038 The Evening Routine – ProductivityCast

Voiceover Artist 0:00
Are you ready to manage your work and personal world better to live a fulfilling, productive life? Then you’ve come to the right place productivity cast, the weekly show about all things productivity, here are your hosts, Ray Sidney-Smith and Augusto Pinaud with Francis Wade and Art Gelwicks.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:17
Welcome back everybody to productivity cast the weekly show about all things productivity. I’m recently Smith and I’m joined here today with my co host Augusto Pinaud how’s it going?

Augusto Pinaud 0:27
it’s going awesome. Good morning. How are you today? Good day.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:31
How’s it going, Francis? Francis Wade. Good. Good. Good to be here. So in the last episode, we talked about morning routines. So if you haven’t yet listened to that episode, I highly recommend that you hop back over there and listen to us discuss the importance of sort of defining routines. So we defined routines and the importance and benefits of having a routine in this episode, we’re going to kind of continue that conversation and switch that to the African noon and or evening routine. No, we’re just going to lump this under evening routines, even though it could possibly cover some of our late afternoon activities. And what we’re going to do is just go round robin again, as we did last episode, and talk about each of our various routines. So I

Francis Wade 1:17
think I mentioned last episode that I plan I make a schedule for the day

use a number of tools to do that including outlook sketchpad and I go to my go to my Evernote sort of plan for the week. So the mornings tend to be fairly well executed according to plan. However, the afternoons when everything started was the heck, I lose steam at around one o’clock their boats and going to like a extended crash. So I’d have lunch at about one 130 is my normal routine. And that’s probably the last productive for the day because I start early and I, you know, I go full steam ahead until about 130 breakfast, I don’t do anything brain related for lunch. Usually, I’m usually watching something on Netflix or fooling around on on Facebook or no one again, I might do better heavy reading. But I usually am pretty tired. And then in the afternoon, I try to stick to active activities like returning phone calls, short term things like paying the bills actually have designation in scan power for what’s called a time map zone in the afternoon called dead dead branded activities. So I serve all my branded activities into the afternoon because it’s it’s highly unlikely that I’ll do anything that’s really really involves any heavy lifting errands, I prefer to do them in the afternoon, anything that doesn’t require sort of the flow state or concentrated work. So it tends to be very, sort of haphazard and chip shop, I have become better at following my schedule in the afternoon, because I sort of better at scheduling my day in general, and keeping it updated. But it’s rare that I would do something really outstanding in the afternoon and say, oh, man, I was the best part of the day, that’s usually not gonna happen, just it it am tired. And, and there’s usually some disruptions that by the end of the day, I’m at least somewhat off kilter. Whereas on the morning, I’m more in control. And then I stopped working at about six on the average day, I rarely go past rarely go past six. So that’s my average today. That’s a

Raymond Sidney-Smith 3:33
routine for me what it sounds like, Good advice for listeners is that those who do, you know, start their day, really strong and early, more systems, more ways in which to benefit your future self in the day is going to be helpful to you, right, the more structure as you lose capacities and your energy, you know, just basically energy for the day, you need to make sure that you have kind of things put into place so that you can have a well worn path in that routine, you probably know about decision fatigue.

Francis Wade 4:09
Yeah, so when you set up a plan for the day, the theory is that you’re doing your heaviest planning, when you have the most bandwidth if you’re a morning person, I guess if you’re, if you’re a night old kind of person, evening person, you might do it before going to bed, because you probably have the energy at 1112 o’clock and you plan the next day at that point. Anyway, the idea is that you match your best energy and your highest creativity with the hardest task of planning the day so that when you get to the afternoon, in my case, I don’t have to do another choosing or are selecting or a lot of heavy lifting to decide what to work on next May would I what I call it my my training and my book switching, my switching occurs in the afternoon in a more sort of planned way, I would say I there’s certain items I want to tried to do. I won’t try to start reading an article in the afternoon. I usually don’t edit one. I though I may do research. So certain activities are strictly prohibited from the morning and they’re only done in the afternoon. So that’s, that’s you’re absolutely right, taking away the choice making a choice at 330 after I talked after a tough but a long day is like the hardest thing to do. So I want to take away the choice if you can, the need to choose. So

Raymond Sidney-Smith 5:28
let’s switch gears to you a boost. Okay, so what’s your evening routine and how does that contrast with your morning routine, since you didn’t have a chance to talk about it,

Augusto Pinaud 5:38
my my morning routine is superstructure. Okay? I tend to write on the journal I tend to tend to write them on my journal, I tend to prevent review my goals and I do that every morning pan. And the reason I do that every morning is because allow me to set direction you know, it is as Francis was saying, at that time, I tend to have the the strongest wheel and as the day progress that tends to go downhill. So reviewing the direction that I’m taking in the morning allow me to make better calls and better decisions as today progress so for that reason I checked them daily so that’s part of why I get quiet time I get prayer time those are things that are part of of my morning routine but he’s pretty strict on pretty rigid if you may, okay I need that that time of reflection of making sure things I that I’m preparing for the day after that’s up then I go to to work and to do things then I start interacting with with the world I usually do not interact with the world on tool I have half that morning check copper teen done on my night routine. It usually happen I have kids I so it’s usually after kids are to bed, it basically goes into closure today. So I go and again review my goals. Why? Well, because he I like to go and shut down with the idea of knowing where I’m trying to go. So that’s that’s the second thing I do. And then I try to look at that time I am you know that that laid guy. So for many, many years, I used to joke that I belong to the our club. And I was a guy who was fake up on till really late. And at some point I discover that if instead of staying on till really late, I go to bed early and wake up earlier than everybody and get quiet time. So I tried to wake up around 430 in the morning, what was going to do I was going to be able to do in that hour and a half before the world is up and before the people is interacting in many cases, I’m able to accomplish more than what I can accomplish on the next four. So because of that I try to get into that early time and do only super high impact things. Okay, that’s another time to check Facebook. That’s not the time to that’s the time of doing tasks that are high impact task. And then but I planned them at night before before I go to bed. You know, I don’t negotiate with myself. My wake up time in the morning. I do that at night at night. I am a pretty reasonable guy in the morning when the alarm sound I am not therefore I do my best to plan that time of what time I’m going to wake up and what is what I’m going to do at night and not in the morning when I wake up.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 8:56
Great. Great. And can you can you talk a little bit about the the tools you use to help you be in control of your evening routine. any kinds of analog or physical? Are you more using paper and pen in the evenings? Or do you feel like you’re better off sticking to your phone do you turn off your phones at a particular time do you have a sense of what needs to does not need to be used in terms of tools as you make your way through your evening,

Augusto Pinaud 9:26
I’m going to say I always liked the idea of handwriting and stuff. But I don’t have the patience to carry notebooks with me. Since Apple was kind enough to release a tool that you can actually hand right on the screen that is has been did the pencil then what’s happening is my all that writing of the goals. I know that happened with the pencil on the iPad. And that is really fantastic. Before that it was not really great. And it wasn’t really happening that effect Lee so I use an application called good notes. And that keep all the tracks I can create custom paper. So I have on my own custom paper that goes back that tied up to a project that will be released later this year. And that’s what I use for for that I have a checklist that I that I check. Okay, that has all these goals written down. And I use that every day. So I make sure that I’m checking all of them. And on Sunday I would need to be and crossing the T’s that need to be cross. But it’s a really simple process. For me. It is nothing nothing complicated. And I tried to keep it as simple as I humanly can, especially for a complicated guy. But I tried to keep it simple. It’s just I do the handwriting exercise. Mostly because I understand the importance of handwriting this stuff, I was never that great on paper because I dislike Karen paper. You know

Unknown 10:58
I so

Francis Wade 11:00
now that I can really do it well on the iPad. That’s my tool of choice. Staying on calendar I think I mentioned in the prior podcast is a very big deal. For me. It’s one of the skills I’m developing. It’s simply just that the idea that when I create the kind of there in the morning that actually follow the Canada throughout the day, or if I make a change and make the change before I change my action plan action. So I have a couple of supports. One is see what this program is called. It’s a reminder program link to my Google Canada

Unknown 11:35
checker. Plus

Francis Wade 11:36
this is what it’s called, took me a while to find to be honest, I was looking for a reminder program, something would pop up on my laptop and remind me when a new task was meant to start or when a new part of my calendar was kicking it echoes on my phone as well as a reminder, and I use audible and kinesthetic sort of the you know the the haptic reminders. And I also use an app called remember, remember me, I think it’s called a reminded me. And what it does is it it’s I use it as a tracking tool to play different kinds of games. Remind me Pro is what it’s called. And it pops up with a random remainder at different points during the day. I’m not playing the game at the moment, because I just got a new smartphone. I haven’t quite figured out the new game to play. But usually I have between five or six random chickens. And the when it pops up, it asked me am I currently following my calendar? And I respond yes or no. And it tracks my responses draw the deer throughout the week throughout the month, so that I can tell how often am it how often am on calendar or not based on this random sort of requests from this app. So it serves two purposes. One is that it allows me to play this game which has helped me to improve my a planning and my sort of awareness so that when I decided to change my plan at three o’clock, that I actually make an entry in my calendar that as you can imagine, helps with my time tracking because I do track all of my time using manic time and active track. Active track is a passive screenshot collector. It does other things too. But that’s what I use it for. And between the two of them I A or And the third thing I just implemented because sometimes I’m away from my computer, isn’t it 20 recap of the D semicolon song fail what 30 seconds to a minute Oh, here’s the things that I did today what I was finding is that when I go back the manic time with too much time at past I couldn’t quite remember what I do this that do I wasn’t on the laptop so I recorded what my screens were doing but what happened to the whole afternoon and what what what in the world was I doing and I don’t see any the indication mechanism. So the you playing this game using remind me pro using active track just capturing this this summary of the day this audible summary helps me to do better time tracking, which is a big part of what I do. So I’m I’m a I’m a very sort of alarm driven kind of person. I wish there were better alarms that I could implement the alarms that come with the main smartphone I really meant for the purpose I’m using them for so they don’t really work all that well. But you know, I’m always looking for improvements and better alarms to use. But then those vacations

Augusto Pinaud 14:41
I also rely heavily on alarms. And what I have discovered since I got the Apple Watch is that I have those alarms now on the Apple Watch that

many of them are a lot more effective

at what they were on a lot better than what they were on app on their phone. It seems to be or seems to work in a more and more effective way. So I don’t know Francis if you have to try kind of on a smartwatch or watch the the

the alarms by the way from the wrist instead of the phone. The other thing I discover is I know what the alarm comes but then nobody else now so indicates my wife who gets you know, frustrated with me having so many things that are talking about Arsenal that that works really, really well for both because then she don’t get frustrated about it.

Francis Wade 15:36
Yeah, I think I would try it. I haven’t haven’t actually tried it. But I think i would i think i think it would it’d be better to have the alarm on the wrist down in the bucket. So that I could imagine. So I think our listeners should definitely definitely try that though

Raymond Sidney-Smith 15:55
I knew that I’ve benefited from that I have I have a warehouse watch myself the the Huawei original smartwatch and it is fantastic for being able to silence So there’s a setting in it. And there may be the same thing on the on the Apple Watch. But there’s a setting that basically says when I’m connected to my phone, then mute all the notifications on the phone itself and provide those to the watch. And so on the watch I have the notifications that to vibrate. So now instead of audible tones, I’m just getting a little buzz on my wrist and that’s alerting me as opposed to being you know, the reflex action which is to hear a sound and you know Pavlovian you know, jumping to it. It’s like, okay, there’s a, there’s a buzz, I can either choose to look at the screen or not. But it’s not it’s not as distracting for me. And certainly it’s not making a sound that’s going to bother others around me, especially if I’m you know, working giving a workshop or seminar or whatever i’m i’m usually tracking my time for different portions of the of a of a workshop, especially on my watch, so that I don’t have to have my phone in hand which is you know, somewhat disruptive to people who you know if I’m on if I’m up in front of people. So the watch is extremely helpful for so many different things that I know it’s not smart watches are not for everybody. But being a watch were in the first place. The smartwatch was a natural extension. And it certainly helps to have those kinds of alarms right there on you. So I appreciate that the gusto and Francis you might want to check that out.

In terms of my evening routine. I am fairly just as structured as my my daily routine. As as I probably mentioned in the last episode, my morning routine transitions into a pseudo blend on some of the work of Peter Bregman and his 18 minutes, I’ll put a link to that book in the show notes. But in essence, you know, the idea of checking in frequently throughout the day to kind of know where you are. And I recommend this usually to folks to try at for some limited period of time, not necessarily, to the extent that I do it, I do it for other purposes. But I certainly think this is helpful. And this is what I do. So throughout the day, at every 25 and 55, before the half hour and hour, I am tracking what I have done in the past half hour, and what I plan to do in the next half hour. And of course, there are exceptions to this rule, which is, if I’m in meetings, if I’m engrossed in a specific project, or working on something that is going to traverse multiple hours, I’m not going to stop my flow, right being in the zone for purposes of tracking. In my case, I have an accountability partner who I message back and forth. And and the idea is to track what it is that you are doing throughout the day. And if they are the things you one forecasted that you were going to do, and are they the things that you want, should and could do productively throughout the day. For me, it provides a really strong and quick feedback loop for being productive throughout the day, I believe that you should spend probably a week or two even if it’s not with another person just kind of tracking, I think it’s really helpful to have to be accountable to somebody else by you know, using a messaging app, or tracking it in an Excel spreadsheet, or Google Sheets workbook that you have shared with someone else. And this will allow you to go ahead and have a running list of what did you what you did, and you can be as detailed or as you know, broad is you want to be, you know, categorical I did, I did work relaxed I whatever. Or you can write down the explicitly what you what you did for confidentiality purposes of privacy purposes, you may not want to share with someone else exactly what you did. But you can, you can give some broad categories. And that way, you can then track more granular and more more privately in your own private document and that way, but over the course of probably two weeks, you’ve gotten enough data to know where the ebbs and flows of your day are. And that leads me to my evening routine. So I have kind of a flow chart in my mind, and it’s based on the context right am on my own work, travel or on my own at home. And if I’m on work, travel, that flow chart tells me if I’ve been on my feet all day at a seminar or workshop, versus just in client meetings all day on work, travel, because both of those things happen, then I have two different flows in terms of how the rest of my day should go, right, I need to be concerned about my back resting muscles and all those other things and and then preparing for the next day. So all of my evening routine is really designed around those those fundamental pieces, then if I’m quote unquote, home and I’m coming home from work, then my routine is going to be different, because there was probably a very different way that my my day went. And so I tend to think about that from a high stress or low stress day. So if I had a high stress day, both categorical good stress, bad stress kind of thing, or just volume of stress, then I think about doing something different than if I had a low stress day by the Los just day, then I can actually do more in the evenings. Because I feel like that ego depletion, what what Francis was talking about earlier regarding willpower, you can read about it in willpower by Dr. Baumeister and I’ll put a link to that in the show notes as well. But the idea is, is that as your willpower depletes, you then have less of that energy later on. And there’s some there’s some science and research out there to conflict with that. So So don’t don’t think that you can’t summon willpower, certainly in different environments in different contexts, even after you’ve experienced ego depletion throughout the day. So but the point is, is that when I have a high stress day, I tend to try to take care of myself a little bit more on those evenings. And so I will actually not pre flight my evening at that point with high activity, I’ll actually reduce that and say, do what Francis is talking about, which is maybe having some option of entertainment, I’m a heavy reader. So I consider that a high level activity. Because when I’m reading, I’m taking notes. And I’m very involved in the the reading activity. So reading is not necessarily always a leisure activity for me also recognize that that some people will think about something that is leisure activity for one person, and is not a leisure activity for another. So be very aware of how you perceive something not just because one of us here on the productivity cast team thinks that it’s relaxing to go for a run that it needs to be relaxing for you. Some of the some of the more granular pieces, though, of my day are always strict I have, you know, about 1030 11pm

bedtime, I always attempt to wind down both the the speed at which I’m doing things as well as the, the activity, you know, the brain activity necessary to do these things, I don’t have a problem with falling asleep generally. So unlike some people, I don’t use blue blockers or other kinds of mechanisms like turning off the TV two hours before bed, or, or things of that nature, screen time. Basically, any of your screens, I just don’t have that I put my head on the on the pillow. And I’m out. For those of you who do have issues, you may want to look at something that can block blue light, that’s a natural intervention, it’s better than using melatonin or other kinds of drugs. I’m not a medical doctor. But my understanding from from my reading on the topic is that most people overdose on on melatonin all the time. And it’s not particularly good for you. That’s that’s pretty much it. I I live and die by both my calendar and remember the milk. And so I’m always looking at my evening. At the end of my day, the kind of the last things I’m doing is looking at the next day, and what needs to be done and, and attempting to make any adjustments that I want. In my personal day, I will usually not make adjustments in my professional day until morning. And so it’s just my my personal day, I know that I have some things I can move around, usually in the morning hours. And then if anything in the evening, the following day needs to be adjusted. I can do that as well. But that’s all usually done right there. At the end of the evening, I wanted to cover two different articles I’d come across in research for this episode. And the the first article is on medium. And it was written by the mission. And so again, there’s a link to this in the show notes. So if you if you go over there, you’ll find a link to this. But it is and it says 10 Evening routines that will make you productive at work. And what this author does is walks you through 10 different strategies for able to build them an evening routine, I don’t particularly think these are 10 individual routines, more so than they are 10 ways in which you can improve your routine. But I wanted to go over them because I think they’re good tenants generally. So and then the next article is as good as sort of a different flavor. But I also like the simplicity of it. But these are the 10 points that this author blogger notes, so 10 Evening routines to make you productive. And then it says preparing the night before will save you from unnecessary stress. That busy morning gives busy morning skiff and and so avoid rat I randomness, eliminate negativity, do what you love,

plan the next day, read your goals, reflect and or pray, set things out for tomorrow, have family time, it says say personal conviction, and then unleash your imagination. So I like the idea of some of these being moved, you know, into your evening hours, especially when we know that when, when we feel confident of energy, that’s actually a very creative time for us. So we are capable of doing more creative stuff. So this is where, like, avoid randomness is actually like, in in control prediction to the idea of being using our imagination and being creative. Because to some extent, you know, creativity is, is that chaotic part of our, our being, but it’s also pattern recognition. So, you know, while things may seem chaotic on the outside, they may not be, you know, underneath the hood. But anyway, the point is, is that I think it’s a good article to kind of get you thinking about the various aspects of it. But I certainly like the idea of eliminating negativity, doing things that you enjoy doing in the evenings, if that’s your personal time. And, and planning the next day, and putting things out for the next day. Because you really save yourself a lot of effort, if you can set yourself up for the following day.

Francis Wade 27:46
Yeah, I can echo that I’ve heard I’ve read some similar research around creativity. And I, in my mind, I kind of have this, I guess, a routine and it’s a routine, but I kind of had this person based on whatever and, and what I’ve experienced, which is that you, you need to, you need to sort of have high energy to, to lay foundation research. So I I, I may read, for example, academic journals, which they take a great deal of effort to properly digested, you can skim one and get an idea what it seeing. But to really use in something else, you got to go deeper. And you actually look at what they did, and understand the strange lingo and do all this kind of thing that takes all that morning time. And if I read three journal articles, and phone for people who are doing some, you know, sort of popular reviews on the article and the idea and picked up a podcast along the way, or something like that. But I might do that kind of broad investigation about particular topic that happens for me, sort of in the more in the morning than any other time I listen to the podcast, by the way, while I’m walking, or running, and sometimes cycling, but mostly walking, running. However, what you said is correct. And what the article said is true in my experience, which is that when you’re when you’re the way I heard it, is that when you’re

in this sort of nonlinear, relaxed brain, not making lots of effort kind of mold, your brain breaks out of this sort of linear step by step pattern that I described earlier, in terms of what’s happening and morning. And it allows the brain to sort of roam free, and it’s in the roaming free that the best ideas come. And that tends to happen between six and nine or sometime in the evening, however, that you can’t quite program and plan them, I can’t, I don’t know how to do, you know, program, that kind of serendipitous insight. And I need to do the background because without the background stuff, I can’t have that kind of leap of logic or that creative burst. But I need to sort of not exhaust myself totally, because it doesn’t happen, then that I’m too tired to have it happen. So I sort of need to create time in the evening where I’m not too tired. But I’m just tired enough to break out of sort of the regular way of thinking. And then I can get hit by an idea. And I know it happens, like I said, I can’t quite program it, but I can at least allow for it on a regular basis. If I solo create the conditions for it, then maybe 10% of the time, I’ll actually have something, you know, like a nice a nice insight that I’ve never had before. So I think there’s some, there’s some validity to it in my experience.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 30:43
And I think we could have a whole topic on productivity techniques for being more creative and unleashing unleashing innovative ideas. The other article that I found was, was called the four step journey to a productive evening I there’s a, there’s a matching YouTube video that’s actually embedded in the article. So you can check that out in the show notes and click on it and watch the video as well. But the The reason I found this article to be helpful was in the sense that it has four fundamental and fairly easy ways in which you can kind of structure your evening skills. One is to stop consumption, in essence, eating, drinking, as well as, you know, taking in, you know, things other than, say water, so that your body can, your metabolism can lower and get itself ready for, for sleep, right. So if when you eat, your metabolism increases, and therefore, when your metabolism increases, so does your brain activity. And so that doesn’t obviously help you if you’re trying to get yourself into a sleep state to he. So stop consumption is number one, number two is review your day. And so the the author and youtuber talks about the idea of fruit viewing your current day, and kind of looking at what happened today, and what you could learn from that experience. Third, he talks about defining the outcomes for your next day. He He says, to choose one to two, and I couldn’t disagree with that. But you know, everybody is different. So he says, number three is define your wanted to outcomes for the next day. And then for is the habit of real relaxation. And this is the part that I really enjoy about this concept is that figuring out how to really, you know, root nice, you know, make a routine of the idea of relaxing and having off time. And I think this is something that those of us who are in the personal productivity space and very focused on our own productive output can sometimes get caught up in the idea that we have to be productive all the time. And that relaxing is actually a form of purchase active output, how you relax is very different for everyone else, right, somebody might look like a little bee buzzing around, always doing something, and that’s relaxing to them. And for other people, that’s, you know, sitting down and in quiet contemplation, you know, in quiet repose, we all are so different. When it comes to those things. Just make sure you’re not doing some kind of productive relaxation that is not you not truly relaxing to you, right, you need to make sure that you’re genuinely approaching relaxation for what’s going to recharge you I I tend to think about it from a rejuvenation perspective what’s going to recharge your batteries mentally, emotionally, spiritually, for the coming day, week or otherwise,

Francis Wade 33:50
I liver same thing I schedule in buffer times throughout the day, especially in the afternoon when I you know when I’m in that sort of lazy phase, but it prevent be from over scheduling myself to do programmed activity. And I think I used to do that I mentioned before, I used to do not a triathlon races. And when I was into heavy training, relaxing and recovering from the training was a sort of very important thing to learn, you, you you needed to give your body time to consolidate the gains from the training. And I think the same thing happens in a regular work is that you need to program in time to not do anything I read somewhere that your your body actually your body, your physical body only needs about an hour of relaxation per night, in order to rejuvenate itself. What sleep is for is for the brain is what I heard the brand needs the 678 hours of sleep in order to regenerate itself. And I think that’s true during the day as well. Its physical body might not need to stop going, but your mental brain in order to be fresh for the next sort of sprint, or the next episode of the flow state or deep work or what have you. So I programmed that right. And I scheduled a schedule that time I think between five and six every evening. I have a

Raymond Sidney-Smith 35:16
buffer setting to not try to schedule time into that if I can, if I can help it. Yeah, your brain is doing most of its work to actually write to memory things that you have learned throughout the day. And if you don’t give it that time in in sleep hours, it is certainly a detriment to you. And

Augusto Pinaud 35:34
the most important to remember this 14 Stephen the morning or the evening routine is that the consistency of it. Because there’s something big to say when you start doing this not consistent. Well, even if your routine begins as not enough, if you do that not enough in a consistent way you will will be able to identify what needs to be removed for the for the 14. And what that will allow you to do is to establish a much easier way to start and begin the day that is going to reap benefits really, really quick. But the key part in there is a consistency and I’ve seen people understood our are missing about them every day routines and saying, well, I tried to work two days and I skipped three days. In order for this to work, you need to do it every day for a really get you the benefits that you’re looking for. There’s

Francis Wade 36:35
a sort of a strong message here around triggering some certain beavers in the afternoon. And that the setting these triggers up. So I mentioned that the alarm is one trigger. And research says that that alarms may work for a while. But you really want to convert them into intrinsic triggers, which are much harder to sort of put in place. These are the ones that don’t rely on external mechanisms, but are triggered by something inside of you like feeling tired, for example, the trigger for taking a nap. But paying attention to the internal triggers and setting these up. But a bit sort of being smart in today’s world is managing all these triggers, knowing what sets them off knowing, for example, that if you change office locations, that all the triggers that were present in all location, even something as simple as where the sun is and, and where it hits the building, it comes in the window and is to trigger your preparation to to relax for 10 minutes. And when you change offices. And that trigger is no longer there. All of a sudden, you you’re no longer relaxing the way you should. But being very conscious of these triggers and and how they set off your routine morning and afternoon is a critical part of being productive in today’s world. And staying focused and getting enough rest and being able to do it enough deep work. There’s just no way to be effective without having these prompts in your environment. If you can hire a secretary, you know do Sol because they’re they boost productivity according to lots of research tremendously. If they’re effective, most of us don’t have that option. So it’s left to our own devices to set up these triggers that low these habits and routines to sort of kick off in the first place. So that’s sort of a skill in and of itself. And it’s a I think it’s a relatively new skill most people aren’t really strong

Raymond Sidney-Smith 38:37
especially with the advent of virtual assistants today I think it’s really important for people to take advantage of the ability to access will who can who can help you in in in that ways especially you know if you Can one of you can afford it but also too if you can manifest the required delegation skills and recognize that you can you can relinquish control over some of these things that are either mundane or are sapping your energy but also these this idea of of what Francis is talking about in terms of triggers. Thank you so much, gentlemen, this has been a fantastic discussion and we’re going to we’re going to close out with just a couple of announcements. If you have a question or a comment about this episode, feel free to comment on the on the show notes. If you go to productivity cast dot net can leave a comment or question one of us will be glad to respond. Also, if Here you can find the show notes. So links to anything that we discussed throughout the episode, as we mentioned will be there in the show notes section of the of the page and you can learn how to subscribe if you’re not a subscriber to the podcast already. If you have a question and you want to send us a private message, you can visit productivity cast dot net forward slash contact, fill out the form or record audio recorded message directly live on the website through your camera or your phone’s microphone and leave us a voicemail message. Thanks to Augusto and Francis for joining me here on this cast. And if you could please leave a rating a review on iTunes, Google Play or Stitcher or wherever else you’re listening to the podcast. Just generally for kudos, we like to we like to know we’re doing well by you and also to help us grow our personal productivity listening community. And so thank you. That brings us to the close of this episode of productivity cast the weekly show about all things productivity Thank you. And

Voiceover Artist 40:29
that’s it for this productivity. Cast the weekly show about all things productivity with your host Ray Sidney-Smith and Augusto Pinaud with Francis Wade and Art Gelwicks.