Andrew: This program is about how to be more productive by not multitasking. It’s led by, there he is, Dave Crenshaw. I got all kinds of camera work here, Dave. Dave Crenshaw, he is the master of helping business owners harness chaos, so harness chaos and harvest personal freedom.

He’s the author of “The Myth of Multitasking: How doing it all gets nothing done” and “The Secret to Becoming Irreplaceable”. I’ll help facilitate and sometimes trip over my own words. I’m Andrew Warner, founder of Mixergy.com.

Dave, I invited you here because this is an issue that a lot of people on the audience have asked for help with, how to be more productive, how to get more done, don’t have enough time in the day, you know the stuff. And my concern in having you come to teach it is I know my audience. They’re going to be thinking “Dave is a master at this. It comes natural to some people but not to me. I have a lot to do. Not to me. I do more, I do more when I focus on a few things at the same time.” What do you say to that?

Dave: Well, the interesting thing, Andrew, is when I speak to corporate audiences and really any audience I found that there are three groups of people that I speak to. And the first of group of persons is the person who is inherently organized, the Zen Master. And the other one is I call them the Lost Souls. They’re someone who used to be organized and then lost their way. And then there’s the group who is the inherently disorganized person and that’s the Pig Pen.

And in my case what happened was I was having a really hard time with my career. I began coaching businesses back in ’98 and really found myself just pulled in lots of different directions. And if you looked at my family history, other people around me, they would do the same thing. They’d jump from career to career. And I did a stint as a rock star. I had a band but it was about the time that my son was going to be born, so this was about 8 years ago, I realized something needed to change.

And so I went and saw a psychologist and said ‘Hey, something is wrong with me’ and he gave me a couple of tests and at the end of the tests he said words that I’ll never forget. He said “Has anyone ever talked to you about ADHD?” And I said well, I don’t know if that really applies to me. And he said, “Look, you are freaking off the charts ADHD” those were his exact words. He said, “If there were a fifth standard deviation, you’d be in it.” And that was really the point when I started to get much more interested in productivity and in developing these systems. And I think that’s really important for people to recognize when I’m talking to them. That first of all, I’m an entrepreneur like you. I know what it’s like to have all these different bright shiny objects floating across your space. And I also am off the charts ADHD.

So the techniques that I share, they’re gleaned from some of the best time management and productivity teachers and tips out there in the world. But they’re adapted for the most disorganized people in the world and I’m one of them.

Andrew: Perfect. Perfect.

And we actually have a bunch of very specific tactics, big ideas but also very specific actionable tactics that are up here on the board and that we’re going to go through. And can you give us an example of one of the people who you’ve worked with who used the tactics that we’re going to teach the audience today and what you were able to do for them?

Dave: Yes. Well, I’ll give many examples as I go thorough this but one of the people that I helped was a business owner in particular who, when I went into his office, I thought he had ADHD. Now, I don’t have a background in psychology but having gone through a lot of this and studying quite a bit of it, I thought ‘My gosh, this guy has got it. He’s all over the place. He can’t concentrate. His desk is messy. People come in, he’s constantly multitasking on them’.

Well, one of the best testimonials I’ve ever received, I’ll never be able to use their name and face and you’ll know why in a second. I was at dinner with a group of business owners, including this gentleman and his wife. At one point, his wife took me aside and took me by the hand, and she had tears in her eyes, and she said, “I don’t know what you did to my husband, but thank you,” because he was someone who was bringing this chaos home with him all the time. And after I had finished working with him – now if you met him, you would have no idea who I was describing, because he can focus on you. He can pay attention. He’s calm. He deals with one item in his business at a time. And that’s the kind of result that I experienced personally and then began helping others create in their business, whether or not they were diagnosed as ADHD.

Andrew: You know what? I was looking over to the side as you were saying that, because I know that there’s a point here on the boards, that we’re going to get to about how – there it is – keep a clear mind, so you can sleep. And as you were talking about this gentleman, I realized, that happens to me, too. When work is chaos, I don’t sleep well at night. I feel like, “Oh, there’s one other thing that I forgot to do. And I’ve got to do this other thing over here tomorrow. And why didn’t I do this two days ago, or the person that I promised is going to be upset with me?” I don’t get enough sleep, and I don’t get enough done. All right, I want to be like that guy by the end of the session.

And more importantly, I want the person who’s watching us, who’s investing the time and energy in this program, to get that kind of result. So, let’s go to the big board right now, and take a look at the first big tactic that we’re going to be discussing here today, which is, you say, “Identify your personality to know your tendencies.” Now, there are different kinds of personalities. Let’s talk about them again, and then we’ll know how to figure out which one we are.

Dave: Yeah, I mentioned them briefly. So first of all, now I’m not talking about personality types like the disk assessment, and that sort of thing. I’m talking about productivity personality types. And this is how you’re inherently hardwired. There’s a group of people that I call the Zen master.

Andrew: Let me bring up this image as you talk about it.

Dave: Please do.

Andrew: Here it is. These are the three people, and I’m sure as we put this up on the screen that people are going to say, “Yeah, that is me.”

Dave: Exactly.

Andrew: So the first one you said is the Zen master. And, we see that lady there on the beach.

Dave: Exactly, she’s perfectly in tune with her environment. The Zen master has never been late for anything. Their office has always been immaculate. It’s been immaculate since they were a small child, and that’s the key, is how you were from the beginning, and the Zen master . . . This concept, Andrew, they probably when saw that you were interviewing me, thought, “This is a waste of time,” which is a big part of the problem for the Zen master. Because they do not comprehend that other people have a problem with time management because they never have.

Andrew: So, in your experience we’re probably not likely to have many Zen masters who are watching this. They don’t need this. They’re good.

Dave: One out of a hundred has been my experience. I mean, I’ll get in an audience of 1000 people and I’ll say, “How many of you identify with this,” and maybe five to ten will raise their hand. And so, what I say to this group who is listening to this right now, “If I can help the rest of the screwed up people around you stop making your life miserable would that be of value to you?”

Andrew: Right. And maybe you want to, if you happen to be listening to this, and it doesn’t connect with you because you’re one in a hundred, then maybe you want to give this to the other 99 people, who you work with.

Dave: Exactly, because you don’t know how to talk them, because you cannot comprehend them. But I know how to talk to them, because I know exactly . . .

Andrew: Well, I feel like sometimes everyone’s a Zen master, and I’m the only one who is in chaos. Let me bring up this image again. As we talk I realize, I’m more like the person in the middle there. Who’s that second category again?

Dave: I call them the lost soul. And the lost soul to someone who is inherently organized, from the beginning, they have been someone who has always been on time, and likes order, and likes organization. But about in the last ten to fifteen years or so, in particular everything; the stuff hit the fan. They stopped losing that control and it’s extremely frustrating to this group: because they crave order, because they crave organization, because they crave time management. And they can’t seem to figure out how to get to that point again, and so my job with that group is to show them where they got off track, and how to get back to that point that they used to know.

Andrew: And this last person over here, the one who you call the pigpen, right?

Dave: Right, the pigpen, yeah, they’re apparently disorganized.

Andrew: Can you help the pigpen?

Dave: Well, absolutely, because I am the pigpen. And it’s important to understand, that it’s not to say that the pigpen hasn’t been successful, or can’t be successful, but they’ve done it in spite of their natural tendency to create disorder and chaos, wherever they go. And so my job with the pigpen is to help them come up with the most simple solutions to still succeed, in spite of their natural tendency to create chaos. And I would also add that the Pig Pen also has the tendency to be really outgoing and gregarious and build relationships, so I would say my job is to help them to be organized without getting in the way of building those important relationships with the people that they care about.

Andrew: OK. Alright, actually before we go to the next tactic do you have an example of one thing that you can tell, one tip that you can give someone who thinks of themselves as a pig pen that shows them how they can use who they are to become more organized, to be more productive.

Dave: Yeah, well, the big thing is to recognize that you have strengths and what we need to do is eliminate everything in your life or as much as possible from your life that’s pulling away from your most valuable activities. And this is something I talk about a little bit more in my second book “Invaluable”, there are certain things that you do that are worth hundreds or thousands of dollars per hour but when you allow your time to get sucked into these low value, what I call the LVA’s, the less valuable activities, you’re wasting not only your own time but your wasting the precious resources of your business when you do that. So the first tip that I would have you in mind, and I think this applies really to all three categories as well is start to be aware of what are those high value activities and also be aware of when your spending time in the low value activities and just begin asking yourself the question, should I be doing this right now?

Andrew: I see, so its not necessarily what’s wrong with me that I’m not able to manage the high value activities and all the other activities in my life, it’s hey maybe you don’t need all those other activities, or maybe you don’t need some of them.

Dave: Right

Andrew: And I know that from looking at the big board that were going to be getting to more of that throughout but I wanted people in that category to know that this is for them too.

Dave: Exactly.

Andrew: So, on to the next big idea here. You say stop multitasking, which is kind of controversial in this world where we have iPhones, where we feel like we can check our iPhone while were talking to somebody and maybe write out an email at the same time. You say stop multitasking and acknowledge the problem.

Dave: Right. The first thing that I want to clarify is I do not view myself as a multitasking expert. There are a lot of people who are much more intelligent and a lot more patient than I am who have done the studies, who have done the research and on my book in the myth of multitasking I cite references aplenty in the back, and more and more studies come out all the time. I view myself as the evangelist and what that means is my job is to convince people that it’s wrong and to change their behavior. Because I think a lot of your audience has heard at some point that multitasking is bad for you, I mean they may have heard it on NPR, they might have read the study by Stanford, I mean it’s been all over the place. But there’s a big problem with that. Understanding it intellectually has not changed people’s behavior and if you want evidence of that just go to any public place and see how many people are doing this.

Andrew: Head down in their phones.

Dave: All the time, constantly. Yeah, or go to a classroom, I even saw a professor who wrote a sign and it said “Dear Student, I know when you’re multitasking or I know when your texting because no one looks down at their crotch and smiles”. Right, well that is the world that we live in right now. We have a world that is addicted to the concept of multitasking. So what I do in my book and actually on the site and anyone can take this for free, I have a little exercise they can go through and I recommend that you go through this. If you have employees, have your employees go through this. If you have a spouse, go through it with them and in a matter of about four minutes you’re going to understand very clearly the three costs of multitasking because when you multitask what your really doing is your switching rapidly back and forth and when I work with people all I’m really trying to do is to help them reduce the number of switches taking place in their day because if we can do that three things are going to happen.

Number 1, your going to get more done in less time. Number two, you’re going to make less mistakes. And number 3, your stress levels are going to dramatically decrease. And that is why multitasking is my number one target and why I rephrase it as switch tasking because what your really doing switching back and forth.

Andrew: OK. So what will this allow us to do, and of course we’ll include a link to this page and to this test with the program. What is the test going to show us and what will it allow us to do?

Dave: You’re going to do a simple exercise something that’s very, you’ve been doing since you were a small child. You’re going to do it once with just one thing at time and then you’re going to do it again, and the second time you’re going to switch tasks. Then you’re going to compare the results, and you’re going to see those three effects. Things take longer, you make more mistakes and your stress level is increased. Everyone experiences that to some degree. Some experience it less than others, but everyone experiences it because it’s simply math. You cannot ignore the fact that when you try to do two things at the same time you have to make a transition, and that transition, that switching cost, is costing you. Most people are doing it constantly.

They’re probably, a lot of people are probably doing it right now as their listening to this interview, and they’re missing out on a lot of value that they could gain by just focusing on one thing at a time.

Andrew: All right, I see, and what you’re saying is; hey, Andrew, we could spent 5-10 minutes, maybe even 15 minutes, and convince people of this. Or we could send them over to this exercise where they can see if for themselves, and really see in their own lives what kind of an impact multi- tasking has.

Dave: Exactly, the most jaded mutitaskers in the world, after they take this, it’s like they just got hit across the face with a sack of bricks. The evidence does not lie, and it’s right in front of them, and they just did it to themselves.

Andrew: All right, for anyone who didn’t see that screenshot, for whatever reason, and needs the URL it’s davecrenshaw.com/multitasking-example. On to the big board, let’s take a look at the next big idea that we’re going to be covering here is. You say shut of e-mail, text, phones and any other interruptions. (?) like this dude right here.

Dave: You probably saw him driving on the road. In fact, there’s a great video, if you like watching good things on YouTube. If you search for video guy texting while driving, there’s actually, someone was in one car and they took a shot of someone else in their car driving and texting at the same time. You see these people all the time, but more, I think more damaging to us is that we are those people. I remember I said, my primary goal is to get people to reduce the number of switches that take place in their day.

If we can reduce the number of switches that take place in your day we’re going to increase the amount of available time that you have. In the neighborhood, when I take someone a business (?), or I take them through a two day boot camp. Usually at the end of that day they end up with an extra 20% of disposable time. There’s actually research that bares this out by a company called Base Text Research, out of New York, that found that the average knowledge worker, and entrepreneurs certainly fall into that category, loses 28% of their time due to interruptions and recovery time associated with those interruptions.

I just call it switches and switching cost. I have a great example of that, it’s actually a client that I was working with and he told me that it happened just a week before I worked with him. He was in Buffalo, so he was going to get on the plane to fly to New York. What happened was is that he was really involved in his conversation that he was having, and so he wasn’t really paying attention where he was. He handed his ticket to the person at the gate and then went through. Well, it turned out he got on the wrong plane and ended up in Boston.

Now a lot of people hearing that are going to say; how in the world is that possible in today’s super high security, attention to detail world that we live in right now? Well, here’s what happened, there was a slight problem with the ticket scanner, and the attendant was multi-tasking at the same time. So only was he not paying attention, but she was not paying attention.

He got on the plane, sat on the seat, and ended up in Boston. I mean, that is just amazing to me, and it’s one of the most dramatic examples I’ve heard of how multi-tasking costs you so much. So if you can get rid of these digital distractions it’s going to help you reduce the switches.

Andrew: What about this Dave, I understand that, that’s a danger, but when I think; should I look at my phone while I’m getting on the plane? I think, I’m not going to be the one guy who gets on the wrong plane. It’s not going to happen today. When I get a text message while I’m driving, I’m not the person who’s going to get into an accident. Frankly, those the big points where I multi-task and where the person listening to us is likely to multi- task. I might be; hey I have to keep my IM program going during the day because if someone needs me I have to be around. Or I have to keep my phone available, if someone calls me I have to be around, and of course e-mail has to be available. More and more people are on Twitter and Facebook so I have to be available there. What about those? In those situations we’re not likely to get into an accident. In those situations, we’re not likely to get into an accident. In those situations we’re not likely to have the dramatic bad ending.

Dave: Right.

Andrew: So what’s wrong with doing it at that point?

Dave: Well, here’s the most simple example. Let’s say I’m typing an e-mail on my screen, I’m typing away and the phone rings. I pick up the phone, I say hey how you doing, I answer the question, I say the answer’s 42 thank you very much, I hang up. Now what do I need to do? I need to figure out where was I in that e-mail, what was I thinking about, where was I typing? So that 30 second phone call will actually end up costing me several minutes or more.

In fact, there was a study out of Microsoft with programmers, that found it took them 15 minutes to recover from an interruption back to programming activities. Now the Mac fans would say, well that’s because they’re from Microsoft. But you get the idea. These little tiny quick questions, I call them the dreaded double queue, these little quick questions. Actually cost you huge amounts of time and you’re not aware of it.

This is where that feeling comes from at the end of the day, when you put your feet up on the couch, and you say; man I’ve been working really hard and perhaps your spouse says; well what were you doing today? You kind of think about it and you say; I don’t know but I was working. That’s because all you were doing all day long was switching, paying switching cost. So it’s much better to stage the time that you spend on these things. You can answer e-mail, have a set time to answer e-mail. You can answer your phone, but have a set time to go through the voicemail, and reduce the number of switches that are taking place.

Andrew: I find in my life when I do it, it’s often because what I’m working on I don’t want to finish because it’s tough or because I can’t think of the next step really quickly. So if I’m writing an e-mail and I can’t think of how to say no to somebody, I might say; I better make sure there’s nothing going on, on Twitter. Because if someone’s complaining on Twitter I have to handle it, and if I see some issue on Twitter that I can’t respond to I think; maybe I should check the customer support message boards and see if there is an issue there. It’s me giving myself an out of a touch process, where if I really would have focused on it I would have figured out that it wasn’t so tough after all. I could say no to people.

Dave: You mentioned a great phrase there, when I have difficulty figuring out the next step. I mentioned that my training is based on the best training in the world, that’s the great thing that David Allen teaches in getting things done. Is focusing on the next step, and what I would say is you have to stick with it, just like you said, until you’ve got that figured out and then move on.

Andrew: All right, on to the next big idea which is to get rid of gathering points, reduce gathering points. What do you mean by that?

Dave: Well, what I mean is there are lots of different places, let’s reference Dave Allen again. He talks about all these different, he calls them collecting points, they’re from places where things collect that need to be dealt with, unprocessed stuff.

I dealt with a client once, what we do is we actually measure how many of these gathering points that they actually have. She had 161 different gathering points, different places she had to go. (?) paper, piles stuffed in her drawers, different places where she had to go to get things. Now let’s look at this in the context of multitasking or switch tasking. If I have to switch back and forth to go back and forth to all these different places to get things, I’m incurring switching cost. I use a metaphor, just kind of an example, imagine that you and I, Andrew, are in an apple picking contest. Our job is to pick 100 apples and put them into one basket. All right? Same number, same basket, but you have to go to 20 trees to get your apples and I have to go to five trees to get my apples. Who’s going to win? It’s very simple, right? Because you’re going like this, picking all your stuff and I’m just going back and forth, back and forth to get my stuff and I put it all in one spot.

A lot of people, especially the pig pens, use the excuse of; well I know where everything is. They use that saying I can still be productive. Yes, you know where everything is, but you have to go to so many different places. You have to go to five different e-mail accounts to get things, you have to look through five different drawers. All this time is wasted. So what I do is that I recommend people take the number of gathering points, and the average person has about 30-40 and I recommend that you get it down to about six. Six or less if you can do it.

Andrew: Can you give me an example of what gathering points are? In fact actually I think we have a visual of it that will give us a sense of what some of these are. Let me bring these up.

Dave: Sure. I recommend that the six recommended gathering points are as follows; number one is a physical inbox. One place where everything goes that is paper, or even cords or cables, whatever it is, one place. So you might need a really big inbox.

Andrew: Even cords, I was thinking of an inbox as a place where I got paper mail that’s where it would go. You’re saying even cords, anything that’s not organized.

Dave: Yes, I worked with an interior design company once, their dealing with huge swatches of fabric and pieces of granite tabletops. So they have these massive inboxes because you want to leave plenty of room, you just throw something in if you see it out of place.

Andrew: I see. Anything that is out of place goes right into this bucket.

Dave: Exactly. Number two is the portable inbox, the mobile extension of the inbox. You want to carry it with you wherever you go, you have it with you at all times. It’s just one slot within the briefcase, not the entire briefcase. Number three is a notepad, and that can be either digital or physical, but I would not recommend both. What I prefer to use myself is Evernote, but what I would tell everyone listening you don’t need to go out and get Evernote. If you are in the habit of writing physical notes, use a notepad, but one notepad. Don’t breed notepads like rabbits.

Andrew: You know what, you use Evernote and it’s like many new programs today that allow you to create lots of different notes within the one program and tag them and so on. Do you keep one note, or when you say keep one notepad, Evernote’s the one notepad and you can have lots of different notes within that program?

Dave: Yes. For Evernote I created a notepad called inbox, and when you create the notepad it asks you do you want to make this the default notepad, and I click yes. So I just create new notes and they go into inbox and I have a set time each week that I go through that and I bring it to zero.

Andrew: I see, OK. So if you scan something in it automatically goes into the default notepad. If you type something up in the middle of a conversation it goes into that default notepad. You just want one bucket for all of these notes to go into and later on you sort them.

Dave: Exactly.

Andrew: All right, let’s go on and take a look at the next one. The next one is.

Dave: Email, one email inbox.

Andrew: One email inbox.

Dave: Not multiple ones, you can have multiple email accounts, that’s not the issue. Personally my company uses Google Apps, so we use the Gmail inbox and I’ve got probably seven different email accounts, but they all go into that one email inbox. So that again saves me time I don’t have to jump back and forth log into Hotmail and Gmail, and all these different things. Just one spot. Then voicemail, one voicemail. Not a home voicemail, a cell phone voicemail and an office voicemail, one. Make sure all of your messages go in that one spot, and incidentally this is one gathering point I no longer have. I use a service called YouMail, what it does is it takes all of those messages and sends them to my email inbox. I can still access them through my phone, but the point is I don’t have to. I don’t have to go to that spot to access them.

The last, I just call it the wild card, and the wildcard is you choose. Some people feel that they need to use text messaging as a gathering point, or some people have a dedicated personal assistant. They tell the assistant; hey remind me to do this, by the way when you tell someone hey remind me to do this, you’re trying to use them as a gathering point. So you can choose whatever it is. Maybe you need two inboxes, you need one for home and one for personal, but that’s up to you.

The idea is to get down from that 30-40, which most people have, get it down to six or less. That will dramatically reduce the number of switches that are taking place in your day.

Andrew: I see. When you talk to someone who is unproductive you will often find that they have multiple places that they go to check email, they will have that message within Facebook, that inbox there, and they’ll have the inbox in e-mail and maybe another random site. It’s just too many places and that’s why they’re not productive.

Dave: Yes. Just yesterday I just worked with somebody who has 80.

Andrew: Eighty, I can’t even imagine 80. What’s the most outrageous one that they have?

Dave: One hundred sixty-one, I think I mentioned that at the beginning. 161 is still the winner.

Andrew: I mean, what’s the most out of all of that? I can’t even imagine that there would be 161 possible places to store things. What’s the most unique place that people store things?

Dave: I think, if I were to pick the top two worst or, I wouldn’t say unusual, but they really become problems is the car. Now remember I said that I’m ADHD and anyone who knows ADHD is that it’s genetic. Right? Well my dad uses the entire car as one gathering point. Now that might sound good in theory, but what we’re talking about is it’s all stuffed in the glove box and underneath the seats, and in the trunk. I mean it’s just filled to the top. You can’t even see out the window. That’s his tendency to do that.

Andrew: I see.

Dave: I would have to say, honestly, when I see people do that, that’s usually the worst. I would say number two is people who are constantly stuffing things in their pockets. When you do that you’re making every single pocket a separate gathering point.

Andrew: You know what, I identify with that now. You’re right, and I don’t do this on a regular basis, but I’ll occasionally find myself making something and extra gathering point for receipts. Then if we happen to be taking notes on paper, I’ll make another place of gathering, and I do this on business trips all the time. Got a receipt I don’t have time to do anything with it, this inside jacket is going to be my place to store receipts on this trip. When people who are handing you their business cards, this pocket over here is for business cards that I care about, this pocket in the back is for business cards that I don’t really need. Now I’ve created three gathering places within a day of being at this business trip.

Dave: You’ve got it. That brings up another principle, it’s not on the bullet point list, but I think it’s important to understand. People will say; well Dave you must be really disciplined to do this, and in fact I think I’m one of the most undisciplined people in the world. What I teach is that conditioning matters more than discipline. If you think about how to become a great athlete or musician, you repeat the same activity over and over until it becomes second nature. So what you were just describing there, Andrew, is a matter of conditioning. If I could help you through working with you to put it in one spot through repetition, then it becomes automatic to you. Then you don’t have to think about it anymore when you go to those meetings.

Andrew: All right. That makes sense. On to the big board again. Let’s look at the next big idea, which is to huddle at a consistent regular, scheduled time.

Dave: Right. So one of the most common problems in workplaces, and if you have employees, is the fact that you’re getting these little quick questions. The dreaded double queue. Sorry I’ve got just a quick question. As we establish that’s chewing up a lot of your time so what you want to do instead, first I will give you an example. I was working with the vice president of a major financial company, and one of the things that we do when we set up the boot camp is we say; hey you’re not to be interrupted during that time. You’re going to get work done, but we can’t have people coming in and interrupting you. So at his office he had this little window by the door so you could see people. Every little bit, and let’s see if I can do this on camera, every couple of minutes I’d see this out of the window. Right? This would happen over and over. The vulture swirling around waiting to swoop in.

Andrew: Just waiting for him to be done so that.

Dave: Exactly, so they could ask the question. We’ve all experienced that right, at least a lot of people experience that. So I said hey; Mr. Vice President I can see this person needs your attention let’s bring her in and see what she has. She comes in, what does she say? Sorry I’ve got just a quick question. Right? It really was something that could have waited. So the question is why, when she was told that she was not to interrupt him during this time, why did she still do this?

This comes down to a principle that I call the culture of now versus the culture of when. The culture of now is that if you have a question you need it answered now, if the phone rings I answer it now, if an e-mail comes in I answer it now. The culture of when says; no we’re going to answer all of these questions, we’re going to answer every single e-mail, we’re going to deal with every single piece of paper, this is when we’re going to do it.

So this principle that you have on the board of establishing a huddle, I call it the one to one huddle, is saying; let’s set up a time, a when you and I are going to meet. Andrew, let’s say you and I worked together, we have a set time every Thursday at 3 o’clock for thirty minutes, and we’re going to bring all of our quick questions to that meeting, and I’m not going to allow anything else to distract me, and we’re just going to share these quick questions back and forth.

One manufacturing company that I work with implemented this and this one thing, just the one to one huddle, increased productivity in the company overall by 20%.

Andrew: You know what? I can totally see how we can use this here within Mixergy. In fact, I was looking at the board and I saw that, this is a little redundant why did Jeremy, our producer write consistent, regular? Then I realized this is the one thing that makes my work with Jeremy go so well, the producer. He has this once a week meeting that is pretty much sacrosanct. We sit and we talk about all the issues that he’s had talking to guests, pre-interviewing guests, how can we improve them and it avoids a lot of back and forth.

Now when I think of my Inbox and all the back and forths that we have in there with people who are trying to figure out Should I post, should we post that, we should do just one once a week meeting for half an hour where we handle all the questions at that point, there’s rarely a crisis that can’t wait until that point. And as you say, if we condition ourselves and condition the company internally to wait until that meeting, I think we can reduce the back and forth that distracts me. The “Hey, Andrew. I couldn’t find you on email you so I’m pinging you on Skye. You didn’t answer my Skype so I’m texting you to say this potential guest PR person has a question.” No, let’s handle it once a week. It can wait.

Dave: You got it. Most of the fires that people are getting are fires because you don’t have this meeting. If you established it, the fires would go away.

Andrew: You know what? We always do images here. We’ve got an image for this, there is Google Calendar.

What do you think of this, by the way? The need for constantly have images for each one of these tactics. Does it feel a little bit overkill when I suddenly say when you make that point and I bring up Google calendar?

Dave: Hey man, it’s your style. I’m not going to crimp your style.

Andrew: Has a higher perceived value. Let people know that it’s just not word, we give them images and we show them where we’re going with this big board here [??]to.

Next big idea. This is the one that captured my attention earlier, which is keep a clear mind so you can sleep. Eliminate internal distractions by putting unresolved stuff into one of the six gathering points that we talked about earlier.

Dave: Yes. Now, you got a great image for that. Let’s bring that one up because I can tell story about that.

This actually came from my nephew who was in Toronto a couple of years back, they had this sanitation workers strike. And so you see this picture of all, they weren’t gathering the trash. People were just stuffing more and more trash in. This is a perfect example of what most of the people are listening to, most of your minds look like.

Now I ‘m not saying you have a dirty mind. What I’m saying is you have all of these tasks and to-do’s in your head but here, I want you to understand the real cost is with this and goes back to the myth of multitasking. When you have these thoughts in your mind, you’re causing yourself to switch task. So you’re incurring that loss of time, you’re incurring an increase on mistakes, and you’re increasing stress levels because you are switch tasking on yourself throughout the day and throughout the night.

And so the real solution to this is to take all of these ideas, all these tasks and to-do’s and put them into an approved gathering point, one of those six places we talked about before. It doesn’t matter which one you put it into. It really doesn’t. Whatever is most convenient, just chose one of those six and put it in. Now I will say, you wan to be careful to consider the context. For instance, if I want to leave myself a voice mail message, right now something came to mind. I want to say “Andrew, pause the interview a message so I can leave myself a voice mail message” or one time when I was asleep or it was at night and I had an idea come to my head and I recorded myself a message, next morning I listened to the message and it was [inaudible]. I don’t know what that idea was, it’s gone forever. So maybe writing down on that context would have been a little better. But just get them out of my head. And then have a time to process them later.

Andrew: so I understand the need to get it out of your head because when it’s in your head it feels bigger than it actually is and it’s constantly distracting and it’s no way to make sure that you actually do everything that you need to.

One of the problems though with putting things out of your head onto a list or onto one of the gathering spots that we talked about earlier is that list, that to-do list becomes so big that it becomes overwhelming on its own. Those gathering spots become so big that they become another big giant obligation that just feels like it’s hanging over your head and hanging over everything that you do.

So how do you eliminate that problem? And by the way, the benefit of that is that it gets really exciting. Someone is going to finish watching us right now, they’re going to start putting things into the right buckets. They’re going to start making to-do lists, everything will look so great, I’ll get all the compliments, you’ll get all the compliments and appreciation for having done this. But a month in the future those things will be overwhelming. What do we do then?

Dave: Right. So what you want to do is have a consistent time and schedule, now we’re going back to that schedule, to clean these things out. I recommend that the average person spends about five hours a week. It could be a little bit more, a little bit less, depending on how many hours a week you’re working. You have a set time and a set place each week to go through each of these gathering points, and clear them out and bring them to zero.

In my book “Invaluable”, I actually give you the processing system that I use. It’s very, very simple. I can tell it to you right now; it’s what, when, where. What, when, where, that’s all you need to know. What’s the next step, when are we going to do it, and where’s it’s home, and if you can answer those three questions about every single item that comes through, you’re processing, you’re taking care of them. Doesn’t have to be more complex than that. We don’t need some dramatic flow chart with defer and all that kind of stuff. What, when, where, that’s all you need

Andrew: You mentioned earlier that you will go through your electronic list, your electronic gathering place, Evernote, and organize it once a week. When do you do that?

Dave: My processing time is Monday and Friday. So I have a big chunk of time that I spend on Monday and a big chunk of time that I spend on Friday. I find that I work best in large chunks of time. One of the keys in success and productivity is understanding what works best for you. Productivity is more about rhythm than perpetual motion. So you need to figure out what rhythm is best for you, and this, like I said I draw from lots of different sources. Ed Howell, who is an expert on ADHD, talks about this. Of understanding your flow and your best time of the day to do these things. So find your best time of the day, and one of the best times to process is when you’re least likely to be interrupted.

Processing time in my opinion is absolutely sacred. I talked about your most valuable activities, it is equal to the highest valued activity that you could be doing. So if you’re doing something, you’re worth $2,000 dollars per hour, processing value is equal to that because it leverages your time to be able to stay in those $2,000 per hour activities.

Andrew: How long before, I have to get to the next item on the big board, but I’ve got one other question. How long before we start to see results? We have brought people into this session who are saying to themselves; I can’t get enough done and now Andrew is making me listen to, roughly, an hour long program. All right, I’ll find the time, I made the time. Now Dave Crenshaw is telling me that I need to find time to process, how am I going to find that time? At what point do they start to see the payoff for all this invested time?

Dave: Ok, there are two different questions here. I love this question. The first thing is it’s an illusion that it’s going to take you more time to process. Here’s why it’s an illusion, because remember that statistic that I said before about basics. 28% of your time is lost to switches and switching cost well, a big part of that is the fact that you’re making these processing decisions. You’re already doing that, remember processing is just what, when, where. You’re making what, when, where decisions throughout your day. The only difference is, is what I’m telling you to do is stop making those decisions throughout the day and make them at a set time.

So most of the people listening to this are already spending in the neighborhood of 10-15-20 hours a week processing. They don’t think they’re doing it because they are doing it haphazardly all over the place. So when you do 5 hours a week it’s actually less time, it’s a paradox.

Andrew: We may not be aware of it at first, and I can see myself thinking; well suddenly there’s this big chunk of my day that’s spent doing this work that Dave suggested. But, the other part is invisible, it’s there, it’s painful, it’s distracting, it’s causing all kinds of problems, but just because it’s invisible doesn’t mean that it’s not impacting me. Just because I’m less aware of it. Sorry you were going to saw something else.

Dave: That’s fine. The other part of the question is; how long? Really it depends on how you go about doing it. This is probably not going to be the politically correct answer, but it’s a true answer. When I work with someone, when I take someone through my boot camp usually it takes two weeks, two weeks or less. The reason is, you have accountability. I’m a big believer in accountability, I have coaches for a variety of areas of my life. Because when you have someone outside of you, holding you accountable, pushing you through the activities it helps you perform better.

So if you do it with that kind of accountability you’re going to get results really fast. If you try to do it by yourself, you might succeed. I would give you a 50/50 chance of success, and if you succeed it’s probably going to take you, in the neighborhood, of several months, 2-3 months to do it. So you can succeed with it, I’m not going to say you can’t.

Andrew: If you can succeed without accountability, you’re just less likely to do it, and it will take longer to succeed with accountability. If we want to get accountability, what’s an easy way for us to do it?

Dave: Well, the easiest way, and I am giving this option at the end, is to take the chaos assessment on my site. What that will do is it will tell you the path that you can take to get accountability. There’s certain things that aren’t going to, it’s not cost effective for everyone listening to this to work with me, and it’s not going to be my time isn’t available for that. For some people it’s worth it. What that would do is tell them how they can get accountability in a way that is custom fit for their situation where they’re at right now.

Andrew: Ok. I’ve got that as a last item that we’re going to talk about today, and we’re going to show people where they can go to take this assessment. I want to make sure that we’re giving people a full enough answer to the accountability issue. Are you saying if they can’t work with you that they can work with someone else in their office, or another entrepreneur, or a family member who’s willing to help them be accountable?

Dave: Yes. You have three options; you have friends, mentors, and coaches. Friends are great because they are easy to access and they are free. The downside is that friends have their own life going on, and because they are your friends they are not going to push you as much as they should. Mentors are great because they have been there and done that, but again they have their own life and schedule. Sometimes they’re a little bit harder to pin down. I mean getting Andrew to mentor me, I’m going to really have to smooze you quite a bit, convince you that it’s worth your time.

Andrew: Well, you’re Dave Crenshaw you can get me to do just about anything, but I understand what you’re saying getting someone who doesn’t know me to give that time, it’s rough. So you’re suggesting a coach, someone who’s prepared to do this, whose job it is to do this, is going to be much more consistent.

Dave: A coach’s success is depended upon your success. That means they have not other interests in mind except for you, and it’s much easier to get a regular set time to work with them. So, yes. Can I build a great body on my own? Yes I can, but I’m going to do a whole lot better if I have a personal trainer kicking me in the rear in a friendly nice way.

Andrew: But it is possible to do with friends, it’s possible to do with mentors if you’ve got them. Just make sure that you work out a plan to hold, to get them to hold you accountable, and maybe if it’s friends to hold each other accountable.

Dave: Yes, and in the assessment we’ll show you how to get a system that you can use with a friend or mentor on your own.

Andrew: Perfect, I want to make sure that we leave people with that option. Alright, on to the big board, the next big idea is to budget your time. Budget your time by pulling out your calendar to schedule everything or you’re going to repay with interest.

Dave: Exactly, and I compare this to money, and I will try to be brief about this. If you go into debt with money what’s the cost? The cost is interest. Right? I don’t just repay it, I repay it plus the interest rate. So the trick question is can you go into debt with time? Can I borrow time? The answer is yes. I borrow though from one thing to pay something else. I borrow from sleep to pay work. I borrow from my friends to pay my family. If I, and you always have to repay it with interest. If I borrow a date with my wife, Andrew, you know I’m going to have to repay that with interest over a long period of time. Right?

Andrew: Yes.

Dave: So, the key is to stay within budget, to live within our means.

Andrew: I was just patting down my head, I realized that I scratched my head and it made my hair (?).

Dave: You were giving me football signals man. I’m like pass, run.

Andrew: (?) a CEO mom who you were working with?

Dave: Yes.

Andrew: (?) been doing this?

Dave: So what we did was we sat down and looked at how much time she was spending on all of her different activities. There are only 168 hours in a week, right, well she had accounted for 190 hours of activity.

Andrew: What does that mean that she accounted for 190 hours?

Dave: It means that based upon her estimates, the amount of time she was spending on all the different things that she was doing, she thought she was spending 190 hours a week. Well, what it turned out was she was switch tasking to account for that. Every evening she thought she was spending time with her family what she was really doing, she was spending time in the presence of her family doing stock research.

Andrew: I see.

Dave: She was borrowing from family to pay work.

Andrew: I see.

Dave: So, there was a huge cost to her children and she realized it. I can’t tell you, Andrew, how many stories I hear of entrepreneur after entrepreneur who has bought into, what I call the con. The con is that if I sacrifice my family, if I sacrifice my time, in the end I’m going to get this payoff. When in fact what happens is that you just sacrifice yourself and get nothing.

The good news is, the CEO, once she realized this, she began to establish a budget. She went home that night and said to her children; I’m here for you I want to focus on you. What was her children’s reaction, what, who are you, who is this person? They were shocked at first, but then they believe her and more important she delivered on the promise.

If we live our life in budget we’ll not spend so much budget. Right now a lot of people are just playing catch up all the time, with everything that they’re borrowing from and just repaying interest.

Andrew: The visual that I had for this, I was supposed to have two visuals for it, not suppose to but Jeremy suggested two. So of course the cover of The Myth of Multitasking, your book, the second things is he was thinking we might want to show a page in the book, and I wasn’t sure exactly how to do that right. So for anyone who has the book, what page, or what section do you think they should look at for this topic?

Dave: There’s a series of worksheets at the end of that, and it’s called the time budgeter worksheet. You can find that in there and the “Myth of Multitasking” is a story. So in the story you’ll see the coach take the CEO through that experience. The experience that I told you is actually part of the mash up of the story that’s in “Myth of Multitasking”. Then you can actually go through the same exercise that I took the CEO through.

Andrew: By the way, I used to do that once. I remember being out on a date with someone, I have this memory in my mind, Soho, New York I remember the exact restaurant. I remember how I pulled out my phone and was checking e- mails and talking to someone while she was sitting there. I didn’t understand why she was frustrated, not about that night, but I didn’t understand the frustration because she said; we’re not spending enough time together. I kept thinking, yes we are, what is wrong with you?

Dave: Right. We’ll touch on that a little bit more. You can see it in other examples as well. I once was racing because I forgot something and I was trying to borrow from the amount of travel time that it really should take. In order to get from this meeting that I was attending back, because I forgot this important tool. Well, because I was racing I got a speeding ticket. Right? So I tried to save five minutes of time, I got the speeding ticket, so I had to go to traffic school, it took me three hours.

So borrowing from that, borrowing five minutes, it cost me three hours. No one in their right mind would pay that kind of interest rate with money. But we pay that with time all the time.

Andrew: On to the big board again. The next big idea is to establish expectations. In fact, let me read this one thing that Jeremy wrote down here in his notes from your pre-interview conversation. Your voicemail should say exactly when you’ll get back to them not fall back on I’ll get back to you as soon as possible, and that’s just one example of how you’re saying; establish expectations for people let them know what they can count on as a response.

Dave: Right. This is back to the culture of now the culture of when. If you call the average person’s voicemail it will say; I’ll get back to you as soon as possible. When is that? In their mind, that’s five minutes. So if you don’t get back to them in five minutes, what do they do? They call you again, or they text you, or they send you an e-mail; did you get my message? So instead if we establish the expectation we move it to the culture of when. In my case my voicemail message says; I return my calls at noon and 4 p.m. Mountain Time and if you call me after 4:30 Mountain time I’ll return your call the next morning. Now, that doesn’t have to be your schedule but you want to establish some kind of expectation that you know you’re going to meet or exceed. Then you’ll see that the number of interruptions you’re getting from all these people, who seem to be bothering you, they’ll start to disappear.

Andrew: What about this? One of the reasons why people are afraid to do that is that if for some reason one day they can’t answer their phone (?). They feel like they’ve committed themselves to letting people down, they’ve let people down that day. They keep imagining that by setting those kinds of expectations, they are going to one day set themselves up for failure. It’s one thing to say, hey I’ll call you back as soon as possible and not return for a week. When you set a clear expectation and don’t return and then don’t do it again, you’ve let people down.

Dave: Right. Well, I think in both cases you’re in trouble, right? So the key is to set expectations that you know you can meet. So, if you’re at the beginning of this and you feel like you’re always behind, then set an expectation that’s going to take you two business days, to return their call. Now at least, you’ve taken control of the conversation and you’ve moved it to the culture of when. If they don’t like two business days, then they’ll reach out to you, they’ll try to get you some other way. But, at least they know what to expect, rather than just guessing, which is going to cause them to switch task a lot too, by the way.

Andrew: Got this. What is this and who put this where?

Dave: This is actually from my son, Stratton [SP], so funny, the things that kids pick up from you, from osmosis. I saw that outside of his door one day when he left for school. So, he had heard dad talking about this and he established an expectation for us so that we knew when he was going to get back to his room from school. I just think it’s a great picture to illustrate.

Andrew: Do you train your son and your family in these ideas too?

Dave: Absolutely. I wouldn’t say I’m some crazy, militant guy about it. But, absolutely, because I know that he’s got the same genetic stock as me. So, if he can start learning these things early . . . I mean he’s already got the same pig pen tendencies, with the messy desk and everything. We talk to him a lot about the myth of multitasking and in his home, excuse me, in his room, he’s got probably about 30 different homes. Homes are those places where things should be put, so you know where they go. We do try to teach him about it.

Andrew: Thanks for including that personal shot in here. Next big point is, stop showing people that they’re unimportant. That’s what I was talking about a moment ago. Essentially this, though we weren’t living together.

Dave: Yeah. When I speak, ‘cuz I speak at a lot of corporate events and associations and large entrepreneur groups, one of the things that we’ll do is another little exercise. I’ll just explain it to you, for 30 seconds you turn to a partner and you tell them about your favorite hobby and then you switch roles. The other person tells you about a favorite hobby, but this time you multitask on that person. You play with their phone, you shuffle your papers, you give them partial attention and then at the end of that I ask the audience in one word, how did that make them feel? When someone was multitasking on you, how did that make you feel? The one word I hear every time is unimportant. Now imagine, you start your day, you turn to a loved one, you say, “Hi, you’re unimportant, what are you going to do today?” Or, you pick up the phone at work and you say, “Thanks for calling XYZ Company, your unimportant, how can I help you?” Now, we would never do that, but we do that.

When we multitask on people, that’s exactly what we’re communicating to them, that they’re unimportant. I talked about the three costs of multitasking, but there’s really a forth effect, which is it damages relationships. It damages them in very severe ways, if we continue to do this over a long period of time. Instead, if we could be someone who focuses on individuals and gives them our full attention, we build relationships faster and stronger then we ever did before.

Andrew: So painful to think about. The times that I didn’t do that. In the moment you don’t recognize that there’s a problem, it takes some time. This isn’t an internal pain from this one relationship, but I just keep thinking about times when I did do it. When I got really excited about email, when I made the mistake that this gentleman right here is making.

Dave: Yeah. Can I tell a brief story about this to wrap it up?

Andrew: Absolutely.

Dave: I’m a big football fan, in particular NFL, so obviously the Super Bowl would be a big deal. We had family and friends over, this happened a few years ago. This was the first Giants/Patriots game for the Super Bowl and we had friends over and I’m watching the game and I’m into it and I look down and see my then two year old son look up at me. He’s got a book about Eskimos, he says, “Daddy, read story.” in the middle of the Super Bowl, right? So, what do I do, what can I do in this situation? Three options went through my head immediately. Number one, is to tell him to go away, I’m watching the Super Bowl, right? Which I suppose I could have done. Number two was multitask, right? I put him on my lap, I read the story to him and then touchdown, I’m sorry, where were we? There are four effects, right? Things take longer, I’d make more mistakes, I would increase both of our stress levels and I’d damage the relationship. In that case and by the way for you smart alecs, a DVR was not an option, because we had friends there. I’m not going to pause the video why I read the book to my son. The third option, was, to just read him the story. Do you know how long it took me to read that story? It took me three minutes. Three minutes, to read this book to him. I don’t know what I missed during that time. Whether it was a sac, a fumble, or a funny beer commercial, but he knew, and I knew, that we were together. That I was focused on him. You know what he said at the end of the story, “Thank you Daddy,” and went off to do what two year olds do.

Everybody listening to this, we have these opportunities every single day. You’re going to have these within an hour of ending this call. If you can be the person who focuses on others, and gives them your full attention and says with your eyes, your ears, and your intent, I have nothing better to do than listen to you right now. You, differentiate yourself, in a world right now, that is addicted to multitasking.

Andrew: That is really powerful by the way. You’re right, because I do want to find places to differentiate myself. I do want to find ways to stand out and, that’s an easy thing to do.

Dave: Yes

Andrew: All right, that’s an easy way to do it with someone. I don’t have to remember every bit of their history. I don’t have to have to do a lot of work. I just focus on what they are saying.

Dave: Yes, just be there. Just be there with them.

Andrew: All right, here it goes. The final thing we talked about this earlier. Let me show the website.

Dave: We will just get right to it.

Andrew: This is where the assessment is, right?

Dave: Yes.

Andrew: The URL is? I thought I had it on here.

Dave: Harnesschaos.com

Andrew: Harnesschaos.com, and, of course, we will link to it. Can you tell us a little more about this?

Dave: Yes, this is a really cool thing we put together this year. We’ve gotten great results form it. What it is, is a brief assessment. You can watch a little video that will explain about it on the site. You answer a series of questions about your personal productivity and your business productivity. Then we will get your answers. Actually, a live person goes through your answers and sends you a custom action plan, based upon the actions you put down. This is completely free. What you will get with the action plan is, two columns on one side that tells you want you can do, it doesn’t cost you a dime. The other side, will tell you what you can do, but will be a bit of an investment, but it’s a fast track. It will get your results faster and more reliable. I would encourage everyone ti take that assessment. That will let you know what resources are available to help you to get more conditioned to be more productive. Regardless if you are a Zen master trying to help other people, a lost soul trying to get back on track, or your inherently a pig pen.

Andrew: I was surprised when you told me before we started, you said that was an actual human being who goes through all those responses. I thought you had the whole thing automated. I figured you probably wouldn’t do it.

Dave: No, I think that again, as differentiator right now, where we live in an automated world. It’s not that hard for us to do it. It just insures that the results you get are accurate and fit for you.

Andrew: All right, that’s a great way to leave it and a great follow up on what we’ve all been watching here. I always like to have one step people can take at the end of a program and that’s a great one.

Dave: Yes.

Andrew: Thank you so much, Dave, for doing this.

Dave: Thank you, Andrew. It has been a lot of fun.

Andrew: Thank you all for being a part of it.