David Saltzman: 0:00

What is the one thing everyone has? Everyone gets the same amount of. No one can make more of, and everyone wishes they had more of. We'll find out on this episode of Shift Shapers.

Announcer: 0:12

This is the Shift Shapers podcast, Connecting benefits advisors with thought leaders and entrepreneurs who are shaping the shifts in the industry. And now here's your host, David Saltzman.

David Saltzman: 0:26

And to help us answer that question, we've invited Andrew Hartman. Andrew is founder of TimeBoss. Hey, Andrew, how you doing?

Andrew Hartman: 0:33

Good David, Thank you so much for having me. I'm really great to be here, our pleasure.

David Saltzman: 0:37

Tell us a little bit about your journey. How'd you come to be doing what you're doing?

Andrew Hartman: 0:41

Yeah, great question. So I, like lots of leaders, got started my career mid-20s, came out of college, great family, great education, ended up in a role where I had more to do than I had time to do it and suddenly realized I had no clue how to manage my time. I had someone that showed me how to use a calendar. I knew how to use a to-do list. I knew how to prioritize stuff, but I had no way to deal with being that much over capacity. Like most people that end up in that situation, I just went on the grind. I just tried to shovel as fast as I could and long nights, early mornings, skip workouts, you know, work past dinner, all the thing, wake up in the middle of the night, stressed out from things I might be forgetting, trying to write down on a post-it note next to my bed, only to see wake up in the morning and see it was utter chicken scratch. You know it wasn't even solving the problem to begin with. So super overwhelmed, super successful at my job was being promoted as a function of what I was able to get done. People loved the results I was getting, but it was costing me so much personally led to my first real red line where I was, as I would feel stress. I would feel these heat flashes, and it ultimately led me to lose my sense of smell. For six months I couldn't smell anything and I knew it was a function of stress. I could feel it coming on and I talked to a lot of people about time. You'll hear people say things. Like you know, I have Bell's palsy. Half my face went numb. I have chronic headaches from stress. I've got irritable bowel syndrome all the time because of stress, and stress is really our body's way of saying like hey, buddy, whatever you're doing is not working, you are dysregulated, something needs to change. And it took me hitting a red light like that for me to really start to make an adjustment.

Andrew Hartman: 2:22

So for me, the path became gosh. I want to continue to deliver, I want to continue to contribute at a level that I believe in. I want to do great work, I want to get great results, but I've got to figure out how to do that without this level of overwhelm. I've got a family that I care about, I've got kids that I care about, I have health that I want to maintain and even my results.

Andrew Hartman: 2:43

You know, the thing that people don't realize about stress is that burdensome stress, anxiety-ridden stress over time actually impacts the results that we're getting. We perform poorer as a function of that stress, and so, for all those reasons, I got to work on building a framework for myself, like I've got to figure out a way to get the results that I want without overwhelm. And it took me a long time, david, like weekly iterations for a long time, and ultimately it worked. I developed this framework that helped me get incredible results without overwhelm. Other individuals asked me to coach them on it and I just kind of rode the horse in the direction it's going and formalized it into this framework that I now train leaders and teams to adopt and for them to get the results that they want without overwhelm.

David Saltzman: 3:28

Jumping around a little bit. This maybe isn't fair, but I was reading some of the blogs on your website. Since you mentioned anxiety, why is it that anxiety sometimes feels productive, even though intellectually we know it's not?

Andrew Hartman: 3:42

Yeah, it's really hard. Anxiety is tough. Yeah, I've recently wrote that one on the blog. So the thing about anxiety is that we know how to solve it. So what we think we do, and it's check items off our list Like gosh. If I check that item off my list, I feel a little bit of dopamine, I feel a little bit of relief and it feels good Like we like that feeling, we like the feeling of progress.

Andrew Hartman: 4:06

And so the challenge is where this goes sideways is when we just let anxiety become the true north and we just keep pointing ourselves at the hottest fires. It does a couple of things. One, we will always work on the hottest fire, not necessarily the thing that is most strategic for us to move our businesses forward and things we care about forward. Two, we will settle into where we don't really know how to operate if it's not on fire, because that has become the way that we get directed towards things. It's like that feels really scary. I should go tackle that right now. But what we're really looking for as leaders, what we want, is space to operate. We really want you know, we talk about urgent and important, not urgent and important we actually want to operate in the not urgent and important bucket, because that's when we feel like we have room to work.

Andrew Hartman: 4:46

There's time for us to see creative solutions. There's time for us to collaborate with others. There's times for us to think expansively. We don't feel like the ax is above our neck and it's about to drop. We have the ability to really get the best results possible, and so, for me, I think anxiety, letting anxiety become true north is not ultimately the most productive. You're not going to get the results that you want. You may, in the short term, over the next five minutes, feel incredibly effective, but I think if you look back over a year, you're going to be really disappointed with the results you got by letting anxiety be true north.

David Saltzman: 5:15

So let's dial back a little bit. Do you have any stats? I mean, how bad is this problem?

Andrew Hartman: 5:19

It's horrific. So pre-COVID, it was 75% of knowledge workers experienced burnout in the last 12 months. Burnout meaning that they no longer have the motivation to do the work that they previously did. And so, if you think about it, motivation is a core belief for, like your entire self being saying, I have the ability to pull this thing off. And so when motivation gets subtracted, it's literally your subconscious declaring bankruptcy on the way you're approaching your time. It's saying whatever you're doing, buddy, is not working. This absolutely has to change. So pre-COVID it was 75%. Post-covid these are Gallup studies it's 77%. So it's actually worse post-COVID.

Andrew Hartman: 5:59

And you can point to all nature of things post-pandemic, I think. Personally, the one that is wreaking the most havoc in people's psyche is always on, always available work. There is no distinction of I close my laptop, shut the office door and go home for the night. That no longer exists and people don't have the habits or the ways of thinking about time that allow them to have freedom where they can actually rest and recover.

Andrew Hartman: 6:27

What most people do with their evenings is cope. They they feel incredibly stressed and they either just keep working right, they just they go in fight mode from the stress. I'm just going to keep working. I'm going to skip workouts, I'm going to skip dinner, I'm going to work late or they go into flight mode where they are doom scrolling or alcohol or ice cream, or you name it. They're just finding something to get out of their head for a little bit. They're not actually resting and recovering, and so the situation is really bad. It's really bad, and there's not a common knowledge of time in our current society to deal with the current societal structure in terms of how we approach our work.

David Saltzman: 7:06

So what are some of the symptoms that we could look for? Could you give us the top two or three that you know? You have this problem if kind of an answer no-transcript, but isn't actually good for you.

Andrew Hartman: 7:44

Those are the things that we're looking for. It's, it's your body announcing to you like there is something not right here.

David Saltzman: 7:53

So what are some of the things that you teach that help people manage this? Always on 24-7 work, work, work, work, work. Phenomenon.

Andrew Hartman: 8:05

Yeah. So I think the first move you have to make is you have to make a decision of how much your life you're willing to give to work, because your to-do list is infinite. Whether you believe it or not, check items off your list. There's always going to be more. Solve all the problems. Your brain is a problem-seeking machine. You'll go find more problems, so you're never going to get to the end of your to-do list. So just trying to grind to the bottom of your to-do list isn't rational. It really isn't. You have to make a decision and say this is my budget, this is how much of my life I'm willing to give for work. For me it's 50 hours.

Andrew Hartman: 8:38

I've made the decision that I'm willing to give 50 hours to income generating activities for TimeBoss, and it's counterintuitive, but it's incredibly powerful if you think about it. We have to treat our time like cash, and just like cash. Let's say I have a million dollars of capital to deploy. If I have a million dollars of capital to deploy, I'm gonna be very judicious about deploying it to the activities that are going to or the investments that are going to give me the highest ROI. And the same is true with our time. If we build that constraint for me, I'd build in that constraint of 50 hours. I have to become incredibly judicious in light of the results that I'm trying to achieve and trying to avoid the overwhelm that I've talked about. I have to be incredibly judicious with what I allow to get on my calendar to help me get those results.

Andrew Hartman: 9:20

And so I think move number one is put a constraint to say this is how much of my life I'm willing to give Now. That doesn't mean your work's going to fit in that. There's obvious next steps that we have to take, but I do think that is the first move. It's just like having a personal financial budget. If you decide I'm going to spend $500 on groceries and you're consistently spending $1,000 on groceries, you should probably make some adjustments right? Maybe you can't make all the adjustments next week, but over time incremental adjustments I'm going to be incrementally better next week so that I can be exponentially better six months from now. Those incremental adjustments build up over time and that's really what we help people do at TimeBoss those incremental adjustments build up over time, and that's really what we help people do at TimeBoss.

David Saltzman: 10:03

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Andrew Hartman: 11:51

Absolutely, almost instantly, because, if you, you know people I mentioned earlier treating time like cash Most people treat time like credit and they just swipe and they just say yes Because really it's fear that drives us to say yes. Two types of fear. One is we're afraid if we don't say yes, we're not going to get the results that we want. There's some world that we want. We think people asking us to help them helps us get to that world. Or two, we are afraid that we're going to let down relationships, relationships that we care about, and so, again, we just swipe the credit card and we're essentially, if I swipe the credit card, I am punting to future Andrew, you're punting to future David, and that dude's going to pay the price for it, right? They're going to be overwhelmed, working late again, impacting their health, all the things. And so, when we are judicious I only have so much time when that new request comes in, I've got to be thoughtful of how does this fit into the things I've already said yes to, and it necessarily drives us to make better decisions. So, as leaders, especially leaders in scaling companies, if you think about it, we have results. Again, my treatise is this you have results that you want and you actually want to get that without overwhelm. If those two things are true, people operate at what I call their highest sustainable pace. It's the pace that they can maintain forever to get incredible results. And so, when you put in that constraint, the first question is how am I going to get the results that I need within this constraint?

Andrew Hartman: 13:10

And where leaders often go sideways is they think, well, I don't have enough time to get the results that I want. I said 50 hours, but I think it's actually going to take me 80. Well, maybe, but do all those? Do that net 30, the 30 that you don't feel like you have? Do those have to be you? Can there be other strategies that we might look at that might help you get the results without it costing more on the back of your time? It's not linear. There are ways that we can think exponentially about how you might get these results. Are there people on your team that also have time that you're not delegating to that you need to be delegating to and helping develop, to help multiply the time you have available to get the results you want? Again, I think when we start with that constraint, it drives decision making and I think we make more powerful decisions with our time. Beginning with that constraint, again, we're still trying to get results. We're not putting results out the door, we're just thinking differently about how we're going to get those results.

David Saltzman: 14:01

So it seems like that's a second level prioritization. Once you say I'm only going to work X hours a week for my moneymaking pursuits and you start prioritizing your tasks, is it an inevitable consequence that that happens, that you start looking at, okay, how can I make this happen, how can I get my stuff done within that time period? And looking at ways to work smarter, delegate, et cetera.

Andrew Hartman: 14:26

Yeah, absolutely. I think it happens almost necessarily in in part of it comes from what's called Parkinson's law, and it's that task will fill the time that we give it. And so you know, if you asked me the question, david, you say, hey, describe yourself in 30 seconds or less. I can accomplish that task. Hey, andrew, we've got five minutes. Tell me about yourself. I can accomplish that task. I'll fill the time that I give myself for a task. It's Parkinson's law and so I think our time is that way.

Andrew Hartman: 14:50

By starting with that constraint and holding those results steady, I think necessarily you're going to put the right things onto your calendar. Part of the process we teach is a weekly planning meeting, which is this sober moment before the bullets start flying, where you're planning, not executing it, and you're just dealing. What are all the things that I could possibly schedule into my week with the available time that I have that are going to make a difference for the goals that I'm trying to achieve? And so, within that process, one of the simple tasks is just force ranking your priorities. What are the 20% of tasks here that are going to make 80% of the difference? Let's move those up to the top.

Andrew Hartman: 15:25

Let's make sure I break those down into manageable tasks, clear definition of done, and then let's get those into my calendar where I am committing to those items on my calendar, as if the president of the United States is showing up to that meeting and you can decide maybe you don't like the current president, choose the last president or the president before that or whoever. It's up to you, but we have to commit to these items on our calendar that are actual priorities, whether or not another human is showing up, and oftentimes those are the first things to go. You know, those are the first things that we'll set aside. When we get interrupted or people ask for things, we'll set aside these items we know are high priority, that are going to move our business forward in name of this urgent item that someone's knocking on our door with because we're just afraid of letting them down or we're afraid, if we don't do it, something bad's going to happen because we're just afraid of letting them down or we're afraid if we don't do it, something bad's going to happen.

David Saltzman: 16:11

So I know this seems kind of oxymoronic, but you can truncate the amount of time that you give to work and get four to 10 hours worth of time back per week. I mean, is that real? Is that a thing?

Andrew Hartman: 16:26

Absolutely real. I mean across. We're I don't even know 35 cohorts in now where people consistently get those results, and it's really simple if you think about it. A couple things are happening there. When I have a fixed amount of time that I have available to me, I will respond to interruptions differently, because I know now that that interruption is competing with these priorities that I'm trying to make happen, because I know now that that interruption is competing with these priorities that I'm trying to make happen. And so one of the one of the big ideas that we talk about in time boss, is budgeting time for interruptions, literally adding time on your calendar. We call it whirlwind. You can think of it like buffer. Where we are, we are budgeting time to deal with those items so that we can really focus in and make things happen. Where people are burning time and losing that four to 10 hours a week is they are allowing themselves to be constantly available and they're being jerked all over the place by every last need that's coming.

Andrew Hartman: 17:19

And here's the deal as teams scale, it's only getting worse as you add literally another node to the system. That is one more node that can ping you, interrupt you, ask you questions, have issues that you need to solve for, and so sometimes leaders that are incredibly effective in small teams can't figure out why they can't get anything done as they scale, and it's because they're just constantly available to their team. And so my encouragement to people is to divide out those times. Have times where they are zero, dark, 30, locked in I'm just making things happen and times when they make themselves available to the team to be helpful and supportive, and that activity alone often creates that four to 10 hours that they were simply losing before from being pulled out, multitasking, losing what's called comeback time. Comeback time is the amount of time it takes you to come back to a task once you've switched off of it.

Andrew Hartman: 18:08

Cal Newport in Deep Work. He talked about deep work is that focused work that's going to move our business forward, leveraged work that has exponential results. You can't do that by leaving yourself constantly available. In his book, he said, if you're working on those tasks, your brain has unfolded into the context of that task. If someone interrupts you, you take a phone call, you go off in another direction and try to come back. It might take you up to 23 minutes to come back to that task. So, if you think about it, if we're allowing that to happen all day long, likely we're not even getting to the deep work because there's just not enough time. And two, we're just burning time throughout the week and so, perceptively, people feel like they get back four to 10 hours simply from making some very strategic changes in their day and then being incredibly judicious about what they say yes to and what they focus on in their prioritized time.

David Saltzman: 18:58

I know our listeners are entrepreneurs and solopreneurs and we do have some larger agencies and some companies, but we're recording this during the summertime. How do you actually rest on vacation? Because a lot of us find that very difficult. Even though we are physically out of the office, and maybe even if we shut off our technology, our brains are still going. How do you do that?

Andrew Hartman: 19:21

Yeah. So it's interesting, you know what, what the research that Cal Newport talked about in Deep Work is, this idea of commitment plans. And what's really fascinated about a commitment plan is we intuitively think we must accomplish work for us to feel relief. And so, if that's true, none of us are ever going on vacation because there's always going to be undone items that we're never getting to right. And so what Cal Newport talked about, this idea of a commitment plan, is.

Andrew Hartman: 19:46

A commitment plan is where I say I have a plan for when this work's going to happen, and I believe my brain believes I will actually follow through. I'm actually committed to it, I will actually follow through if that happens. And if that happens, then we don't fear anymore. Now, a commitment plan doesn't mean just me, it could be others as well, and so, especially for someone that's on a small team, you might say you might find someone to trade with where you say, hey, I'm gonna be on vacation next week. If anything comes in, could you just field it and help it along, make sure that nothing's bleeding, nothing breaks, and when I get back in the office I'll be able to take care of that. I call that person a vacation shield. They are literally shielding you from even being aware that those items are happening.

Andrew Hartman: 20:26

Now what that does is that's a commitment plan. I have made a commitment plan. This person is my plan, where I know that the relationships I care about and the results that I care about aren't going to fall through the cracks because this person's there Now if it's bleeding and it's on fire and the business is going to hurt if I don't take it.

Andrew Hartman: 20:41

that person can certainly call me, but what that means is, if my phone's not ringing, I can actually just detach and rest and recover, and when that person goes on vacation, I can offer them the very same service so that either of us can fully relax. Now, offer them the very same service so that either of us can fully relax. Now, if someone's a solopreneur, they're literally on their own. Obviously, you have to mitigate it, right, you've got to mitigate it. But what I might say is work with your stakeholders. Can you, could you work maybe just an hour in the morning, minimal things, right, that just keep things moving and then let and let people know hey, I'm on vacation.

Andrew Hartman: 21:12

If it's absolutely on fire, please call me. I will help you no matter what. But if you wouldn't mind, just drop it. If it's not on fire, drop it in my email and I'll get back to you when I get back. Again, it's a little bit of retraining, but you're creating a commitment plan. You're telling to that person I'm not gonna let you down. You're still gonna get the results bit differently with me over the course of this vacation so I can rest and recover and come back and be fully ready to support you.

David Saltzman: 21:36

Great advice and a great place to end our conversation for today. Andrew Hartman, founder of TimeBoss. Andrew, thanks for a fascinating conversation.

Andrew Hartman: 21:44

Wonderful. Thanks so much, David. I was really looking forward to this. I appreciate the time with you.

Announcer: 21:51

The Shift Shapers podcast is a production of Shift Shapers LLC. The content and images of this podcast may not be used without our express written permission. Copyright 2023. All rights reserved.

David Saltzman: 22:07

Shift Shapers.