Graham Allcott 0:04 Hello, and welcome to another episode of Beyond Busy, the show where we talk productivity, work life balance, and how people define happiness and success. My name is Graham Allcott. I'm your host for the show. And on this episode, I'm talking to Alex Pang. He's the author of a couple of books, one called Rest and one called Shorter. And we're gonna be talking a lot about the four day week, which feels like it's one of those ideas that has gone from fringe to a bit more mainstream, particularly in recent times people talking about this of post COVID economy and ways to rebuild and all this kind of stuff and I'm kind of seeing a lot more coverage and credible coverage around the four day week. It kind of feels like it's, it's growing as an idea. And as you may or may not know, my company, Think Productive. We've been doing it for a week for eight years. So we talked about that a little bit in the episodes and I think Alex is pretty surprised he hadn't heard of us doing that. And then, you know, not deliberately but we'd been kind of keeping a bit of a low profile with our four day week stuff. Just we didn't really think it was that remarkable. So we weren't really telling the story. And weirdly, we'd told a couple of PR agencies and much more marketing savvy companies about it. They'd started doing for the week, and then started going, Hey, we're doing a 4 day week and getting loads of coverage about it. So you were talking about that in this episode, and how the idea might grow. And we recorded this before the lockdown. So I thought that might be quite a nice thing for this week, because we start the episode talking about the West End shows that Alex is going to see while he's over here from the States. So that's how we start the episodes and it kind of feels like a different world. Listening back to it now, but hope you'll find that you know, entertaining and kind of interesting And kind of a little bit of escapism, maybe, as well. So yeah, we're gonna get straight into episode in a second with Alex.

There's been a lot of talk recently about the concept of "Toxic Productivity". I think it's an important topic to address.

I'm the Productivity Ninja guy, so a lot of people assume that I'm here to defend the idea of productivity; that what I care about most is simply maximising output, at pretty much any cost. How to be a Productivity Ninja was published back in 2014, and my company, Think Productive has been running productivity workshops, getting peoples' inboxes to zero and many other helpful things since way back in 2009. I'm certainly a fan of the transformative effect that addressing your own productivity in a conscious and deliberate way can have. Clarity breeds momentum breeds more clarity.

The death of George Floyd has shocked everybody. Suddenly every company and organisation seems to be releasing statements about how they support the Black Lives Matter movement and I worry that their motivation for this is often more about good PR and image than it is about genuinely resolving to see and do things differently. Some of those organisations posting black tiles this week included NFL teams that hounded out Colin Kaepernick because he peacefully took a knee in protest not that long ago, and a few organisations that I know from personal experience have all-white boards or all-white leadership teams. Talk is cheap! I hope they back it up.

Graham Allcott 0:04

Good morning lockdown campus. We're back with another episode of Beyond Busy The show where we talk productivity, work life balance and how people find happiness and success. My name is Graham Allcott. I'm your host for the show. On this episode I'm talking to Sarah Ellis. She is one half of Amazing If and one half of the author team behind the book, The Squiggly Career just come out so we get to talk a little bit about the book. And also we talked about a load of really interesting stuff in this episode. So we talked about personal manifestos. We talk about her six year transition from employed to gain elite self employed. We talk, she used to work for Sainsbury's in head of corporate responsibility in society. So we talked about how changes have been dealing with the current crisis. The loo roll shortage and all that stuff. And just a whole lot more. So I think you're gonna really enjoy this conversation. So let's get pretty much straight into it. This is another one of these ones recorded down the line during lockdown, so a little bit of COVID chat, but not too much. Let's get straight into it. Here's our episode with Sarah Ellis.

I'm with Sarah Ellis, how are you?

I really enjoyed speaking to Katz Kiely recently for my Beyond Busy podcast. She's doing amazing work helping to get PPE to the frontline. If you know anyone working in a hospital, care home or other setting, please make them aware of this website and the fact that they can tweet three hashtags and have people delivering PPE to the door of their workplace.

But aside from just wanting to get that message out last week as quickly as possible, I really loved her thoughts on her purpose - to prove that looking after your people helps generate the best innovation, productivity and collaboration. It ultimately all boils down to the feeling of 'psychological safety' and being in a 'reward' state (where you can chase good things) as opposed to being in a 'threat state' where you feel the need to react and kick back. I've been thinking about this a lot this week, as the current situation has definitely thrown me more regularly into the threat state recently. Perhaps you're feeling that too?

Graham Allcott 0:05 Hello, and welcome to another episode of Beyond Busy The show where we talk productivity, work life balance and defining happiness and success. My name is Graham Allcott. I'm your host for the show. And on this episode, it's another COVID special. And we are talking working from home. This is actually the audio from the first Think Productive webinar, which was myself and Grace Marshall on the Productivity Ninjas guide to working from home. So we recorded this about a month ago, we've been running these as live webinars. Most days at the moment, it's kind of once or twice a week and you can find out the dates at thinkproductive/wfh. They're also on there. There's a load of info about how we can help your team, your organisation, your company, with a whole variety of stuff that's either specific to what's going on With COVID, so working from home leading remote teams, and how to supercharge your virtual meetings, but also all of our regular stuff as well. So how to be a Productivity Ninja, how to get your inbox to zero, all that sort of normal productivity stuff that we do. So we're going to talk in this special webinar for an hour. It's myself and Grace Marshall. We'll talk about a few of the key challenges of working from home, we'll talk about how to solve them. And we just thought, let's use the audio and get this out there and, you know, make this a podcast episode as well. So let's get straight into it. Here is our live webinar in audio form with myself and Grace Marshall. Let's do it.

http://frontline.live/

Graham Allcott 0:04

Hello and welcome to another episode of beyond busy The show where we talk productivity, work life balance and defining happiness and success. My name is Graham Allcott. I'm your host for the show. And on this episode, I'm talking to Katz Kiely. It's a special episode. It's in our usual off week, but it's all about how to get PPE protective equipment to the frontline NHS and other workers. So we just thought we'd put it out as soon as we could. And stay tuned for how you can help. Before we get into that directly, a couple of things for me So firstly, I've just started this new mailing list. So if you go to GrahamAllcott.com then fairly high up on the homepage there and actually at the bottom of all the pages is a little form that you can fill in to be part of my mailing list. It's the first time ever I've had my own mailing list, Think Productive have had one for years, giving out productivity tips and useful stuff from the business but this is the first time that I've done my own. And the idea is that every Sunday night I'll be sending out some kind of upbeat, interesting thought for the week ahead. That's the the general kind of theme of it. really designed to get conversation going and get a bit of debate going and also for me to connect in with kwith you and what you're doing. I'm going to probably try and put questions in most weeks so that it just encourages people to reply and get some dialogue going. That's the general idea. So if you want to be part of that, if you want to be on the inside track and know what I'm doing then just go to Graham Allcott comm and sign up for the mailing list love to have you there. Also think productive is still doing our work from home webinars. So think productive comm forward slash w f h. The first ones all just booked out and they were all full, had some really great feedback on it. And it has led to a few new clients within productive as well. So just goes to show as you'll hear in this episode with cats, you know when you put good stuff out there And just focus on how you could help, then the money usually follows. So that's been good because it's kind of kept us afloat really over the last few weeks. Obviously, a lot of our regular clients have been cancelling the face to face sessions that we were doing, and we've moved some of them to zoom, but not all of them. So that's been a real lifeline for us. But we've we've now got to the point where there's still demand for the web webinars where I'm working from home, but they're not filling up. So chances are, if you've tried to get on one before and you couldn't get on one, you'll be able to get on one now. So think writer.com, forward slash w f. h, if you want to find out more about that. So let's get straight into this episodes. We're recording this on a Saturday morning, middle of the COVID situation, obviously. And yeah, just shows the cats is someone who is certainly busy, but also full of purpose and doing great stuff and just has so many great insights to share as well as some really important information about how you can help with this whole PPE. So, let's get straight into the episode. Here's my conversation with cats. Kelly. We are rolling. We've turned off all of the devices and other distraction points. You're fully present in the room. Well, how you doing?

Graham Allcott 0:04

Hello, and welcome to another episode of The temporarily badly titled beyond busy podcast, the show where we talk productivity, work life balance and finding happiness and success in a world where nobody's rushing around being busy, although you might be busy at home. My name is Graham Allcott, I'm your host for the show. And on this episode, I'm talking to the amazing Louai Al Roumani. Blue, I was the head of planning for one of the biggest banks in Syria during the war there and has written a book. It's called lessons from a warzone how to be a resilient leader in times of crisis. And really, some of the stories in the book are just so fascinating and insightful. And not that we can belittle what happened in Syria by even comparing it to what's going on right now. Where our main job is to just stay in our houses and you don't have ISIS 20 minutes down the road likely I did. But I think there is some real lessons that you can transfer from one crisis to another. And there's just so much value in the book. And do I shares a lot of that in this episode, so that you're going to really get a lot from this conversation. We're usually on a two week cycle, as you probably know. And I just thought, as we recorded this last week, I just thought we just need to get this out quickly. So this is out pretty much as soon as we could, as soon as we have a little break in the schedule. And the idea is that it helps people right now with things that you're dealing with right now. Either in your business and your personal life home. Yeah, we're obviously living through times, which just makes us think about some of those much more fundamental questions in life. You know, what our purposes what we're doing one question Success Factors in all of that and just a lot of stuff that you're going to get into here during this episode so let's get straight into it. I'll talk to you at the end but let's get straight into the conversation with who I am I'm here with Lou I'll Romani and we are recording this virtually via Zen caster. Lou How you doing?

Graham Allcott 0:04

Hello and welcome to another episode of beyond busy.

Here's like a weird thing to say when no one's busy running around right now. This is the show where we talk productivity, work life balance, and how people define happiness and success. My name is Graham Allcott. I'm your host for the show. And this week, I'm talking to Mark Leruste. Mark was the country director for Movember, the charity campaign and he is now a speaker a podcast has a lot to say on living your values, living your authentic self and is really great thinker. So we talked about his journey with Movember. We talked about Instagram and marketing and putting yourself out there lots of stuff like that and I think this is a really good one for right now because it's I just I love the way mark thinks very top line strategic thoughtful and yeah, I think This is gonna be a really good one I think you'll get a lot out of it. So just before we get into the episode couple things I want to say firstly think productive are still running free webinars to help people who are struggling working from home so think productive comm forward slash w f h if you want to hear about that. We're also running all of our regular workshops still and we're running them all on zoom and actually on zoom and also whatever other tech you use in your business if it's not zoom, so you can find more about that I think productive calm. We've obviously seen a drop off in our own work. It's you know, month by month, it's it's actually been surprisingly steady up till now. But really, you know, starting to drop off at the moment. So yeah, if you are interested in productivity and helping your team then we can definitely help and we are poised to help so it's impressive calm if you want to find out more about that. Also, since the last one, I released this blog post I wrote a couple of weeks ago. It's called Tales from Holland, autism, Corona and all of us. And it's just a set of thoughts around how my son who has autism has found the last few weeks, very soothing, and a really nice environment for growth actually, like really seeing his conversational skills coming on a lot. He seems really happy and relaxed and, you know, free of a lot of the usual anxiety or there are definitely obviously some anxieties. There's a lot of stuff that he can't do that he would normally do. But yeah, I had a huge response. Well, I posted on LinkedIn also on medium. And yeah, we'll put a link to that in the show notes. But I'd love you to check that out. Let me know what you think. It's just called Tales from Holland, autism, Corona and all of us and I'll put the link to that in the show notes. You can also find on medium and LinkedIn. Yeah, go check that out. I'd really love to hear your thoughts on it. And the other thing is, I've finally launched the new grammar. caught.com so you can go and find that Grandma katako. And one of the things that's part of that is, for the first time ever, I'm going to be doing a personalised weekly newsletter, which is going to go out on a Sunday, the idea of it is it's like the blues buster, Sunday night email. So it just has some positive thoughts for the week ahead. And just hopefully, is just me kind of sharing ideas and just having a bit of dialogue with people. So if you want to sign up for that, just go to grandma got calm. We'll put the link to that in the show notes. We might even try and put in a little widget to sign up to the mailing lists on get beyond busy.com as well. I'll talk to mark about that. But yeah, if you want to sign up for that, the idea is that I'll just be doing a kind of weekly email out I'll let you know what I'm up to. And also just share some some thoughts for the week ahead. I'd love to get some signups for it's brand new literally just launched it last week with the new grammarly.com site. So check that out. So let's get into the episodes. This was myself and Mark actually recorded our old lives back in January in Camden. And it just, it was a really great conversation. I really enjoyed the conversation. It feels like such a long time ago now. It's just it's a weird thing how time seems to just be moving at a very different pace in this current COVID world. So, yeah, it just feels like a lifetime ago but really pleased to get this one out. So you join us in Camden, we black to meeting room, here's my conversation with Mark the roost.

I have a complicated relationship with Holland. The complication is not the fault of Amsterdam, Rotterdam or The Hague. I’m lucky to have friends in all those places and for the opportunities I’ve had to travel there over the years. I’ve never lived in Holland. Yet, because of my son, I reside there for parts of most days.

I don’t leave my values at the door when I go to work. There are four key principles that guide what I do - and more importantly, why I do it:

Kindness & Empathy

I believe in doing business in a way that treats people with respect. My motto within Think Productive for years has been “People first, work second. Always”. When you work in a way that puts people first, you build trust, loyalty, empathy and with it,the right team spirit. Screwing people over, or working in a transactional way is short-termist.

One of my big goals for 2020 was to get much better at marketing. It’s April and so far I’ve shifted from my flashy and slightly pretentious old website into this new one, set up my first ever personal mailing list (I know!) and started to think a bit harder about things like Instagram and vain notions of what “my audience” might want from “my content”.

I should start by saying I hate marketing, which is probably already obvious.

I’ve been really interested in nutrition for a few years now. Anyone who knows me will know I’m not a massive ‘foodie’ and fine dining is largely wasted on me, but there’s something obvious yet profound about the fact that our brains perform better when they’re well-fuelled.

I guess it hit home for me around three years ago, when I suffered a really nasty bout of depression. I have terrible genes when it comes to mental health, but this was my first time being medicated for it. Save for a few afternoons in bed that no one really knew about, I carried on running the business and nobody really knew what was going on in my brain (I was CEO at the time, and although I wasn’t doing a great job, I managed to just about keep the show on the road). Once the fog cleared and I decided to come off the happy pills, I wanted to give my brain the best chance of being clear, sane and energised.