How do we optimise our minds?
This weeks episode is with Chris Beaumont, a Productivity Coach who helps Directors, Senior Mangers, Business Owners and their teams to gain proactive control over their work, manage priorities effectively and make more of the resources you already have to maximise potential.
Chris is an advocate for aligning the day-to-day with the long-term strategy to give more clarity and proactivity to work, rather than remaining in a cycle of reacting to the most immediate tasks.
In this episode Chris gives advice on getting more value with less effort than we expect, productivity, our biggest professional advantage and how detrimental 24/7 availability can be.
Also discussed:
(0:00) Introduction
(7:00) You’re capable of getting a lot more out of life than you think, you can get swept up in the low value but you’re more capable of getting more done with, most likely, less effort than you expect.
(11:24) ‘Optimise your mind’, use your energy more productively, use the time, energy and focus you have effectively (internal RAM analogy) If you use it for low level stuff, you have no capacity to deal with the important tasks
(15:00) We’re not good at remembering and ordering information, we make no distinction between the relative value of all of the things we need to remember. The lack of evolution in understanding relative priority, the deeper level of cognition needed to prioritise rather than just make a list and leave it be
(22:38) Emails, 80/20 concept, you tend to answer easy emails first rather than high value which is counter-intuitive.
(27:55) How can you expect to spend your limited resources and deliver the best result for yourself and your client (if you’re stressed)? How people in high positions are susceptible to burnout because they try to reach their potential with too many other factors. If you spend all of your time reacting, you’re limiting your ability to help/serve others
(30:00) The shift in the last 15 years of ‘always available’ due to technology, and if you aren’t proactive with priorities, you will end up using limited mental and physical resources
(40:00) How not managing priorities means that clients/customers may go elsewhere because they can find multiple alternatives instead (a story about how not prioritising can lose large amounts of money)
(47:00) The value in people/opportunities is not in the ‘here and now’. 45% of those interacting with you/your business may be in the market to get the products or services you provide, as long as you’re attentive.
(49:00) The biggest professional advantage you can give yourself is keeping your commitments. Do what you say you’re going to do, when you say you’re going to do it, because so many people don’t. Your success is almost always based on your relationships and the trust you have.
(55:58) The role of unrealistic expectations and how we have them for ourselves but not others, resulting in too much pressure on our brains to do everything, resulting in burnout. Your second biggest advantage is avoiding preventable problems, as it will help you long-term
(59:27) How waiting for the customer to notice something wrong until you fix it is ridiculous because most issues are preventable
(1:05:41) How pre-social media negative experiences differ in terms of the amount of people you’ll tell about it. The negative impact of thinking short-term as it affects what you see as valuable or not valuable, when things may be valuable long-term for you.
(1:09:40) Stress and how it can negatively impact what you consider to be company values and cause you to be too reactive to smaller things, rather than taking more time to the matters of importance and how it impacts company culture
(1:12:06) The things we miss out on when we’re running around for low-priority tasks
(01:15:56) Distorted perspectives of what is and isn’t important because we’re being reactive in the ‘here and now’.
(1:17:48) Advice for those who are recognising these signs in
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