what we all need to thrive. If there's overlapping components that all of the research from neuroscience and psychology really suggest we need to thrive. And so by distilling what we want to do in those micro moments, when we have these 90 second to 15 minute breaks, knowing that we have a couple of activities that are supported by research to help us thrive, that means that instead of this constant deluge of noise, we're actually taking agency over doing the things that we want to do throughout the day.

Rebecca Shaddix
07:54 - 08:14
Like you can do 100 pushups in 10 minute or 10 pushup at a time intervals in a minute at a time while you wait for coffee to brew. And so instead of thinking in order to get enough social connection or exercise or thinking and learning time, I need to carve out these big blocks. The research actually shows you can do it in between the structured parts of your day if you're just intentional with it.

Spencer Horn
08:16 - 08:20
Christian, I definitely can't do 100 pushups in a minute. I might be able to get 10.

Rebecca Shaddix
08:22 - 08:26
You could do 10 pushups. You can do 100 throughout the day, right? You have one minute. You have two minutes.

Rebecca Shaddix
08:26 - 08:29
You can do 10 pushups. And by the end of the day, you can do 100.

Christian Napier
08:30 - 08:37
There you go. I could do one push-up in a hundred minutes. If we just inverted the ratio. Excellent.

Rebecca Shaddix
08:37 - 08:46
Do it against the counter while you're waiting for your coffee to brew. That's my favorite. I like to see how many I can do. And then I just keep my focus like, oh, can I beat yesterday?

Rebecca Shaddix
08:46 - 08:46
Nope.

Christian Napier
08:49 - 09:11
All right. I have to ask a question because that sounds amazing, but it also sounds potentially exhausting because I'm just switched on all the times, right? So how do you find some balance so that you don't feel like every second of the day I have to be doing something quote unquote productive, right?

Rebecca Shaddix
09:12 - 09:12
Sure,

Christian Napier
09:12 - 09:14
it's a good question.

Spencer Horn
09:15 - 09:16
I had the exact same

Christian Napier
09:16 - 09:17
question,

Spencer Horn
09:17 - 09:30
Christian. I wrote it down. I said, I'd love to hear the science on the importance of downtime. I'm so excited to hear that because you talk about research and I'm like, I could be maxed out.

Rebecca Shaddix
09:32 - 09:37
Yeah, you're probably maxed out. Let me ask you, what do you do when you have five minutes between meetings?

Spencer Horn
09:39 - 10:02
Ah, so there's the problem. You know, so we're talking about the digital scrolling, the, uh, I need a mental break. So I'm going to watch, I mean, sometimes I'll watch, you know, a little news article or something like that. Um, and, and so that's, that, that's some of the things that, that I do if I have a break or I'll, I have narcolepsy, I might, you know, take a five minute nap, not kidding, just kidding.

Spencer Horn
10:03 - 10:05
But my wife says, as soon as I close my eyes, I fall asleep.

Rebecca Shaddix
10:06 - 10:29
That feels like work to your brain. So the scrolling emails, the reading, the scrolling Reddit, it feels like a knowledge work to your brain. And so basically, what you're doing is you're going from the context of one meeting, to the deluge of all of these unrelated emails that you don't have any time to process. So you're putting these in your brain, you've context shifted from meeting to topic, to topic, to topic, to topic.

Rebecca Shaddix
10:29 - 10:41
You can't respond to them because you don't have time. You have to remember to mark them on red. Now you have dozens of context shifts in your brain, which research calls attention residue, and you go into another meeting. So that's more work for your brain.

Rebecca Shaddix
10:41 - 10:43
That feels like downtime to

Spencer Horn
10:43 - 10:45
you, maybe. Our brains do not like context switching, do they?

Rebecca Shaddix
10:46 - 10:53
No, that's exactly right. And so the entire idea of micro moments is just being intentional with what you want. Do you want more connection? Fine.

Rebecca Shaddix
10:54 - 11:06
Use that time then to just send a voice note to your friend or a handwritten birthday card if their birthday is coming up. That feels really energizing to your brain and is the opposite of more work. And it's the opposite of the draining scroll that we're used to right now.

Spencer Horn
11:08 - 11:25
So I think that's really interesting because you said distilling what you want to do. So I'm assuming that you got to have a plan about what you want to do with that downtime. Otherwise, you might fall into a trap of, well, what do I do? And now I'm thinking about something.

Spencer Horn
11:25 - 11:30
So how do you reduce that friction is coming up with a plan for the downtime. Is that what I'm hearing?

Rebecca Shaddix
11:31 - 11:57
Exactly and it's a lot easier than you might think right by the time you realize you have a four-minute break It's too late to ask what to do in those four minutes because by the time you answer that the four minutes are over So every Friday from 3 to 3 15, I just answer three questions. What went well this week? What didn't what do I want more of and the what do I want more of is usually what I want for a micro moment that next week There's six categories that my research found of micromoments.

Rebecca Shaddix
11:58 - 12:19
There's thinking and learning, reflection and mindset, connection, so interpersonal connection or connection with animals, nature and sensory awareness, play and creativity, and I went out of order this time. Oh, and physical movement and exercise. So basically, if you ask yourself, what do I want more of? It's pretty easy to say, I want more interpersonal connections.

Rebecca Shaddix
12:20 - 12:33
I want more exercise. I want more whatever. You want more play and creativity. And then I have a whole list of exercises that people can choose from that I talk about on my podcast, or you can just say, what's something I enjoy doing?

Rebecca Shaddix
12:33 - 12:46
You would just go outside and take five deep breaths. That's still better for your brain. And actually, it's a nervous system reset than just constantly scrolling and staying inside on what you're doing. So it's really easy.

Rebecca Shaddix
12:46 - 13:16
It's just a few minutes of reflection. You can use the same ones for an entire week for an entire month just three things i like to have written down physically on my desk of what i want to do that next week so handwritten notes were on my list this week great i just have a stack of stationery on my desk and i send a couple handwritten notes to friends i haven't seen in a while and mail them when i get a chance and so i feel better because i pulled out of the digital noise and they feel better getting connected to me, it didn't take any extra time.

Rebecca Shaddix
13:16 - 13:26
So I stay very well connected with friends in different states and even different countries just by giving them a little bit of attention in 90 second to four minute breaks.

Christian Napier
13:29 - 13:42
I love this. Okay, so I've got a question for you about this because as you were telling your story of how you got to where you are, You said, all right, I've got these moments. What am I going to do? I'm going to start listening to audiobooks.

Christian Napier
13:42 - 14:27
OK. So you could have stopped there and said, I had this little epiphany for myself, and I realized that I could fill up some of my little free time with these listening sessions to audiobooks, and that would be it. But it sounds to me that you decided, I'm going to dive headfirst into this rabbit hole of research about why this works. So what kind of, tell me about the thought process that went through your mind to say, I really want to figure out what's going on here instead of just being content with listening to audiobooks in your five to seven minute micro moments of free time.

Rebecca Shaddix
14:28 - 14:40
Yeah, it's a great question. And as you're asking that, I realized I didn't explain that this was all a happy accident. I didn't set out to do research. I just set out with some audio books that I'd wanted to that were sitting on my Goodreads.

Rebecca Shaddix
14:41 - 15:03
And during a micro moment, which I didn't call micro moments at the time, I just saw myself going outside. I was doing a play and creativity micro moment outside. And had this epiphany that so much of what I had been reading, the dozens of books that I had read in the months prior, there was the overlap. And so I haven't seen the categories of micromoments that I just mentioned listed anywhere.

Rebecca Shaddix
15:03 - 15:20
That's just what my brain distilled from the research that I was doing, which is the power of micromoments. Because when we pull ourselves out of Being constantly distracted, our brain can do more creative work, which is why a lot of us have felt in the shower. It's really the only time we're not connected, right? And so that's what micro moments are too.

Rebecca Shaddix
15:21 - 15:44
And essentially I just realized there was this pattern by accident while I was not thinking about it and just having a good time. with my day, and then the attempt to document it. I didn't have that the idea to even document or share this until a couple of months ago, when a colleague of I was talking about something, some approach to some big mistake that had happened on my marketing team. And I was just explaining my approach for how we should resolve it.

Rebecca Shaddix
15:44 - 16:12
And my colleague said, Man, I just wish I was as naturally grounded as you, my mind doesn't work like that. And I do not consider myself a naturally grounded person at all. I've had diagnosed anxiety disorders for most of my life. And so the idea that the benefits of micro moments would come out into somebody that I thought I knew fairly well, thinking I was naturally grounded, made me think, okay, wow, there's actually more compounding power in this than I realized.

Rebecca Shaddix
16:12 - 16:20
But when he first said that, I thought, oh, he just doesn't know me very well. I'm not naturally grounded at all. But when I realized the benefits that this had for me, I thought, let's share it.

Spencer Horn
16:23 - 16:38
You know, Rebecca and Christian, it's interesting. I have very similar experiences when I mountain bike ride. If I'm not listening to anything, I'm not doing anything, I have all these ideas that start percolating. It's so interesting.

Spencer Horn
16:38 - 16:53
And it's just exactly what you're saying. When we eliminate the noise, when we unplug, that's when creativity starts. And I want to create more of those moments. And you're helping us do that.

Spencer Horn
16:53 - 17:01
And what you're saying is it doesn't have to be a big, long event. I mean, that creativity can happen and percolate in just a few minutes. Is that right?

Rebecca Shaddix
17:01 - 17:11
Yeah. While you're sitting in a doctor's office waiting room, as opposed to just scrolling your phone, you can be using any one of these. Something that feels more enriching to you.

Spencer Horn
17:11 - 17:33
I love your idea of increasing connection. Christian, you and I have talked so often about the importance of connections, right? And you've had some great connections in your life that have helped you to be very successful in what you do as a consultant and the work that you do. There's a study that was just reported from Harvard.

Spencer Horn
17:33 - 18:05
They followed 80 people. This is a decades-long study. And what they found is it wasn't, success did not depend on IQ, it depended on actually their likability or their connectedness to others and making others feel important. And it's so interesting that you don't feel like you're that person that necessarily naturally is good at that, but because you take the time to just connect with others, the perception is, that you are naturally grounded and care about other people and that connection has helped you.

Spencer Horn
18:05 - 18:10
I don't know if I said that the right way, but have I, does that, I mean, you don't feel that way about yourself.

Rebecca Shaddix
18:11 - 18:38
Yeah, but yeah, exactly. The idea that just by pulling ourselves out of being passive consumers of noise that feels productive, but really isn't, it's draining your brain in the exact same way that your knowledge work is, but with less agency over it. You're basically just being intentional with the time that you already have but currently waste. A study found that we check our phones an average of once every five waking minutes or 205 times a day on average in the US.

Rebecca Shaddix
18:39 - 18:54
And for younger people, it's even more. That is just wasted energy that zaps us and it fuels comparison culture and just all kinds of disconnection. So this is just about being intentional with reconnecting. And I'm certainly not saying stay off of social media.

Rebecca Shaddix
18:54 - 19:01
I love social media. I think it's a great tool. I'm just saying be intentional with your goal and how you spend it. So I spend 30 minutes a day on it.

Rebecca Shaddix
19:01 - 19:15
I set a timer and I go in with the goal of connecting with people and learning something. And so I catch up with my friends, I comment on their lives, it's great. But I'm intentional about it, right? I'm not just like passively consuming values that aren't mine from people I don't know.

Rebecca Shaddix
19:15 - 19:18
That's suddenly putting me in a headspace that has nothing to do with my life.

Spencer Horn
19:20 - 19:44
So, but Rebecca, some of us are addicted to that dopamine rush that we get from reaching our phone every couple of seconds. So how do you change that behavior, how do you begin to shift into, okay, now I've gotta create this new behavior of not checking my phone every second. There's gotta be some type of transition that happens. And did that happen for you?

Spencer Horn
19:45 - 19:54
How did you overcome it? Or if you haven't, what have you found in terms of the strategies to create those habits if it's really hard for somebody that's addicted to their phone?

Rebecca Shaddix
19:56 - 19:57
Yeah, I definitely

Spencer Horn
19:57 - 20:00
have found that. That wasn't a cough. I'm asking for a friend.

Rebecca Shaddix
20:01 - 20:04
Asking for a friend. Got it. Yeah. Certainly.

Rebecca Shaddix
20:05 - 20:09
Absolutely. And I think too, when I was consulting in service work, I felt

Christian Napier
20:09 - 20:09
like

Rebecca Shaddix
20:09 - 20:13
it was really responsible for me to be hyper responsive and reply really quickly.

Christian Napier
20:13 - 20:13
So the

Rebecca Shaddix
20:13 - 20:26
very first thing was just physical separation. When your phone is on your desk, it's just this quick reach. So putting it away in a bag, in a zipped pocket still adds a little bit of friction. For me, I prefer it outside of my office.

Rebecca Shaddix
20:26 - 20:43
When I work from home, I don't sleep with it in my bedroom anymore, but the dopamine hit you're talking about, We can do a one-to-one dopamine hit swap from it. Sorry. You're reaching for your phone because you want a dopamine hit. So asking yourself what you're trying to get out of it is the very first step.

Rebecca Shaddix
20:44 - 20:53
And it's really little. So for me, I just keep this note on my desk that says, stand up. I don't know if you can see it. I found that that is often the first interruption of a habit I don't want.

Rebecca Shaddix
20:54 - 21:07
So if I'm in the habit of, oh, let me see if I can crank out some emails or catch up on emails in six minutes. I know I can't do anything thoughtful in that. So if I just stand up, well, suddenly pushups are an option. Sitting outside is an option.

Rebecca Shaddix
21:07 - 21:17
Going and connecting with my partner is an option. And so just interrupting that habit is the very first step. And I think it means just really looking at yourself and asking what is this driving toward.

Christian Napier
21:17 - 21:27
Uh-oh. What happened, Spencer, did we have a technical issue?

Spencer Horn
21:27 - 21:46
I tried to do a bumper and it said it wasn't found. And I'm like, what? Hold on, let me try that again. You know, we produced this show live, so there's never any snafus.

Spencer Horn
21:47 - 21:49
I love that. Christian, what say you?

Christian Napier
21:52 - 22:22
So my question was about impact. You mentioned that a friend or colleague had noticed that you appeared grounded to him. So clearly there was some kind of impact on you. So as you looked at the changes over months or years, how has it impacted you personally And what kinds of impact have you seen in others who have implemented these methods?

Rebecca Shaddix
22:25 - 22:40
In short, just a lot more confidence. So confidence in our ability to spend our time well, to achieve the things that we want, because the power of reclaiming these micro moments is agency over our time. And we need to feel agency over that. It's a fundamental human need.

Rebecca Shaddix
22:40 - 23:08
It's part of the reason toddlers often throw tantrums is they don't have agency over their time and how they spend their energy. And so that just compounds. There's a concept called time poverty in the research, this feeling that we never have enough time to do the things that we need or want to do because we're constantly overwhelmed. But there's a choice in that to just give up control over how we spend our time to other people, to how we structure our schedule, mindless scrolling of algorithms that are designed to keep us hooked.

Rebecca Shaddix
23:09 - 23:43
And so just the subtle shift comes into more confidence in how you can spend your time, make decisions, and then the compounding benefits of enjoying your days more because you're not doing things that you don't want to do. The concept that I, my podcast is called Time Billionaires. And the idea is that a billion seconds is 31 years, but a lot of us waste time in ways that we would never waste money. And so if you think about doing things that you know, you don't like in time that you feel like you don't have enough of out of habit, it's basically like not knowing how much money is in your bank account and spending it on things that you know, you

Rebecca Shaddix
23:43 - 24:10
don't want. like food that makes you sick or an unflattering pair of pants that you don't like to wear. And so this just all comes pounds into more confidence in how you spend your time, more happiness in what your days look like because you feel more agency over them and you're getting more done while feeling more relaxed. Because if interpersonal connection is important to you, well, suddenly now that you're not spending hours a day doom scrolling, you have that time and the energy to reclaim it.

Rebecca Shaddix
24:10 - 24:13
And so this all compounds into a really relaxed motion.

Spencer Horn
24:15 - 24:28
Isn't that what Dr. Daniel Amen says? When we make time for the things that we say are most important to us, then we feel this sense of fulfillment and achievement. And that's that confidence that

Christian Napier
24:28 - 24:28
you're

Spencer Horn
24:28 - 24:44
talking about, right? I'm using my assets with my agency on things that I say are important. I actually feel aligned with what my values are. And so often we feel misaligned because it's not that we're It's about the habits that we've created.

Spencer Horn
24:44 - 25:00
And so the habits that sometimes we've created are what you said, purchasing that food that's not good for us, which is really not aligned with what we say we want. And so we're creating our own challenges. Where can I find that information about time poverty? I really like that idea.

Spencer Horn
25:01 - 25:04
Is that something that you coined, or was that somewhere else?

Rebecca Shaddix
25:04 - 25:25
Time poverty is an established research fact. The psychologist's name is escaping me, but we can link to it in the show notes. I talk about it a little bit on my podcast, but time poverty and time affluence is really what we're going for. And ironically, the more money we make, the more we tend to feel time poverty, because quite literally, our time is worth more.

Rebecca Shaddix
25:25 - 25:34
And so the trade-off of any one thing feels much bigger. So you'll never outwork or out productivity, a sense of time poverty if you

Spencer Horn
25:34 - 25:42
don't redefine it. Okay, so you just brought up a really important idea. So we're talking now about high achievers, right? People that are earning a lot of money.

Spencer Horn
25:42 - 25:50
What are some of the myths that high achievers often believe about productivity that Micro Moments has helped debunk for you?

Rebecca Shaddix
25:51 - 26:08
I think the biggest one is that there's an obligation to spend our time in certain ways. I think a lot of high achievers feel like if they're invited to a meeting, they must attend. If they get emails, they must respond super promptly. But they've missed that their job is not attending meetings and answering emails, it's to get results.

Rebecca Shaddix
26:08 - 26:30
And those activities are in service of their real goal, which is generating results. And so that flip of how can I generate the most important results is what I like and a reflection of mindset micro moment question that I often use is what's the most important thing to get done today? Halfway through the day, am I on track to hit that? If not, why not?

Rebecca Shaddix
26:30 - 26:51
With a lot of self-compassion. And that's the second part of what a lot of high achievers miss. I think we often tend to think that working harder, being more intense, demanding more accountability of ourselves and others is the key to results. But you can ask, oh, why can't I get more done today in a way that's really self-critical and not productive?

Rebecca Shaddix
26:51 - 27:11
You can't answer that question if you're sort of condemning yourself for not being more productive. But if you have this sort of open self-compassion, what's getting in the way of achieving my most important goal? And you can do this with yourself and the teams that you manage. If you just ask these questions very genuinely from a place of curiosity, you can actually answer and diagnose them.

Rebecca Shaddix
27:11 - 27:18
So if we can say, what's the most important thing to get done today? Some report. By 2 p.m., am I on track to hit that? No.

Rebecca Shaddix
27:19 - 27:24
If, why not? Oh, because I had to attend all these meetings. I have to answer all these emails. Do you?

Rebecca Shaddix
27:25 - 27:51
Could you batch those emails to answer them in a single hour block, two or three times a day, as opposed to feeling like you're constantly pulled out of the focus it takes? Because then if you're saying the most important thing to get done today is this report, but I don't have time to do it until 8pm because I'm doing all these other pseudo productivity things, well then we've totally lost the plot and that's the reclaiming of the agency. that goes into the accountability. And the same thing with teams that miss deadlines.

Rebecca Shaddix
27:51 - 28:00
What's the most important thing to get done this week? If we miss it, let's ideally have some visibility before it happens. But diagnose why. Why did that happen?

Rebecca Shaddix
28:01 - 28:12
In a way that is actually just coming from a place of curiosity, so our teams can be honest with us. Well, this deadline slipped. What happened? People might say, oh, yeah, this deadline slipped, but then you assigned me two other things.

Rebecca Shaddix
28:13 - 28:29
Or Steve from sales said this was more urgent, and he said you were OK with it. So I thought this was less important because we hadn't talked about it between when it was assigned and when all these other things cropped up for me. And that's where the really actionable insights come from. And those reflections can happen in just a couple of minutes.

Christian Napier
28:46 - 29:33
All right, well, I'm a self-diagnosed proficient procrastinator. So one of the justifications that I use for procrastination is when I have these micro moments, I tell myself, I can't really get that thing done in this period of time, and I don't want to leave it halfway done. So I'm just not going to do anything about that right now, and I will do it later. What advice would you give procrastinators like me to get over ourselves and figure out something, quote unquote, productive to do in these micro moments, instead of just putting it off and saying, well, I'll do it later because it's going to be too much energy for me to mind

Christian Napier
29:33 - 29:46
shift from the thing that I just did. into the thing now that I'm thinking about doing in the seven minutes that I've got available, and then into this other thing that I've got coming up in seven minutes. So I'll just scroll on my phone.

Rebecca Shaddix
29:47 - 30:02
Yeah, I would say that a couple things. One, you're right. If something, a big task requires a lot of focus and stamina, seven minutes is not the time to do it. Seven minutes is the time to recharge your energy and reset so the meeting and task that follows will be more productive.

Rebecca Shaddix
30:03 - 30:16
So then your day is more productive. You time batch and time box activities that are most important. 8 to 10am is when you're going to get the most creative flow for you as an example. That's great.

Rebecca Shaddix
30:16 - 30:38
The point of micro moments isn't to cram productivity into every second. It's to reset what you need to thrive holistically as a human being so you're more creative. And then by extension, more relaxed and productive, because nothing good is coming out of rushing. The point is that when you're scrolling constantly, and you're inundated by emails and messages, your brain never gets that reset.

Rebecca Shaddix
30:38 - 31:14
And so you stay sort of lack of agency of just following the powers that be, the whims of the dopamine hits of your phone, the whims of agreeing to everything that pops up on your calendar, that's what micromoments interrupt. This is claiming agency for the things that you want in life. And you may find that you don't need to dedicate two and a half hours all in to a spin class each day to get the energy exercise you need, you can do pushups, wall sits, jumping jacks, yoga at home in the time that you have. And so now you've suddenly reclaimed blocks that used to feel like they needed entire standout times.

Spencer Horn
31:16 - 31:31
One of the things I started doing is actually having just a really not very heavy dumbbells while I'm watching a movie and just doing like some reps while I'm sitting on the freaking couch, Christian. And it's awesome. But

Christian Napier
31:32 - 31:33
I do that

Spencer Horn
31:33 - 31:33
with a bag of

Christian Napier
31:33 - 31:39
potato chips. I do those curls from the bag to my mouth.

Spencer Horn
31:40 - 32:02
That's something. Rebecca, you mentioned the idea of evaluation, self-evaluation, and then you talked about team evaluation and taking a more subjective approach to why we missed deadlines. I want to segue into this application. I actually don't know if I'd say

Rebecca Shaddix
32:02 - 32:04
more subjective. I'd say more compassionate.

Spencer Horn
32:04 - 32:05
More compassionate.

Rebecca Shaddix
32:05 - 32:08
More objective, because if you're I

Spencer Horn
32:09 - 32:13
used the wrong word. Not subjective. Absolutely. That's exactly what I meant.

Spencer Horn
32:13 - 32:18
Sorry. I'm not doing enough micro moments. My brain's not working. I meant more objective.

Spencer Horn
32:18 - 32:41
More aware and understanding of what's going on. Forgive me. The question I have is how can teams and organizations use this idea of incorporating micro moments into their hectic day or, or just actually more, no, let's talk about putting it into the culture of workflow.

Rebecca Shaddix
32:42 - 33:05
Yeah, I think it starts with the expectation setting. So any individual, I think of any seniority level can decide this is something that they want to establish in their routine and bring that up as an example to share with their manager. So for example, I worked at a startup and there was somebody, I don't even know who, who decided that at three o'clock they wanted to do planks and pushups and it became this whole big thing that everybody had fun. doing from 3 to 3.15.

Rebecca Shaddix
33:05 - 33:25
Great. So at any seniority level, I think you can do that. As a manager, I think setting the expectation that you expect your team to be stewards of their own schedule and responsible for the output, not the productivity theater of how quickly are you responding to show how dedicated you are. I'm holding you accountable for results, first and foremost.

Rebecca Shaddix
33:25 - 33:54
That then just cascades and manifests into, great, if somebody has These shared seven minute blocks, if you have two team members who are going from the same two meetings and at the same time, could they then take a walk around the block together and just ideate on something that may not feel directly related to work, but will improve their working dynamics. Expectation setting is the short answer to your question of claiming this and trying to be accountable and then sharing what it looks like for you will make the teams just that much more effective.

Spencer Horn
33:56 - 34:16
And that can actually play into your idea of earlier of deeper connection, right? I mean, if you're taking that time with a colleague, you can be intentional about, you know, hey, I'm gonna, let's plan some time together so that we can really understand each other and build a relationship of trust. That could be an intentional approach is what I'm interpreting from what you said.

Rebecca Shaddix
34:17 - 34:24
Exactly. And if we've said, hey, this is what I'm doing, then it doesn't feel weird to be doing wall sits between meetings because everybody knows this is part of.

Spencer Horn
34:25 - 34:28
So you're setting your intention, hey, Rebecca, I want to get to know you better.

Rebecca Shaddix
34:31 - 34:33
In that example is like a colleague.

Spencer Horn
34:34 - 34:45
Yeah, I want to get to know you better. And so I really want to understand you. So let's schedule and be intentional about some time if you're okay with that. What if they're like, heck no, Spencer, I don't want to get to know you.

Spencer Horn
34:45 - 34:45
Suck it.

Rebecca Shaddix
34:47 - 34:53
So I think this all comes down to little, right? Saying, hey, I want to get to know you feels heavy. It's like

Spencer Horn
34:53 - 34:53
asking

Rebecca Shaddix
34:53 - 35:29
somebody to be a mentor before you've Talk to them just hey when i get coffee between these meetings saying hey when i know you spend time but what i meant by intentionality is i'm being intentional about how spending my time when i have the small gaps where i can't be productive my intention is to use them in research back ways to make me feel more. creative and productive, not to frenetically fire off emails that are half-baked, that confuse somebody. So now they have to frenetically fire off an email when I could have just sat down for 20 minutes, said what I meant, and had two emails as opposed to the seven email thread that's now fire, fire, fire, fire.

Rebecca Shaddix
35:29 - 35:35
Oh, I didn't read that. Sorry, that's not what I meant. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. This is productivity theater that makes us much less productive.

Rebecca Shaddix
35:36 - 35:50
The intentionality and the slowing down to speed up is what I mean. So when I say being intentional about how you want to spend your time, I mean literally describing how you want to spend your time and the goals that you can decide what feels right for you in that week.

Spencer Horn
35:50 - 36:04
Rebecca, there's a lot of technical people that listen to this. And so sometimes we need to spell that out for them, right? Because it's like, well, you know, you are a very emotionally aware and emotionally intelligent. And that's, as we were talking about in the beginning, that's a rare element.

Spencer Horn
36:04 - 36:15
Not everybody has that same level of, you know, I just need to, I just need to connect with and have coffee with instead. They're like, you know, so thank you for, for explaining that.

Rebecca Shaddix
36:17 - 36:33
Thank you. Yeah, and I think to your point of we can make things more complicated than they need to be. And really just claiming this is what I want, this is my goal, go directly at it. This is how I feel about any conflict, any goal, be explicit.

Rebecca Shaddix
36:34 - 36:56
None of this like, hey, here's something abstract that I've sort of noticed explicitly. Hey, boss, I've noticed that this cadence of responding to emails too quickly is leading to a lot of confusion. My plan is to time block my calendar, so I will respond in these blocks. That may mean I'm not quite as quick to respond, but my answers will be more thoughtful, and I think that means our team will be more productive.

Rebecca Shaddix
36:56 - 37:13
Even better if it comes from the manager. I mean, being explicit and clear in exactly what you want, and then nothing gets lost. So one of the objections that people sometimes share is, look, the expectation of my culture is that I'm fast to respond. My manager expects if he emails me at 9 p.m.

Rebecca Shaddix
37:13 - 37:20
on a Saturday, I reply at 9.07 p.m. on a Saturday. My buzzer is always on. But your manager expects results, right?

Rebecca Shaddix
37:21 - 37:37
It's not your job to respond to emails quickly. It's your job to get results and move things forward and not block projects. So you're saying, this is the way I'm going to do that. I am going to not block projects by being more effective in my communication or whatever your goal is.

Rebecca Shaddix
37:38 - 37:40
And that's just really, again, the intentionality. My

Spencer Horn
37:40 - 38:02
goal is to get results. Rebecca, sometimes the culture does confuse activity with productivity, right? And so what I'm hearing you say is you actually have to be a good job in selling your boss the idea of, I'm going to get results, and here's how I'm going to do it, and have the confidence to be able to say, this will be my process to get you the results that you say you want.

Rebecca Shaddix
38:03 - 38:11
Right. And then to open that dialogue, right? They're going to appreciate and respect, this is a problem I've noticed and a solution that I'm proposing. Great.

Rebecca Shaddix
38:11 - 38:24
Let's have a dialogue. It doesn't have to be the end-all be-all, and this is iterative, right? Like anything is iterative, any product or launch process, software, marketing, it's all iterative. It's about just claiming that intentionally to start this.

Rebecca Shaddix
38:24 - 38:39
And in anything, in business and in micro moments, I always start problem statement, hypotheses, experiments. These are the big high-level problem statements I'm noticing. Here are two to four hypotheses about what could be causing them. Here's some experiments I want to run to how to fix that.

Rebecca Shaddix
38:39 - 38:56
And then it becomes this iterative loop where we're constantly refining. Running anything as a pilot is a lot easier than saying, here's a whole bold new sweeping initiative we've never tested. And suddenly you're testing everything, but it doesn't feel as high stakes. I think a lot of the procrastination that I felt, too, is when things feel high stakes.

Rebecca Shaddix
38:56 - 39:06
I have to get perfect. If I'm not in the perfect mindset, the work is bad and it's threatening my career. But what if it's easier than that? All of this is probably easier than that.

Rebecca Shaddix
39:06 - 39:20
The first step is easier than that. And just saying, okay, this will be the first step That is easier than I think, and not as high stakes as I'm making it. I noticed myself doing that yesterday, recording a podcast. I was like, oh no, I just ate dairy.

Rebecca Shaddix
39:20 - 39:27
Now I can't do it because my throat's not going to sound great. Oh, but now I'm rushing to go to this birthday party. I have to wait until after. Oh, now I'm tired.

Rebecca Shaddix
39:27 - 39:33
It's like, you know what? Fine. I'm just going to do a first draft, run through it as practice. It was fine.

Rebecca Shaddix
39:34 - 39:35
It was literally fine.

Spencer Horn
39:35 - 39:39
Christian, you and I have quickly thrown all of that out the window with the podcast, haven't we?

Christian Napier
39:44 - 40:07
Okay, I want to come back to something, Spencer, that you said and then relate it to some of the concepts, Rebecca, that you've been teaching us today. So Spencer mentioned that we have a lot of technical people that listen to this podcast. A lot of the vocabulary and the terminology you use and the examples you use sound like agile, right? Like, okay, we're time boxing things.

Christian Napier
40:08 - 40:37
Every Friday, you're basically holding a personal sprint retrospective. Right? So, and I don't mean that disparagingly, I think that's a very positive thing. And really, and another thing that you mentioned also, that is a core concept of agile is if I'm doing things, I'm looking at my burndown, and I got new stuff that's coming in, Well, if I need to achieve what I set out to achieve, I gotta be willing

Christian Napier
40:38 - 41:29
to take things out of my current sprint and put them in a future sprint or put them in the backlog because I don't have capacity to do everything. And I think that's quite liberating. And so I am curious to hear from your perspective, what are some of the linkages or relationships that you see between the concepts that you have discovered and these more agile frameworks that exist on the technology side of the fence these days, and how can people who are already implementing these frameworks become even more productive and fulfilled by taking advantage of these micro-moments?

Rebecca Shaddix
41:29 - 41:36
I love that we can use agile terminology. Thank you. I've been trying to avoid buzz. That's great.

Rebecca Shaddix
41:36 - 41:44
I love to hear that. Daily standups with yourself. It can be a micro moment of a daily standup. What's my priority to get done today?

Rebecca Shaddix
41:44 - 42:04
And I also like to then say, what are three wins from yesterday that I'm proud of? Because you're keeping building that confidence, that momentum, and keeping yourself focused. Whether your team does daily stand-ups or not, there's probably things that go onto that priorities list that are worth reflecting on for yourself. And then when we talked about earlier, what's my most important thing to get done today?

Rebecca Shaddix
42:05 - 42:23
Am I on track? If not, why not? If you've documented three wins from the day before, three goals for that day, you then have this really quick way to check in and keep compounding that list and stay focused and to your point, replace them with things that aren't working. But I also think it's not this high stakes, right?

Rebecca Shaddix
42:23 - 42:33
Every day is a new opportunity. Heck, every micro moment is a new opportunity and we stay nimble to adapt to new inputs and just avoid getting bogged down with things that aren't a priority.

Christian Napier
42:38 - 42:43
Sorry, Spencer, for kind of geeking out there a little bit. No, actually, that was,

Spencer Horn
42:44 - 42:49
you're bang on. I'm glad you asked that. And that's such a great idea. And thank you.

Spencer Horn
42:49 - 43:08
I mean, I absolutely love this. You know, how does this, I don't know, it seems like there's some overlap with this idea of habit stacking, right? James Clear talking about this in Atomic Habits, right? I mean, it seems like there's some correlation here.

Spencer Horn
43:09 - 43:26
And I love that book, and I love the idea of habit stacking. And it sounds like you're using some of that, I don't know if the right word, but the process to get behavior change and to get results, is there some correlation?

Rebecca Shaddix
43:28 - 43:40
There absolutely is. I love his book. It's one of the ones I mentioned reading and realizing there's a correlation with a lot of what people recommend to live a good life. And there's two things that stick out to me from the habit stacking.

Rebecca Shaddix
43:41 - 43:54
One is he talks about just the smallest possible step to get started. If you want to work out more, just putting your shoes on, but not even leaving the house to go to the gym. That's exactly right. If you want to check your phone less, just

Spencer Horn
43:54 - 43:59
make it more difficult, which is what you said in the very beginning. Yes, create more friction. And I love that.

Rebecca Shaddix
44:01 - 44:09
Yeah, absolutely. Exactly. If you don't want to behavior, put more friction into it in your personal habits and in your business. dynamics.

Rebecca Shaddix
44:09 - 44:28
And if you do, really just ask yourself, what's the lowest possible step to get there? And I think there's often just a lot of pressure. The one thing I like to is similar dopamine hit swaps. For me, if there's something I don't want to do, like, oh, I want to go to the gym, so I'll look better, or I'll be healthier, just absolutely does not work for me.

Rebecca Shaddix
44:29 - 44:43
If it's I want to go to the gym, or go hang out with my friends, I need the same through line of the metric I'm using to measure it. How fun is it for me to be at the gym? Because once I'm there, it is kind of fun and kind of energizing. Or how fun is this other activity that doesn't feel as productive?

Rebecca Shaddix
44:43 - 45:01
If I can evaluate, it's not fun for me to sit here scrolling in the time I could be at the gym. It would be more fun to be at the gym. I like the same through line of a metric of not some second degree consequence for this near term action. How fun is this activity, sitting here scrolling?

Rebecca Shaddix
45:01 - 45:08
How productive is this activity, reading all my emails when I can't respond? Versus how productive would it be to go meditate for four minutes?

Spencer Horn
45:09 - 45:24
So you're tricking your brain to actually fill the dopamine rush to do the things that you wanna do and giving yourself more of a, hey, this is, you're training your brain to reject the things that you don't want is what I interpret what you just said.

Rebecca Shaddix
45:25 - 45:36
Yeah, it's just taking a clean swap. So yes, that is the goal you're training your brain. But in the very near term, it's like, hey, I'm eating out of boredom. What's something else that could bust my boredom?

Rebecca Shaddix
45:36 - 45:37
Do one of those.

Spencer Horn
45:37 - 45:53
Yeah, I love, love, love the questions. So, gosh. Christian, there's so much that we could talk about and I'm loving this conversation so much. We have just a few more minutes.

Spencer Horn
45:53 - 45:55
Have you got any great insights or questions for? Oh,

Christian Napier
45:59 - 46:18
I have a bunch of questions and I can't believe that we've already been talking for 46 minutes. It's blowing my brain. It's incredible. All right, so one question out of curiosity I have is, as you started down this rabbit hole of research, What's one thing that kind of surprised you?

Christian Napier
46:19 - 46:40
You were doing the reading and you're like, oh, well, I had no idea about this. Or maybe Spencer used the term debunking a myth. What's one thing that as you started going through this process of researching it and learning more about this that you learned something that really, really surprised you?

Rebecca Shaddix
46:41 - 46:56
the hours breakdown. So there's two books that really stand out as an answer to that. One is Cassie Holmes' Happier Hour. And she found that if we have less than two hours of leisure time or more than five hours of leisure time a day, we're similarly unhappy.

Rebecca Shaddix
46:56 - 47:20
And about two hours is what most American adults spend scrolling social media on average. So we have it if we can reclaim it. And I was surprised that having more than five hours of leisure time would make you as unhappy as having less than two hours of leisure time. And in an almost paradoxical vein, but related, the book, I know how she does it.

Rebecca Shaddix
47:20 - 47:33
Laura is the first name of the author. I can't remember her last name. She broke down, there's 168 hours in a week. If you spend 50 hours working and 50 hours sleeping, you have 68 hours to do anything else.

Rebecca Shaddix
47:34 - 47:58
And I had really not thought about that because I thought I do not have 68 hours lying around in a week, what is she talking about? But I really can't argue with math. So I do, right? And just realizing that it was lost because there was no clear opportunity cost, I didn't mind spending 14 minutes scrolling in a doctor's office because what else was I going to do with that time?

Rebecca Shaddix
47:58 - 48:17
But when I answered that question, what else was I going to do with that time? I realized I could forge meaningful connections with my cousins who live on the other side of the country. And things like that, I can't actually do a lot of other things. I can listen to an audiobook, I can practice a language, I can learn something I'm interested in, just being intentional with it.

Rebecca Shaddix
48:17 - 48:27
So there's sort of this learned helplessness of like, what can I do? There's all these demands on my time. answer that really answer that question. There is something you can do.

Rebecca Shaddix
48:27 - 48:44
Sure, there's demands on your time. But what can you uniquely do? And, and this isn't perfect. This is an iterative science to iterative process to answer your question of, on Saturday, I was talking to my mom as I was driving home from the post office, and she goes, How you doing?

Rebecca Shaddix
48:44 - 48:49
I was like, oh, I don't know. I just spent like four hours doing errands. She goes, oh, well, do you feel productive? I was like, not really.

Rebecca Shaddix
48:49 - 49:08
I feel like I should have just spent 80 bucks to have someone else go to the post office for me. So what can you uniquely do? There is probably a solution to whatever feels like you have no alternative but to constantly answer these emails or to make so many lunches and drive. There is probably an answer to the question.

Spencer Horn
49:19 - 49:34
Martin Seligman would be so proud, Rebecca. I mean, this idea of learned helplessness is so true. I have enabled myself to waste those hours. And in those small moments, it feels like we're not even doing it.

Spencer Horn
49:35 - 49:47
So we've deceived ourselves. is what I'm hearing you say. And that's really scary. So this whole idea of agency is like you get to take back control of your life.

Spencer Horn
49:47 - 50:16
So I have one more question before we get to a lightning round from my perspective. How can somebody who is a mentor or a coach help members of their team incorporate this idea of micromoments or coach them or mentor them into using this? I mean, you figured this out on your own. I mean, some people are coming and they're getting excited about finding it, but how do you help someone discover it when maybe they're not looking for it?

Rebecca Shaddix
50:18 - 50:30
Yeah, so I think that introduction is the first step. There's a three-part answer to that. It's a good question. introduction to the concept that you can be intentional with how you claim your time, and we're wasting it in ways you may not notice.

Rebecca Shaddix
50:30 - 50:48
Giving them a swap. So like, two is giving them the tools of what could you do with this time instead. Bunch of examples on my podcast or LinkedIn that you can just grab and copy and keep on your desk. But third is in a mentor coach capacity, you have the really amazing benefit of personalizing this to somebody.

Rebecca Shaddix
50:49 - 51:02
And I think knowing about their day is really helpful. And I can give you this example to emphasize what I mean. I cut my finger making dinner the other day, because I was rushing. I was like, oh, I have to slice the chives while that's cooking.

Rebecca Shaddix
51:03 - 51:14
I don't have time. And in the process of cutting my finger, I had to stop cooking, go get a Band-Aid, stop the bleeding. It took much more time. And so I've realized that I've made time for things that feel urgent, right?

Rebecca Shaddix
51:14 - 51:41
Like a bleeding finger is urgent. But I had more time to make the dinner in a way that would have taken less time if I had stopped rushing. So I think if you can just pull out the rushing and the comparison trap, all of the ideas get more thoughtful from there. So if you can look at, oh, you don't feel like you have enough time to X, But we spent how many hours fighting a fire that could have been prevented if this bug hadn't been deployed, if we had just slowed down.

Rebecca Shaddix
51:41 - 52:17
Things like basically personalizing to the person that you know you're talking to. And the book I mentioned, the author of I Know How She Does, it talks about someone that she knew who her water heater went out or something exploded and she spent like seven hours that week dealing with it. Well, if you had said you have seven hours to go work out, she would have said no, but she had found seven hours to deal with this emergency at her house. And I think there's so many things that we spend running around to emergencies as if they were things that have to be solved without realizing they're creating these downstream effects of rushing is creating more problems and more misunderstanding.

Rebecca Shaddix
52:18 - 52:22
And just slowing down and being intentional with it is the solution.

Spencer Horn
52:32 - 52:36
Rebecca, I spend a lot of time talking about this idea of the Eisenhower matrix, right? I mean, most of the

Christian Napier
52:36 - 52:37
time we

Spencer Horn
52:37 - 52:56
spend is in urgent and important, right? So that's the firefighting that you're talking about, but switching more of our time into the important but not urgent, those are preventative measures, right? Slowing down when we're cooking. whatever, that's going to actually save us time in the long run.

Spencer Horn
52:56 - 53:06
And so we just shifting, making our lives a little bit better, shifting into that quadrant to important, but not urgent. It feels like slowing down, but we're actually speeding up.

Rebecca Shaddix
53:07 - 53:18
That's exactly right. We are speeding up. It feels like you're slowing down. And the mindset of constantly being rushed, constantly being frenzied means that your cortisol level stays spiked.

Rebecca Shaddix
53:18 - 53:31
You make worse decisions. Deciding what's important gets worse. And so it doesn't take any more time, right? I can make cereal thinking, oh, I have to, or eat cereal, hurry up and eat because I only have three minutes before the next meeting.

Rebecca Shaddix
53:32 - 53:45
Or I could just sit there and appreciate that I have blueberries here from our garden. It doesn't take any more time. It's the mindset of the exact same activity. Anything you do, you can do mindfully or mindlessly.

Rebecca Shaddix
53:45 - 53:52
And it does not take more time to do it mindfully. And it creates more time. And that's just the intentionality that we're speaking to.

Christian Napier
53:53 - 54:20
Well, as a person who has truthfully cut himself opening up a box of Captain Crunch, I can say that I was pulling it and I got a paper cut, like opening a box. That's how I cut myself in meal preparation, is opening a box of cereal. So I appreciate you mentioning cereal. Spencer, I know we want to go to lightning round, but I am dying to ask one last question.

Christian Napier
54:20 - 54:40
Do it. Yeah, absolutely. So this has to do with AI, right? So the organization that I work with, the people who are using AI on a regular basis report saving an average of three and a half hours a week using AI, right?

Christian Napier
54:41 - 55:25
Now, Microsoft came out with a study and said, well, actually, people aren't really saving that much time because, and they did a study saying, well, if you take into account all the task switching and the people, you know, going and getting a drink out of the break room or whatever, Maybe they're only saving like 14 minutes a day, right? But I'm really curious to hear how micromoments can play into the use of AI if AI is in fact allowing us to do certain things more quickly and perhaps maybe affording us a few more micromoments than we might have. Have you given any thought to AI and the impact it might have on our micromoment strategies?

Rebecca Shaddix
55:28 - 55:47
I'm going to answer that a little indirectly. So in short, how our time feels is so much more important than how much of it we have. So whether people are actually saving 14 minutes, two hours, I don't think is the point at this relatively nascent stage of AI usage. It's the agency and the autonomy to be asking, can I do something better?

Rebecca Shaddix
55:48 - 56:02
Is there something I'm uniquely capable of doing? And are there tools to do the things that I am not uniquely capable of doing? That is the mindset shift. That we all need for whatever we're doing and powers more intentional micromoment usage so.

Rebecca Shaddix
56:02 - 56:20
I mean we have very weak proxies to even measure attention spans that. I don't think really work but that's not the point the point is whether we have more time. or we feel like we have more time. The feeling like we are in control of the time we have is the point.

Rebecca Shaddix
56:20 - 56:59
And then letting that compound, that momentum of I feel in control of the time I have, I can claim it with agency for the things that I know are important to ask the big questions about whether this is actually fueling the results that I want versus being on autopilot and default assumptions of I have to do something this way or I can never do something this way. In my work, I think about what feels like an attainable amount of market research for companies at certain sizes to do at certain stages, totally different. Getting freeform responses used to be something I had to physically read through and try to group and document weirdly.

Rebecca Shaddix
56:59 - 57:16
But AI is pretty good at bucketing a lot of the sentiments now. And so things that I would have said, there's no point in suggesting to this client at this stage with this time frame or budget, to do a research endeavor like this because we don't have time for it. That's totally changing now. And so that's the benefit.

Rebecca Shaddix
57:17 - 57:25
And I'm less concerned with this micro-measurement or micro-optimization, but the point of micro-moments is a mindset shift and reclaiming it.

Christian Napier
57:27 - 57:30
Sorry, Spencer. Thanks for indulging me with that question.

Spencer Horn
57:31 - 57:40
Great, so just a couple of quick questions for you. What's a favorite, just like one word answers or just super short answers. Favorite micro moment in your morning routine?

Rebecca Shaddix
57:42 - 57:42
Meditation.

Spencer Horn
57:44 - 57:46
One thing you say no to regularly?

Rebecca Shaddix
57:48 - 57:49
Pick your brain, coffee.

Spencer Horn
57:51 - 57:59
Most unexpected place you've had had a breakthrough idea? Besides the shower.

Rebecca Shaddix
57:59 - 58:00
My tri-play.

Spencer Horn
58:01 - 58:05
Driveway, okay. Book you recommend to anyone seeking clarity or presence.

Rebecca Shaddix
58:06 - 58:08
Happier Hour by Cassie Holmes.

Spencer Horn
58:09 - 58:11
Your go-to reset when you're overwhelmed.

Rebecca Shaddix
58:13 - 58:14
Five deep breaths outside.

Spencer Horn
58:16 - 58:18
One word that captures your leadership style.

Rebecca Shaddix
58:21 - 58:22
Protagonist.

Spencer Horn
58:23 - 58:27
If you had five minutes completely free, no agenda, what would you do?

Rebecca Shaddix
58:28 - 58:31
send a handwritten card to my friend in London who's getting married.

Christian Napier
58:32 - 58:38
Brilliant. Christian, that's all that I have. Well, that's amazing. It's been an incredible hour.

Christian Napier
58:38 - 58:57
Wow, Rebecca, thank you for making the time. If people want to learn more about micro moments and how they can help them, not just to be more productive, but to feel more fulfilled, what's the best way for people to connect with you?

Rebecca Shaddix
58:58 - 59:01
We can connect on LinkedIn, Rebecca Shaddix, or timebillionaires.org.

Christian Napier
59:04 - 59:11
Awesome. Thank you, Rebecca. And we'll make sure to put that in the show notes as well. And Spencer, you've been helping teams improve their performance for decades.

Christian Napier
59:12 - 59:18
If people want to learn more about how you can potentially help their organization build high-performing teams, how can they connect with you?

Spencer Horn
59:19 - 59:26
Just LinkedIn. Connect with me on LinkedIn. Every day that happens, I love that. And Christian, I mean, literally, he's changing the world.

Spencer Horn
59:26 - 59:31
Isn't he great, Rebecca? He's such a smart guy. I'm so thrilled. Thank you for coming on.

Spencer Horn
59:31 - 59:34
And I know it's already, what, 10.30 at night where you are.

Christian Napier
59:35 - 59:37
Yeah, it's 10.30 PM

Spencer Horn
59:37 - 59:37
here.

Christian Napier
59:37 - 59:37
There

Spencer Horn
59:37 - 59:37
you

Christian Napier
59:37 - 59:38
go.

Spencer Horn
59:38 - 59:38
So

Christian Napier
59:38 - 59:38
how

Spencer Horn
59:38 - 59:39
can

Christian Napier
59:39 - 59:46
people get a hold of you, Christian? We'll just put in another plug for LinkedIn, I suppose. Just look for Christian Napier on LinkedIn. You'll find me there.

Christian Napier
59:46 - 59:47
Stay

Spencer Horn
59:47 - 59:56
on the call with us, Rebecca, for a second. And we're going to get all your links. We'll put them in the show notes. All

Christian Napier
59:56 - 1:00:00
right. So Rebecca, thank you. Spencer, thank you. Listeners, thank you.

Christian Napier
1:00:00 - 1:00:03
Please like and subscribe to our podcast. We'll catch you again soon.