John Brandon | Practical Solutions To Boost Your Daily Productivity
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In this episode, John Brandon has joined us today to give some tips on how to increase your everyday productivity. Listen in and learn a simple yet powerful approach to managing your schedule, overcoming distractions, and achieving healthy results at work.
Key Takeaways From This Episode
Core components of a good morning routine
Tips to maximize your focus at work
How to use social media productively and effectively
Curiosity gap: What it means and how to apply to emails
An alternative method to catch people’s attention
Simple actions to break bad habits
Disclaimer: All information and views shared on the Live Greatly podcast & the Live greatly website are purely the opinions of the authors, and are not intended to provide medical advice or treatment recommendations. The contents of this podcast & website are intended for informational and educational purposes only. Always seek the guidance of your physician or other qualified health professional when you have any questions regarding your specific health, changes to diet and exercise, or any medical conditions.
Resources Mentioned In This Episode
About John Brandon
John Brandon has lived what he writes about for Inc. Magazine, Forbes, Fox News, and many others. He has a BA in journalism from the University of Northwestern and spent over a decade in the corporate world, becoming director of Information Design at Best Buy.
John is the author of ‘The 7-Minute Productivity Solution: How to Manage Your Schedule, Overcome Distraction, and Achieve the Results You Want’ which will be released on 01/18/22 and is available for pre-order.
In the aftermath of corporate restructuring, he traded hats to become a full-time writer/journalist and has published more than 15,000 articles in that time. He and his wife live west of Minneapolis and have four grown children.
Connect with John
Website: Seven Minutes Solution
Twitter: @jmbrandonbb
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Kristel Bauer, the Founder of Live Greatly, is on a mission to help people thrive personally and professionally. She is a corporate wellness expert, Integrative Medicine Fellow, Keynote Speaker, TEDx speaker & Physician Assistant experienced in Integrative Psychiatry and Functional Medicine.
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Episode Transcript
John (Teaser)
Someone says to themselves, I want to be more healthy. And then for some reason they never actually get more healthy, but a better way to approach that is to say, I want to go for a walk for five minutes every day, every morning, maybe before breakfast. That is habit for me. That's routines.
Kristel (Guest Introduction)
If you’re looking to boost your productivity, you're going to love today's episode with John Brandon. John is an author, he's also a journalist, he's written for Inc magazine. He currently has a column for Forbes and he's an author of the new book, the Seven Minute productivity solution, How to manage your schedule, Overcome distractions and Achieve the results you want.I endorsed John's book. I read it. It was amazing. We're going to be talking about how do you minimize all the distractions? All the outer noise and boost your productivity get into a flow state, support yourself for achieving your goals. I'm really, really pumped about this episode. Let's jump into it and welcome John Brandon to the show.
John, I'm super pumped to have you here. We're going to be talking a lot about productivity, which is something that's so incredibly important. So thank you so much for joining me.
John:
Yeah, thanks for having me.
Kristel:
For sure. So you have something really exciting. That's been going on, you have a new book, the Seven minute productivity solution, right. Did I say that right?
John:
Yeah, that's correct. So yeah, not a new baby, but a new book, but it feels somewhat similar actually with, you know, just launching it and talking about it. It's a really exciting time. Comes out on January 18th next year, but I'm learning a lot about it. It's my first real book as a journalist, I did write a previous sort of indie book that it's available out there on Amazon somewhere. But this is my first like real book. It took me six months of research and another six months of writing. And it was very intense for a long period of times. Yeah, that was the hard part of actually talking about it, you know.
Kristel:
The marketing piece, well, you sent it to me to read and I endorsed it and I really, really enjoyed it.
I actually read out when we were in Michigan on the lake, it was like the perfect scene for it. But I loved a lot of the points that you talked about. And I also love that you talk about this Seven minute timeframe. It's not a lot of time. So I think that's much more approachable for people it's less intimidating.
So let's dive in a little bit to this topic. And I'm curious, like where did you get this idea? I know you have written four different columns and I know you're writing for Forbes right now, but where did you start to realize that there was a need for this and how did this all come about?
John:
Oh, great question because I come to this very authentically. I need all of these tips myself and all of these tools because I'm someone I'm sort of like a really creative type. I'm a writer. But I also understand that you have to be persistent in your job and persevere in your job. So I play both sides. I wouldn't say I'm like detail oriented necessarily, but I know there's a need for that.
And I also know that I'm just very easily distracted by things. I tend to have like 10 or 15 books laying around in my living room at all times. And I'm like grabbing one, get a little bored with that. Grab another one. So I am the target use case for my own writing, where I need to learn how to be more productive.
And then I also have this big claim that I've made, which is that I've written 15,000 articles. And I mean, feel free to find someone and I'm sure there is someone out there who has done more articles than I have. But I do say usually that it's probably not as diverse a list of publications. It's somewhere around 30 or 40 different publications over that 20 year period.
Many of them very well known and also 15,000 is just a lot. So if someone's done more than that, I'd be happy to talk to them and how they accomplish that.
Kristel:
Wow. So then you obviously had the experience in writing. So you knew all of that, but what about the idea of the productivity? I know you said you needed that yourself, but how did you figure this out? Was it through research? Was it through talking with other individuals? How did you start to get the wheels turning on the Seven minute piece and what to put in that sentence?
John:
The story of this is that I wrote an article for Inc magazine in 2015, and it's called the Seven minute morning routine. And it was a wildly popular article, but that article came out of actually doing that routine for about a 10 year period myself.
When you asked, like what inspired me or was it based on research? Honestly, it was just things that I've done and I've learned and it helped me stay productive. And I feel like that's a very authentic way to come up with ideas. I didn't read about somebody else doing a seven minute morning routine. I actually just said, I've been doing the seven minute morning routine. I invented it because I needed it and it's been really helpful.
So then I wrote that column and the column led to doing this book. And I expanded it to, there's actually nine different routines in the book, which we can talk about, but my favorite will always be the morning routine because it really sets the tone for the day.
Kristel:
Okay. So let's dive in a little bit to this morning routine. I'm also a huge proponent for having a healthy morning routine. And a lot of times what people do when they wake up is they grab their phones. They start scrolling, they get the scary news headlines and start their day off in a reactive mode of like overwhelm and stress.
And that doesn't feel good. It doesn't feel good at all. So I love starting my mornings with meditation, and then I'll like have my coffee, I'm slower in the morning. And then ultimately I'll get to like working out and after I get my kids to school and all of that, but I'm curious, what do you feel like are the core components of a good morning routine?
John:
Yeah. And just one comment about that phone for anyone listening to this, when your phone is sitting right next to you at the bedside, it's really easy to grab it and start scrolling through your feeds. So one tip I tell people is just put it somewhere else. A lot of what I talk about, they're simple things, but they're things that people don't actually do.
And there's something called near goals in productivity circles. Goals that you can achieve easily and then help you get on the path of productivity. But to answer your question again, it comes very organically, but the morning routine is all about setting the tone. I love the title of Live Greatly. Right?
And I think that's awesome because it ties right into what I write about where, how can you live rightly if the first thing you do is have this device staring at you right away in the morning. And so what really happens with the morning routine is you set the tone for the whole day. That'd be thoughtful.
You're going to be intentional. You're going to think about time. I say seven minutes. Feel free to use a different time if you want, but it's a good place to start. And then your whole day just falls into place a little bit easier because of that.
Kristel:
Right. Yeah, that's really, really helpful. Now let's talk about, as the day progresses and life gets chaotic and people are pulled in a million different directions.
So how do you propose that people can be more productive at work? What would be some tips to really focus because I think people try multitask too much and it doesn't really work. So it's like, how can people get in that Headspace of maximizing their productivity, like getting to that flow state, you know, or it's just comes easy.
John:
Yeah. And that's why I expanded it to nine different routines. So for example, one of them is take a break routine, and this is something where as you get into your day, let's say it's mid morning. And it's like, you're feeling a little bit sluggish. You have too much coffee, actually, in my case, sometimes that makes me feel sluggish.
And then I say, Hey, just set it aside for seven minutes. Doodle on a notepad for a while or place so to two or whatever it is you want to do. Just remove yourself from work for seven minutes. Again, it's amazing how many people don't do this. They just charge on and on and on all day long. I'm a big fan of taking a break and saying, I just want to ruminate on things for a little while.
I want to think about, am I working on the right task? That's something we don't ask ourselves enough. And then the other routines, I have one for social media and I know you're on social media and most of us are, and we all know what that's like. We're basically we go into this void and pretty soon, a half hour later, we're done scrolling Instagram and then we start on Facebook or LinkedIn.
Well, I'm guilty. I do it. But when I'm intentional with my time, I only do it for seven minutes and I have a system where it's like, you can actually post, you can read, you can comment. You can get through all those tasks, by the way of Facebook and LinkedIn, they do have a way to save posts and to be productive using their apps.
There is a way to do it the right way, and they know that. I don't know if they're legally obligated to do that exactly. But there is a way to be productive on social media. And I'm just saying do it in seven minute increments and it works a lot better.
Kristel:
That's a year on LinkedIn for work and you want to network, you want to comment on other people's posts instead of doing it like sporadically throughout the day, where you're going to find yourself checking your phone and being on your phone more than you like. It's what you're saying is kind of set that seven minutes, save all the posts that you want to comment on, and then you can comment on all of them in kind of like time blocks, like chunks.
John:
I can tell you read the book. Yeah, because I do talk about this in the book where I say you can save posts.
Believe it or not, you can favorite them. You can like them. And then look at different posts that you've liked later. There's just a way to do it more intentionally and I would say smarter, there's another one on email, and this is something I talk about in the book and it just blew me away. Research IDC actually says that we spend about 30 hours per week on email, and I'm thinking to myself, 30 hours, we're supposed to work 40.
So I don't know what we're doing that 10 extra hours, but 30 of them are spent on email and I didn't believe. So I actually called the analyst who did that research at IDC and he said, yup, 30 hours. That's how much time we spend based on our research.
Kristel:
What does IDC stand for?
John:
It's a research firm. It's actually the same one that does like in four world and computer world.
And somehow I used to write for, the really well known.
Kristel:
It sounds really high. I agree with you. I'm like 30 hours. Oh my gosh. So. Filtering through. I know in the beginning, when I started my business, I was really overwhelmed with like feeling the need to respond to every single message I'd get on LinkedIn, to every single email that I would get.
And now I've really just been more selective with my time. And I think that that's something that I've heard from journalist. As well, where like you have so much stuff coming in that it's not, that you're necessarily, and I'm not talking to you directly. But what I've heard from journalists is that it's not like they're trying to, it's not about being mean or ignoring people.
It's just like, self-preservation. If I only have so many hours in a day, I can't respond to everybody.
John:
Yeah. And by the way, one little footnote to that is that I researched it with IDC research, talk to the analyst and then I found out that Adobe they're famous for Photoshop and a bunch of other apps.
They did a study and they came up with the same number of hours. 30 hours spent on email. And I thought, wow, we're wasting so much time. So yeah. I have a routine on email as well. For seven minutes, seven minutes. I found out about the one for email is the most interesting to me because I've discovered that that's what I was doing anyway.
So it's like I realized after the fact that I was checking email, I have a system where I go through. I mark the emails that are important. I reply to a couple. I delete most of them. Sorry about that.
If you're a public relations person listening to this podcast, I do tend to delete a lot of emails, but some of them cut through and I read those and I respond to them, but I realized that I was doing that in a seven minute period.
So that was a amazing finding seven minutes is how long the human brain can focus on something with sustained attention. And that's comes right out of, uh, research in the classroom. Students pay attention for seven minutes. Radio DJs actually know they can talk for seven minutes before they need to take a break.So it all comes from that research and brain science. But.
Kristel:
I wonder if that's changed now with all the social media and the like short little clips, because I feel like they talk about, you only have such a short amount of time to grab people's attention on social media.
John:
Yeah. So it's the difference between, so attention span is lowering. I think it's like three seconds or something, but sustained attention is different. That's where it's like, how long can I pay attention to someone speaking to me. You know, like for me, I am a avid church goer. So I go to church every Sunday and I'm listening to the sermon. And for the first seven minutes, I'm like totally with the guy or the woman or whoever is speaking and then after seven minutes, I'm like, I'm starting to check out a little bit.
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Kristel:
Right. Okay. So it's important to know that as a speaker presenter and as a human being, like that's where your window is, that's where you're going to give it your all.
So I want to go back for a moment and you talked about, you know, I know you get so many emails and you get a lot of pitches, I'm sure for articles and different things. So what does stand out if someone is listening and they're like, okay, I have this great idea or whatever and they want to pitch someone who writes articles. How could they get their email noticed or is email the best way? Is there a better way?
John:
There's two answers to that. So the first one is I learned something at Inc magazine. I was there for 10 years as a columnist, and we talked a lot about something that's very well known. It's not revealing any secrets here, but it's called curiosity gap. And what it means is that you give people part of the answer, but give them a reason to click.
And so that applies to email and the emails that come in with the subject line that's like Hey, read this. If you want to find out about this person who did this or something like that, that has some curiosity gap to it. That's what seems to always work. If anyone does an email newsletter, it's the same principle.
Don't just call it email newsletter, June or something like that. No, that doesn't work. But yeah. The other part to that answer though, is I'm sorry, what was the second question? Cause I just forgot it. Sorry.
Kristel:
If email is the best way? Yeah, if there's another way to contact?
John:
So yeah, I love when people figure this out, there's other ways attention.And so one of my favorite ones is you remember vine when that was out for a while? It was a, I think it was a seven second video app. So like a precursor to tick. And I remember there was a people who had sent me a vine with a pitch and it'd be like, oh wow, you figured this out. You know how to get someone's attention.
So if anyone ever does like a tik tok with a pitch for an article, I'll be very impressed, you know, but it did not happened yet. Finding other alternative methods to get through all the noise really makes a lot of sense.
Kristel:
A way to make yourself stand out. Yeah. Yeah. So let's talk about one more productivity hack for lack of a better word.
And then we can kind of dive in towards some wellness related questions.
John:
Yeah, and I have to say so with tips and with tricks for productivity, I'm fine with them. Set your phone in the kitchen instead of by your bedside. Those do work and they're helpful, but I have to say that. Is it okay if I describe how habits work? Really good.
Kristel:
Yeah. Please do.
John:
So I have an example where you're riding a bike. And so again, tips are fine. I'm not really against tips, but I'm more into habit farming and I'm more into routines. So in the example of riding a bike, you don't get on a bike in 10th gear and just start pedaling. It just doesn't work. You have to start out with something really simple like for example, first gear. And once you get into first gear, you shift up and pretty soon you're going faster. You're thinking about which direction you're going. You're actually maybe even enjoying your bike ride. So what I like to talk about is a routine is a repeatable pattern that you use, and I'm talking about seven minute routines, but any routine sets you on a pattern, first gear, second gear. A habit is when you're fully going at like full speed. You think of something like when you're driving a car, you have a habit to use, hopefully the brake and the gas at different times, and you don't ever think about it and that's a habit, but at some point you learned a simple routine, like, okay, which one's the break and which ones the pedal.
So one thing I would say to your audience, Tips are good. They're helpful, but you're probably only going to farm habits when you really go and learn new routines and new ways of working. And then when you do that, you're going to form good habits. Another phrase that I'm really, I thought of this like a few weeks ago, and basically we don't create good habits. Good habits create us.
And I think that I'm really locked into that phrase because I think it's so true. And yet we keep trying to like create these habits and routines. That's where our tips come in. I think when we think productivity is about just learning good tips, And that's not really the case.
It's about learning good habits and that's what creates kind of a better person or a more productive person.
Kristel:
Right. And I think sometimes people can get intimidated with creating new habits because they feel like it takes so much effort and it's like so far away. So I liked the idea of starting with like small kind of micro steps to get you there, like easily done things like what you sat with, just like putting your phone in a different place.
Like that's something very simple people can do. Doesn't take much effort at all, you know, and that can kind of get the momentum going.
John:
Yeah. So another example of that, and I know you want to talk about wellness and health.
I'm starting a little early on this one, I guess, but you think of something like someone says to themselves, I want to be more healthy. And so they'd learned some tips and tricks for how to be more healthy. And then for some reason they never actually get more healthy. But the better way to approach that is to say, Okay, I want to go for a walk for five minutes every day, every morning, maybe before breakfast, that is habit for me. That's routines. And when you do that, what happens is you learn how to do something well for five minutes, seven minutes, and then eventually you start walking longer. Eventually start eating better. Eventually you start being more healthy.
Instead of saying like tomorrow, I'm going to be healthy. Just say tomorrow, I'm going to walk for five minutes.
Kristel:
I liked that it's very specific and it's focused on the action and problem solving. So something like related to eating, instead of thinking, I want to lose five pounds or focusing on that focus on, I'm going to add more vegetables and fruit to my lunch today.
Something basic, straightforward and setting those intentional goals, which then you can pat yourself on the back for the achievement along the way.
John:
Yeah, for me, it's no more donuts, no more pop tarts. You know, that type of thing. I respond better to starting out, like, what habits should I give up? Or what routine should I stop doing?
You think of something like even brushing your teeth? It's such a simple little routine. And most of us do it. If you have kids, it's sometimes hard to teach them that habit. But yeah, just start with something small, brush your teeth, then think about getting healthy and other areas of like personal hygiene and stuff like that.
But don't try to just take it all on at once because that never works.
Kristel:
Right. So true. We're going to be doing like a quick wellness lightening round at the end. But before we do that, I want to ask just briefly about self care and wellness, basically while you're working and trying to be productive, because what I see a lot as people are overworked and they're working too hard and they're probably not always taking those breaks that you've talked about.
So how would you recommend people can start having more wellness? And self care in their Workday. So I see a lot of people like segmenting it to before work or after work, but I really see a need for more of it during the actual Workday.
John:
Yeah. And I hope I was clear about tips and tricks are fine, but I would say that developing new routines is what works.
So at work, maybe you develop a new routine where every time you go get coffee, you walk around the building two or three times just inside. Maybe it's only a hundred or 200 steps if you have a fitness tracker, but what happens in the brain is when we say it triggers something in us, we say, okay, when I go get coffee, I'm always going to walk around, do a couple laps around the office.
That's so simple. So you don't even need walking shoes, you can do it anytime. And what happens is, is it teaches you that oh, triggers work. So every time I get home from work at the end of the day, now I'm going to go around the block a couple times and then, oh, every Saturday after I have coffee. I'm going to go on a two mile walk.
Pretty soon, you're doing marathons. I'm saying this to someone who doesn't do marathons by the way, but I do walk and bike a ton, but it just, it doesn't start on 10th gear. It starts in first gear and people who start in 10th gear, they tend to struggle the most and they don't get healthy. They don't have wellness.
What they have is just the idea that they should do these things and that's it.
Kristel:
Yeah. And that can lead to a lot of guilt too. So I love the idea of just these like small approachable goals and building from there. So that was great, John. So I'm going to put a link to pre-order your book, right? Is there a pre-order.
John:
Yeah. Seven minutes.solution.com is the best link. It gives you the pre-release and everything, and some information about the books.
Kristel:
Cool. So if you want to learn more, check that out and then John, anything else you would like to add before we go into the wellness lightening round?
John:
Uh, honestly, just that productivity, like we said, start small, set a goal for yourself to put the phone in the kitchen. Instead, walk around the office a little bit, social media, we're all so addicted to these things and we use them all the time. But just to limit your usage, don't get rid of the apps. I like social media. It's awesome. There's a way to, I met you on social media, you know, on LinkedIn, but just to limit your usage on it and be more intentional with it.
Kristel:
Right. Awesome. Thank you so much, John. Okay, so we're going to do a quick wellness lightning round. Give me the first answer that pops into your head. No need to overthink this. So the first question I have for you is if you are on a deserted desert island and you had to bring your own food, what would be three foods that you would need to bring.
John:
Wow, this is pretty cool. So do I have to be completely honest or do I have to think of good answers?
Kristel:
You have to be completely honest.
John:
Okay. All right. I'll do it. Well, I would bring beef jerky because of the protein. I would bring cheese because I like cheese and I would probably just bring water.
Kristel:
Perfect. Awesome. Okay. So second question. This one's just a special one that I'm adding in for you. What is a bad habit you currently have?
John:
Wow. So I have to admit that I like social media just as much as everyone else. I tend to use it in the line at Starbucks and I use it right before bed sometimes. I'm not saying that that's a good thing. I'm saying that I struggle with it too. So, yeah, it's something where I want to be more intentional with my time and I get sucked into those apps. Some of it is because I'm checking in on my adult children and sometimes my grandkids, the motivation is good, but the time usage is not good, so.
Kristel:
Gotcha. Okay. And then question kind of going right after that one is, what's a habit you're currently working on creating for yourself right now?
John:
Yeah. Awesome. So I am trying to do a lot more walking before breakfast and it's been a struggle. I have not succeeded. So if there's a theme to this, I'm ready to admit that I don't have this all figured out, but I know in my head, I don't know if you know the term for it, but it's something about fast walking, I think.
And it's not talking about how quickly you want. It's because at night you're fasting and then in the morning, you're still fasting and if you can somehow walk before breakfast, it's a really good time to re-energize yourself. And so I've been trying to do that. It's been like maybe two or three times in the last couple of weeks.
Kristel:
Cool. Cool. So yeah, it's a great, great goal. And then the last question I have for you is knowing what you know now, what advice would you have given to yourself from 10 years ago?
John:
10 years ago, I was deep into being a columnist and I was starting to maybe get a little bit burned out at that time.
And I would have told myself probably to slow down a little bit. Yeah. 15,000 articles took a long time, but it also means that I worked really hard and really fast. I don't regret it. I really enjoyed that period of time. But now that I've moved into more of a book writing phase, I love the new pace of life as an author.
Kristel:
I love it. Well, John, this has been so fun. Thank you so much for taking some time to share all of your insights today.
John:
Sure. Yeah. Thanks for having me.