The Reality of Business

Time: Rethinking and Achieving Control

• Bob Morrell and Jeremy Blake • Season 6 • Episode 17

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Are your days full of meetings, messages, and madness? Feel like you’re reacting instead of creating?

In this episode, Bob and Jeremy take on the chaos of modern working life – hybrid schedules, constant pings, and the illusion of being ‘back-to-back’ busy – and show you how to get a real grip on your time.

From Stephen Covey’s time matrix to Ivy Lee’s brilliantly simple ‘Success Six’, they share practical tools to help you prioritise what matters, reclaim your focus, and feel accomplished – not just exhausted. You’ll also hear why Friday has quietly become the new Saturday, how retirement is being totally redefined, and why your energy peaks (not just your schedule) should shape your day.

Expect laughs, real-life examples, and five powerful tactics you can try today – from time blocking and batching comms, to deleting, delegating, and finally saying no.

You’ve got 24 hours a day… but are you flying the plane or clinging to the wing?

Tune in now and discover how to make time work for you.

For more info, free resources, useful content & our blog posts, please visit realitytraining.com.

Reality Training - Selling Certainty

Jeremy Blake:

Okay, Bobby, great. You're in the room nice and early. So you're okay to join this meeting in a couple of minutes.

Bob Morrell:

Ah, no, no. I must stop you there, Jay. I'm really sorry. Um, I've got a couple of things happening today. As you know, I'm back to back all day. I've just had uh an email come in from um you're my boss. I must reply to that immediately because you know he he he demands that. And I've also had a text from the client, and I've got to look at that and reply to them before we do this. So I'm just I'm just in a bit of a moment here where I'm trying to get all these things juggling. I know you want to do this meeting, I know it's important, but if I can't get ahead of myself here, I'm just not gonna be able to concentrate. So can you give me 10 minutes at least, at least, just to just to sort a few things out before we begin? Is that okay?

Jeremy Blake:

Yeah, I mean it must be wonderful living in this kind of highly stressful poor time management sphere.

Bob Morrell:

It's not always like this. It's just it's just sometimes these things all come at once, you know. It's just it's really difficult. You know what I mean?

Jeremy Blake:

Yeah, absolutely.

Bob Morrell:

But I know you've booked this room for an hour, but uh, you know, we don't really need to, you know, it won't take that long.

Jeremy Blake:

I mean, this meeting compared to your diary full of all these meetings that you're back to back, these jewels that you're clearly having, they're all of equal importance, or smile just becomes less relevant.

Bob Morrell:

I know you're being I know you're being a bit sarcastic, but I I you know me. I I this is just the way I am, okay.

Jeremy Blake:

So do you work with this man, this woman, this person? Are you recognizing or is this you? If so, this episode's for you. Stay right there as we dissect time.

Bob Morrell:

You've got Bob Morrell.

Jeremy Blake:

And Jeremy Blake, we are your hosts. We are going to deal with our well, one of our favorite topics, but it's got worse, hasn't it, really? Um, wouldn't you say that we're all at home or largely, and uh people still can't manage their time?

Bob Morrell:

Well, I think time has changed, especially when it comes to work. Um I was commenting the other day uh in a training room that Thursday nights in most cities now are pretty damn busy in the bars and the clubs because Friday it's a ghost town.

Jeremy Blake:

Yeah.

Bob Morrell:

And that's because everyone's time means that they're working from home on a Friday. And why wouldn't you? I mean, if that's an option, it's a it's a great idea. Um, I would love to find some stats about the effectiveness of Fridays and working from home. I mean, you and I work from home all the time, and we're very effective all the time. But I think it's an interesting perspective that Fridays has now become the kind of default uh day. And I wonder how much gets done on a Thursday when you know that Thursday is the new Friday. Does Thursday become the day where you start to sort of wind down at about three-ish and start looking at the clock and think, or should we pop out for an early one? You know, that sort of thing.

Jeremy Blake:

Well, of course, none of this affects people working in hospitality, no medical professions. Um, all sorts of people have had to continue managing their time, key workers as we call them. Um so let's get into this. I want to start with a quote, which is very simple is the bad news is that time flies, the good news is that you're the pilot, and that's from Michael Altschuler, translated Michael Oldschuler, no terrible German joke. And um he is a serial entrepreneur. I haven't found out what serial he invented, but um he is somebody who's had lots of businesses and he's written books. But I love that. I mean, there's so many quotes on time, and when I hadn't seen that one, I just thought, well, that's true. People forget they're the pilot. We all have the same amount of time. As Zig Ziggler went on about we all have 24 hours in a day. It's not time, it's lack of direction. You know, it's not knowing what you're doing with it half the time.

Bob Morrell:

Well, I think that's a very interesting point. Time is a concept that has been created by man. Um, you can argue that science dictates it because we have the earth going around the sun, and there's all that stuff which dictates the amount of time we have uh in a solar year, etc. And I know that's where it all comes from. And of course, our initial calculations about that were wrong because we we moved from uh one calendar to another, from the Roman calendar to a more modern calendar years later, because we'd actually got those calculations of the year uh incorrectly uh monitored. So I think it's interesting that we are using science to give us those units of time. But on that, I think it's really interesting. I um saw an interview the other day with um my old friend Prince, um, as you all know, I'm a big Prince fan, and he became uh a Jehovah's Witness uh in the last 25 years of his life, and what that meant was of course they don't celebrate uh Christmas and birthdays and that sort of thing. And he was asked in an interview about how old he was, and he just said, Look, he said, We've all got one birthday, which is the day you were born. He said, uh after that, it's what you do with it. And he said, I don't celebrate my birthday, which is why I look as good today as I did 20 years ago, right? Which is a very good point. If you're not, if you're not sitting to you're not, if you're not thinking in your brain, oh my god, I'm gonna be 56 on the next birthday, oh God, oh, how do I look? You're using that birthday every year as a kind of monitor for you to look at yourself and go, oh my god, I'm falling to pieces, you know, this is the end. And if you don't think that way, if your mindset is I'm not gonna monitor time in that way, I'm not gonna conform to having an annual celebration, I'm not gonna conform to worrying about what date it is, what time it is, I'm just gonna maximize the use of time that I have, then maybe that does alter how you are perceived and how you come across.

Jeremy Blake:

You said a minute ago that things have changed or time has changed. And in a weird way, just in the news recently here in the UK, that fantastic debate about pensions, when do you stop working? And just listening to you talking then, I think some people tune into almost the point of when they think their body won't be able to do enough. Yes. But well in advance, like going, How dare they ask me to work to 67 or 68? I was planning on packing up at 65 and allowing my body to do very little and do less and to be less mobile and well who who has chosen the that 65, 66, 67?

Bob Morrell:

Who's chosen that as the cutoff?

Jeremy Blake:

Well, we know we know it's finances, it it's based on economics, so but but that's crazy, isn't it?

Bob Morrell:

And yeah, I was I saw a thing the other day, an interview with um Liam Neeson and Pamela Anderson, who are in the new Naked Guns Well. Yes, but Archie's big he says it's good.

Jeremy Blake:

Yeah, and surprisingly, Liam Neeson can carry comedy, apparently.

Bob Morrell:

Oh, he is quite funny. He was very good in Dairy Girls. I I think he's great. But um he's 72, Liam Neeson. Yeah, now I do have uh certain opinions about some of his other films, but Liam Neeson's 72. He's now in a relationship with Pamela Anderson, he's 58. Oh yes. Oh, they've found love on the set of Naked Gun. Now, he's 72, okay. He's a he's a famous film star and he's making films all the time. If you were in his boots, would you stop work? 72, you're getting paid good money to make films, it's good fun, you get your expenses, you meet lovely people, you have a great time. You know, 70 these days, you know, that's interesting.

Jeremy Blake:

So I think a lot of before we even get into tips and managing time, it's good to talk maybe bigger picture more holistically about this. I think if you are engaged in your social life, your emotional life, your working life, then it's much easier. Because I know just down from here two retired policemen who live neighbours um down, who who loved being policemen, but they joined young. They worked their careers in London, they've moved out of London. They are both the most two most active people in this little bit that I live in. Um massive gardeners, cyclists, but they're often down the pub boozing together. They are constantly doing projects, and they they say that classic thing, oh Jeremy, I'm busier now than I've ever been. Because they've got rich and full you know they've got rich and full lives. So so many people, if work defines you, and as you know, I've got a brother who work totally does not define him, he's just retired, actually. That one. Yeah. Um, and you've got nothing outside of work, then I think it's a real struggle. A real struggle that you stop work. I mean, you and I, you know, we've had teachers in our lives. Um, the classic thing is whenever we talk to the financial advisors, they're always kind of ooing and ring about how you wind the teaching down, and that a dramatic stop to leave the classroom and stop is basically going to stick you under. Um, you have to have a gradual decline. Teachers are the highest death rate when they stop working because they've lived off a kind of adrenaline stress of kids wanting stuff, emails coming in. Miss, can you mark this? How do and if that just stops, their brains don't know what to do. So it has to be a gradual thing. I I mean, retirement probably isn't advisable in this modern age with how we've lived with our stress lives.

Bob Morrell:

But then I suppose there are lots of other people who manage their retirements brilliantly, go on lots of cruises, um, they've paid off their house, they've got an asset, they, you know, can do whatever they like. Now, to do whatever you like is an appealing thought, but if you can't think of what you'd like to do, then it's unappealing. Then you've got nothing to think about but yourself and how you're feeling, and start worrying about elements of your body and ailments, yeah, and that's how you end up, you know, generating these sort of no, I'm not saying that's exactly how it happens, and you know, of course, there's lots of different ways that that the people can make themselves ill, but I I think we are in a society which is increasingly healthier, living longer, yeah, being more active into an older age. And I think that also means, coming back to the original point, we have options when it comes to managing our time. Um, I heard a brilliant thing the other day on the on the uh on a podcast about sleep. And I'm I'm a terrible one if I don't get enough sleep. You know, I'm literally like a bear with a sore head. Um, and it used to stress me that I wasn't getting enough sleep, which meant I didn't sleep very well still further. And then I heard a brilliant thing where a guy said, Look, it's not about the sleep you get every night, it's about the week. Think about the week. If you can get enough sleep spread over a week, you're fine. Yeah, it's it's the individual night, couple of uh early nights, couple of early mornings, you're you're you're gonna be okay because you'll make it out through the week and you'll be all right. Um, and and that that really helps. But there are some people for whom if they if they cannot get eight hours, they cannot function.

Jeremy Blake:

No, I may I manage it up. So this week, very busy, got up at 4 a.m. I hadn't flicked the um sound off, and I had Florence texting at 2 a.m. going, can someone turn the light off even though I'm staying away? Um so I was on a flight at six to head up to Glasgow, and then lack of sleep and all of that. But I made it up and I did my classic thing of just massive brilliant power naps on the plane or whatever. I'm I'm much better at sleeping than I used to think I was. So good. So yeah, let's so we're talking about time, which of course doesn't stop. The clock starts and it's running, and you're running at work. But our sketch at the beginning shows a lot of the frustrations that we have, and I'm sure you must have, or you could be this person who seems to have filled your your diaries with endless meetings and appointments that are sapping your time.

Bob Morrell:

So I've got three questions. Um, I've asked um my online assistant to give me three questions to help someone with their time management. Okay, and you will recognise some of these questions. So the first one I'm gonna apply to you and and see what you think. Are you spending more time on what's urgent or on what's important? No, I'm definitely spending more time on what's important. Okay. So in that sketch at the beginning, you had somebody who was absolutely prioritizing urgency. And the note here then is if urgency always wins, you might be living in reaction mode instead of working strategically.

Jeremy Blake:

Oh my gosh, the amount of people who are responding to requests for information, spreadsheets, client chasing, all of that stuff. Let's go through these and then actually we can go back to a few of the um Yeah, tips that come from them. Bigger than tips sort of the authorities on time in a sense.

Bob Morrell:

Sure. Um, which tasks today could you delay, delegate, or delete without negative impact? Hmm. Good question, isn't it?

Jeremy Blake:

Yeah. Um, I've got a nice, pretty clear diary with just two more main things. I'm designing something. I could all you can always put off designing a program. So I'm I'm running a one-day program with with um an entire company, actually. Um but I like doing that little and often because that's important. I don't have to design the whole thing now. It's a sort of part improvement, part creative workshop. Okay. I could put that off, but then I'll have less time to design it. So just getting a bit more done on that would be good.

Bob Morrell:

But that sounds like important work, though, it is, it is, which is why I'm doing it. Is there anything that you could delegate to someone today? Um I've delegated taking my daughter somewhere, so I'm not doing that now.

Jeremy Blake:

So there you go. That's good. I've managed the car between three teenagers, because there's one car between three. So yeah, that's all delegated.

Bob Morrell:

Well, the point is most of us aren't very good at delegation. Okay. Most of us also have a level of control that we like to maintain.

Jeremy Blake:

Yeah.

Bob Morrell:

And when we feel that we are giving some of that control away, that can be difficult. So I think that's an animal.

Jeremy Blake:

Well, just on that point, when I was training in Scotland this week with these leaders, I talked about I I call him because everybody can picture it, I make it a hymn, the Weatherspoons manager who pulls that thing out of their imaginary belt, and it's a sort of magnetized disc on a chain that they hover over the till, they type some digits and go, there you are, John. So the Weatherspoons override management key. Yes. Which is, can you not just tell me how to do that on the till? No, no, no. Call me over whenever you have these. And it's like, you know, I've got somebody who's I've got to cancel the double scotch and change it to a double brandy. Come here, I'll do that for you. Why can't you just tell them how to do it?

Bob Morrell:

You know, rough day, was it, Jay?

Jeremy Blake:

In the Weatherspoons. Yeah. That must be why I came up with the uh the whole Weatherspoons override thing in the first place.

Bob Morrell:

Exactly. Now, I think that's a I mean, there's some there's a load of stuff we could say about that, but we'll come do another podcast about that. The other question here is at the end of most days, do you feel accomplished or just exhausted?

Jeremy Blake:

No, very accomplished. I mean, it also I'm lucky. The separation of my work from my home, having a garden office, has totally changed my life. I don't, I I, you know, I shut this thing down, have my list, have my success six sorted, which we'll talk about, which is a time management planning tool. Um no, all of those, and how do you answer those?

Bob Morrell:

Well, I um I definitely spend more time on things that are important. I have to react sometimes to urgent things, but I try and react to the same thing. Well, you find them mostly urgently.

Jeremy Blake:

Domestic? The ones that my ones that get in the way are the domestic ones.

Bob Morrell:

But that's because your garden's your office is in your garden, whereas I don't have anyone to distract me, you see. So that's the first thing. Well, I I get I get them coming in still and asking. There you go, that's it, you see. Um I think I think that um there are things I could delegate and uh delete. But you see, the thing about accomplishment is this you and I have our own business, okay? So if we have to work on something late, and if I have to work on something late, which I occasionally do, especially when we're very busy, I don't mind because actually I can see the value of what it is I'm doing. If I had to do something incredibly, you know, just administrative and work late on that, you know, putting in data or something really kind of I then I'm not sure I I I could cope. But because it's our business, we are invested in it, so therefore our all of the time we invest has a value. So I think that's another element which uh which is.

Jeremy Blake:

Well, you invest the time to produce the income, I suppose, the results, the happy customers.

Bob Morrell:

Yeah, absolutely. Um so let's think about some tips. I've got five tips here. Well, can we go into your point one?

Jeremy Blake:

You you use some of the language that uh so let me remember 1989. Uh a book is published.

Bob Morrell:

What book is that, which relates to your tip? The seven habits of highly effective people.

Jeremy Blake:

Yep, first published 1989. Stephen Covey, who sadly we lost to a cycling accident, or was it ice skating? He he um he didn't die because he ran out of time. Um, time is taken away from him. But his point in that book is he has this um time quadrant, doesn't he? But we can condense that. The the general tip is is it urgent or is it important? And then he also gets you to consider urgent and important. So, right, fair enough. But we make the point that those are deadlines, emergencies, and crises. Back to the first sketch, the problem that that version of Bob had is that he's seeing everything as urgent and important.

Bob Morrell:

Yeah.

Jeremy Blake:

Because there's no plan, everything's not spaced out, it's highly reactionary. And Covey says, as Bob was talking about a moment ago, that the box you want to live in is the not urgent but important, because you can build relationships, um, develop people, develop yourself, uh, do proper work, and that's the box to be in. We both feel more than half of the United Kingdom and abroad that we're talking to isn't in that box because they seem to tell us that straight after talking to us about something, they're going to another meeting. And I'm thinking, what are you doing? Are you when are you doing the job that you're meant to be doing? Because if you're endlessly in meetings, what are you doing?

Bob Morrell:

He also talks about um things which appear urgent. So, how many of us have our emails ghosting onto our screen when we're working? And we go, Oh, that's much more interesting than the thing I'm working on. Let's have a look at that. And it distracts us. And we reply to that email, and the person you reply to goes, Oh, they're there. I'll send them another email. You suddenly have an exchange going on, you're trying to do some work. It is poor time management to have that. Or there's a sound when your email comes in, or there's a sound when your phone sends you a text and you go, Oh, I'll have a look at that because it's more interesting. And you can't resist that thing which appears, oh, yeah, appears to be urgent, but it isn't.

Jeremy Blake:

The phone is a huge addiction. I'm very good at turning it off, and I note which of my trainers I'm co-training with can do that and which can't, um, and who are who are thinking some good stuff comes in. We know that there's a dopamine hit, so the science has researched this. You get a little bit of dopamine going, ooh, when you get a message or a text or a thing. Um let's talk about the final box, which is all that stuff that is neither urgent nor important. Um, which is hey, come and have a look at these photos of me being amazing at the weekend. Look at me, look at my dress. Uh, have you seen this hysterical TikTok? Um, let's watch a little sketch together. I mean, you and I, we we find these moments to do our wonderful, not urgent, not important stuff. Um yeah. And we'll go and watch an old sketch or send someone a sketch or something, you know. Yeah. Dick Henry, we couldn't, we're obsessed by sharing Dick Henry's sketches, weren't we, for a while? Oh, brilliant, brilliant. Absolutely. So uh that's Covey. Uh he's he's one of the sort of um pioneers of encouraging time management. I think the most recent research that I really like um is the time management where where you're saying time has changed is more like energy management. Because if you're working from home, there's going to be certain times of the day when you're better at doing certain tasks because you're not in a factory and you're not in an office if that isn't your job. So you're not necessarily conforming to everybody else's rhythm or operating rhythm. And the idea being, it's quite simple, is we think about birds, types of animals. There's two animals you'll be absolutely fine with, and the the other one, they haven't got a brilliant name for it. So there's the early bird, and the early bird catches the worm. And um, the early bird means somebody who is quite good in the morning, quite focused, up and at it, um, not a teenager. Teenagers we know, it's all scientifically proven, would love lessons at school to start at about two o'clock in the afternoon. So the early bird is somebody who can do quite focused work early. Then there's the night owl. Um, and I'm talking to a night owl now. Bobby, I think you're still probably a night owl, aren't you? Bit of a night owl. You're quite good at night. You're better than me in the evening, aren't you? You kind of got more energy at night, I'm sure you have. I don't know that that's true. I think it depends. I've always thought you were better at staying up later than me. Anyway. Um, so the night owl is somebody who can do some of that work quite a bit later. And then there's the third bird, who's kind of good in the kind of midpoint of the day. And what this research says is that you need to find out when you're best at doing certain types of work. So if you want to get your focus stuff out of the way before nine in the morning, do that. If you're actually good working later, do that. I remember you telling me years ago, Bob, that IBM got hold of this way before anybody else and said, we don't care when you do the work, just get it done in the period. And if you're a night owl, do the work at night rather than nine to five. They IBM are one of the pioneers of crashing that.

Bob Morrell:

I don't know that they still run their business like that, but certainly for a long time, you were empowered to manage your hours in your own way. Um, and I think that was quite useful. And indeed, where you worked from, which saved a lot of time as well.

Jeremy Blake:

So let's come to you for some of your tips, and then we can finish if you like on a nice little planning tool, which is about time as well.

Bob Morrell:

So, really good, easy tips. We're going to give you a planning tool because the first one is prioritize with a clear daily plan. Okay, so that's a good one. Now, this is something which I don't do enough, and we should time block your calendar. So if you know you need time to do something focused to something that's really important, block out the time and make sure you're not available. Just absolutely block that time out and don't be available. And that could be for a private thing as well. If you want to go for a lovely walk and you want to take some time out for yourself, block the time so that you can absolutely do that. Um, this is a really good one. Use the two-minute rule. If something takes less than two minutes, do it immediately. Okay, don't let those build up, just do them quickly. Tame your communication channels, just been talking about it. So emails, messages, look at them in batches rather than as they happen. That's a great one. And lastly, build in buffer time. So don't just have you know back to back. We hear that all the time, back to back. Well, make sure there's 10 to 15 minutes between each meeting to go and have a cup of coffee, look out the window, do something to take your mind off things before so you can have a bit of a life before you go back in. Because I guarantee if you're having back-to-back meetings, by the time you get to about three o'clock, you've had it. Your effectiveness is going to be extremely limited if you're not taking regular breaks.

Jeremy Blake:

Yep. Very good. Um I'm just thinking about that back to back. Sort of funny. Back to back, the alternatives are spooning or front to front, but my brain has just wandered off there. Um, which would make you make the time much more interesting, wouldn't it?

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Jeremy Blake:

So let's finish with um Ivy Lee's success six. So, Carnegie building bridges, all this wonderful stuff in the United States, and uh all his growing empire of building things he can't get enough done in the day, and he wants his senior managers to be much better at running projects. He asks Ivy Lee, who's actually sort of the pioneer of public relations, and he says, Okay, I've come up with this idea. You're gonna do two things in the morning, then you're gonna have a cup of coffee, you're gonna do two things, then you're gonna have lunch, you're gonna do two things, then you're gonna go home. So you divide your day into six parts, and you do your worst first. Get the thing out of the way that you're dreading, then you do something else, then you reward yourself with a cup of coffee, chalky bicky, whatever you need. Then you're gonna do two more series of tasks, and then you're gonna have lunch, then you're gonna do two more and go home. Now, if you write this the night before, it could be a group of tasks. It could be called 10 prospects between 11 and 12, it could be phone these people back, it could be design this, and all the stuff Bob's just said about blocking out, buffering, all of this can map in. Now, what it means is instead of having a ridiculous list with 20 things on that you're never going to accomplish, you lift them off that list and put it onto your success six and you cross them off as you go. So it's a prioritization method. It also gets you to realize what is important in the day that you're running. I tend to write mine the night before, but you could also write them on the morning of. Now, if you operate that for some weeks, you'll see how good you are. You'll also see what's bothering you. Who is it that's maybe senior or appearing to be knocking stuff out, bothering you, but not letting you keep to your success six. But also if it's rewritten daily, then you're really poor at saying no.

Bob Morrell:

Very good. So that is something for you to try, the success six. Now, this is a subject we keep returning to because uh it's something which we all need to work on, because of course we're all creatures of habit. And if you're in the habit of uh scrolling on your phone for half an hour at a time, um, that's the habit you're going to be into. And then you'll think, oh God, I've wasted all that time. Okay, well, then limit your time, give yourself a 15-minute limit. Um, you know, take control of that time you're spending rather than allowing yourself to be drawn into things in a way which will distract you from more valuable things that you can be doing. And of course, this applies equally to home life as it does to work as well. Yep. So good luck with managing your time more effectively. We will see you on another podcast soon. But in the meantime, thank you for listening.

Jeremy Blake:

Please share, review, and rate. It helps us hugely. You can forward this to somebody who you think could really do with the help. You can write us a few words, um, give us a review, give us some feedback. Thank you ever so much.

unknown:

Bye.