Leverage Your Time Balance Your Life
Dr. John Ingram Walker, psychiatrist, author, and speaker, chats with his co-host Wende Whitus about personal development tools for designing a life well lived.
Discover more about Dr. Walker at his website: https://leverageyourtimebook.com/
Wende is the founder of Personal Retreat Day, her website is https://personalretreatday.com/
Leverage Your Time Balance Your Life
Book Summary: The Productivity Project
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After a highly entertaining story by Dr. Walker about an accidental arctic adventure, we dive into another one of our popular Book Summaries! This time we discuss Chris Bailey's The Productivity Project. Bailey took an entire year to experiment with dozens of productivity "hacks" so you don't have to! He tells what worked and what didn't for him. Wende has already successfully implemented two new disciplines from Bailey's suggestions, and Dr. Walker is eager to try one too.
Also mentioned in this episode: Lucinda Halpern's book Get Signed.
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Want more resources? The Leverage Your Time Balance Your Life book is available on Amazon! Visit www.leverageyourtimebook.com to order the book, read the blog, and listen to the podcast.
Discover more about Dr. Walker HERE and Wende HERE
All right, everybody. Today Wende's gonna discuss her book. Well, it's not her book, but a book she read, The Productivity Project. So listen up. Alright, here we go. Leverage your time, balance your life, Dr. Walker and my wonderful, delightful daughter, Wende Whitus.
Wende:Hey, hey, Dad. Happy January. We're about to get a big ice storm all over the country, so we're gonna record this and I'm gonna make sure it's online and available before this ice storm hits and knocks everyone's power out.
John:Yeah, and I finished my novel, my rough draft, and so I got 100,000 words.
Wende:That's amazing.
John:Which will compute to about 300 or 350 book pages. So I'm printing all that out, Wendy. I'm printing it out so that I can do editing uh on the printout if we get an ice storm.
Wende:That's right. You'll be working by candlelight. Just like Abe Lincoln.
unknown:Yeah.
John:Yeah, a lot of these warnings are much to do about nothing.
Wende:Well, we will see. Next time we will give you uh an actual, this is what is supposed to happen with the ice storm. Next week we will hear what actually did happen with the ice storm.
John:Well, let me tell you what actually did happen with me. Uh May 17th, we had a house up in Red River, New Mexico, up in the mountains. Our house was at 8,500 feet, I'll tell you. And so I was gonna go on a hike. In fact, I was gonna go camping, and I was gonna camp out, and I was going to find my purpose in life. And so I took with me some water jugs. By the way, when you're hiking and camping, what weighs the most? Water water. Yes. So I had a bunch of water and I hiked up to about just below tree line. Beautiful place, Wendy. Water stream going. I stacked up a bunch of wood. I had everything ready. It was wonderful. I was gonna spend two nights there fasting with only water. I took my Bible and I was gonna fast there and sit, read the Bible a little bit, meditate, and find out what my purpose was in life.
Wende:And have an epiphany, yes. Spirit journey.
John:Here I was, spring day, went to bed, oh, nice and cozy. I woke up and heard thunder. And I said, hmm, that's interesting. That's gonna be wonderful to have a little thunderstorm. I'm in my tent, it'll be fun. I went back to sleep, and the next thing my tent had caved in on me. And I said, What in the world is happening? And I stuck my head outside, and it was a white out of snow. Well, it was night, I couldn't tell. But it was snowing, and my tent had collapsed, so I get out of my tent, and what happened? I left my boots outside my tent.
Wende:Oh no!
John:And so my boots were filled up with snow. What nice then? So I emptied my boots out, put my feet in my boots, walked outside, got the tent erected, went back to bed, sleeping soundly, woke up the next morning, and it was a whiteout, Wendy. It was a total whiteout. People can't see, but uh about ten feet you couldn't see of the tree out there.
Wende:Oh my goodness.
John:It was snowing so hard, and my boots were icy, and had, you know, when you go camping at high altitude, what you do is you take a candle with you. The reason you take a candle is you light that candle and you can start kindling real easy. So I had my kindling ready, my candle lit my candle, but the candle, kindling wouldn't start.
Wende:Yeah.
John:And so I was frozen in my sleeping bag with only water for two nights and two days. Oh my gosh. But it was kind of it was kind of fun, but uh, I had to get in my sleeping bag most of the time, you know. And uh finally it cleared up, and I walked out, and my tent had iced up, had coating ice on the tent pegs and everything. So it was hard to get the tent out. Wow. And it was already frozen, it was still frozen. So taking all the ice out, I put it on my backpack, clear, clear day, and I start walking towards uh the house, going down the trail, and I see a bear track. I said, hmm, I see the bear track on the trail. And I said, I'm not gonna worry because I got my whistle. You know, the bear comes up, he's going the way from me, not toward me. If he comes toward me, I'll just blow my whistle. I'm not scared. So I walked along. And I walked along, and sure enough, the bear track went to the stream. He was gonna catch him some fish for breakfast. And I went back home, and I got home at 10 after 10. And Vicky said, Where have you been? You were supposed to be here at 10 o'clock. She really wasn't that bad. But she gave, hey, Vicki, didn't you get scared? She got really scared for me. She called the friends and said, Hey, John's up in the mountains. I didn't tell them where I was going. Oh they didn't know which this was a different uh can't be.
Wende:It could have been anywhere. You could have been anywhere.
John:And Vicki said, you know, I'm worried about John. They said, Oh, don't worry about John. He can take care of himself. So Vicky worried for two hours, uh, two days.
Wende:Yes.
John:And I froze for two days, but I'm figure if I can stand that ice storm, I can certainly send this ice storm.
Wende:In a house that is gonna be nice and cozy. And even if you lose power, at least you don't have to deal with ice in your boots. Wow. That's a real Jack London story right there.
John:Yeah, that was a good ditch. Couldn't get us get the fire started.
Wende:I know. God, everything was wet. Yeah, it wasn't Jack London. It was a Jack London type story. That's amazing. Well, I'm glad you're okay, and you survived that. And like you said, if you survive that, I'm sure you can survive the ice apocalypse of 2026.
John:Yeah, well, I remember that Jack London story. He also fell in some ice. Yes.
Wende:Remember then?
John:Yeah, that's that's deadly dangerous.
Wende:Wow.
John:So uh let's get on to your book.
Wende:Yeah, so we're gonna pivot a little bit to one of our book summaries, our famous book summaries that we do. These are always very popular. The downloads on these are big books. People like the book summaries. So we have another one. This is one that I picked up because the reason I picked it up, actually, let me tell you the title first. It's The Productivity Project by Chris Bailey. And the reason I picked it up is because I had been following this um agent that wrote a book on you know how to get your book published, and this was one of her publications that she published. And so it was about 10 years ago.
John:Oh, this uh agent.
Wende:This is an agent that I had been reading. I had been reading her book about how to become a published author. And this was one of the books that she signed, you know, the authors that she signed, and she got published with a major publishing house. So one of her success stories as an agent. Right. Um, I was looking at her website to look at to see what she had actually represented. And this one came up, and I was like, oh, that is very much in alignment with how I think. So I'd like to read it and see what insights Chris Bailey had 10 years ago about productivity. Um, so what's what what do we always say when we talk about these things?
John:These are the same old books, the same deal difference on that. Now, what you have to do when you write these books, you gotta have some tra terrible tragedy happen to you in a biphany scene. You know, something terrible is gonna have to so you can write the book. That's what happened to this guy.
Wende:Now, this guy didn't have a terrible tragedy, but what he did have is that he did have a unique angle. Everyone needs a that's one of the things that the agent talks about in her book is if you're going to write a book, a nonfiction book, you have to have a unique angle, even if it's the same old, same old, repackaged, which all of these productivity books are. And his angle was very fun to read about. So he spent a year after college. He was a big, you know, productivity um junkie, yeah. We can call it that, right? Just hooked on all these different methods. And he decided that he wanted to take a year to experiment with some of the productivity hacks that he had learned about. And so he took time to do things as extreme as meditate for 30 hours a week.
John:30 hours a week.
Wende:Yes, to waking up at 5 30 a.m. every day, to um, you know, uh different, different so many different difficulties.
John:Why did he have time and money to do that? Did you have what you reach?
Wende:I don't think he was he was wealthy. And as a matter of fact, part of the way through the book, he talks about how he had to move back in with his girlfriend's parents in their basement because he was running out of money, but he was determined to finish the project. But what he did was he blogged about it and had a very successful blog. And he he has a very entertaining writing style. I enjoyed that very much about his style. And I haven't gone back to look at the blog, but I I bet it was just fascinating to read about it.
John:Well, when let me tell you your big problem, Wendy, is you don't like social media. I don't all these guys have used social media to get their stuff up there. But anyway, go ahead.
Wende:Exactly. So I am anti-social media. It's kind of it's something that I'm coming to peace with, actually, because it is anti-my brand. My if you would call it my brand, is I get away from I want people to get away from social media. And so I find it kind of um hypocritical. Exactly, hypocritical to be put you know, self-promoting on social media. And so I think there are other ways. LinkedIn is not as social media, so I use LinkedIn quite a bit now. Okay, but I I actually, I think it was yesterday, deleted Instagram. That was my last app on my phone that was social media. I deleted it, so it is no longer there. You can't get in touch with me through Instagram anymore. Um, so here is Chris Bailey in a nutshell. We have he talks about what he learned from all of these different productivity hacks and tips and tricks.
John:Um three pillars.
Wende:The three pillars. So we talk about managing time mostly when we're talking about being more productive, right? Is you know, you've got to manage your time and you gotta get in control of your time. But he said it's not just time, it's also we have to manage and channel our energy and our attention. Correct. So those three things working together make you a more productive person. Now, the other thing is what is productivity? A lot of people confuse being productive with being active.
John:Yeah, activity doesn't make you productive. You can do a lot of things actively and not be productive.
Wende:That is absolutely right. And I will mention another book that I'm reading now, um, which is by Cal Newport. He was the famous deep work guy. Um he is all about getting away from social media as well, uh, as an aside. But his latest one is also about it's it's called slow productivity, and it's about um really what is being productive. Uh, you know, we we confuse this activity and you know, emails and meetings and all of this with being productive. Oh, we're so busy. Busy equals productivity. And his his message in this is like being busy is not being productive. You do your most productive work when you, you know, work that really matters you can do in a very small amount of time.
John:Well, what he talks about is biological uh prime time. Now, a lot of these books say get up early in the morning and work hard. Okay. Sure. Well, I used to have tried that. I got up early in the morning and worked hard, but that's not my biological time. I'm more productive after 6 p.m. Yes at night. So I stopped getting up early and I started working at night. And sometimes I'll go to 2 a.m. in the morning because that's when I'm productive. That's my biological productive time. That's it. And that's what he's talking about.
Wende:Exactly. And so Chris Bailey experienced, this is one of his experiments, you know, is exactly what you said. He gave himself a challenge of waking up at 5 30 in the morning because he read, you know, a book in a blog about like getting at 5 30. And he said he just was sluggish, he couldn't, he couldn't manage his energy, right? It wasn't about time, it was about energy.
John:Yeah.
Wende:So with that experiment, he goes all through, you know, how that happened in the book. What he suggests to find, if you don't know, most people kind of know their biological prime time when they're most, you know, they you don't have to keep a log to know. But if you don't, for some reason, if you're really scattered and some, you know, you just don't have a handle at it, he said, take a week to set an alarm on your phone every hour and just kind of make a note of how energetic you're feeling, how focused you're feeling at that given hour, and then analyze it the next week and see when when your highs and lows are.
John:That's in interesting, Wende, because remember when I was at Duke, I was director of the medical specialties group. And so that meant that we had a lot of people coming in with pain. And so we would have them keep a log every hour where their pain level was. So that's what he's talking about. Find out where not your pain is, where your pleasure is.
Wende:Yes, exactly. Where your energy is, if you're focused, if you're feeling, you know, like you can channel your attention on one task at a time. Those are those are that's what he recommends. So that's great.
John:So uh work smarter, not longer. Now we heard that forever and ever.
Wende:Yeah, exactly. So nothing repackaged, everything repackaged again. One thing I did take away um is I took two ideas of his. So he has, I believe it was about 25, these are very short chapters, about 25 chapters, each talking about one of the productivity hacks that he tried, how it went, what he learned from it. And then if you want to implement it, this is how.
John:Oh, it's one of the powders. Okay, I don't know about that, but a bunch of powders.
Wende:So a bunch of powders, but this is like some powder that you could mix, and it gave you all the nutrients and all the fiber, everything that you needed nutritionally, and that's all you have to do. Well, coconut powder.
John:I just use it all. Oh god. Go on.
Wende:Everything that you're supposed to have for peak performance, but you you don't eat, you just drink this powder, right? And so he said that was his biggest failure because he loves food, he loves the experience of eating. And so he said that one he kind of like he tried and he was gonna try to do it for a couple of weeks, and he's like, Yeah, it lasted two days, and I that was garbage. So there were a couple, it's that's why I'm like this is a funny book because you read and some of the really extreme things he did and what worked and what didn't work. But here are the two that worked for me. Right. One is The Rule of Three. Okay. And uh this has been repackaged in many different books, but um, I just like the way he laid it out. What he does once a week is he has his weekly planning session and he lays out the three most important projects or tasks. More for a week, it's more of a project that he needs to work on that week. Okay. Then he takes every day the three most important tasks to work on just that day. And that, for some reason, I've done that before. This time it's really stuck with me.
John:Wait a minute, what's the difference between making a list of activities and doing the first activity?
Wende:So these are just three. The most important, the three most important, it really makes you focus. So every morning for the past week, I have done this, and oh, I was gonna bring in my notebook and tell you what they were. Um, but I've written at the top of my notebook page, and it really makes me think what are the most, the three most important activities of all of yeah, of all of the activities I feel that I must do. If I get these three done, then it's been a successful day. So I've done that for about two weeks, and it's really helped me focus my attention and let other things go to the back burner.
John:Well, let me tell you something that's helped me focus my attention, and that was the trick you told me about when you start on a project, set your clock to go off every 45 minutes and stop.
Wende:Yes.
John:That really helped me. And it's hard for me to stop sometimes, but I do notice around 45 minutes for me, my creativity starts to wane a little bit. So if I take that time off for about five minutes, touch my toes, do some little exercise, get back to it, that really works. That's sort of what he's talking about too, right? And you've you came up with that. So put that in your book.
Wende:Okay, I will. Yeah, that's something that is really your body is telling you, your mind is telling you this is a time to take a break. And you get to the point of diminishing returns, right? Without that, if you just try to slog through.
John:If you try to slog through, it won't work. Yeah.
Wende:So yeah, so setting the alarm for 45 minutes and taking a break. I do the same thing, but sometimes, like if I'm in the zone, just like you, kind of in flow, I'll ignore it and keep going. But it's not too much longer after that that I'm like, you get tired, yeah. Yeah.
John:And it could be for uh an individual, it could be 30 minutes, 15 minutes, but know when your energy begins to wake. Another issue though, Wendy, is you cannot wait for your energy. In other words, you've got to set aside. I'm gonna work what help help helped me with my book is I said, I'm gonna work 45 minutes every day. Yes, at least 45 minutes every day. Yeah. Okay. I don't want to do it today. Well, I said, well, I can do it for 45 minutes. Yes. Right? Right. So that helps people get started. I think a lot of people have trouble getting started. Yeah. That's the biggest problem rather than getting stopped. Right. So I think m saying I'm gonna work on something for 15 minutes every day.
Wende:Yes, exactly.
John:Okay.
Wende:And it's the same thing as the hardest part of exercise is putting on your shoes.
John:Right. Exactly.
Wende:Yeah. And it yeah, just getting started with the one small step, that's great.
John:Now, uh, so what about managing your attention? What what'd she say about that?
Wende:So we have so many d distractions, uh, more now than ever, and I'm sure more now than he wrote this, but even 10 years ago, the phone was a distraction, all of the pinging that we get, the notifications. So you and I, I think both a long time ago have shut those notifications off. I would encourage our listeners to do the same. You do not need to be notified when an email comes in. You do not need to be notified when someone uh DMs you on social media. Right. You control the app, not the app controlling you. So turn off the dang notifications, the bells and whistles, because the research has shown that it takes so I can't remember the exact time, but it takes much more time to redirect your brain back to the original task at hand once it's been integrated.
John:Isn't that amazing? I've noticed that a long time. It's amazing. You're in a creative zone, boop, beep, beep, and your creative zone goes away. And it takes you sometimes 30 minutes to get it back.
Wende:Yes. And I will get on my soapbox about this because the designers of these social media apps, they they're the evil geniuses behind this, they know what it's doing to us. It's the dopamine hits. Right. It's the easy click, click, click, scroll, scroll, scroll. They have designed these apps to be disruptive to our lives because their monetization is our eyeballs, our attention, right? So um, you know, I I say, whoa, evil genius, but I it's really for their bottom line. It's not for us, it's for them.
John:Right. So that's the big point. They're they're trying to seduce you with their little beats. That's right. It's like Vegas in your pocket.
Wende:You got Vegas in your pocket. So managing your attention, that is step one, is just turn off the notifications of your phone, make uh regain control of your attention rather than letting technology dictate where you can.
John:Embrace your disconnect. What is that?
Wende:Embrace disconnect. So we talked about that already, taking breaks and what the talked about that. Okay, well, good.
John:Okay, so what have you implemented?
Wende:So besides the rule of three, the other thing that I really took away that I I liked is having a quote unquote maintenance day. We all have these tasks that kind of uh happen regularly in our life. So it's to use a cleaning analogy, you always have laundry, you always have dishes, you always have these things that need to be done. Why not take a chunk of time and lump those tasks together? So I'll tell you.
John:Washing clothes, washing okay.
Wende:So here's here's an example. Before I would, or sometimes, you know, when I get lazy, uh I will put in a load of laundry, and it's hours go by, and then I go, Oh yeah, I need to put that now in the dryer, and then it sits in the dryer, and then the next day I hit the like fluff cycle, so it's yeah, and then the next day, and then finally I'm like, gosh, I need some clothes, so I go to the dryer and I finally put it away. So this one task will take a multiple of days. So if I decide, hey, I'm gonna give myself a two-hour chunk of time where I'm going to get all of the cleaning tasks done at the same time. It's probably gonna be in a weekend, right? So I put the load of laundry in. I know I have about 45 minutes then to do other to sweep the floor, to do the dishes, to do the other things. Then I take that, I put it in the dryer. I have another 45-minute block, right? So we've taken our break in between, we got our 45 minutes, all that. And then immediately once it comes out of the driver, dryer, fold the clothes, put them away. You can do the same thing with maintenance of other tasks that are ongoing, such as electronic cleanup, right? Take a chunk of time and devote it as your maintenance. This is when I'm going to clear out my inbox, toss out the, you know, go through the old texts and make sure that I haven't missed anything. Look at the voice, listen to the voicemails again, delete, delete, delete. Rather than like doing it one at a time, you take a chunk of time, devote it to that task, and then it's out of your mind.
John:Well, let me tell you something funny. I didn't check my mail for a month.
Wende:Okay. Like snail mail or email?
John:My snail mail. Okay. So I get all this mail is in a huge bag. Okay. Oh my god. So I get this and I go out to the garbage can. Okay, I just sh sh sh throw away all that junk in the garbage can, and I come back with a handful of stuff that's important. Yeah. So that's your maintenance of. Yeah, there you go. Oh, that's good. No, no, another thing I do every day when I get that email, delete, delete, delete. It doesn't take me but three minutes to delete all my email, and there might be one or two emails that are important. Now, occasionally I delete something that's real important. I know. And then you call me up and say, Did you get that email? And so the problem with my deleting is sometimes I delete too fast.
Wende:You get trigger happy. Trigger happy. So those are the two things that I've implemented from this book. And on the whole, I enjoyed it very much. It was a pleasure to read. It was a pleasure to be reminded about your time, energy, attention.
John:And it was a funny book, right?
Wende:And it was funny, yeah.
John:And what about the agent? I mean, uh did you figure anything about how to get an agent from this book?
Wende:Not from this book, but this the book that I read by this person's agent was the one that led me to this book. So that was a great book, yeah. The Lucinda, Lucinda, um, I can't remember.
John:And I guess she said uh publish a book, you gotta have a blog, social media, and all that. So I don't know.
Wende:If you want an agent, I'll probably end up self-publishing because again, because I don't want to go through all that.
John:But well, if you get enough people on our podcast, you know, that's right.
Wende:I might be famous from our podcast. But our podcast is going well. We thank everyone for listening. It's such uh it's such a great podcast.
John:Hey, I got a call from a good friend yesterday, Wendy, and they said, Congratulations on the sixth season. Oh, yeah. And she said, I've been listening to your stuff all the time. Oh, yeah, and it is really good. And that was nice to get a call from somebody to say we've been listening to your podcast, and congratulations, wasn't that nice?
Wende:That is so nice. Thank you to who whoever that was. But I really that that feedback is important because sometimes you put stuff out there and it's like, hey, is anyone is anyone out there? Is anyone out there?
John:But you know what? Well, it doesn't matter because I enjoy talking to you, and you always educate me, so I'm learning something, and plus we have fun doing this. We do, yeah, and it's a good way for us to get together every week and discuss things. And now, how do you work this in with your scouting? Like you've had a bunch of scouting to do today. Yes, and so what about your priorities? That had to be important.
Wende:Yes.
John:Uh, how do you squeeze something else in there? Well, you came in and said we're gonna do our podcast at this X amount of time.
Wende:That's exactly what I mean.
John:Did you have anything that you neglected today because you were busy doing your other stuff?
Wende:No, and that was that was very purposeful. I'm glad you brought that up. So, as an example of this rule of three, I can tell you that my three for the week, my three projects that I wanted to work on this week. Number one was the scouting project that I'm currently working on. Number two uh was my exercise, consistent exercise. Um, and number three was the podcast. Those were the three projects that I was working on this week. Um, so I knew that I had to then time block those items first in my calendar. Right. So after I decided which were my three priorities for the week, the first thing I did, I think I contacted you, I said, How about Friday at one of the time? Set aside this time, set aside this time, and then the scouting could go around those times. I've just finished three scouts, I'm going back after this to do two more. And I uh yeah, I was able to fit everything in. Yep, I planned out when I was gonna work, work out, got plenty of scouting for these people. It's all good.
John:Well, that's great. So you you set that block of time, the week in events. Now, let me tell you something else that I did wrong that you need to tell the listeners about. I was gonna go to Toastmasters, right? And you told me about it, and so I put it in my unconscious mind, Toastmasters, on Tuesday, and it was about a week, okay? Well, in that week's time, I forgot about Toastmasters. I didn't put it on my calendar. So, what did you say to do? You said set the alarm to go off. We'll go through that about how to set the calm.
Wende:I set alarms on my phone all the time. So even if I'm not using social media apps, I am using the alarm app. So what I do is the night before I look at my calendar. So if it's not on your calendar, it's not gonna help you. But but I look at my calendar and I go ahead and I set alarms for anything that I need to leave for. So I don't set it for, let's say I have a 10 a.m. appointment here. Right. I would set that alarm for probably 9.15 to give myself, oh yeah, it's a reminder in 15 minutes or so I better get in the car so I can be there by 10. And that's how I use the alarm. So it's not for the actual time of the event, but the time that I need to get ready to leave.
John:Well, the alarm system I was talking about was a whole week in advance. Uh you can't really do well. You can't do it a week in advance. No, you can't.
Wende:Yes, you can set on your calendar app a reminder that will email you the reminder.
John:I think it just I guess my problem was I didn't put it in my calendar.
Wende:Yeah, yeah. But uh but the day before, you can do the 24 hours before to do the the actual alarm to sound like.
John:Well, and the point of this too is that we're always learning, we're always tweaking something so we'll do better and better with whatever we want to do.
Wende:That's right, that's right.
John:All right, you told me something.
Wende:Well, what was your biggest takeaway from this?
John:Well, I think my biggest takeaway was to have that maintenance time. You know, the maintenance time was very important for me to set aside a block, to get rid of all that junk that you have to do and do it all together, and then the monkeys are off your back.
Wende:Yeah, and it kind of makes up you make it fun too. So, you know, just play some music while you're doing it or something. Great, I'm glad. Well, thanks. All right, thanks for the great conversation, and we'll see you next week here.
John:And time to go scouting. I'm gonna start dancing on my book. Good. Bye bye.