Hey guys, and welcome back to Change Wired Podcast. My name is Angela Shorina. I'm your host. I'm your partner in Change, Personal and Collective Evolution, your executive health and high performance coach 360, and just someone who's truly passionate about unlocking, using, expanding our human potential to create the most extraordinary world and live the most extraordinary lives. A couple of things before we jump into the topic of today's podcast. Please stay tuned for Wednesday episode because we're gonna talk about some of my favorite topics, nutrition, and specifically about new US dietary guidelines that I'm already such a fan of. And a few of my friends were not that like in favor of simply because they don't really align with government in the US and you know, people who maybe they don't really admire people who came up with those guidelines and prior history of US guidelines, you know, also doesn't help. But I wanted to step on it here today because I wanted to consider a human bias that we all have. What's called messenger effect. You can also Google look it up, behavioral science messenger effect. This idea that when we have certain feelings about the messenger who brings to us some knowledge or information, we tend to evaluate that information based on the feelings that we have for that specific person or people or entity like US administration, maybe like Trump, maybe like his whole administration, right? And we fail to consider other factors. Like, for example, you can Google it and search for it and find the scientific foundation for it and how they admit their prime mistakes and a lot of really good information. Why I don't have negative feelings about this dietary guidance, but only the positive ones. A I am super apolitical, I don't know much about politics, and you think, well, Mangela, that's not really a good way to exist in the world. But actually, what it allows me to do is have no prejudges towards any government, because I just really don't read the news and don't follow politicians, don't know much about them, don't know what's been the latest gossip in the you know news world, don't really know what they did before. But when I look at something, I'm like, ah, you know, that's something that I've heard over and over and over and over again from all the nutrition, exercise health scientists who've been around for decades and who base their opinions and change their opinions, what is also very important, based on new scientific evidence. That's what I've been hearing. And people who I look up to for health, nutrition, and fitness science-backed information, they've all been saying very similar things. And so when I saw it in the US guidelines, I'm like, huh, the government catches up. And I what I'm also very excited about is because US, you know, love it or hate it, but it's I think one of the best marketing countries, in a sense that whatever US they're doing, like it spreads to the rest of the world sooner or later. So I'm very excited about this stage of development of nutrition guidelines because you know, I'm very passionate about nutrition. I'm a nutritionist, I'm a nutrition coach, part of my certifications and part of my expertise, and every single cell in our body, in our brain, yeah, everything, what we physically are is built from the foods that we put on our plates. And so the better quality of it gonna get in the world, the better as humans we're gonna become. So I'm very excited about that. And stay tuned for Wednesday episode when we're gonna get into details and how implement it and why it's important, da-da-da. So stay tuned for Wednesday episode. Or if you're also curious, check out new US dietary guidelines that have been on the news everywhere. Then now let's jump into the topic of our podcast, which is true, smart, what I call meaningful productivity. When I do my workshops on productivity, I usually call them meaningful productivity. You're gonna learn about three practices or three habits or three ways of approaching your work in this new world of work with all the AI. So you don't end up creating more slop in your life, not just AI slop, but sloppy things, things that are insignificant, that create more workload, business, and overload in your life without necessarily producing qualitative upgrades. So I'm gonna share with you three productivity frameworks that I learned from people smarter than me who've been researching and writing about productivity and also doing teaching in universities, some of the best universities in the world. I'm gonna share with you what I learned from them and how I apply it into my life, and how perhaps you can apply it in your life and work as well if you want to be truly productive, creating more meaningful results in your life. Right? Because if we define productivity is getting more stuff done, send more emails sent, more messages replied, more just more busyness of any kind, then yes, AI for sure will make us busier, just like the telephone before, just like email before, just like remote work and capabilities to do work in different locations simultaneously, right? Just because we added more technology, it did not mean that we added necessarily more meaningful productivity or moving the right things forward in our life and in our world. You might argue, well, if I'm now am able to send more emails, am I really productive just because it replied to more emails? Did I actually move the important things forward or did I just get busy? So, principle number one, and a lot of this I adopted and learned from Cal Newport, the author of Be So Good They Can't Ignore You, Deep Work, and his latest book, Slow Productivity. He is a computer scientist, he teaches in universities, he deals with a lot of you know what's happening now in university and college life with students and all the AI, and he writes about productivity, the meaningful kind. So, uh a very interesting thing I learned from his latest law productivity book, and that I uh try to apply to my work as well, because I really like got it. It was a really insightful moment for me. So, first principle is do less, in a sense that take on less projects. And what I what was an insightful moment for me is that when you take on more projects, let's say I decide to work with startups and I decide to work with companies and I have my one-on-one coaching on the side, and I'm trying to do more speaking, and I want to uh grow my podcast. Like I actually have quite a lot of podcasts, and I'm looking to test more things and then downsize the amount of things that I do. So when you get more projects and when you get to collaborate with other people, you know what happens? You start doing a lot more work around work, like emails, how to do this, how to do X, how we collaborate, sometimes select messages, uh, teams, so all kinds of stuff, which is not moving things, but just coordination, talking to people, meetings, and all of that stuff. And the more projects, like macro projects that you can define, you have on the less the slower each project moves, because A, you then now spread all of your resources on all these projects, and B, now you have that amount amount of more work around work, like again, emails, messaging, meetings, and just all the kinds of coordination. And so, what you end up doing, and also what very often would happen now, you can't really dedicate a lot of deep work to stuff, and so you're constantly task switching, which in research has been shown to make your brain less capable of doing work, deep work faster, and so you move slower, and because of that, projects move even slower. So we might notice that a lot of companies would move slower and not faster because all of a sudden they take on more and more and more and more, and people take on more and more and more because they feel like with the eye they can just you know reply to more emails, and what you'll find is projects are moved slower because of all of this overhead and sheer amount or number of projects that one working on. So, how you can apply it to your life is choose fewer projects. Let's say you set a rule like Carl Newport suggests that I only take on three projects at a time, and you create this line or this cue in maybe even what also Carl Newport suggests a public document, and you can give access to people and say, hey, I'm working on this project. Once I'm done, I can take on more projects. So please put it in the queue. And once I'm done, I look at the projects and I'll get back to you if I think we are, you know, it's worth it for us to collaborate on that. And because of that, you set this limit, and so you're forced to actually get things done to at least a certain degree of completion you're capable of before allowing yourself to take on more work versus just hitting some you know challenging point in the project and deciding I'm just gonna jump to the next one because, well, this I can't handle working on at the moment, even though if you tried a little bit harder, you probably could have found the solution. So principle number one to predominantly avoid work around work and slowing down the shipment of the projects is do less, take on less projects, not like work less necessarily, a lot of work. So I would work the same amount of hours, but I'd like to deliver more. Framework number two, or more of a habit that I'm personally keeping myself accountable this year, is before committing to anything, saying a simple sentence, five words, I think it's five. Yes, let me think about it. So the phrase is let me think about it. Whenever somebody asks you to do something, say let me think about it. Because I don't know about you, but I'm a yes person. So whenever I somebody asks me to do something, or do you want to be a part of this? I'm like, yes. And then I get back home and like, oh my god, I already have these commitments and I would like to deliver a great job on this, but now I have this and I have to dedicate time to that as well. So what I learned, I need to pace myself and get into the habit of saying, let me think about it, because if I look back over my 2025 and you know, all three years that I've been in South Africa, I can say that I could have delivered more better quality on fewer things if I didn't load up my plate with all the like side hustles and side things that I've been doing. So let me think about it and creating that list of projects that I'm currently committing to and not putting anything else, but again, creating this cue, creating idea list for things to consider when I decide to either pivot from a project or finish working on it at this stage. So that is what I'm adopting, and what is an easy enough thing, a simple enough thing for me to downstream create better habits for doing less and taking on more. Because again, you know, the fastest way to stay mediocre is just stay busy and never have time to deliver outstanding quality, excellent quality, quality that stands out and you remember it by on any of the projects. So I'm actually very proud of the experience of the project that I did last week where I was leading a five-day high-performing entrepreneur challenge, and I'm very proud about that because at this time I decided you know, no, I'm not gonna be moving any projects forward, I'm gonna show up and deliver the best quality I can for that project. So I'm very proud about that. And I'm having subsequent sessions with guys, and they're staying in my community. So it is a good experience. I'm really proud of that dynamic that I set up for that first week of the year, and so I plan to continue. And the way I continue is practicing habit. Whenever somebody asks me to do something, saying, Let me think about it, then what you do then that's also very important. You come back home or to your computer, to your schedule, and you to your project list, and like, well, there are all these projects. Am I truly committing here to take on this and cut the time from the projects that I set for myself for this year that I thought were really important? Am I ready to cut the time out of from these projects and dedicate it to this? Because every single waking hour that you're not putting in working on what matters most to you, well, it's not there and it's not going to be delivered, and you're gonna slow things down, and there is less deep thinking and your talent and your genius dedicated to them. So ask yourself these questions. Am I ready to sacrifice more quality, more meaning, meaningful progress on this for this? So that my uh habit for 2026, and that's what I recommend to you, at least giving it a try, to move more meaningful things forward and feel less overcommitted, overwhelmed, overworked, because that also influences what kind of quality you deliver on any one of the projects. Yes, with the eye you can ship a lot of things fast, but is it gonna be adding to what is now called AI slope or something that stands out, something that is remarkable, something that you can be remembered for. So, habit framework number two, let me think about it. And then framework number three also actually learned, and it was quite insightful for me from Carl Newpert on uh while listening to the podcast Finding Mastery with Malk with Dr. Michael Gervais, he's a high performance psychologist. And they were talking, well, Carl Newport was sharing this notion. He teaches at university, I don't remember the name of the university, I actually didn't look it up. But what he noticed when he gives assignments to students that the students who work with AI actually take longer time to complete it. Not shorter, longer. And the reason is because they get into this mode of back-in-forced conversation and figuring it out. And I don't know if you notice that about any AI chat, but but it always brings you like this sheer big volumes of information and ideas, and like this sounds also great, and I don't know what I'm gonna do with that, and what is more important and what should I try? And I can't possibly try all of the things because it's just too much. And what I know, and I can totally see how if you start working in this mode, like you will work more and seemingly on more things and with more ideas. But is it getting you closer to shipping the result? That's another question. And what I'm learning from Carl Mupert, who works again, who teaches actual students and gives them assignments and they use AI to work through those assignments, what I'm learning from him, using AI might not be speedifying some kind of work. The kind of work uh to give you an idea, an example from my real work, for this challenge that I mentioned, five-day challenge, I needed to prepare good presentation and material for each of the days on different topics. And I wanted to present what I learned and in experience and practice and from again smarter people like myself, and I wanted to present good quality work. And no, I did not go to ChatGPT starting asking to create this whole thing for me. What I did and worked super, super duper well, and I couldn't do it without the eye, but I did not start with the eye. First, I would go to Google Doc, and the doc was HPE, high performing entrepreneur reboot challenge draft, and I would write down everything, everything I wanted to have in that presentation with enough detail to know exactly what I mean, but not you know, all of the details that you know there were blank spaces that I know that AI with the web search internet can figure it out and can fill it in for me, and then I can edit what I don't like. But anyhow, so I would create this draft, which was usually about a page, maybe a couple of pages, totally sloppy in terms of grammar and sentence structures. But I would write something like so this is the day number two and day number three of the challenge, and I want to cover these things and I want to talk about first this and that and that and this. So I would write this draft of what I wanted to have in the presentation, and then I would take this draft and I would put it in Gamma AI, probably one of the best tools for creating presentations, and I would ask it to create this presentation for this challenge that I'm doing, and I wanted to expand on specific things and wanted to present diagrams and uh you know certain style of the presentation, and so I would put it all there as this big prompt and hit enter, and in probably like I don't know, five minutes I would have almost a ready-to-go presentation, which looked pretty damn good. And because I put in so much detail, like you the AI agent couldn't really go into many different directions, but it knew exactly what I wanted to cover, and then I would pretty much spend another 10 minutes of uh for on editing that, and that was it, and then I would get ready and present, and that was how I was also able to do that, even with all the additional work and sessions and etc. So that's how AI can speed up your work, but again, thinking about all the instances when I would start working with this like chat mode, it did not speed up my work, it made it slower because it did not help him help me to narrow down my choices, but instead expand it and expand it and expand it, and I wouldn't end up like in this chat for like an hour and no work to show for it. And so the purpose of this beat is to help you uh be aware of this extension of timeline on delivery on any on any project with AI, which might happen. I and I highly recommend you to do this experiments, like do the work. You first, and then you know, ask AI to just add it and present it or be your you know like assistant, like finish it off. I got it. So do something like that, and then do it perhaps in the chat mode where you start with AI. Perhaps that's the way you do work now, and see how long that's gonna take you. But the whole idea of this third part of the framework is don't think that AI will make your work faster and better. Actually, it might very well do the opposite because AI is not you, it does not have your experience, expertise, lived stories, and something from real life you can share with the audience. It does not have your brain that connects the dots in a specific way, it cannot know how to emphasize things that you have point of view on and seem to be more important. Like AI cannot do that. AI is not you, it's an uh assembly of different stuff on the internet that sort of resembles human cognition and the way we express ourselves in writing and in imagery, etc. But it is not your brain. And not just you might lose your individuality that you had for this mediocre, you know, set of things and ideas from all over the internet. It's how what I heard from recruiters and people who do hiring, they would get very similar resumes for job positions, and they just didn't have any patience for going through this AI-created stuff because it kind of averaged everything everyone out and nobody stood out, and it was you know just not worthy to look at. You don't treat the person behind that, you just see a bunch of AI stuff. So be aware of the stuff that using AI for everything in this way, substituting your own thinking is not better and very often not even faster. And most people who work with a lot of people can see the difference where it is unique and where it is AI all the way from start to finish. So to sum it up, but before we sum it up, please guys do rate a review of this podcast, share it with at least one other person that's how this podcast is gonna grow. And if you are getting value from this podcast, then please do share, please help me to reach more ears. Please help all of us to learn from each other so we get better together. Our podcast is already in 193 countries, so maybe bring it to more countries. And we are in 11,000 cities plus, so maybe let's bring it to more cities. And now back to summing up the framework. Number one, do less. Not like work less if you like working, work if you don't, don't, but do less of things, of projects, create a set, a list of meaningful projects that you are dedicating yourself to, and have a separate list of ideas and all the things that you might be considering. And before jumping into any of that, you know, consider the fact that every time you jump into new things, you take in the quality out of these projects that you decided were meaningful and important. Number two, to make this happen, to prevent overcommitting, over-scheduling, overwhelm. Whenever somebody asks you to do something, ask, tell this phrase, let me think about it. Let me think about it. And when you think about it again, back to your list of meaningful projects, and see if you want to cut some time off from this to whatever that thing you're asked to do. You can always reconsider, but don't fool yourself. Time is not extendable. You get 168 hours every week and no more for 50 what three or so weeks of the year. And then part number three of this productivity for unfair advantage, not mediocrity framework, is consider your AI tools. Just because you can use it doesn't mean you should, or at least not 100% all the way through, and figure out your own flow that does allow you to delegate the stuff that doesn't steal from your individuality. Like you can draft everything, create the ideas, work them out, and then add AI to add the flair and correct the mistakes and you know do the all the assistant kind of work, not the creator kind of work. That's it for today, guys. Thank you for tuning in. Thank you for listening. Stay tuned for Food Pyramid episode on Wednesday. And till next time, be productive in a meaningful way.