The Art of Agile Living: How to Get More Done with Less Stress

0:00 The topics and opinions expressed in the following show are solely those of the hosts and their guests and not those of W FOURCY Radio. It's employees are affiliates. We make no recommendations or endorsements for radio show programs, services, or products mentioned on air or on our web. No liability explicitor implies shall be extended to W FOURCY Radio or its employees are affiliates. Any questions or comments should be directed to those show hosts. Thank you for choosing W FOURCY Radio. Welcome to to Ask Good Questions Podcasts, broadcasting live every Wednesday, six pm Eastern Time on W four CY Radio at W four cy dot com. This week and every week, we will reach for a higher purpose in money and life, as well as a focus on health and wellness. Now, let's join your hosts, Banita bell Anderson, as together we start with Asking Good Questions.

1:01 Hey, hello, and welcome to the Ask Good Questions podcast. My name is Benita Bell Anderson, and we are here today to have a fantastic discussion around being more organized at home, being more productive, less stress in life. And a lot of other things. So with that, I'd like to invite my guest, Helene Gidley to the podcast stage. Very good, Thank you, hello everyone, Thank you for. And so I'd like to just give a little bit of an intro for for Helene. We we met online and I was actually looking for like someone just like her, productivity specialist. She is an entrepreneur. You know, I'm an entrepreneur too. We kind of run in those kind of circles.

1:53 And she's what she calls herself an agile coach, and she is has been celebrated for her extraordinary ability forgetting things done. So she draws on forty years of experience and she has something that she calls agile project management techniques to get things done and build a better life. Frankly, so she is she built her method called the Art of Agile Living over the course of ten years, and she tried a lot of different things and nothing really seemed to work until she kind of came upon some of the principles that she used in her IT industry career and it was basically taking the best of those practices.

2:45 And so bringing her. Up to today, is there anything more that she'd like to add to a little background. No, that was great, Benita, Thanks and I'll add that as part of that project management background for any buddy listening. I am a certified project management professional, so I do bring some of that very specific project management techniques to the agile approaches that I use. And I'm also a certified scrum master on the agile side, so you know, I'm pulling from tried and true techniques. It's just a matter of making them work a little bit better for us and helping us in our lives get a hold of all of our to ask and to do items and to just reduce our stress and live a little more happily.

3:36 So I'm just curious want to delve into that just a tiny bit more. How did that experience, through it and through that career, How did that experience lead you to create this? So, as I mentioned, I've spent many years in the IT industry, and for a good chunk of that time, I was operating as a project manager. And project managers help teams enable, you know, manage their work, to find and manage their work, and you help get obstacles out of their way and report up to management and just sort of keep things moving forward. And I started to notice that, well, I'm doing all this work for my teams, and we have a great way of managing the work for the teams using these various traditional Agile practices. But my work, even as a project manager, was getting very difficult to manage. I was managing it. And it's not uncommon project managers would manage more than one project at a time and the work between the two. All of the usual techniques have you working independently. Like project A, you have a whole list of things you have to do, Project B a whole list of things, Project SEE a whole list of things. Well, okay, what am I doing next?

4:54 And I'm having to look all in three different places, and then oh my gosh, there's like personal things that I have to do with them, for you to call the doctor, make sure you get the kids vaccinations, going like whatever. And suddenly there was just too many places to pull from. And it was in that mode of working on multiple projects with another project manager who was also trained in Agile, that we came upon a method of utilizing some of those techniques and incorporating that for our own work. And that's where we just found, oh my gosh, this is so much better than any other method that we've tried and yes, we have tried everything.

5:39 Of all that. Like an aha moment for you. It really was, It really was, and it was fun that both he and I had been trained in the agile practices and the specific methods were very simple. And this is one of the beautiful parts of the technique is it's blindingly paper. You don't have to load an app, you don't have to like get on a computer and try to figure something out. And I'll talk more about that. It makes some people very happy right now. Yes, yeah, So it was blindingly simple. So we put up a sheet of paper that was to define our day, and we started putting all of our tasks on that sheet and we started to know and he would have a sheet for his day, I had one from mine, and we kind of looked at that and said, Okay, I think we've got it. This is going to work great.

6:31 And of course that first day, in the first use of it, it didn't work that great, and we realized why, you know, we still weren't getting what I mean it was it wasn't working well that we weren't getting all of our work done right. So there were still still things on our to do lists that weren't getting done in that time frame that we had allotted. So it never happens to me, I know, right, but that's exactly what we were trying to solve for. Yeah, and of course not have to spend over time hours. Right, The whole goal is to be able to do that work in the allotted time so you can still have a life, right, still get home to be with your family, and do things for yourself. So we realized when we looked at it closely, what was missing was the hard demands on our time, things like meetings, right, meetings that were pre scheduled.

7:21 And once we because going to a meeting, it's literally more than just that. Let's say it's an hour meeting, so it's more than just that hour. You may have to prepare for it. Maybe that just means grabbing a few papers, what may might be well look at a few things, because you know you're going to be called on to participate in the meeting. Walking or transporting yourself to that meeting. If you're in corporate America, that could be a bit of a walk, depending on where the meeting is held. Right, even if it's a zoom, you know, it's still kind of getting there and getting everything ready, being in the meeting, taking your notes. When the meeting is done, then you may have homework, right, more asks that get assigned and you have to keep track of that, and then it's again getting yourself back to your work location.

8:07 Well that hour meeting just suddenly turned into maybe an hour and a half or more. Well, no wonder, right, no wonder. When I started looking at my day and I started putting in the hard demands on the time and that realistic well, I've got to prepare for the meeting, I have time, things to do after the meeting. All of that extra time took away from the traditional and I'll call it the eight hour day, right, that mythical Man month. On that eight hour day, the thirty days, you know, Man month took away from that time. And that's when I started to realize, oh, this is important. And once I started to allocate for those things and I call them the hard demands of my time, the pre scheduled meetings and events that I'm going to. Once I do that, now I can see what time is really left for the works. And that was that big aha moment of this is a far better way of managing my time than anything else that I had tried before.

9:11 What did you have, like a personal struggle with organization or focused that pushed you? I mean, were you frustrated. I'm kind of sensing that there is a little bit of frustration. The frustration was certainly on being able to get everything done, to understand everything that I needed to get done so things didn't fall off the page. And it's one of the things that I notice, and I think this is for a lot of people what I hear when they say they may not be motivated to manage their work better. I think it's more losing focus. Right. It's so easy for us to say, Okay, I know what I'm doing right now, I'm going to work on this one task.

9:58 But then when specially in today's world with the amount of technology we are surrounded with, an email might come in, You might get a text message, a slack message, something pings and dings at you, and you lose your focus for a moment, and then you may go over and look at it and try to approach it and do work on it, and then come back to your task. Well, you've just lost time and now you have to come back. Well I call it. The bright shiny object syndrome exactly. So we get sidetracked with the bright shiny syndrome and we can easily then lose focus on what was that important thing that I'm supposed to be doing. What am I supposed to be doing today?

10:40 Right? What's today's key goal and you know, key items that I need to get done. And that's when having any other task list mechanism just had me a bit lost. And that's where the method I've come up with. I've got what I'm working on today in front of me all the time because it's blindingly simple. It's on paper, so it just sits on my desk and I see what's the I work on a prioritize list like we all need to, and it's the top item on the left side of the sheet of paper. That's what I'm working on right now today. Don't you explain a little bit more about how would you describe agile living? Because this is really the thing the things that I was so interested in this episode with you was because this can apply to anything, and so what would you say are some of the basic principles around this whole agile living approach?

11:44 Yeah, and it's it's really on beginning to take the work that you're doing and breaking it down into smaller pieces. Right, And now start understanding what work I have, and I break it into something smaller. I do that smaller bit. Right. This is one of the innciples of agile in itself that got its start in the IT industry, and our IT teams use this to build great and wonderful software. We can use it for our tasks as well. Break things into smaller chunks, right, and I can estimate those. Now I can estimate it a little bit better I make with my estimates, I can go down as small as five minutes, no more than two hours. And from that I can now start looking at these small bits and I can get more done in a day. I have more willingness to do. I can fit that in.

12:38 I've got a half an hour between this and the next meeting, and that task is only ten minutes. I can certainly do that in that timeframe. Right. So it's breaking it down, estimating it and to help you with that focus of what are you working on next? And maybe yeah, I would keep it from being frustrated because you put too much on your yes. Yes. And that's that's a big thing that I had seen and certainly something that I had done right. You know, I would say something as simple as like write a status report. Project managers write status reports on is a regular basis. That is not to say that we like writing them. I never did. I still don't, So that would often be one It's like a task. Of course, I have to write this week or this bi weekly status report, but honestly, that could take three four more hours to put together. Yeah, I've got a base that I used from last week's, but you've got to get all the information. You got to put it together, get your charts to work just right, and make get coherent sentences.

13:43 And you know, maybe you're putting it together as a written report. It may be more of a PowerPoint slide. There's a lot that's going in on that that you're trying to put together, and it starts to be a really big task, an easy one to say, I don't have the time to work on that now. I don't have the time now, And you keep pushing off the item that needs to get done right, you're losing your focus on what's important. By breaking it into smaller chunks, like start with a draft status report, take last bi weekly or last week's status report, and just identify the things that are missing that I need to get for this week. My next task might be go and get some of those items with parts. If it's data, if it's talking with people, get the missing data. The third task might be to incorporate all of that in update some images. Get kind of that that first pass through of what might be a final report. That's what I mean by breaking things into smaller chunks, to start to think of our work in a different way. That enables us to actually get to doing the work right. And it's avoiding that procrastination, which is what we all struggle with so much.

14:58 Well, what would you say. Makes this method different from traditional productivity tools like planners or apps or taskless What would you say? There's a number of things that make it a little different from those, And I think the first one is having today's work in front of me while not having tomorrow's and the next week's work in front of me as well. Right, it's the out of sight being out of mind being a good thing. I want, I want all of that other stuff that's distracting me out of my viewing vision and my viewing and I want to be able to have in front of me just what I'm working on right now and today, so keeping me focused and why right because and this is part of the challenge with very traditional methods, that big task list.

15:56 If it's always staring at me, I start to get a little despondent that I am overwhelmed that oh my gosh, I'm never going to get all of this done. Oh yes, I have to work on that. Oh and there's that report coming up, and oh right, you get easily distracted. So for me, it's it's that focus again, that hyper focus of what am I working on now, what I'm working on today, and then I have a place for handling tomorrow's and next week's. So it's that that hyper focus, the planning for tomorrow and beyond. And this the regular ceremony component of it, that this is something you do every day. I write everything down. If I have a new task that comes out, I write it on my method of using little sticky notes, and I put them on the sheet of paper. And I have a place for handling today's, tomorrow's, next, and something beyond tomorrow for the next week and beyond. And it's that ceremony of I do this the same thing every day. I work walk through my planning list, I work through my tasks, and it becomes part of how I manage my time.

17:08 And that is you know where it starts to differ from the other techniques. And I'll share one last thing about the blindingly simple part of paper and you know why I so focus on it. And there's a lot of reasons I get into that, but I'm going to share one right now, and it's called the doorway effect. I have a little video on it as well that I have a lot of fun with because I started walking through doorways, and it's a known effect. When you walk through a doorway, you drop twenty percent of your short term memory. And this is exactly why you can find yourself downstairs in the kitchen and you came from upstairs in a bedroom and you look at yourself and say, why am I here? It's not you going crazy. There is a known effect called the doorway effect. And if I'm dropping twenty percent of my short term memory every time I go through a doorway, will you just start counting the number of doorways in your home and your office, and every time you go through just make a note of it, and you can see exactly why you lose track of things. And there's a lot in evolution on why that is the case. You can certainly see if I've gone from in a secluded area, like a forested area, into an open prairie, you would definitely want to know is there something out here after me? Are there any predators around? Right? So you can see why over evolution, your focus is going to change based on where you

18:39 physically are. So, okay, that's great for the physical sense, but gosh, I manage my tasks on this really fancy app that I have on my phone, and my phone's with me all the time. Do you think the doorway effect also impacts you're working with a computer. Yes, it does. Every time you have a screen that pops up, a window that opens another window that pops up twenty percent, twenty percent, twenty percent, which is why you can find yourself. I've opened my phone and I wanted to go do something, and five minutes later you look at that phone and go, what was it I was going to do? I got so sidetracked I did that this morning.

19:20 I had like ten tabs opening on the computer, opened a new tab, and I was like, what was I going to do? Exactly? It's the doorway effect. So that's another reason why I stay away from the electronic tools because they are just insidious with opening up another doorway and another little oh and remind you when, oh, don't you want to upgrades? No, I just wanted to have a new task into my task sheet. I've totally forgotten what that task is now. Well, right now might be a good time to bring up our little visual for those that are watching the video. Yes, yeah, you could bring up. One is that?

20:00 Which one is that? Called? Let's bring up the personal conbin so people can have a better sense of what am I talking about with these little tasks and breaking things down into smaller chunks. So I am literally saying, yes, this is all on paper, and we're using things like little sticky notes, and I use these lovely little ones, the one by two inch ones if that's showing up and you see them on the image, and it's from the top left corner down. Is how I work through my list for the day. So notice, for on this example, Monday has a number of items and I keep track of where they are and when they are done, they move to the right hand side. What is mine?

20:47 I think it's like a little victory or a little celebration for your brain. Yes, when you move it over, oh oh not only you know, do you move physically move it, which is a wonderful reinforcement step, and it's such rewarding. Absolutely, But I put a check mark on it, and the act of like putting that check mark is like, yes, you're done. I've accomplished something, and I moved it to the right hand side. I can still see it, but I don't have to focus on It's like, yep, I'm done, and I can worry about the next item and the next item. And so you see, I've got a sheet for every day of the week, and yes, I have one for the weekend. Because regardless of where you are in life, there's stuff that you're probably keeping track of and want to make sure that you do. Like maybe it's if you're busy at home with young children, your weekends are probably busy shuttling those kids to all the various events and play dates and birthday parties and sports activities. If you're past that or don't have children, depending on where you are, there are still things you want to get done on a weekend, and to make sure that you know, you don't forget that oh yes, I was supposed to get something cleaned for the event that's coming up the following week, so that I have that item in preparation.

22:07 So I also manage my weekends. And then there's that that sheet at the far end called backlog. That's how I do things that are beyond this week. So there's my beauty of out of sight being out of mind and in a good way. What's insight and in mind is what I'm working on today. And that's really the nicest way to keep me focused on what needs to get done. So when that nice, that shiny new item comes by and wants to distract me, I can come right back to this and say, no, I really need to get that done today. This is very visual, very is very much works with your brain. Let me let me, let me bring up what somebody might might have, like a little complaint and say, I just don't have enough time in my day.

22:54 Yeah, yeah, yeah, And that's always the case, right, And that's that that mythical man month on to go right back to that of like this this belief that I've got lots that I can get things done in a certain amount of time, but stuff gets in the way, like those hard demands on my time. So the I don't have enough time is that I'm probably got too many things I'm trying to do at once. And by beginning to not only break your work down into smaller chunks, but estimate it how much how long will this item take to do? And if it's hard demand on your time, you know there's that hour half hour meeting that you want to account for. Once you start to see really what's there, you can start to really plan and allocate your days far better. This is going to help you get time back because you're probably getting a little distracted on what needs to get done, and you probably and you may this was something that I ran into. I would have a task that I'm working on, and my sense of completion, my sense of done wasn't clearly defined.

24:09 So you can just keep going and going and going, and that's your time sink. And that's where smaller bits defining, Like I have one right now. So I'm a grandmother, I have I have some grandchildren and while it's Christmas is coming up, so one of the things is I want to look for a present for the one year old, and I have an idea of what I'm looking for. Okay, don't tell her, but I'm looking for a little kitchen set for her. Well, I can spend hours scrolling online for kitchen sets for toddlers, and I did the other night, and it was just over It was overwhelming. I have now turned that into spend twenty minutes researching, right, because I'm now my definition of done was just like, Oh, I'm going to find the perfect present to get and I'm going to order it and it'll be done. Well, that's a really big that's a tall order, right, that's a very large task. When I started to break it into Nope, just spend twenty minutes and get a couple, get two or three that you think are candidates, and then put it aside, come back to it another time, and now review those and look at and see which one of those would you really want to buy, and then buy it.

25:25 Right. So I start to break things into smaller chunks and define done a lot clearer, and I think that helps a lot with the length of time that you feel and I don't have time in my day. Yeah, well, I'm thinking, you know, You talk a lot about focus and order and motivation. Which one of those do you think people struggle with the most? Yeah, And I know a lot of people say either I don't have the time or I have trouble with the motivation. Right, that's the procrastinations, and I get I think about that a lot, and I think the motivation is really a byproduct of getting a better handle on your work. You said it earlier that there's this little bit of the I call it brain candy, the excitement of I've completed an item and I get to move that physically from one column to another, and I put that check mark on it. And I think that motivation comes right as part of getting things done. How do I start getting things done? And that's where I come back to. I think it's the focus, and it's the ease that we have today of losing focus and getting carried away and for us to just narrow it back down and to get us thinking about and I don't want to see we use the word focus yet one

26:56 more time, but focusing on what are the most important things to do today and to get them done. So for me, I think it's it's the focus more than anything. Do you think that the whole procrastination idea is just overwhelm in disguise. Yes, yeah, yeah, it's. And I'm overwhelmed why because there's so much that I have to do. I'm looking at all these tasks and I just don't know where to get started, you know. And I hear that. I hear that in project teams, and I hear that with people, that I just don't know where to get started. And that's where, Okay, well, let's start to break things into smaller chunks, smaller estimates. So what's most important right now?

27:42 Let's look at timelines. It's everything that we've done in our lives to manage general projects. You bring that all in and you just start thinking about, yep, these are the things that I need to really focus on today and this week. And that's what I put in front of me. And I start to deal with that overwhelm, and it starts to become far easier to see your days and to see your way through all that work. If you were gonna, you know, if someone says, well, I don't know how to get started, would you just say, just outline the big project first and then start breaking it down. Yeah? How you get started. That's how you would get started. That's where the first thing I always say is to take your work and start breaking it down into smaller pieces and smaller chunks, and estimate them and estimate how long it would take you, working on your own uninterrupted to complete that task. Right.

28:40 Don't say, oh, well you know I need to build a repair or paint a set of bookshelves. Well, okay, that could be like I don't know, three four days, right, depending on how big the shelves are, what state they're in. So immediately break that into smaller chunks. What you need, really you need to do? Are you sanding things down? Are you do you need to clean? Just clean it? And maybe it's just do one code of paint, the next cote of paint, or some repairs it. Start to think about taking that piece of work and breaking it into what can you get done in what your day is like that you can work uninterrupted. For some people, you might be able to work uninterrupted for an hour or two. For a lot, oh it's five or ten minutes, fifteen or.

29:30 I've found just getting ready to do a project takes a lot of time just getting prepped. Yep. It's like crazy. So I was the thing that I got so excited when we first talked about this and met each other. Was the other thing that the variation on this that has to do with a holiday dinner. Yes, And so I would love to bring that up. Because I got all excited about it because when we I have I also have grandchildren, and like when we're to get in the summer and we're at a lake and I'll have like a big poster board and I'll have jobs for everybody, and then there's some argument about who's doing. What, and so yep, yep, let's bring up another.

30:16 One because I was like, this is like completely and if I know, I've got a couple of grandchildren that have watched this, So if they watch this episode, they're gonna they're gonna know what Grandma's talking about. All right, Yeah, so yes, put up that. I think we call it the Thanksgiving conbind there it is, yep. So, and this is great because we are just right up to Thanksgiving, we're coming up on Christmas and some of the big holidays. And I do this every year. I do this for big events, and I did this this year. I take all the tasks that need to get done to host a Thanksgiving dinner. And as you look at those who are looking at things like setting the table, lighting candles, making gravy, doing the meshed potatoes, right, all those jobs, And let me tell you the little story of why I come up, why I do this? And I know you've you've started with it, you've got your list of tasks for your holiday summer vacation. But let me give you the gist of why did I bother to do this? And it's exactly the case when you've got people coming over and you're hosting. What's the first thing most people say to you when they walk in beyond hello, how it's lovely to see you.

31:34 How can I help? Is there anything I can do? And then most people go, no, no, I've got. It exactly and do we have it? No, We're running around. Crazy thinking, oh my gosh, there's so much yet to do, and oh, only I can do it because I'm the host. Well, pushaw with that. I realized that, oh no, there's got to be a better way, because people, in the end, they really do want to help. I know, when I go to someone's house, I really feel terrible. If I go in, I just sit down and suddenly they're waiting on me and they're getting me a drink and oh, are you comfortable? Can I get you something else? Here's some snacks. And then they run back in the kitchen and they're trying to cook and is there anything else I can get? I mean, I feel terrible. I feel so much more relaxed and that I'm contributing if I can physically help with some of the preparation. And based on that, I started a year doing this. Probably I've done this four or five years now, but four or five years ago I tried this with my family. I put tasks down very much just like exactly like this, and then they came over and they would ask what can I do to help? Great, pick something on it, pick something, and that's the key. You pick it, You pick it. So they would pick, oh, get the chairs up from the basement and put them on the table.

32:59 They know where that is. They lived here, these are my children, so fine, go get the chairs. For anybody who didn't know where they were, I might have to tell them, oh, that's in the hutch on you know, on the second shelf, go and get those. So with a little bit of direction, but leaving them alone. They would go off and go ahead and do things. And the first thing that I found was, oh my gosh, it was so much relaxing, more relaxing for me. Everybody jumped in and participated and they were happy because they were doing something, they were helping. And I had one one final thing that came out of this and this was and this was for a Christmas event where I had one of the tasks was to put napkins on the table along with some napkin rings. Well, my daughter in law picked that one up. This was a number of years ago, and she's very creative and these were green napkins because it was Christmas, and the napkin rings I had were like a little beaded circle that you would just put around them. Well, next thing I know, I walk over to the table and she has made little Christmas trees out of the napkin with the little the napkin ring right on top of it, like ornaments and lights on the tree. And I was blown away, like, oh, this is beautiful. I would never have done that, right, But you see, if you let go of some of these tasks, let others do them, and give them the

34:32 freedom to do what they want, you may be equally pleasantly surprised that you get something far better than you could ever have done. So that was a great story of how I came to use this, and I do this now every year for every big holiday event. And we just we had Thanksgiving at our house just last week and we had a new person come along on. My son has a girlfriend, and she came along and with very little instruction, I just pretty much said, feel free to pick anything off the sheet. Yeah, whatever you want to do. And you see there's a to do item to the to do column, the doing column and the done column, and its self explanatory. She picked something up, she was off putting silver around the table and plates out and doing various things, and by the end everything was ready to go. We all had fun participating and this it was far far less stress.

35:30 So like for the person who might be getting chairs out of the basement, they could put that note in the doing column in case somebody came behind them one minute later and yeah, so ye then and then we talked very early on about how there's a little celibratory thing that goes on in your brain and so then that person gets to when it's done, they get to. Put it in the done Yes, they do, and people actually liked doing that. I was observing it again this year and they were enjoying the like, yes, this is done, I get to move it over to the done column. And you know that there was that celebratory aspect of it.

36:12 And I have to share this, this example. So, yes, this was mine and I'm, you know, the queen of getting things done, and these are my kids. Sure they're all going to play along, but does this really work for other people? So the daughter in law who made the Lovely Christmas napkins had a birthday party for her one year old. This a month ago and she was in There were about twenty people coming. She's a big family. She has lots of friends that she wanted to invite over. I go, We go to her house and up on her board she has a door wall in her kitchen. Guess what she had. She must have had forty tasks up there. Oh, a huge number of tasks, everything from cleaning things, I you know, wiping down the kitchen counters and wiping down outlets and doors and windows and vacuum me and then of some food prep. She had a large number of tasks now, and it was just more than my husband and myself. Her mother came over, her sisters came over, and they all just part. They all just grabbed a task and did it. And it was again, it was almost self evident. And here it had spread to just beyond, you know, my immediate family. Now suddenly her family are doing this, and it was all and everything got done. Although I looked at that task and I just I cannot imagine we're going to get all

37:43 of this done. But lo and behold, we did. And it was that beauty of that visibility of everything just right out there. So it's focus, right, it's visible, it's focused, We know what we needed to do. It's blindingly simple. Right. It's either in the to do column, the doing or the done column, and they're small enough, and it's it's clear what done means, right, So I don't spend there, spend hours and hours trying to figure out am I done? Yet it was pretty clear why I'm starting a movement. I was so thrilled to see her do that, and that gets that sense of that this can work. It works across a various number of people to help you get on top of and get a better management of the work that you've got to get got done.

38:33 Well. When you first showed this to me, I just left, because you know, everything has gone to online tools and online apps and everything and getting rid of the sticky notes. And here you are. Bringing back the simplicity of the sticky notes and your columns and just making it simple and straightforward. Yes, exactly, And it's I'm brace singing the sticky notes for sure, and it is. And for me, it's rather than drowning in sticky notes because I've seen all of the little memes and all the cute little cartoons of people like you know, covered in sticky notes.

39:14 Right. So here's where my method differs than many others. I provide a method, a pattern, a practice for managing those sticky notes so you are not overwhelmed with sticky notes all over the house and again you don't know where to get started. They are intended to. I have a place for today's for their whole we plan a whole week out, and I have a place for things beyond that week, and it's controlled management of all of those little sticky notes. Right, control of the sticky notes. Yes, yes, that's the key. You should control them. They should never control you. You should never feel like there's just too much of the sticky notes out there.

40:00 Well, let's talk just for a minute about behavior. Why do you think people feel such guilt or pressure around unfinished tasks? Don't we? All right? I mean, I'm sure the psychologists would love to get into that, and I'm certainly not a psychologist, but I know I've certainly experienced that myself. That you it's so easy to be yourself able to yep, I should have been able to get all this done. I didn't get it all done today. Oh I'm bad or something I did something wrong. And the big key for me is at the end of every day when I look at my planning sheets and if I if not everything got done. Instead of beating myself up, I really look at it and start to have a little bit of what we call a retrospective in the in the agile world, we use that term where I'm asking myself, well, what went well today? What didn't go so well? You know?

41:00 Why why didn't I get things done? Is it because I underestimated them? Did something else come in that sort of trumped today's activities, something that was a true emergency that I needed to shuffle things around? You know what? What was it that did I forget that I had other demands on my time that I didn't account for. So I ask a few questions and what could I what could have done differently for everything to have gotten done today? And I ask myself in an inquisitive and a non accusatory, non judgmental method, And I don't beat myself up over that these things didn't get done. Fine, okay, let's learn from it and move on. Move on. Sometimes that learning from it could be Gee, did that task really need to get done? Doesn't need to get done this week, today, tomorrow? Do I need to do it?

41:59 Yeah? Maybe could somebody else do it? Right? Is this really critical for me? Is this task is a task too big? Did I not get to it because I felt overwhelmed that it just was too big? I felt I could never get to So should I break it down into something smaller? And I think that's the other one. More time before we were running at a time. My gosh, we all let's. Take the Thanksgiving conbin down and put the personal one back up, just as a reminder. Yeah, okayco so. We talked about Yeah, I don't you know, people, it's more like it's more than it's more than just managing your time. It's like it can also be managing your expectations right.

42:49 Very much. So you I think you've got that right on the head. Yeah, I have a better expectation of what today is going to look like, you know, based on how I've planned out my time. And yes, you're right, it's better managing those expectations right, and something that's more realistic for you and what you can truly get done in the day. As I said, we are running this, this is just sped by. But well, well maybe you. Have to do this again one of these days, maybe halfway through the year, and see how we're all doing. But if someone listening could implement just one simple agile practice today, which one would make the biggest difference.

43:38 And I always go back to break your work into smaller chunks and estimate them. So even if you're not using my sheets, and if you're not using the conbind boards, just start to take your work, even whatever you're using for your to do lists, and start to break it into smaller pieces and estimate it. That'll be twofold, right, it'll get something that is smaller to do, more more appealing to you to schedule within a busy day in a busy life. And by estimating it, you're now also defining what done will be. Yes, right, because if I say, oh, this.

44:19 Should take twenty minutes, let's take the. Let's take our slider or yeah yeah. So by by estimating it, I'm now getting that sense of how how how much I really want to accomplish in that. Right. So if I say, well, I'm only going to spend twenty minutes on whatever that task is, like looking for that present for my granddaughter, I've now defined done right rather than the present for a granddaughter, right, which think of that? Oh that could feel big. So that's my first thing, WAK. Regardless of the method you're using today, start to break your work into smaller chunks and estimate it and I think that'll get you your biggest advantages just to start with. And then of course I encourage you to use the art of agile living.

45:16 And if I may show you know, get my book. There's a book, Sticky Notes. There's a bunch of sticky notes written with my business partner, Thomas Malash. We have the book out here for you available widely on Amazon, just in time for the holidays. So even if you want to use my method and give that a try, well, we get into these details that we just touched on today in this little whirlwind of our podcast, but we get into the mythical Man month, we get into the doorway effect a little deeper and understanding why the simplicity of paper works for us as humans far better than the computer techniques.

45:57 This is so brilliant. And even if it's not the holidays that maybe it's uh, maybe it's getting close to fourth of July when you're listening to this. Or or maybe you have a wedding. I know somebody I have a family I'm going to share this with who has a wedding coming up, and they're like, so I can I can't imagine with all the tasks. Yeah, so anyway, and so well, yeah, and I will mention too that on my website on Benita bell Anderson dot com there's a bonus downloads you'll be able to find Helene there with all of her contact information, and I will encourage those of you who really want to turn your productivity around to go and learn from Helene.

46:44 So yeah, absolutely, and feel free to reach out to me. As you said, you will provide the contact info. I'm here to answer questions and to help make you as successful as you can be and de stress your life. And with that we have got to wrap this up today. Thank you so much, Helene for being here with us today and sharing this valuable take on this whole subject of being productive well and. Thank you welcome, thank you for having me appreciate it. And thank you so much for joining us on the Ask Good Questions podcast. We will see you next time.

47:26 Today's episode is over. But we did ask Good Questions again, didn't We don't miss out as we broadcast live every Wednesday, six pm Eastern Time on W four CY Radio at w fourcy dot com. Joined Vanina Bellan. We'reson next week for more conversations with experts on finances, retirement, behavioral finance issues, health and wellness and more. Until then, remember to ask good questions.