Video - Paul Holbrook on the Uncomfortable Truth About How We WASTE Time at Work

VIDEO: 46:21 mins

AUTHOR: Robert Craven and Paul Holbrook

In this GYDA Talks, Robert talks to Paul Holbrook. Paul is an author and leadership rebel who, after 20 years managing rapid technology change in the City of London, decided that he'd had enough of standing by, watching the toxic effects that accidental managers had on their people and themselves. From that moment, he decided he wanted to spend his time creating a world of better-led people.

As an all-round optimist and creator of the Diary Detox®, Paul believes the best way to eradicate accidental managers is to make sure they don’t become managers in the first place. 

The missing piece is to promote only those people who genuinely love people and fix the foundations of management training to transform how managers use their diary.

Robert and Paul discuss the uncomfortable truth about how we WASTE time at work. Why you need to Diary Detox to become more productive and why you need to plan the life that you really want.

Transcription:

Robert Craven  00:00

Hello and welcome to GYDA Talks. Today I am absolutely delighted with someone who claims we can challenge that by hope it's true to be able to give us back a whole a whole day a week. And this is the wonderful Paul Holbrook. So hello, Paul. And it's an absolute pleasure to be interviewing and talking to you.

Paul Holbrook  00:27

Hello, it is a pleasure for you to be talking to me today.

Robert Craven  00:29

It certainly is. Absolutely. So, without further ado, this book, yeah. What are you doing? Whatever. Just give us a bit of a background to who you are and how you ended up writing the book?

Paul Holbrook  00:53

Well, I know I like the fact that you're not sure how to say it. Because I think that's part of the reason I called it that because it could be said in all kinds of ways. I think the overriding way that I think about it when I hear it. And it was very different to the way Chris Evans said it when he spoke about on his radio show was I kind of go, what are you doing? What are you doing? And I think it came out of spending 20 years working in banks in the City of London. I was a technologist. And the amount of time I would spend looking at people, mostly managers, if I'm honest, and looking at what they fill their time with, and they're kind of running around with their hair on fire, and they're kind of panicking. And you just look at them and go, What on earth are you doing? And that's kind of where my story started. About five years ago, I probably spent 20 years in the banks. And I thought, You know what, I've had enough of this, I'm gonna go and try and do something about it. So the book didn't actually come at the very beginning of that five year journey, you know, it came about two or three years in. So I left to change the story of those people who I was watching. And I first tried to be a coach, a leadership coach. But then as I started talking to people, once I qualified as a coach, and as I started talking to people marketing my own business to those people that were struggling, the first thing and probably the most consistent thing they would say to me is it sounds really interesting, but I just don't have any time to talk to you. And I heard it so many times, I got really fed up of it. And eventually I thought, Well, if that's the biggest problem, people are telling me about them, maybe I should try and fix that first. And so I had a little thing just because the way I think about time, I had a little kind of technique that I used to use when I was running divisions of 350 people. And I decided, well, why don't I use that little technique with these people as a way of opening the door and giving them a bit of time to talk about the things that I surmise they probably needed to talk about, that probably became more interesting to people than anything else I was talking about. And it naturally became a product in itself. And that was where the diary detox was born. So I was delivering that to people in person. And then I started creating courses that were delivered to groups, and it started to grow. And then I kind of realised that the place I really wanted to give this to was the organisations that I used to work for, even though I swore I'd never go back. But I didn't want to leave behind people who were watching this, the entrepreneurs, the people who have a really good idea about what they want to do, but they just struggled to find the time to do it. So the book was a way of capturing that knowledge. So when somebody came to me who wasn't part of a large organisation and said, How do I get back time, I could say, We're gonna read this, and it will give them all of the techniques that I have behind creating authority types.

Robert Craven  03:56

But the time thing is it's a lot more complicated than just giving back someone time but just, I mean, I've got I'm running meeting tomorrow and two people said oh, I'm not sure if we can turn up because we're running out of time and you kind of think well actually know that that's because you don't have enough respect for the thing that we're doing that's the problem. The problem is you think you've got something more important anyhow without before we go down that rabbit hole. I mean, when is the best place to start and describe the book to people?

Paul Holbrook  04:35

Well, I think where you just were was quite interesting, actually, because one of the biggest arguments or objections that people will use for pretty much anything you know, you're selling them something they'll say, oh, yeah, but I don't have time for it. Or would you like to come and do this? I don't have time for it. And for me, it's an illusion. You actually have all the time you need, you know, you've got people in the world who are billions as, and they've created these empires of 168 hours, which believe it or not, is exactly the same number of hours you have every week. So what is it about them that they have that you don't? Well, firstly, I'd say it's clarity. It's a clarity about what it is you actually want to achieve, and a discipline in giving you the focus to actually go and achieve it. So you're right, when somebody says, I don't have time, that's actually not what they don't have. Usually what they're actually saying you could translate it to, I don't think that's important right now. But of course, everybody would feel really uncomfortable if every time you ask them something, they say, I don't think it's very important. It's a very impolite thing, or perceived to be a very impolite thing to say. But that's exactly what is going on. I don't have time to come to your meeting, because I've got another meeting that I'm going to that's actually more important. Because if you turn around to somebody whose parent or loved one was in hospital, and they had a completely full diary of meetings all day, and you said, your parents just gone to hospital, Have you got time to come, they wouldn't say we haven't got time, they'd be there in a heartbeat, because that's the most important thing. So I think it's about focus. And it's about discipline in following that focus.

Robert Craven  06:19

So isn't one of the dangers, that you will come to that. Obviously, you give someone back a day, and they just fill it up with the same rubbish that they had there in the first place, but it's just slightly different rubbish. I mean, or are you saying, which would be my vote would be on this one. Don't work Monday to Friday, take Friday off, because if you take Friday off, you'll do so much strategic, big thinking. And because you never get a great idea in front of a laptop. So Is it horses for courses, or what I mean, if you're really interested to understand your approach to that?

Paul Holbrook  07:05

It depends on what you think of taking time off to mean. So for me, taking time off means not working. And you're right, some of your best ideas will actually come when you're not consciously thinking about work, you know, you go into exercise, are that thing that is in your subconscious have been working through, it comes to you at that moment. So I think there's kind of two answers here. So I'm doing some work with the four day week movements at the moment. And some organisations are really concerned that people are concerned that if you try and put us on a four day week, we're going to have to fit five days worth of work into four days. What they don't realise, and this is part of what diary detox shows you is and this is why I say it'll give you a day back in your diary every week is that usually when I go and look at organisations or individuals, and we use the diary, detox techniques to get some kind of a reflection on what they're already doing, because quite a big part of it is reflecting on what you're already doing. Usually about 20% of it or more is spent doing stuff that adds no value whatsoever. And so if you can spot that, that's not adding any value. And you can put all of that stuff into the same day, well, then you've got two choices, you can either take that day off, and achieve nothing less, because by definition, you're just not doing anything all on the same day. Or you can think about how you would rather spend that time and work five days of the week, maybe putting some time to the side for strategic thinking, maybe looking at how you can create a succession plan and make yourself not the only person that your business is dependent upon, etc. So it's kind of down to you, would you want to work less time but still achieve the same results? Or do you want to work, the time that you're supposed to be working but get more value out of the time that you're spending? It's entirely up to you. And that's what the method is there to do is get this to get you to focus on what actually you want? And are you actually allocating your time appropriately to do it.

Robert Craven  09:06

And I guess that also then depends on what your job is. Because I would argue that my job it's not to do with so many hours a day, right? My job is to make the tough decisions and figure out what needs to be done to take the business to the next level. But someone else or someone working for me might know that they need to put in the hours because they either need to be seen to or they get paid for putting in X number of hours. At a certain rate. So I guess there's not a one size fits all but one of the things I really liked about the book is we've all been on time management courses and turned up late for them if you know, you know all the old old stories.

Paul Holbrook  09:54

Ironically.

Robert Craven  09:57

I've actually got a story about running a time management course. Was the first paid work I ever did that I turned up for late, which is classic. But you're not just saying, if you're looking at your hours, chop the hour into 15 minute segments, or seven and a half minute segments, they could then and blah, blah, blah, you've got a different approach, which I suspect makes your approach land better, because most time management courses, and I'm really nervous using that phrase, in your presence diagnosed, at most of those courses, you know, chop your week up, don't do it to do list, put it in a schedule, go across here, go up here, go down here. And then everything's wonderful. And people come away with reams of good ideas. And five days later, they're back where they started. So let's just start off with your approach to how we look backwards, because your thing is you're really keen on this, where are we now? Where are we going to do the audit first? So talk about how you think people should audit their time in the first place.

Paul Holbrook  11:16

Well, the key for me was getting, you know, when I said that, I was kind of breaking out myself, and I was wanting to create my business around coaching. And he said, I don't have enough time. And I was sitting there thinking, well, given the role that you say you're doing, you should have time for that. So I'm a natural problem solving. And my background was in math, my degree was in mathematics. So I was very logical, looking at what's going on with your time. And that's kind of where the method that kind of genesis of the method for details came from. And I was actually managing one person when I was working in the city. And they said, I have not your time. And I said, Well, just out of interest. What are you spending your time on? And I just gave them a piece of a pen and a piece of paper and said, tell me, you know, nothing less than 5% blocks? What is your week taken up on? And they started going through all this stuff. And eventually they got to this 40% band is our voice and my time is spent on doing this. I'm going What's that? And it turned out that it was something that they were convinced they needed to do. And I said, but I gave you your job, I know what your job is. And I'm not sure that's part of your job. And they said, well, it's not really part of my job. But I need it done because this person needs to do it. And if they don't do it, I can't do my job. So I'm having to do it for them. Because they can't, it was like, whoa, whoa. So you've now convinced yourself that something is yours to do when actually it's not, even though I understand it's blocking you. But there's another way of dealing with it. And so for me, what I started to get people to reflect back on, well, what is your week filled up of? Yeah, and I bought it when it was originally three, then it went to four and now it's five colours, it won't go any more than five colours. And each of those colours green, amber, red, brown, and blue. And the idea is to get somebody to look back at their existing week in the past. And once they got into the flow of doing it that week in the past is their last week. And the idea is to look at that and and categorise what each of those things that they've done in that week, what colour they were. And as a spoiler alert, the green things are the essence of leading, making things better. So that strategic thinking in your business where you said, I'm going to make the big decisions and decide how to get somewhere. That's an example of green behaviour. So that's leading, then you've got Amber behaviour, which is what I call managing, and managing is like supervisory. So you're not making the big decisions. But you're just checking to make sure that everything's going quite nicely. Everything's going like clockwork, et cetera. And in some cases, you're giving instruction, you're giving orders, or you're asking people to do things by rote. So that's the green and the amber stuff. Then you've got the red stuff, and the red stuff is called doing and doing is productive work. That's delivery, that's when you're earning money, okay, so if you are a digital marketer, and you are delivering the service of digital marketing for your clients, you are doing, you're doing the red stuff, so red stuff isn't bad. But it's bad if you do too much of it, and we'll get on to that. So you've got your green, your Amber, your red, then you've got brown. Okay, so Brown is called floating, because brown things that float our waste. And I basically get somebody to look at one of the things that they do. And an example, I once asked somebody about a meeting that they were having with their boss, and they swore that that meeting was green, it was a really valuable thing to do. And I said, Okay, let me just ask you a question. Then. If that meeting had been cancelled, and your boss had never rescheduled that meeting, what would you have lost? And they said, nothing. It's like, okay, so that's the differentiation of something that adds no value to that is a brown meeting. And it's things like going to meetings where we don't think we need to be there, or scheduling a business development court with the client, and it doesn't result in the results that you thought. And that causes us to think Well, why didn't that work? Unless we acknowledge that it didn't work, we never consider why it didn't work. And we never learned from it. So we always make sure we have a good eye on all the stuff that doesn't add value, the brown stuff. And then lastly, there's blue stuff. And the blue stuff is about living. And this is about recharge, this is about giving yourself physical, mental, spiritual, emotional well being it's taking risks, it's having lunch, it's finishing work at the right time, it's whatever it is, it's exercise, it's all the things that you need to recharge, because one of the biggest challenges we have right now is that people are obsessed with the red doing, they're not obsessed with the blue stuff. And of course, what happens very quickly is you get burned out, you need to take the rest. So that reflection on how much of your time is spent on each of those colours, is really important. And to your point about, it's not one size fits all, depending on what level you are in your organisation. Or indeed, if you are, if you are the organisation, so if you're an entrepreneur, there would be a different recommended mix of each of those colours for you. And it's not a hard and fast rule. It's a guideline, it's, well, if it says you should be spending half your time on this, and you're spending three quarters, have a think about whether that's okay. And you might agree that's the right thing to do. But just have a think it gives you pause for thought, that's a really big thing about reflection. And often 20% or more of people's time is spent on the brown stuff. And if you can just get rid of that stuff, just by knowing it's there. You're already on a good route to getting at least a day back in your diary every week.

Robert Craven  16:56

But wouldn't the push back on the brown stuff be like, Yeah, especially since so many people are working from home. Yeah, I know, it's not kind of productive. But it kind of, you know, I kind of think about other staff, while I'm kind of doing stuff brackets that someone else could have been doing. And it kind of makes sure I've kind of got my finger on the pulse. And they would argue that really, it's managing really managing, not just wasting time.

Paul Holbrook  17:31

It's possible. And that's why we never really mean, the method doesn't ask you to allocate a colour. Okay, the colour is like a result. So what you have or that you have five colours, you actually have eight categories. And those categories are named certain things, and they have descriptions on them. So what the method actually gets you to do is it gets you to look at this activity that you've got, let's say it's a meeting with one of your clients. And then it gets you to look at each of the activities in a certain order. And the idea is that you say the description. Okay, so what's the majority of my time for that thing spent on bla bla bla bla bla, and when you read it out loud, you kind of go, yeah, no, it wasn't that. And so what you then do is by then going through that in a methodical way and getting to the one that is what then implies the colour, but it is. So it avoids you kind of cheating the system. Because if I said to you, like that guided the guy that said it meeting with his boss was green, we then went through them in a methodical way. And he got to the end. And at the end, one kind of said, well, it added no value. And then he had nowhere to hide that because it was like, Oh, so that's brown then. And the look of horror on people's faces when they realised that something is brown when they thought it was green, is really quite impactful and quite powerful. Because this is all about giving people a better insight about what they're doing themselves. If they choose to do it anyway, despite thinking that it's brown, well, then that's your choice. But what we want to try and get away from is people not realising that it's not adding value. And that's what this reflection is there to do.

Robert Craven  19:08

But don't you find those that kind of looks like that Edvard Munch is a screen thing when people realise, ah, oh my God, I don't believe I thought I was spending half my time doing strategic big work. And in fact, no, I don't. I'm spending like half my time in the brown and a little bit in the red.

Paul Holbrook  19:29

Yeah, I mean, that does happen. And yeah, it's worrying. And the interesting thing is that whenever I'm delivering this personally, because you can do it via a book, or you can do it with me doing with me, it's obviously more expensive. It's a lot cheaper to buy a book. But what you're gonna get if you do it with me is you're gonna get the truth, which is that if I see it, and if I see it, I will say I'm a rebel brand by definition. And so what's interesting is that when some people and some people do get really uncomfortable about that, I even mentioned it in the book One of the side notes I said was that one person said that it was really uncomfortable, because it told her a story about herself that she wasn't comfortable with. But the thing I say is just because you don't like it doesn't mean to say it's not happening. The real question is, you're going to do with it, and you can either ignore it and pretend it's not happening and go, no, no, no, it must be wrong. Or you can listen in and lean into it and go, Okay, so why is that something different than I thought, I once did a kind of a really kind of, sparse version of this reflection, with a guy that was just under 30 years old, he'd been running his company, it was an aqua tech business. And he'd been running it for about a year, and he had 40 people on his payroll already. He was really, really, really working well. And what was fascinating was that when I explained these colours to him, he said, Well, I think the majority and he was the CEO of this business, right? He said, I think the majority of my time is probably spent on the amber stuff managing, which is basically giving direction and just checking to make sure that things are okay. And I went, Okay, how do you feel about that? Except it's fine. Because he said, My CEO tends to do the green stuff. And I went, Okay, so what is the CEO, COO do the green stuff, and you do the ambit stuff? And he said, well, because he's older than I am. And who the hell is going to listen to a 20-28 year old CEO, CEO. And I just sat there and thought, wow, you've actually told yourself the story that you don't have permission to be CEO, CEO of your business, that this guy does have permission because he's older. What does that say? Your organisation? So yeah, you do have those moments, but you just have to lean into them. And you have to just question what makes them feel uncomfortable about that.

Robert Craven  21:43

So yeah, so what you've produced is, it's like the Tom Peters quote, you are your diary. But you've actually put it on steroids in a way, you know. So you're not just saying no, actually, it's not that you are your diary, although that's interesting. You've actually got to go, you got to say, so what I'm what does that mean? And really, what is actually going on? So I get that we've done the audit, then how are you kind of suggesting that people then work forward? So they discover that they are meant to be really interested in how there is a system or do you leave people to do it? Or are they recommended percentages? And what's the way forward?

Paul Holbrook  22:29

Okay, so the whole of the diary is detailed, I mean, don't do it's basically a method, okay, and it's a five step method. And the idea is that once you understand the method, and it's quite interesting, because the method is taught in the order that it is ultimately used, that's the whole point is that by doing some reflection, and doing some planning in the book, you're effectively going through the steps of what I call the weekly diary, detox. And that is a 30 Minute, once a week activity, where you get to use those five steps that spell out the word, detox, D E T O X. And those five steps will get you to look back at your past week, and see, well, what have you been doing? Is it what you expected? Has it worked, what are your reflections? But it will also get you to look at your future coming week to make sure that it is set up, dare I say planned out to achieve the things that you really want to achieve? Okay, so the method is a five step method. And the most important thing you can do is the weekly diary detox. So it's probably worth just kind of outlining what the five, let's say, we were looking at a coming week. And we were using those five steps, what do they call them? What do they do? So the first step is D, okay, and so D is about looking at your coming week, it stands for diary. And it's about looking at what's already in your diary, and making sure that you've included the real cost of your decisions so far. So for example, if you look at your diary right now, next week, you're probably going to see that it's full, like most people's would be, full of meetings that you've already booked in with other people or that other people have booked in with you. Okay, that's what most people's diaries look like now. What they don't always have in them is if you are delivering a course, let's say on Wednesday, it won't necessarily have the prep time that you need to prepare for that. To deliver it. It may be that you don't have the prep time for the meeting that you're going to have with one of your clients. It may be that you don't have the follow up time that you need to actually do something with the decisions that have been made in that meeting. It may be that you don't have the travel time to and from it. It may be that you don't have enough time to have a wee break between all the meetings that you have. It may be that you haven't planned what I call blue time, which is the breaks for lunch, getting up, having a shower, and leaving work. All these things are things that you have truly accepted because you are alive and you need to eat and you need to sleep and you need to go to the toilet, and you need to rest. But also, when you accept a meeting, you have naturally accepted the prep time, the follow up time and the travel time to it as well. So D is about looking at what's already committed to in your diary, and accepting the true cost of it by putting in those extra bits. That means you have to do them because you go into that meeting, that's the D part. What that does, just doing that one step shows you how little time you now have because you've already committed to so much, okay, so that's a really important thing to see. Then you go into E and E is about evaluate, and evaluate is about assigning the colour to each of those things that are now in your diary. Okay. And that will show you who was quite a big chunk of red or brown stuff or whatever in your diary, it's about giving you that reflection of Didn't realise I was doing so much of that red stuff when I thought I should be doing more. That's what the second step is all about just starting that reflection for the future week. The third step is T and T stands for targets. Okay, this is really important. I'd actually say this is probably the most important part of the diary detox, even though it doesn't come first, but it doesn't really need to. And targets are about understanding, well, what is it you want to achieve? Okay, just break off very quickly. Um, I told you, there was an interesting story about this. I went to a conference, and I had to stand there for diary detox, and a couple of people will walk few people walking past. And during the day two particular people walk past the stand, and they kind of look at you, and it's quite colourful, and they kind of go, and they're not sure whether they want to stop. But eventually I kind of smile at them and say hello. And they come over and say hello. And they were both women. Look that loss just by the buyer is not enough. It's nothing. And both of them said to me at different times. So are you saying you can give me back time? And I said, potentially. And they said, how? And I turned around and I said, Well, let me ask you a question first. How much would you like? And they couldn't tell me. They just froze. And I said, Look, and somewhat facetiously, I said, I know that's a hard question. Let me ask you an easier question. Let's say I waved the magic wand and gave you however much time you needed, what would you do with them? And again, they couldn't answer me. And the only thing I could say to them, as I said, Look, right now the best thing you could do is go away and have a think about what it is you're not able to do, that you think you'd love to do, which tells you you don't have enough time. Because I'm telling you right now, if you had a crystal clear view on what it is you wanted to achieve, chances are you would spend less of your existing time on stuff that isn't getting you there. And you'd spend more of it on that. And they kind of went away going, Oh my God, my mind's blown. So T targets are about thinking about, well, what is it you really want to achieve. And the idea is to have five, relatively chunky, but not massive targets that you are looking to achieve. And they're targets, they're not activities. And within those targets, you have a series of activities that would deliver those targets. So the target is about becoming clear on what it is you want to achieve. And that's all that's all the T bit is. Because then you get to an O is about opportunity. And what that's about, it's about looking at each of those targets in turn, and looking at your coming week, and for each of those targets saying the following. Is everything I need to do to achieve that target. By the target date in my coming week, yes or no? And if it's a yes, you put a tick next to the target. And if it's a no you put across next to the target, and you just do that it's just a simple yes, no answer. And you do that for each of your targets. That's the opportunity step. And at the end of the opportunity step, by definition, everything that has a tick is in your diary already. Yeah. Everything with a cross isn't in your diary. So what do we think the X stands for what x I took some liberties stands for x change. And the idea is that all because it doesn't sit in your diary, you need to exchange some spare time or empty time or something already in your diary for one of these things. So the idea is you go for each of those targets with an X next to them and you put in the thing that you need to do to achieve that. That is the simplest way that you can reflect on your past week and look at your coming week and make sure it contains everything that you want to achieve. But you may not have enough time to do all of that stuff. But what that actually is get to do is except that time is finite, you are going to have to make some hard decisions on what's really, really important. Or you might want to say, well, actually all that stuff in there, I don't need, I'll get rid of it. And that's a great thing, you've then exchanged it for something that's more important. So that should take you after a bit of practice around about 30 minutes a week, and it's the most impactful 30 minutes you will spend. Because if you do that on a Friday morning, then you've got then the rest of your weekend as you can relax, because you've already planned out your coming week. And yes, things might come up that get in your way. But you've got a much better view of what you can achieve in the next week. And you can relax for the weekend safe in the knowledge that everything's just there waiting for you. That's a really important thing.

Robert Craven  30:44

I can hear these voices go Yeah, but what he doesn't understand what he doesn't understand if you've got real clients and real staff and real crises and just when we've got one of these beautiful meetings with whatever colour he talks about, all lined up all sorted out for the week, someone's website's gonna crash or someone's campaigns gonna fall over or so. So how can I work with all that? I mean, what's your kind of reply to that urgent stuff that just appears?

Paul Holbrook  31:17

Yeah, so in this interesting one, because the colours, not only did they tell you what value you're getting, because this is a big difference, right? This isn't talking about what you're doing, it's talking about because although quite ironically, it's called what you're doing. That's talking about the value you're getting from what you're doing. So whilst the green stuff is leading, the amber stuff is monitoring, the red stuff is doing brown stuff is bloating, and so on. What's also interesting is that if you then come to a point in the day and you go, crisis, something has happened. What do I do? Well, in the book, there's also something called the spot detox, which helps you make the decision about what you should do about it, I won't tell you what to do, but it'll help you make the decision. But those colours can actually help you in a different way. Because, let's say right now, in your diary, you are about to do something red, it's productive. It's delivering something for a client, okay? And somebody rings you up and goes, disaster, this is happened, bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla. What do you do? Do you drop what you were doing in your diary? Or do you do the thing that they're asking you to do? Well, the red of that existing item tells you to stop. Because what it's saying is, if you don't do this thing, something is not going to get done, which means you might annoy somebody else. So it's not telling you not to do it. It's just saying stop, think about this very, very carefully. Okay. And you can choose which way you do. And the idea is you rearrange things as you can. Let's say the colour of the thing already in your diary was amber, and somebody rings you up, the amber says, amber warning. Okay, now the amber stuff is usually stuff that is checking, managing, checking to see that things are going on as they should be. So if you don't do that thing in favour of this, it means something might not be noticed. That's not necessarily such a big deal. So maybe you can do that. It's your choice. Or let's say that the thing already in your diary is Green, or Green means go do it. Because the only thing that you're going to lose if you do this thing instead is growth. Okay? Nobody's gonna be annoyed, you delivered everything you needed to and there were no warning signs. It's just you won't have an idea about something brilliant. That's kind of okay, on the odd occasion, you know, don't always have to grow. But we need to be very careful. Because sometimes what we'll do, we'll pick that up, and we'll go, Oh, my God, we better do it. And before we know it, we've left everything else in our Wait, this is about interrupting you, and getting you to stop just for a few seconds and go, are you sure. But it doesn't get past the fact that you will sometimes have a real conflict where you've got a red thing there. And you've got somebody ringing you up with a red thing there. And in that moment, the only choice you have is to make the decision which one is more urgent. What you ideally want to do is the one that's more important, but that's not always a luxury we have.

Robert Craven  34:10

And my brain is just firing off. How do you deal with this addiction to urgency, I recall giving a presentation to a telephone company who will be nameless to the main UK board or seven of them in the room. And all seven of them had two phones in front of them. I said I'm not prepared to talk to you until you turn your phone's off. And they said in that case, you can leave. It's like No, no, no, you don't understand. It'll be five minutes of your time if your phones are off. If your phones are on it's going to be that half an hour so why don't you just turn them off for five minutes. I'll deliver what I need to deliver then I can leave. But that addiction to urgency which is good that dopamine hit Oh wow. Somebody loves me, like a client wants me something's fallen off the edge. I mean, is direct detox in a way kind of working with weaning people off that? That dependency on the mobile phone, the emails, the Slack channel, popping off all the time.

Paul Holbrook  35:19

Yes, but not immediately, right. I mean, it's not like you do the diary detox, and all of a sudden, you don't need the phone in front of you anymore. That's not the way it works. The point about this is that the reflection part is really what it is. It's a reflection. And it takes time. Okay. So usually what's interesting, I mean, you said earlier on, when somebody first reflects back, they go, Oh, my goodness, me, I had no idea. And that's the first part of the reflection, right, which is, then as long as you're supported by a good coach who understands this stuff. And I do coaching, and I have associates that work with me, who I put people in touch with, if they want to be coached on it, because doing the diary, detox is one thing. But even if you then understand what you're doing, some people can then use the method to become better even on their own. But some people really struggle with some aspects of it. And they need further support by coaching. And what's interesting is when you start doing the coaching, you start to understand well, okay, your week started off when you planned it, it looked like you were going to be very green with a bit of amber and a bit of red. And there is a mixture between all of those things that you would expect at different levels. And we haven't spoken about that. But just so people are comfortable. It isn't all the same for everybody. What's interesting is that you say, well, you planned to be very green. But you ended up where on reflection when you did it the next week being quite red and amber, the real question for the coach, there is what changed? Why was it red and amber? And what usually happens with very senior people is they haven't put the systems in place to insulate them from problems within the business they haven't handed over or authority or they haven't handed over skills to their people. So when it comes to a problem, the only person that can solve it, is you. So the key is yes, it does start to wean you off, but it does it gradually and with support, because you're hoping that when so I mean, the key thing is that I think I've kind of indirectly alluded to it there. Something when you plan it out starts off one colour, but when you go back and do the weekly detox, it could change colour at the end of the week. You could say, oh, well, it was supposed to be green, but it ended up being brown, the real, the mere fact that you've changed that colour, gets you to question, why did that change? Now normally, we don't even think about it. Because we don't, we don't reflect on whether something was what we thought it was going to be having those colours and changing the colour, if it's changed, gets you to question well, why did that change? Was it me was it and with the support of a coach or an advisor or a mentor, you can sometimes start to find out that, okay, so if I want to stop all my green stuff getting consumed by red stuff, I need to invest some green time into succession planning, or into strategic thinking, or into bringing in a new system that will remove me from that, etc. And if you don't invest that time in that, nothing will change. But there's a real key here, which is part of this. The part of the reason dirty talk is what it is. And it does what it does, is because I became really frustrated that people in authority were saying, Well, the reason I haven't got time to do it is because of circumstances. It's like no, it's not so for each of you, and I don't mind that it's you. But I want you to admit that it's you because if you admit it to you, then you can then you can change it. But if you say it's just circumstances, you've basically removed yourself from the equation altogether. And that's not healthy for you or the people that you look after.

Robert Craven  38:49

So it's really interesting, because what you're doing is you're forcing the managing of your time up your agenda. So rather than saying, What's the most important thing I'm doing next week, I've got a meeting with Fred and Arthur and Jim and John. The most important thing is that I need to figure out how best to use my time next week. Should it be the meeting with Jim and Jonathan John? Yes, no. Okay. I need to realise that between the two of those I need to build in a buffer or time or okay, I'm also desperately we're about to run out of time. I guess my the question, aside from obviously by the book and obviously make contact with you and check out the website, the resources and I mean, if you're kind of just had a meal this summer, you're leaving the restaurant after a couple of bottles, whatever it is in there, and they're looking at you and they're sort of saying you're the guru on managing time. What would you do if you were me? I mean, what kind of stocks are the three sentence answers of golden nuggets that you give people to that kind of question?

Paul Holbrook  40:06

So, the first thing for me is to be really clear on the targets. I mean, when I first created diary detox, I didn't realise that the T stat was going to be the most important one. And it's not that the other ones aren't there, obviously, all very important, but that is really important. Because whenever I see, well, yeah, be very, very clear on what it is you want to achieve, I think is a big one. I think, too, is aren't necessarily in order, because the most important thing I'm gonna say is actually the last one. But that's not really about the detox. But anyway, so yeah, be very, very clear on what it is you need to achieve. I'd say plan out your time to achieve that be very deliberate about planning your time to achieve it, because what I tend to find is that when I go and do an audit with somebody, the majority of the time that is existing in their diary right now blank, as in it, nothing has nothing in it. When you go back and you ask them to reflect on what value they got from it, it invariably becomes mostly brown, sometimes red, okay, so at best, it will be productive. But most of the time, it's a complete waste of time. So unplanned time, results in not you not using time. Okay, so know your targets, and plan, consciously plan out what you want to do in advance. But actually, the most important thing is to plan your personal time before you plan anything else. Okay, we've got this thing called Parkinson's Law. And Parkinson's Law says that if you, you know, tasks will expand to fill the space available for their completion. At the moment, the way we use our diary is it's just a big blank canvas that anybody can just go and ping things into. And if you've got 8 or 18 hours in the day, things go over the 8 hours, 9 hours, 10 hours, 11 space, 10 levels, 13 hours, 14 hours, 15 hours, just loads of space. That's what tends to happen. What I do is the first thing that I actually plan in my diary is my personal time getting up in the morning, having my breakfast, having lunch during the day, having my breaks and leaving work at five o'clock, that naturally gives you narrower bands in which you can work. And guess what, it's kind of a reverse of Parkinson's Law. It's like cheating Parkinson's Law. Because you have a shorter period in which to work. When you come to do work, you become far more focused, because instead of having three hours to complete that document, you've now got an hour. So it won't take you three hours, chances are it'll take you an hour, there's a natural lower bound to that there are some things that will only take as long as they take. But for the most part, people spending their time on their personal stuff first, gives them shorter bands, and they get more focused, because they have less time to do the work they need to do. Now those are my nuggets.

Robert Craven  42:51

Absolutely, absolutely love it. Absolutely love it. I always find it a bit nerve wracking talking to you, because I've got this mirror just kind of going on, go on, are you doing it? Are you doing it? How old are you? And I think we all feel like that. And I think we all of us need to just really reflect and you know, because it's the only thing we've got is our time, you know, so one thing that's going to evaporate, so we just really need to use.

Paul Holbrook  43:24

I'm not gonna say my parting shot is that I was talking to somebody the day and they were basically saying, you know, everything's important, I've got all these things, everything's important. And I turned around to them, I said, the best thing you can probably do right now is to think to yourself, I haven't got enough time for everything none of us have. Okay, you could never do all the things that you really want to do ever, the best thing you can do is assume that you haven't got enough time to do everything. And therefore focus your time on making sure you do as many of the things that are really, really needed. That's the best thing you can do. And that's all about the targets and focusing it really is.

Robert Craven  44:00

I love that. I really love that. Paul, it's been a real pleasure before we go through just to outline any coming plans or any projects you've got lined up that we should be looking out for?

Paul Holbrook  44:14

Yeah, so um, there were a couple of things. Obviously, there's the book, I'm gonna be writing the next edition of the book because it doesn't currently include living. And that's going to have to come into the book now. But we're living is included as in the online course. So if you go to the website, there's actually the diary detox course online that gives you access to the app, the diary detox app, which helps you do all this stuff that's included in there. And one of the things that I'm now looking to do is to create something called the diary detox community, where people can get if they don't want to buy the book, and they'd rather be talked through it or help through it. They can do an online course, which is me directing them through the course. And then they basically get to capture all the information in the app. And then they join a community for at least three months, whereby every week they're in a group pitching setting whereby people can go on and say, Oh, I had a problem with this or Oh, it's not quite so simple and they can give all those objections that you've spoken about. And they can actually get somebody talking back at them to say, that's an insincere objection. You're just yourself. So yeah, that's called the diary detox community. So I'm quite excited about creating that.

Robert Craven  45:20

Paul, it's been an absolute pleasure talking to you as it always is. And thank you so much for being very kind. Thank you very much.

Paul Holbrook  45:27

Thank you for inviting me. Bye.