Making Business Matter (MBM)

Sticky Learning Lunches #42: Think You Don't Need to Attend This Webinar?

This 7-part model will help you to find out what is wrong with your time management.

You will learn:

- Each of the 7 parts of the time management system.

- How each part is essential to creating an effective time management system.

- The holes that are exposed in your time management system by not having any one of the 7 pieces.

- Practical tips to incorporate any one of the 7 parts of the time management system.

- The strengths and weaknesses of your time management system.

You Can Read the Full Transcript Below:

Nathan Simmonds:

Oh God, there we are. Congratulations we made it. Welcome to Monday. Excited to be here. Excited to be sharing. Excited to see so many wonderful, beautiful people already. We're just as always gonna wait for the last few people just to arrive in the room, get themselves ready. Abby, thank you for being here. Colin, as always appreciated. Fabian, wonderful to see you again. Tim, Victoria, thank you so very much. I'm just looking down at the list of people coming into the room.

Nathan Simmonds:

It's Monday, it's beautiful weather outside. I hope you have sunshine where you are, so you give it 30 seconds. Good afternoon, Darren. On a scale of one to 10, for all your wonderful people that are here, how are we feeling about this week? One terrible, 10, fully, you know, primed. Ready to go? How are we feeling about this week? Got some tens. Got some eight. Strong nine. Nice, strong nine. What, what's stopping it from being a 10? Victoria? If it's a strong nine, what would make it a 10?

Improve your time management skills

 

Darren Smith:

Good.

Nathan Simmonds:

To see you, Rihanna. Thank you for joining. I hope I pronounced that right, not having so many back to backs. Agreed. We've talked a little bit about that inside the time management side of things. Let's just make, you know, one thing we can be making sure is know, giving ourselves a little bit of breather to decompress from one meeting and declutter. And then get those things off, you know, captured on the right lists, uh, and and stored in the right way. And then give us those a few minutes to get to the next session. So actually we've got a clear mind.

Nathan Simmonds:

Next week is better. Nice. Good. Let's dive in. Gotta make sure I've got all the right pens in the right places. Welcome to today's Sticky Learning Lunch with me, Nathan Simmons, senior leadership coach and trainer for MBM Making Business Matter, the home of sticky learning and the provider of leadership development and soft skills to the grocery and manufacturing industry. Idea of these lunches is to give you 20 to 30 minutes of micro learning is gonna help you be the best version of you in the work that you do from wherever you are right now, whether that's at home or whether that is that you've returned to the office or that you are, you know, in the middle of those two spaces.

Nathan Simmonds:

Just some core content that's is gonna help you raise your awareness, raise your thinking, and raise your impact. So first things first, let's get you set up for success. As always, mobile phones, let's make sure they are on flight mode. Little airplane is lit. Zero out the distraction, a hundred percent attention. Also, as always, fresh page, fresh thinking. Let's make sure you've got a nice clean sheet there so that you can document your thinking. Top of that page, you're gonna write keepers and these are the things that you wanna remember, that you want to be reminded of so you can reignite that new thinking when you go back and reread it.

Nathan Simmonds:

Drinks, I've got my herbal tea here. Make sure you're hydrated and you're keeping the brain lubricated. Before we even dive into this, I'm gonna make sure that I do this now with you right now. If you have not signed up for tomorrow's session, the link for tomorrow's sticky learning lunch is gonna be in the chat box. Now, if you haven't registered, now is the time to go and make sure you are registered for tomorrow to make sure you are in the room live for hurdle number seven, as we bring time management to a close tomorrow.

Nathan Simmonds:

So that link's gonna be available in the box for you. I just wanna make sure you've got that link. You're primed ready for tomorrow, so you're gonna be receiving that information. Where are we going? I think that's everything. I think that's everything. I think we're prepped for today's session.

Nathan Simmonds:

What are we covering today? This is hurdle number six of the time management training session, which is all about scheduling and it's all about making sure that you are getting the right things in the right places so that you can take the action at the right time. Or we'd be reminded to take the action at the right time. Quick flow through what we've already covered. I'm gonna do this quite small because I've got quite a bit to cover up here. We've got capturing, these are the points where the information comes in, whether that's our email or text message, whatever that's coming in.

Nathan Simmonds:

The next thing here he says is emptying. Making sure we're clearing our capture points. We have deleting is making sure that we're stopping things from coming into that flow if we don't need it, 'cause it's wasting our time or making sure we're removing things that don't need to be there. Emptying then comes down to listing, making sure that we're taking things off of here and putting them into the relevant lists so we know where they are to take the action in here. We then have storing and then we also have over here. What we're gonna be covering today is our scheduling,

Nathan Simmonds:

And then we also have our action. So as the saying goes, all, all roads lead to Rome, but when it comes to time management, all roads lead to action. Okay, so these are the flow of the, of the seven hurdles we often experience and where they come in. And we've already covered a lot of of these and we're now getting into the scheduling side of things. The key part, and this is a lesson, a vital lesson that I've learned, uh, repeatedly in previous jobs and previous experience, is the first thing that we need to be looking at is making sure that we've got a centralized point.

Nathan Simmonds:

How many people here are managing more than one diary? Yes or no? If you're managing more than one diary, yes. Home and work good. Yes, yes. Good. Lots of yeses. Who here is manage them? Managing them on separate systems? So both of those diaries, those calendars are completely separate of each other, yes or no? Yes. Yes. Who here then has experienced a challenge in those where you've forgotten to put one thing on the other and you've caused yourself a double booking? Yes or no? Yes. Yes. .

Nathan Simmonds:

And it is frustrating. Um, a because you know, it's your own actions that of caused this to happen. It was an oversight, um, caused by yourself in this. There is no one else to blame there, you know, it is because you then feel you maybe let the other person down because of that, that, that lack of foresight or you know, the ability to, to sync those two elements, who hears experience, these emotions come that are coming up when they've been in this experience. Yes or no, it's painful and it's a painful lesson to keep learning.

Nathan Simmonds:

So what we talk about is, or the ideal is that we have our capture points, we empty them, and when we want to get 'em into a schedule that we have a centralized point where we can see everything that's going on. We want to give ourselves as much support as possible in making sure that we can take the, all the actions we need to get done. The moment that we start to separate things and we start to pull them apart, it becomes just that little bit more difficult because we're having to constantly look at two things and try and calibrate what's going on to make sure we take the right action.

Nathan Simmonds:

This make sense so far? And I'm just gonna just check on my slides in a minute because I'm gonna share my screen in a second. I'll give you a prime example. Previous job that I was working in, um, and I've been working in, in multiple, um, there's multiple elements of the work that I do. I was working full-time, pretty much over here. Um, I'm also working as a trainer. This was some time ago. Um, with MBM, I'm also running my own business over here, but I'm trying to manage two different diaries because I've got the work diary over here for the day job.

Nathan Simmonds:

And then I've also got my extra, um, responsibilities over here as I've started to transition. And I'm trying to keep certain things separate because this is my diary, this is my work, this is what, you know, and this is the, this is the day job. And then what would happen is I would have something coming over here, but because it wasn't in front of me on my, um, where I was on my nine to five, reminded me at lunchtime that I would be doing this.

Nathan Simmonds:

I would then fall down over here and a prospective client. I be then late for that conversation or the conversation wouldn't happen. And then I'd be frustrated at myself because I actually haven't, you know, delivered on the promise that I said to them, you know, I haven't set an expectation clearly with them or I've got something over here, you know, in my personal diary that's outside of, you know, the nine to five. It might be a webinar or some training that I'm doing within that clashes with something that's going on over here on the home diary.

Nathan Simmonds:

We know with what's going on with my daughter. So maybe I was meant to be taking my daughter to dance class, but actually there's a live training that I need to be in. Okay, there's a problem here. So we start to see by having these three structures in place, or these three points that I had, where we start to get conflict in those elements and then we

Sticky Learning Lunches #41: Think You Don't Need to Attend This Webinar?

This 7-part model will help you to find out what is wrong with your time management.

You will learn:

- Each of the 7 parts of the time management system.

- How each part is essential to creating an effective time management system.

- The holes that are exposed in your time management system by not having any one of the 7 pieces.

- Practical tips to incorporate any one of the 7 parts of the time management system.

- The strengths and weaknesses of your time management system.

You Can Read the Full Transcript Below:

Nathan Simmonds:

Welcome to today's Sticky Learning Lunch. Good afternoon, Colin. Good to see you, Fabian. Thank you, Howard. Tim, vj, good to see you again. Thanks for being here. Bas around. Thank you for being here. We're just gonna give you a couple of minutes while more people are arriving. Just conscious of time. So I know a couple of people are still coming into the room. Let's just give that a moment just to settle.

Nathan Simmonds:

Looking forward to today's session. Excited to be here. Let's get everyone set up for success as always. Let's make sure I can see what's going on. Good afternoon, Anne. Good to see you. Let's dive in and as the other people start as, as they are still arriving, let's let them get into the room. But let's make sure we are setting ourselves up for success in this space right now. As always, there's a phone call, not always, but there was a phone call from my mum. I'll have to speak to her later. Um, let's make sure. Mobile phone.

Nathan Simmonds:

So let's get this on flight mode. Zero out the distraction, a hundred percent attention. I'll speak to my mum later. Also, making sure you've got a drink available. Staying hydrated, keeping the brain fluid and moving so that we can ma maximize the, uh, the development and the learning that's happening here. Hello Gina. Hello, Gareth. Good to see you both again. Thank you very much for being here. Fresh page, fresh thinking. Let's make sure we're setting up that notepad in the right way so you get the right information.

Improve your time management skills with these 7 hurdles

 

Nathan Simmonds:

At the top of the page, you're gonna write keepers and these are the things you wanna remember. Remind yourself and reignite as you go back and reread those notes to, to, to create new ideas, new thoughts from the learnings that you get from today. And it helps to embed that learning and make it really stick and, and support that behavioral change that helps you to deliver a better result next time.

Nathan Simmonds:

All set, he says, got the right color. Pens in hand, I think. Welcome to today's Sticky Learning lunch with me, Nathan Simmons, senior leadership coach and trainer for MBM making Business Matter, the home of Sticky Learning. And we are the leadership skills and soft skills provider to the grocery and manufacturing industry. I do with these lunchtime sessions is to give you 20 to 30 minutes of core content that's gonna help you be the best version of you in the work that you do, whether that's at home or if it's you returning back to the office after this current situation.

Nathan Simmonds:

It. Let's get into this part. Where are we now? Uh, 1, 2, 3, 4, part five. Part five is hurdle number five of time management. So let's give you a super fast rundown of what's going on. I can see some regular faces here. So we are at hurdle number five. Question for you all for to to, to light up the questions box with what have you got so far that's at the top of your list that you want to prioritize or action or make sure you embed that's gonna help you improve your time management?

Nathan Simmonds:

What's one thing that you've taken away from these recent sessions that's helping to improve your time management right now? Let's see those in the questions box and see what's changing in the world for you all as a result of these sticky learning lunches. Good afternoon, Abby. Clearer capturing and emptying time. Absolutely clearer capture and empty, nice collating less and emptying. Good.

Nathan Simmonds:

We're gonna talk a little bit more about some of this collation piece today. Interesting because I started looking at some of my own behaviors a little bit deeper as I was preparing this content. What's one thing you are doing differently as a result of these recent sticky learnings as those are coming in, let's have a quick recap on what we've covered so far. Number one, capturing number two, emptying.

Nathan Simmonds:

So your capturing is making is, is the points in time where information comes in, whether it's in your car, at your email. And we're gonna talk about an analogy here of the, the waiter in the restaurant. What that capture point is at the table. Emptying is making sure that we are emptying these, these capture points regularly.

Nathan Simmonds:

And deleting is making sure that we're taking things out and crossing 'em off and removing them at the right time so they're not cluttering up, but also removing things before they come into us. Um, so do we need to be on that email chain because actually we're wasting huge amounts of time just deleting emails we didn't need to receive in the first place. Listing, making sure that we're taking things out of these spaces and putting them into the right lists.

Nathan Simmonds:

And do we have enough lists and do we trust the lists that we've got storing? So are we storing the right information and keeping hold of it? Scheduling? Are we putting it into the agenda to make sure it's happened or going to happen? And then how do we make sure we action it? So that's our flow chart for where we need to be. Again, super fast, we covered this in a couple of minutes every session, just so you can start to see it, feel it and remember it. What we've done, what we've covered off, we covered capturing, emptying, listing, deleting, and now we're now onto storing,

Nathan Simmonds:

As I have said. And I will say again, and this is where it's really important, there are no prizes for attempting to remember everything that is going on in your day. Okay? The only thing that we get in relation to trying to remember everything that's happening at every single point in time is a hard time when we forget the things. You know, no one's given us a packet of Harry Bow or packet of sweetss or a bottle of wine for remembering everything that we get given in the day or you know, for the actions or emails that we get.

Nathan Simmonds:

So we have to have that system in place and a system that we trust so that we can maximize our efforts and our outputs without fear of retribution or reprimand because of what we didn't get at the right place from the already from these first places, from these first points in this flow. So it's key that you are emptying your head. Uh, the most successful people are the ones with the emptiest heads. Why? Because they've got the space to think they've got the mental bandwidth.

Nathan Simmonds:

And you may have heard me use this phrase previously and it is about having that mental bandwidth, you know, and it's the same as your, as your broadband as it comes into the house. You know, you can see the little arrows on your phone going up and down or on your laptop now. How much are you downloading? How much are you uploading? And that speed is in the relation to how much bandwidth you have.

Nathan Simmonds:

And we as human beings believe that we have a very certain, we have a finite amount of bandwidth and we have to test it regularly and stretch our capabilities, which enables us to do more. But when we have too many things, because we don't trust, especially our own system and where certain elements are being held that bandwidth, now it starts to get really tested and we don't feel comfortable with what's coming in or what's going out and we start to feel like things are getting dropped.

Nathan Simmonds:

And that's when our, you know, our stress pot starts to fill up and then we start to have more challenges like mentally more than physically. It always starts with a thought though I can't do this or I forgot that I should have been doing this. And we get caught in this kind of, um, washing machine cycle of being, you know, going through kind of that, that that change curve of frustration, agitation, and and upset. But all the time we're sitting in that washing machine, we're not actually taking the next action that's moving us out of that.

Nathan Simmonds:

So when we understand, you know, that bandwidth, let's support how much we are capable of, let's make sure that we're getting things out of here, deleting that. So it's freeing up some extra space over here that enables us to think a little bit faster and a little bit more fluid, um, and a little bit more focused on what it is we can do and what it is we are doing. I hope this makes sense. Let's free up some of that mental bandwidth. He says. So number one, as always, well not always, but is empty your head

Nathan Simmonds:

And that's referring back to some of these previous elements. Before we even get into this storing phase, I make sure that's being clear. Emptying the capture points, deleting the stuff that you don't need to be working with and keep that thinking fluid. Okay? Um, there was a thought came in and it went really quickly or come back to it when it comes back to me.

Nathan Simmonds:

So the first thing is, empty your head. Keep your space as clear as possible. Declutter the thinking, reminding yesterday, what are you, you know, what are you saying yes to keeping some of that space here. Now what are you saying? How many times are you saying yes wisely to things so you can increase your capacity on your bandwidth to focus on certain things and give it your fuller attention.

Nathan Simmonds:

Number two, he says, where are you emptying to? What do we mean by this? All this stuff coming in....

Sticky Learning Lunches #40: Think You Don't Need to Attend This Webinar?

This 7-part model will help you to find out what is wrong with your time management.

You will learn:

- Each of the 7 parts of the time management system.

- How each part is essential to creating an effective time management system.

- The holes that are exposed in your time management system by not having any one of the 7 pieces.

- Practical tips to incorporate any one of the 7 parts of the time management system.

- The strengths and weaknesses of your time management system.

You Can Read the Full Transcript Below:

Nathan Simmonds:

Where's that button? Let's go. Share screen. We are in sticky learning. Lunch people, good to be here. Welcome to today's Sticky Learning Lunch. We've got that midweek feeling, which I don't believe in. We've got a handful of people that have arrived. We're just waiting for the next few people to come in, as always. Abby, hello again, Abby. Good to see you. Colin. Thank you for being here, Fabian. Very welcome as always. Lynn. Good to see you again. Petra, thank you very much for being here Again, Tim, Tracy, Victoria. Beautiful. Thank you so much for your investment in yourself and engaging with the content today. Just a few more seconds while we get those people in the room.

Improve your time management skills with these 7 hurdles

 

Nathan Simmonds:

Another mouthful of tea. And then we're gonna dive into today's content. Let's get ourselves set up while we're just waiting for those to arrive. As always, never changes. It's the same distractions that we always put into our days. Mobile phones, flight mode. Zero outta distraction. A hundred percent attention. Ah, making sure you've got drinks, you are hydrated. Couple more people arriving. Jane's arrived. Good to see you. Thank you for being here, Jane.

Nathan Simmonds:

Fresh page, fresh thinking at the top of the page for today's learning is hurdle number four. It's all about the ing and we're gonna break that down in a minute just to help you with some ideas and habits that potentially have formed and calcified over time, which is actually wasting your time. So we're gonna look a little bit into this. We're gonna look, build some skills from yesterday a little bit further, and we're gonna look at some of those habits that are built over time or Colin's saying's. Got no audio, Colin's, that's all right.

Nathan Simmonds:

Colin's gone out and come back in. Can everyone else hear me? Yes or no? Yes, yes, yes. Good. Ready to highlight more areas that can improve on, that's what we are here for. That is what we are here for. Good. Let's dive in and do this. Let's get the intros flying as we always do. And for those that arrive in a minute, they can get caught off in just a second. Welcome to today's Sticky Learning lunch with me, Nathan Simmons, senior leadership coach and trainer for MBM, making Business Matter, home of Sticky Learning.

Nathan Simmonds:

And we are the leadership development and soft skills provider for the grocery and manufacturing industry. Idea of these sessions is to give you new ideas, new concepts and approaches that are gonna help you be the best version of you in the work that you do. Whether it's right now while you're at home and or while you are preparing to return back to work after whatever situation you are currently in. Wherever you are around the world. Fingers crossed, staying safe, staying well. This session is all about as part four of our time management and our, uh, our hurdles that we experience in time management.

Nathan Simmonds:

So we've already covered, I'm gonna go through the flow chart again just so we've got it and we're embedding this, um, for each of these sessions, top one as we've got it is capturing where are we actually capturing the information? Where is that information um, happening? Is it in the meeting? Is it in our email? Is it a voicemail? Is it, um, a, a voice recording process? Wherever that idea is, wherever that action is, the capture point is where it's dropping into our time management system that we're looking after.

Nathan Simmonds:

Step two, emptying. We talked a bit about this yesterday in part three, uh, and it's all about how you empty those capture points and are you doing it at regular points o of time? Do you trust that you are going to those capture points at the right time and making sure that you are getting that information out and you are turning it into the relevant actions or getting it into the right lists and listing sits over here. So making sure you are doing that. Today's session is gonna be about deleting,

Nathan Simmonds:

Which we're gonna talk about a little bit further. So these are the first four key obstacles or hurdles that we experience in our time management system and some of us I'm hoping. Let's, let's have a quick rundown. What things have you picked up from the first three sessions to notice where your time management is falling down? Let's see at least one thing from everybody in the room. That means everybody here. One thing that you know, um, or notice from the last couple of sessions where you've fallen or you are falling down in your time management system.

Nathan Simmonds:

Next area we've got here is storing of all those are coming in. I'll finish the flow chart off for you. Scheduling, we speak for themselves and then we've got action whistle. Stop tour of the time management flow chart. So what have we got? Being more aware of how and where to capture. Beautiful , too many lists. Victoria, amazing. Drill 'em down. Too many unconnected capture points that in itself is amazing.

Nathan Simmonds:

Reduce the ones that you can't trust. Connect the ones that you can trust. Ignoring distractions when other emails come in. Good, good, good, good, good. Learning how to do that arm my catch point's. Working. Good question. Not attending the others saying, no, I procrastinate about eating a frog when it's technology based. Good, good, good, good.

Nathan Simmonds:

There's been lots of learnings that have come out of these sticky lunches and that's why I've enjoyed doing them so much. But where are we going to next? What we're looking at today is we're looking at deleting and that's helping us to delete some of those distractions which have already come up in that, in that box there, helping us to delete things out that are actually causing us to, um, to stumble or causing us to look in the wrong direction. 'cause again, they're starting to build up different habits. They're starting to calcify because they became the norm.

Nathan Simmonds:

Um, and we're gonna break that down a little bit further. One thing that I wanted to share with you and dive back into briefly from yesterday's section, I'm just gonna share my screen with you. Can you let me know if you can see it or not? Yes or no? Wait for those to come in just to make sure you're all with me. Can you see my screen? Good. Okay. So the first thing I wanted to look at today, number one, it's looking at triggers for emptying. So overlapping where we were talking about yesterday triggers for emptying. So helping you to remember .

Nathan Simmonds:

Whenever you are doing something, whenever you get that information. We talked about this in brief yesterday, is making sure that you have the right amount of time in your diary or in your calendar to make sure that when those actions come in, when those items come into your capture point, that you take the appropriate time to get them and empty them. Okay? 'cause if we're not doing that, we end up with a a notebook with actions on different pages at different points, and we've got actions over here on our emails and they're getting piled in on top of.

Nathan Simmonds:

If we're not bringing those into the right place into the right list, we're gonna lose track of those things and it's gonna start becoming damaging and making sure that we have clarity on that. So what we've got here, and this again comes straight off the white paper, we'll drop the link in there for the time management white paper.

Nathan Simmonds:

You can get hold of that and you can get all of these tables and forms in there as well. It's in PDF forms. Do you just copy and paste it out or print it out and just work in the directly. So here, oh, he says, got the triggers in there, what the wrong sheet? Apologies. So making sure that you've got the right triggers in there. I'll talk about this in a second. Looking at the habits of when you are doing those things, is it gonna be when you are picking up that cup of coffee, is it gonna be when you are closing your laptop at the end of the day?

Nathan Simmonds:

Is it um, when you are sitting down with your cup of tea first thing in the morning, what are your trigger points to make sure you are capturing that detail? Okay? So that's the first thing we wanna look at. Where are your trigger points and where are your habits starting to form? And can you start to have it stack? So what this means is it may be that you, I have my 10 o'clock cup of coffee and at 10 o'clock with that cup of coffee, I'm just gonna make sure that I've taken the actions out of that meeting and put them into the right list.

Nathan Simmonds:

Does this make sense with everyone? Yes or no? And then I'm gonna talk about, about this table in just a second. So that's the important, that's the first part with the triggers. The second part is one of the things we ended on the conversation yesterday is the number of times you said yes wisely. So what this means is, and we talked about yesterday, no one ever wants to be told no. So when your boss turns up and says, right, I need you to do this, and the last thing you wanna do is say no, because then you'll be seen as the problem child.

Nathan Simmonds:

Makes sense? So then we have to understand that what we're saying yes to, what are we actually saying no to by saying yes to that thing....

Sticky Learning Lunch #39: Think You Don't Need to Attend This Webinar?

This 7-part model will help you to find out what is wrong with your time management in this episide called I Don't Need to Attend this Webinar Part 3.

You will learn:

- Each of the 7 parts of the time management system.

- How each part is essential to creating an effective time management system.

- The holes that are exposed in your time management system by not having any one of the 7 pieces.

- Practical tips to incorporate any one of the 7 parts of the time management system.

- The strengths and weaknesses of your time management system.

You Can Read the Full Transcript Below:

Nathan Simmonds:

Good afternoon, sticky learning lunch, one o'clock. We are just gonna give it a couple more minutes while we're waiting for people to arrive, just watching and seeing who's entering the ring. So good to see so many friendly regular faces. Thank you very much for being here, Abby. Good to see you again. Alexandra, good to see you again. Thank you for being here, Colin, as always. Thank you Fabian. Gareth, it's amazing. Howard Jane, Samantha, thank you very much for coming back. Samantha, Tim, good to see you again, Vicki Victoria. Amazing, amazing, amazing, amazing right pen in pockets. Let's get ready for this.

Improve your time management with these 7 hurdles

 

Nathan Simmonds:

Might even have a blue pen that might work today. See where we get to. If anything this, no, this sticky learning lunches have done the world of favors for Q Connect on whiteboard markers because I've used a fair few of them for you in these sessions. Last few seconds while we're letting people come in. Everyone as always, mobile phones, you've got 20 minutes. This is a sticky learning lunch. This is all about you. It's not about your messages, it's not about your email, it's not about your pings, beeps, buzzes, whatever. A hundred percent attention on you. So let's zero out the distraction, get it on flight mode and let's make it all about you for 20 to 30 minutes, making sure you're hydrated. I've got drinks available today is brought to you by pucker herbs. Three ginger, very nice too.

Nathan Simmonds:

Helping keep the drone focused and making sure the final one as always. And then hopefully after doing this for six weeks, we've got some of this embedded in fresh sheet, fresh thinking, top of the page keepers, things you wanna remember to remind yourself and reignite that thinking. Let's make this learning stick. Okay? Let's really make some behavioral change here and embed some of this thinking at a deeper level. Ah, a few more people arriving. Good, glad you're all here. So where are we going today? First of all, welcome. Let's get the welcomes in properly. Welcome to this Sticky learning lunch with me, Nathan Simmons, senior leadership coach and trainer for MBM Making Business Matter. Homer sticky learning idea with these lunchtime learnings is to help you be the best version of you in the work that you do.

Nathan Simmonds:

Why? Because we are the leadership development and soft skills provider to the retail and grocery industry. And we wanna share some of these ideas. And these are un uncommon ideas shared in uncommon ways that get uncommon results. Now, if you want average, do what everyone else does. If you want exceptional, do incredible things. And I wanna share some of these ideas that I've learned over 23 years of leadership development and experience and give them to you so that you can help make some of those moves yourself today.

Nathan Simmonds:

Part three of the seven Hurdles of Time Management. So where are we going today? Emptying is where we're going. So quick rundown, quick rundown of where we were before day one, capturing, then we go into emptying here, emptying, and then we go over here and we've got listing. So lifting was day two and we talked about that already.

Nathan Simmonds:

Emptying we're gonna talk about today, although there is an element of emptying in every part of the seven hurdles, whether you are capturing, it's about making sure you are emptying those pockets, which we're gonna talk about today, whether it's your lists and making sure you are emptying those lists, whether it's your schedule and making sure you're going in there and doing those things and making sure you're ticking 'em off and clearing them out.

Nathan Simmonds:

This is the emptying process, so it's important we understand this. Then we've got deleting. I'm gonna get into deleting later on. So from the emptying here, and I've got my little flow chart here down to listing. We've then got our storing and I'm gonna reiterate this several times to make sure that, you know, you see this and you can, you get this flow in your head. Then we've got our schedule and then as always, we've got action

Nathan Simmonds:

Down here. Any more arrows we need to draw in like this. So this is the flow of the seven hurdles and these are often, you know, the elements of our time management system that cause us to get tripped up. So we may be great at capturing, but we're terrible at deleting. We may be great at scheduling, but our lists are awful. So they never really get to that place where we need them. So it's understanding where in the time management system that you have in place that you are, you are hitting these hurdles and what's causing you to trip up.

Nathan Simmonds:

So when you can see these things as the saying goes, you know, one man stumbling block is another man's stepping stone. When you can see where the stumbling block is, then you can make it the stepping stone. Then you can understand what it is you need to shift about this thing to make the move that you need to, to get where you need to be.

Nathan Simmonds:

So let's get into this a bit deeper. What is emptying primarily when we're at the top of this flow emptying is about the regular connection into where you are capturing information. So wherever your capture points are, and we talked about them a little bit yesterday and in part one as well. So wherever your capture points are is making sure you are going in at the right time to empty those capture points.

Nathan Simmonds:

The analogy that I used on on Friday in part one, it's like a snooker table and each of the pockets is one of your capture points and they're relevant at the right time for the right color of balls on the table to go into. And depending where you are in the situation depends on which one of those capture points that you'll use. But when you look underneath the snooker table, what you'll notice is there's a little wire rack where the balls drop into and they're stored. Everyone with me on this analogy. Everyone knows how snooper table works or a home pool table works. Yes or no?

Nathan Simmonds:

See that? To make sure everyone's with me on this analogy? If not, I'll find a different one. Got some? Yes, it's good. Good, good, good. They all seem to come in at the same time. It must be my internet. So when you look under the table and you can see all the balls lined up, eventually what happens is though that pocket starts to back up and the balls that you are trying to, you know, earn points with will no longer go into that pocket. So you have to clear them down. So it's vital that when we understand that when we've been doing our capturing that we move to emptying and we clear those pockets to clear out any stuff that's sitting in there, then we can make a decision. Do we want to send it to listing? Do we wanna store it for later?

Nathan Simmonds:

Everyone with me on this? Yes or no? Good, good, good, good. This may seem fairly straightforward, this is the fundamentals. You know, if we can't see these things, we know we, we've got a, an issue where we are handling some of the stuff that's coming in. But what is healthy emptying? How many times are you a day? Let's say let's go through a day. How many times a day are you taking things out of your email or our notes from meetings? How many times are you how many, what's your frequency, shall we say, of points where you are emptying things out and trying to get them to list? How often are you doing this?

Nathan Simmonds:

Let's call some of the gray matter to have a bit of reflection about what we're doing on a daily basis. Email constantly. Good list, not frequently enough. No set time, good, end of the day, fantastic. Not enough generally when it's backed up on full. Okay, we are hitting some, no, some clear understandings here. We've got some challenges. Try to schedule, but often it's throughout the day. Okay, good. We've got a nice variation of stuff that's happening here. How many people? We've got a show of yes or nos.

Nathan Simmonds:

You are working on your computer, you are, you are processing something. Know you've got something on your to do list. Email comes in pinging you look at the email, there's something to do in there. It's like, oh, and that may be your boss or you know, it might seem like it's some sort of important, we'll put that in floating speech mark. Action or activity. And as a result of that distraction, you then start doing that. How many people do this on a daily basis? Yes or no?

Nathan Simmonds:

Yes. With explanation marks yes. After, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes. So what happens is you'll be working on something here, maybe that's on your list, on your, to-do list, something else comes in, you start working on that, but you haven't finished this. What's the problem that's starting to happen here? This one then goes to one side, you start working on this. Totally distracted. Absolutely been trying to complete a task since 9:00 AM that should have been taken 30 minutes.

Nathan Simmonds:

Jane, I'm I'm no, thank you. I appreciate you being here. got snooker balls back up. Absolutely. So this thing over here is kind of just, you know, worrying around. Nothing's happening. We've done a bit of work and then we're doing this and

Sticky Learning Lunches #38: Think You Don't Need to Attend This Webinar?

This 7-part model will help you to find out what is wrong with your time management.

You will learn:

- Each of the 7 parts of the time management system.

- How each part is essential to creating an effective time management system.

- The holes that are exposed in your time management system by not having any one of the 7 pieces.

- Practical tips to incorporate any one of the 7 parts of the time management system.

- The strengths and weaknesses of your time management system.

You Can Read the Full Transcript Below:

Nathan Simmonds:

Good afternoon. Welcome to Sticky Learning Lunches Monday. Excited, brilliant day of the week. To kick things off, we are just gonna give it a few more minutes while the handful of people come in. Excited to see so many people this week, some new faces, some longstanding friends. Thank you for being here, Abby. Good to see you again. Andre. Thank you again. Colin, as always, I think you are the one person that has attended every single session pretty much.

Nathan Simmonds:

Stuart, thank you for being here. Karen, Howard, Gina, Gareth, Fabian. Vicki. Thank you, Victoria Moore, thank you for being here. Just gonna give it 20 seconds, maybe more, or the last few people are arriving. As always, let's get ourselves set up for success. Mobile phones, hold 'em high, let's get 'em on. Airplane mode, zero out the distraction. A hundred percent attention on you being here and investing in your mindset to help you deliver better results.

Find out the 7-part time management model and whether you need to attend this webinar

 

Nathan Simmonds:

Thank you, Colin. It's appreciated, right? Also, hydration, herbal teas, coffees, whatever it is, you need water to make sure that you're keeping your mind lubricated so that you can get the best from this. The third thing that we always do to set up the success in this situation is get yourself a fresh page for fresh thinking. So at the top of that page in your notepad, you're gonna write keepers as always, keepers at the top. It's the things that you want to remind yourselves about.

Nathan Simmonds:

It's the things you wanna remember when you reread it. It's those things that you want to help reignite that learning and make sure that it sticks. 'cause That's what we're all about. That's why it's called Sticky learning Lunches. 'cause We want this stuff to stick, not because it's a gooey lunch. Happy to hear kind. Thank you very much for letting me know that the cards are starting to arrive as well.

Nathan Simmonds:

I know that a lot of you have ordered the cards and we are very thankful for that. From ourselves at Making Business matter it's really important. We have had some challenges with getting these out to people just for current circumstances. This isn't the normal procedure, this isn't the normal times that we're living in. They are arriving, they are landing on doormats. I have mine somewhere in this very office, so they are starting to arrive so massively from me.

Nathan Simmonds:

Thanks very much for the patience. While these are arriving, let's dive into today's session. Welcome to today's Sticky Learning lunch with me, Nathan Simmons, senior leadership coach for MBM Making Business Matter and with a leadership development and soft skills provider to the grocery and manufacturing industry. Idea about these sessions is to give you a micro learning to help you be the best version of you in the work that you do.

Nathan Simmonds:

And whether that's at home, in the office, or even just returning to the office, it's just about helping you to upgrade and shift the thinking with one or two ideas that's gonna help make a a massive improvement. What are we covering today? Part two of the seven Hurdles of time management. So this is about listing what I wanted to do though. One of the points came through, I dove straight in on, on Friday with that first element, which is capturing.

Nathan Simmonds:

So what I wanted to do today was actually give you a bit of a flow diagram to show how all of these steps are working and how they interlink with each other. And then you can start to see actually what was Nathan talking about here on previous session? Where's that gonna go to in the next session? And while I say that, that's as a reminder for me to take action, which we'll talk about in a minute.

Nathan Simmonds:

If you have not already registered for tomorrow session, there will be a link in the chat box below to make sure that you can do that. So the first call to action from today's session is make sure that you are registered for the future sessions this week, all the way through the time management process that we're talking about. And that link will be there in just a moment for you. So what we wanted to do was just give you that flow and that texture or or context that we that I want to take you through.

Nathan Simmonds:

So each step, each hurdle where you are gonna find that challenge in your time management. So the first one, which is the one we talked about on Friday, is capturing and capturing as we talked about, are those points in time where the thoughts come up and you know, is you need to be asking this question.

Nathan Simmonds:

Is one question that's gonna help you. What and where are your capture points? Lemme say that again. What and where are your capture points? Now this could be the notepad beside the, beside your telephone or beside your, your computer keyboard. It could be the packet of post-it notes in your pocket. So as you are walking down and someone grabs you in the corridor by the water machine, they, and they say something to you or asks you, you can quickly get out that pad. That's another capture point. It might be Alexa, it might be a voice recorder. It might be your email, your inbox. Where are all your different capture points?

Nathan Simmonds:

And as we talked about on there, it's not about so much about the number of capture points, it's whether or not you trust those capture points. That's gonna be the important part. But the first part, and this is understanding, okay, what and where are they? 'cause If you don't know where they are, chances is you're gonna be writing things down in your, in your system or your so-called system in floating speech marks. And you're gonna be losing them. And therefore if you are losing them, you're gonna start losing trust in your ability, in your capability to get stuff done with the time that you've got. Hope this makes sense.

Nathan Simmonds:

So what and where are your capture points? The second stage in here in this part of the flow is empty. And I'll explain this a little bit more tomorrow though. So we're not gonna go into that today and then we've got deleting. So let's give you an idea of what's going on here. Capture point could be an email, it could be your significant other sending you a request to do something or, or or need to do something. Maybe buy the cereal or need some milk. So your capture point capturing comes in here.

Nathan Simmonds:

What you then have is you have your listing, which is what we're gonna be talking about today. So you may want to take it out of your email and put it somewhere handy to make sure that you've got access to it. So that listing could be, I know it's a documentation, it's where are you getting stuff or making sure that you are storing stuff.

Nathan Simmonds:

So it's in a place where you can access it at a regular basis. So we've gone from capturing up here, which can be in your mind, it could be electronic or it could be paper, wherever that might be. And then we're taking it out and we're breaking it down into some core lists. Some, you know, some clear categories that we can work from that are relevant to different, probably different elements in our life.

Nathan Simmonds:

That's how I work with these lists. Then what happens once we've got it listed, we can either go across here into scheduling, which is fairly self-explanatory and we'll talk about that a little bit later on. But it's just making sure that we're factoring in the right amount of time to make sure that we're taking the right amount of actions from here. We've also got storing

Nathan Simmonds:

When we're emptying certain elements out of here. So the email that's come in, is it something we need to store? Is it something we need to be aware of? So maybe that email that came in and said, could you get the milk or could you buy this or that actually, rather than that saying could we do it? It was a case of so and so is gonna be taking that action. Need you to be aware of that. And we all know about that in a work context. So it might be you are working on a project just to let you know John is doing this and I wanted you to be aware of this in case this happens.

Nathan Simmonds:

So that thing comes in and maybe we don't need to take action on it, but we do need to store it 'cause we need to have future reference and we need to have an understanding of it. Then if things change, then maybe it goes to listing and then maybe it goes to scheduling depending on what happens in that, in that flow of thinking.

Nathan Simmonds:

As always, nothing's gonna work up here. So we may have gone to the, the listing, okay, which list is it on? Do I have access to that list? Okay, how do I make sure I act on it? If it's scheduled, how do I make sure I act on it? So kind of the flow looks like this, it's given us an idea of how we're moving things. So we get the email, can you take action on this? Yes. Great, well I'm gonna put that on the relevant list to make sure it works. Milk home life. Okay, I'm gonna keep that separate. Where do I keep that list?

Nathan Simmonds:

Where do I store it Or if I need, you know, and then how do I make sure I act on it? And if it's in there, well maybe as an example for the home life one, we've got it on the list,...

Grocery Guru Episode #34: New UK HFSS Laws on High in Fat, Salt or Sugar Foods

Join Andrew Grant and Darren A. Smith in the thirty-fourth episode of the Grocery Guru. They discuss HFSS New Laws: High in Fat, Salt, or Sugar Foods. These are products that will be stopped from being sited on secondary spaces in-store, and cannot be volume promoted. The HFSS New Laws will affect all stores over 2,000 feet and including symbol stores, like Spar.

You Can View the Full HFSS New Laws Transcript Below:

Darren A. Smith:

Hello, and welcome to episode 34 of the Grocery Guru. We're here with that guru, who is Andrew Grant. Andrew, how are you doing?

Andrew Grant:

Morning, Darren. Yes, very good. Are you well?

Darren A. Smith:

I'm very well. It's Friday. What's in our postbag? What's on your mind? What's the world talking about today, in the world of grocery?

Andrew Grant:

Yeah. It's, I think, yesterday, all you could hear about, other than England playing Germany next week, was HFSS. It doesn't exactly slip off the tongue. It's nothing to do with a train line about to go past your house, but I think it's a pretty big deal, actually.

Darren A. Smith:

All right. So, HFSS. Let's treat me like an idiot. No comments invited. HFSS, what does that mean?

Andrew Grant:

Okay. I won't get you to guess. High fat, salt, and sugar foods. For people in the industry, the impulse category, basically. Some pretty serious legislation coming down the tracks, and actually, potentially will be enforced on the 1st of April 2022, which by my reckoning is 279 days away.

There will be HFSS New Laws commencing in April 2022 for HFSS foods

 

Darren A. Smith:

It is, [inaudible 00:01:23].

Andrew Grant:

If the legislation goes through as I've read it, seismic changes to all those foods that will be classed as high fat, sugar, and salt. We're talking fizzy drinks, we're talking soft drinks, cakes, biscuits, chocolate, crisps, snacks, even processed ready meals, and stuff like that.

Darren A. Smith:

Wow. All right. Let's do what our Americans say, let's unbox this with you, [inaudible 00:01:55].

Andrew Grant:

Ooh.

Darren A. Smith:

Let's unbox it. So HFSS is about salty, sugary foods. I think I do know a little bit about this. You said it's the biggest change in enforced dietary changes since the World War, the Second World War?

Andrew Grant:

Yeah. If you think about it, I'm sure we all remember Jamie Oliver on the Turkey Twizzlers. The government, over the last 10 years, has made a lot of changes encouraging, and in some regards forcing, manufacturers to change formulations.

Darren A. Smith:

Yeah.

Andrew Grant:

To reduce the amount of salt, to reduce the amount of sugar. There's obviously been the watershed advertising bans.

Darren A. Smith:

Yep.

Andrew Grant:

Not allowed to advertise these products to kids, or in schools.

Darren A. Smith:

Yep.

Andrew Grant:

Sort of round the edges, but what they're proposing for next April, as far as retailers and suppliers are concerned, goes one hell of a step further. That is to ban the siting of those foods anywhere other than on the shelf, their home shelves. So you can't have sweets on checkouts. A lot of the retailers have made that decision themselves, but that will be illegal.

No siting of sweets or these HFSS products anywhere near the checkouts, within two meters of the entrance. Then probably the biggest, you won't be able to volume-promote these products. So you'll be able to price-promote, I believe, but you won't be able to do BOGOFs, extra-frees, twofers. If you think of the impulse category, certainly back in my day, something like 70% of a brand's volume in those categories went through on deal.

Darren A. Smith:

Let's bring that to life. If I'm walking through the central aisle of a Tesco or a Sainsbury's, and I see the gondola end and it's packed with M&M's, with the little round man with the funny hands-

Andrew Grant:

Yep.

Darren A. Smith:

No more?

Andrew Grant:

From April the 1st 2022, potentially not, unless it's a straight price promotion, but then would it be big enough to get on end?

Darren A. Smith:

Then also secondary-siting those, so it would be allowed?

Andrew Grant:

It's a very good point. It's [inaudible 00:04:16], but yeah, I'm not sure secondary-siting counts as promotional, but yeah, but potentially that's a very good point, actually. You have to promote off-shelf.

Darren A. Smith:

Okay. How does this fit in with the sugar tax on soft drinks that we saw a while back?

Andrew Grant:

Yeah. That's separate. As I said, this is about the merchandising and promotion of a massive slug of the store. This is going to affect all stores over 2,000 square feet.

Darren A. Smith:

Oh, okay.

Andrew Grant:

All symbol and member stores. So this isn't just the big supermarkets. This is everybody, basically, other than the independent mom-and-pop shop.

Darren A. Smith:

So this will affect a SPAR?

Andrew Grant:

This will affect SPAR, it'll affect Alldays, [Todays 00:05:08], Nisa, the works.

Darren A. Smith:

Okay. your sense, because you know a lot of people in the industry, have they wrapped their heads around this yet?

Andrew Grant:

A few have. A few of the big brands that we talk to, those categories, they have. They're very focused on engaging with their retail customers to get space re-designed.

Darren A. Smith:

Right, [crosstalk 00:05:35].

Andrew Grant:

Because if, as you say, you can only promote off-shelf, all of a sudden, think of the volume that goes through, as I said, those impulse lines on [inaudible 00:05:45], if they're not going to lose a shed load of volume, manufacturers and retailers, they've somehow got to shift that amount of volume off-shelf. So do you suddenly need 50% more shelving? Then even more interesting, what do you put on those promotional ends? Because the fact that it's called impulse means that actually we quite like the stuff. It might be bad for us-

Darren A. Smith:

Yeah.

Andrew Grant:

But we like it. Are we going to buy BOGOFs of wholewheat grains, cereal bars, and lime-infused natural mineral water? I don't think so.

Darren A. Smith:

So there is a positive for all of the other categories, who may find now that they've got access to space they never got access to before.

Andrew Grant:

Yeah. [crosstalk 00:06:34].

Darren A. Smith:

[crosstalk 00:06:34] to promotions they never got access to before.

Andrew Grant:

Yeah, but do they sell it in enough volume?

Darren A. Smith:

Probably not. Okay, good point. Then I guess this is also bricks-and-mortar plus digital. So if there is an... let's come back to my example of the M&Ms with the funky hands, the round, red guy. Digitally, if that was a banner on a Tesco shopping site, it probably won't be allowed anymore.

Andrew Grant:

No, that was the big news yesterday. Digital advertising or online advertising will be banned.

Darren A. Smith:

[inaudible 00:07:05].

Andrew Grant:

Manufacturers will still be allowed to have their own M&M website or Coca-Cola website. But yeah, they won't be able to do pop-up banners on a Tesco or a Sainsbury's shopping site, promoting a promotion.

Darren A. Smith:

So this law, bigger than GSCOP? Bigger impact, do you think, on the grocery world in the UK?

Andrew Grant:

Yeah, because GSCOP is after the event. GSCOP only comes in if a retailer inadvertently or deliberately breaches it. No, this is like changing the speed limit from 70 down to 40 on a motorway.

Darren A. Smith:

Yes. Yes.

Andrew Grant:

In my view. Yeah. For the impulse category, it essentially halves it.

Darren A. Smith:

You mentioned earlier, 287 days or something, because we came up with some sort of countdown thing. But actually, that's days. In working days, we can take a whole bunch off that. So we're probably down to about 180, 190 days before this thing happens.

Andrew Grant:

Oh yeah. Yeah. So it's working days, where are we now? We're effectively July. In the old world, the world stopped in July and August.

Darren A. Smith:

Yeah.

Andrew Grant:

So you've got September, October... November and December are busy for Christmas. So you've got September, October, January, Feb. You've got five months. So 20 weeks, 140 days less. Yeah. You're probably down to 100 working days or less.

Darren A. Smith:

That's just what we're thinking about. Would you just bring to life Easter for us? Easter eggs. What's happening there?

Andrew Grant:

Yeah. They'll still be able to sell Easter eggs, but will it be allowed on front-of-store pallets? Which traditionally you walk into a store just prior to Easter, and you can't move-

Darren A. Smith:

Yeah.

Andrew Grant:

... for pallets of Easter eggs. So potentially no pallets of Easter eggs, certainly no three for ten, or buy two for five quid, which is how the stores have promoted Easter for the last 10 years or so. In theory, it'll be single-priced Easter eggs, in shelf.

Darren A. Smith:

Wow. Wow, wow.

Andrew Grant:

Yeah.

Darren A. Smith:

Would you just expand? I don't know if you've got the knowledge, but let's try. In terms of products, so Easter eggs, obvious. M&Ms was my example. What are some of the more obscure ones that we're not thinking about?

Andrew Grant:

[inaudible 00:09:27] it's probably easier to say what isn't covered, so what's counted as a staple.

Darren A. Smith:

Yeah.

Andrew Grant:

So oil, olive oil, corn oil, lard, butter, margarine, and that's all very high fat, but by definition those will be excluded because they count as a staple item.

Darren A. Smith:

Right. Okay. Right. [crosstalk 00:09:50].

Andrew Grant:

But anything that is processed, so the minute that becomes a cake, a biscuit, a chocolate bar, a fizzy drink, a processed ready meal, it falls under the HFSS legislation. There's a whole government website, if anybody's watching and is worried whether their products fits in or not, there is a government website with a calculator to work ou

Weekly Training Booster Episode #5: Improve How You Deal With Conflict

Join Andy Palmer and Darren A. Smith in the fifth episode of the Weekly Training Booster. This episode was about how to deal with conflict, or manage conflict. We discussed how important tone is to the situation, the use of irritators, and the Thomas-Kilman conflict behavioural model.

You Can Read the How to Deal With Conflict Episode Transcript Below:

Andy Palmer:

Okay. We're back here again with an MBM Weekly Training Booster. This is number five. Today we're talking about conflict resolution. So Darren and I had a huge disagreement this morning over something that felt quite trivial at the time, but it's caused us quite a bit of friction between the pair of us. Now, we're both going head to head and yet we're trying to figure out if we had our time again, how could we manage our conflicts better? How could we get conflict resolution faster? So Darren, if we had our time again, what would you and I have done differently?

Darren A. Smith:

I think what I read about conflict is that everyone says, "Just calm down, listen, do it properly." But actually, when you're in conflict, you basically want to beat the other person to a pulp. I get that. So telling us that we need to calm down and it shouldn't matter, I get why people are saying that. Actually, I'm not sure that achieves the behavioral change that we're looking for because what we're really looking for is to understand that it happens. The adrenaline's pumping, we're in conflict and I think what we need to know is what's going on more in our heads at that time. And I want to share a couple of models that hopefully will help people understand what is going on in their heads, which I think then will calm them down rather than just telling them, "You need to be calmer."

Andy Palmer:

All right, good stuff. I think the calming down a bit's important just to take the heat out of the situation. And yet the psychology that sits behind the reason why we're already in that place and then what we can do is where the true value and the importance comes from. So let's hear about this first model that's in your mind right now.

Darren A. Smith:

Okay. So it's Thomas Kilmann. These guys came up with a model many years ago and it says that we have five ways of dealing with conflict and we have a default, one of them. So if we can understand which one we are defaulting to, that will help us understand how we deal with conflict normally because that's our default behavior. Now, once we understand that stuff and we understand it well and we're trained in it, we can then move into using other behaviors, because the challenge isn't to stop having conflict, the challenges to manage conflict using other behaviors.

So as an example, one of the behaviors is avoid. Now everyone sees that as the weak one, but it's not because sometimes you just need to walk away. So one of the five default behaviors is avoid. And if we can plant that in people's heads, then maybe one in 100 arguments, if they're really in conflict, they might just walk away because they'll live to fight another day.

Andy Palmer:

Yeah, absolutely. I think depending upon the level of conflict and of attention of where that could then go, being mindful of actually making a conscious effort to avoid escalation can be super powerful and why some people will have an avoiding mode just by default. It allows them to at least select it or be aware of where they're at.

Darren A. Smith:

It does. And avoiding isn't the weak one, all five are exactly equal.

Improve how you deal with conflict with this week's WTB

Andy Palmer:

Good. Okay. So, that's avoiding. Tell us about one of the other styles.

Darren A. Smith:

Well, I'll go right to the other end, the one that I am. And again, each of these has their strength and weakness. So on our Kilmann model, there's competing. And the phrase that people would use to describe competing is might is right. And these guys will just keep puddling away until the other person gives in. And sometimes that works, of course it does. And other times it doesn't. Accepting that you are a competer, you're someone who is pushing to be right all the time, helps you understand actually you can't be right all the time.

Andy Palmer:

Absolutely, it's good. And I know, from myself, I sit actually smack bang in the middle of that compromising mode. Whereas I look to find compromises and look to find things I can give to get and vice versa. It's interesting how these different styles can work together and at the same time create even further friction. And it comes back to just an awareness of them. Forewarned is forearmed and that's good.

Okay. So we've talked about avoiding, competing, the compromising one. Self-explanatory. What are the other two?

Darren A. Smith:

So there are two more, there's accommodating and collaborating. Now, anyone out there who is thinking, "Well, if I had a choice of all the five, I'd probably pick collaborating." Yeah, you probably would, but let's imagine sometimes maybe there's a buyer and they're really pushing, competing. And sometimes you want to meet might with might. So collaborating might be seen as losing. So of the five styles, there's the right style for each situation. Now we can't train and learn all five, but maybe if we've got one, we can add one, maybe two to it and at least that gives us a choice in conflict.

Andy Palmer:

It doe indeed, it's the ability to be able to dial up or dial down based on the situation. I think, as with any of these models and these ways of working, it's being aware of the situation because it's situation based and then making a conscious choice to do stuff differently or do stuff the same depending upon where you sit and certainly where you sit within this model.

All right. Good stuff. All right. So we're talking about how to manage conflict. If there was one top tip that comes to your mind, sitting beyond understanding this particular model, what does that look like?

Darren A. Smith:

So as HBDI Yellow, a big picture thinker, I don't do the detail or I struggle. The phrase I took away was something I read a few weeks ago and it was from a famous guy and I've forgotten his name, but that will come back to me. The famous quote was something like in conflict, 90% is the tone that you use. And I absolutely love that because we know that words, body language and tone matter. But in conflict home really matters. If you're using the wrong tone, it doesn't matter what the words are. You're already in that conflict and you're going to struggle. So I think my top tip is to be aware of the tone that you're using.

And I'm going to add a rider to that from our negotiation training, something called [irritaters 00:06:22]. I've seen negotiators when they're in conflict throwing in irritaters and an irritater looks like, "Yeah, I bet you couldn't do that anyway." "Imagine a 12 year old girl doing that." And we do some of that as adults just to irritate the other person and then we're surprised when they're irritated. So be careful about tone and avoid irritaters.

Andy Palmer:

Nice, absolutely love that. We've got a whole raft of thoughts and thinking [inaudible 00:06:48] around how you can more better manage conflict, how you can get conflict resolution. We're going to put the link to our ultimate guide to conflict resolution. We'll put that in the comments at the bottom. That's there to take away and read and it brings to light all the things we've spoken about today. So we're going to wrap up there. That's our Weekly Training Boost, number five. Using and better understanding conflict management with some further reading because we know you're going to be hungry to go away and understand more how you can maybe manage conflict more effectively. Thank you, Darren. We'll see you next time.

Darren A. Smith:

Take care all, bye bye.

Take a look at the How to Deal with Conflict video on our YouTube Channel. Also, check out our award-winning blog.

Weekly Training Booster Ep#4: Make Working From Home More Effective

Join Andy Palmer and Darren A. Smith in the fourth episode of the Weekly Training Booster. This episode was about how to work from home effectively. Also, known as remote working. We discuss the M.I.N.D.S.E.T. mnemonic that will help you to work from home more productively.

You Can Read the How to Work From Home Effectively Episode Transcript Below:

Andy Palmer:

Okay. Good morning or good afternoon, depending on when you're watching this video. Welcome to this week's MBM Weekly Training Booster. So we're running these 10-minute videos all of you to help boost your training, with lots of top tips, useful techniques that you can apply, whether you're working from home or back in the office, which I know a number of us are starting to return to. Mentioning that, that's exactly what this week's about. It's about how to work from home effectively. It's about managing role, remote working, and bringing to life some of that stuff that we've all got going on, and how to overcome some of those challenges. So, Darren, good morning to you. Let's hear your first top tip about how to work remotely.

Darren A. Smith:

All right. So we've got an infographic on this and also a mnemonic. Mnemonic is just the Greek word for remember. And I'm going to offer this mnemonic, which is MINDSET. So imagine those seven letters and each one represents something. That's how we can help these guys work remotely better.

Andy Palmer:

All right. We won't talk through all of those letters, but if you were to grab one or two, which ones come to mind from MINDSET?

Darren A. Smith:

I think I'm going to go right over to here, to the S, S for sierra, but in this case, it's S for space. A lot of people struggle with working from home, and they've got used to it, but they're still now in a place where they're probably at the kitchen table. They might have the kids running around or the husband's coming in or it's the husband working and the wife's there. And it's a space. Now I get not everyone's got a place where they can have separate spaces, and I didn't for a long time. But if you can have a separate space, even if you make it a part of the living room or part of another room, it's much better, because otherwise, you're always at work and over time, you'll resent it. Because if you're at the kitchen table working, but then you're there eating, but then you're there doing the kids' homework, you're always working. So separate space is what S is for.

Andy Palmer:

Good. I like that one. I think you're right. It's that differential between, that's my home space and that's my work space. As lots of people are now embracing a hybrid way of working, whether that's being in the office for a couple of days a week. I think I heard the phrase TWaTs mentioned not so long ago. So just to clarify that, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. People maybe are in the office for those days, home for the Monday and Friday, or vice versa. But important to have that space. All right, good stuff. Good. I could grab a letter, but I'll let you pick one.

Learn how to work from home effectively with Darren and Andy

Darren A. Smith:

Okay. All right. So the next one I'd like to talk about is the N, N for November, but in this case, N stands for neat. I [inaudible 00:02:46] that a bit to make the MINDSET work, but I'm sure they'll let us off. Neat is about making sure... Again, that mindset is so important, which is why the mnemonic is MINDSET. We need three separate wardrobes. Now, I can only imagine anyone's bedroom, certainly not in mine. [inaudible 00:03:02] three separate wardrobes. In my head, I've got work clothes. This is what I wear when it comes to work. I've got clothes when I actually go into the office, and then I've got clothes where I'm just chilling. I try and make sure they're different; otherwise again, we blur the lines between work and home and all goes a bit crazy on our heads. So when you go to work, even if you're in the office or particularly when you're at home, make sure you wear something different.

Andy Palmer:

I think there's also the respect as well of how you're viewed. If you're rocking up to a meeting in your college wearing shirts, and you're in a football shirt, there can be some views on that. I'm wearing my work T-shirts there, so it is not [crosstalk 00:03:45].

Darren A. Smith:

Even the T-shirt, you might just have my work T-shirts here and I've got three or four. Then my two shirts I wear with Mickey Mouse on at home, that's cool. You need the separation; otherwise, your head will fry.

Andy Palmer:

Absolutely. So thinking about that and thinking about the perception of that, it gets me thinking about meetings. Lots of us are now having our meetings online, where we're the group of our colleagues, we're not face-to-face as much as we were a bit. We know we're returning to that. So in terms of your thoughts around meeting management for online, but what does that look like to you?

Darren A. Smith:

I see lots of clients and people that we are working with, and we're just supporting, who are creating a calendar that looks like Tetris. You remember Tetris. We've got as blocks that come down and you're trying to fit the flaming things in.

Andy Palmer:

[crosstalk 00:04:33].

Darren A. Smith:

Go.

Andy Palmer:

I say I've got the tune in my head now. [crosstalk 00:04:40]

Darren A. Smith:

The diary's like, "I can get another block in here." They're maxing it and they're almost proud to share. "Look at my diary. I can't think from 8:00 AM to 6:00 PM every day, Darren. It's absolutely banged out." This can't be the way. Now that's easy for me to say, they're busy. They've got to achieve certain targets. Their boss is on the case. I get it. They also get that you need some space between the blocks, even if it's just 10 minutes. You need space to think; otherwise, you're buzzing for one meeting to another and you're not achieving great amounts. Also, my other top tip is if you've got to put the blocks in, put a block in for you. I'm going to do a big piece on this project. It makes a big difference. It's worth an hour and a half. I'll book a meeting with me, and then no one else books the meeting. Love it.

Andy Palmer:

Good, I like that. Yeah, absolutely stops other people inviting you to a meeting because you've given yourself time. I think for me, one of the advantages of working from home is you get to get up from your desk or your sofa or your kitchen table, and take that time for a quick walk around the garden or down the street and back just to get that refresh going on. When we're in an office, we're typically glued to our desk. We might get to go to the canteen or walk down the corridor. The reality is we can embrace some of this stuff right now and give ourselves time to come back a little bit more refreshed because we've taken time for ourself. We're not being that person that go, "I'm going to sit here for eight, nine hours straight," because the time you hit two, three o'clock in the afternoon, you're getting diminishing returns. You are nowhere near as efficient as you were at 8 AM when you started.

Darren A. Smith:

I could almost hear some of the people that I've coached in the past say, "Yeah, but Darren, I'm so busy." I get you're busy. We're busy. I get it. If you don't put that space in the middle, your productivity will go like this.

Andy Palmer:

Yeah. Good. I think for me, busy equals job. It's as simple as that. If you're not busy, then there's different questions to be asked. Okay, cool. More for the time. Coming back to the MINDSET infographic, and we're going to put the link to that in the bottom of this video so people can go and fully understand each step of that, but let's pick one more that stands out for you as a last takeaway point.

Darren A. Smith:

I think I will come back and I'll pick up on the busy a bit more. It's very easy to be busy. Busy, as you said it, equals job. Absolutely. It's whether we're making a real difference on whether we're hitting our targets. Now, one of the things that really distracts us, particularly as we're at home is we've got the screen in front of us all the time. We've got this little bit at the bottom here that pops up and I call it the four-minute badger. Imagine you're driving, Andy. You're concentrating to drive. You can do that. It's very natural. Then a badger runs out every four minutes in front of you. "Ugh, I've got to... Bloody badgers." That's what's happening with email notifications.

On average, you get about 122 emails per day. That means every four minutes, this thing pops up and we all know you do it. You sneakily ever look, see if it's an email you want to respond to, then you go back. But what that's actually doing is taking you out of the deep work you were doing, which hopefully is big, significant, making a difference work, going into that, then coming back. Imagine doing that 122 times a day. You'd want to run yourself over, let alone the Badger.

Andy Palmer:

I know that you need to be a math genius to quickly run that calculation and figure out exactly how much time you are indeed losing. All right, good stuff. So I think what we're saying is consider switching off that email notification. Let's shut it down or best shut out, look down for the hour. I know people are going to go, "Oh God, I can't possibly miss an email. It might be urgent." The reality is you still have other meetings where you don't review your emails. Sometimes it's good to be selfish for you to get that important work done. Okay. Good stuff.

MINDSET is our acronym that we're hanging on how to work effectively from home, how to work remotely. We're going to get that link in the bottom. Likewise, if there's questions or thoughts, add them into the comments, drop us an email, give us a call. As you said, we're starting to get return to work, return to office thing happening now,...

Sticky Learning Lunches #37: Think You Don't Need to Attend This Webinar?

This 7-part model will help you to find out what is wrong with your time management. Today's episode is I Don't Need to Attend this Webinar Part 1.

You will learn:

- Each of the 7 parts of the time management system.

- How each part is essential to creating an effective time management system.

- The holes that are exposed in your time management system by not having any one of the 7 pieces.

- Practical tips to incorporate any one of the 7 parts of the time management system.

- The strengths and weaknesses of your time management system.

You Can Read the Full Transcript Below:

Nathan Simmonds:

Welcome to today's Sticky Learning Lunch. It's Friday. It's exciting. Monday's exciting. Friday's exciting. Every day is exciting and we're gonna be delivering some exciting content that's gonna help you get a bit more focus with what you're doing. Just giving it a few more minutes while we're waiting for the last people to arrive into the room. Xavier, massive shout out to you for being so early. Really, really appreciated.

Nathan Simmonds:

Good to see you Tim. Good to see Janine again. Jane, hello. Thank you for being here. Fabian, Darren. Colin, thank you for being here. Who else have we got in at the moment? Abby, good to see you. Just gonna give it 10, 15 more seconds just to let the last few people arrive. We won't hold it against anyone if they're late, even though this is time management. Just kidding.

Find out the 7-part time management model and whether you need to attend this webinar

 

Nathan Simmonds:

Ah yeah, just remember bun. Wanna see a sub, right? Just while we're setting everyone up for success, let's make sure we get this right. Mobile phones as always, flight mode, zero out the distraction. A hundred percent attention on what we're doing here today. A hundred percent Focus on who you are, what you need to get out of this, and how you're gonna develop yourself. The only investment that is ever guaranteed is the one that you make in yourself. And if you're going to that with any vague intentions, you're only ever gonna get a vague output.

Nathan Simmonds:

So let's be super clear on that. Phone's off, emails closed down. Close down Your social media feeds a hundred percent attention on you in this second thing. As always, fresh page, fresh thinking, fresh page in the notepad at the top, you're gonna write keepers up there is gonna be the things you want to keep hold of the things you wanna remember. Remind yourself about the things that you want to, to reignite that imagination and keep that thinking going and keep the learning sticky. And then finally, making sure you've got a drink available. We're gonna go into this in just one more second. Good afternoon Karen. Good to see you.

Nathan Simmonds:

Let's go then. So welcome to today's Sticky Learning lunch with me. Nathan Simmons, senior leadership coach and trainer for MBM Making Business Matter, home of Sticky Learning. And we are the leadership development and soft skills provider to the grocery and manufacturing industry. Idea of these sticky learning, these sticky lunches is to give you new information, new ideas that's gonna help you take your skillset to a whole new level.

Nathan Simmonds:

Helping you be the best version of you in the work that you do right today. Well actually not just today, for the next seven days, we're gonna be looking at time management and the hurdles that go with our time management and the hurdles that we need to overcome to make sure we're doing the best that we can with the time and the space that we have available. On a scale of one to 10, one being terrible, 10 being phenomenal, how is your time management right now? I've got an eight coming in. Ivy, great to see you again. Thank you for being here.

Nathan Simmonds:

We've got a five, we've got an eight, got a nice mix of numbers already coming through. Haha, I drink team mid-sentence 6 5 7, 7 0.57. Wow. Okay, we're all feeling like we're a little bit in the middle of the road here, there or thereabouts in the majority in the question box. A couple of eights here, which is nice in the question box, what's one thing that you would like to learn or would like to improve about your time management from the next seven days? Let's get a flavor of what's going on with the thinking right now.

Nathan Simmonds:

Gonna say Ivy. Ivy, I don't think I've seen you since the personal development session, so it is lovely to see you here again, thank you. Sticking to what I've listed in my diary to do. Absolutely not leaving everything until the last minute, Abby. Definitely you're gonna gonna get a link in. So while this is coming through, we're gonna get a link in for the future sessions around time management. If you haven't already registered, do so in that link though, Abby are the link to the previous sessions. And in there you're gonna find there's three sessions that we've just done around procrastination and that may really help you with some of these elements as well. Not being distracted, how to stay focused, prioritizing good, we've got some key elements in here.

Nathan Simmonds:

So let's dive into this and keep hold of these. So these things you put in the question box, let's make sure that you are writing those down on your page and you've got 'em in front of you and you've got 'em there as a, an individual learning objective for yourself. So it's gonna help you kind of develop your thinking in that space and keep hold of that. It's really important in a second. That link for tomorrow's session will, sorry not to my not , the future sessions will come up and we'll dive into that. Oh, excuse me.

Nathan Simmonds:

So what are we gonna be covering today and moving forward in these next sessions we're gonna be looking at the seven hurdles around time management. And these are things that, you know, the often the challenges that we hit or we're not very good at or that we now, we are missing something in that area that stops us from moving forward and enabling us to manage our time.

Nathan Simmonds:

It's interesting kind of misnomer though about managing time because you can't manage it. It's gonna do what it's gonna do. The only thing that you can do is create a structure inside it that helps you achieve what you want to. And some of that comes down to personal development planning. So how you structure those, those elements out. How you take note of the things that you need to do more often than not and then make sure that you execute against those. So let's be super clear.

Nathan Simmonds:

Time is always gonna do what it needs to do. You just need to change certain elements of what you do and just turn the heat up and dial certain things down in order to get the best out of those moments that you, that you section off for yourself. So what are the seven hurdles? I've got 'em listed down here. The first one is capturing how we make sure we're getting that information down. The second one is listing how we make sure that's documented and compartmentalized and prioritized. I'm writing it a bit Simon because I've got quite a lot to put up here today. Emptying, making sure actually when you go to those pockets and those buckets that you are taking the stuff out of them at the right time and getting them cleared down,

Nathan Simmonds:

Deleting it doesn't need to intake it out, making sure when it's done it's removed. Storing where you're holding that data to make sure you know where it is and you can get to it at the right times. Scheduling where you put it in your diary to make sure that it does happen. And the last one of these seven is acting. As I just said though, execution, making sure that you do take the time to get it done and getting it and making sure those things are, you know, these seven elements are where we often stumble when it comes to our time management.

Nathan Simmonds:

So take a note of those 'cause each one of these days we're gonna be ticking off one of these as we move through this, but what is the one thing that makes time management? What does second to last one say? Storing how many people here? Yes or no. If you've got a good memory one below that one. Oh, sorry. Scheduling. Apologies. Scheduling, yes or no? Have you got a good memory? Got lots of yeses coming through. Good. Got one note.

Nathan Simmonds:

How do you feel about your time management then on a scale of one to 10, like I said earlier, know, how are you feeling? How do you feel about the systems that you've got in place? One terrible 10 phenomenon. I've got yes or no? Depends on the value of the experience. Got eight on a system, six on a, I wrestle with them, you know, seven. I think that's a seven. It could be a minus seven, I'm not sure that would be quite bad on a one to 10 scale, 4, 7, 5.

Nathan Simmonds:

Okay. So it's just bearing in mind that yes, you may have a good memory and we'll talk about that in a second, but it's having trust in your systems and understanding how you work as an individual that's gonna make the difference to your time management. How many times have you heard people say, yeah, I'm, I'm really forgetful.

Nathan Simmonds:

I've got a really bad memory. How often do we hear this? A lot? Yes. No, maybe from ourselves or maybe from the people around us. Me of it's absolutely. Well the truth is it's not that you've got a bad memory, it's what you think of yourself and that memory. Now how many things are we being asked to do on a daily basis and then we give ourselves a hard time for forgetting something. When we get home, now we have a a list of objectives of things we want to get done during our day. We have our outlook calendar in our back to back meetings.

Nathan Simmonds:

We've got a task list, we've got a note bad with a to-do list in there, all these fantastic things. And then something else comes in,...

Sticky Learning Lunches #36: Keep Putting Off Your To-Do List?

Today's topic, Annoyed That You Keep Putting Off Tasks Part 3. Find out why you procrastinate, how to avoid it, and simple tips to start doing the tasks that you are putting off.

You Can Read the Full Transcript Below:

Nathan Simmonds:

Good afternoon, sticky learning. Lunches. Lunches. Gonna give a couple more seconds while we wait for the last few people to come into the room. Good afternoon, Colin. Darren, good to see you, Tim. Welcome as always, just as we're getting ourselves in, just gonna make sure, let's get these phones on flight mode, zero out the distraction, a hundred percent attention. Just gonna give it a moment. Hello, Claire. Good to see you. Welcome in. It's Thursday, good to be here, and we're gonna dive in, in just a moment. Karen, good to see you. Thanks for being here.

Nathan Simmonds:

So right now, before we even get into today's session, those of you that are here now ready to start that thing that you said that you were procrastinating on or had been procrastinating on you, hopefully, fingers crossed, you've come up with one or two actions that you could have taken or have taken to help move you forward and get that thing done. Get it off your to-do list, stop the procrastination, and you know, get that action in place. How are you progressing on a scale of one to 10, one being not at all, 10 being completely taking action.

Work on your procrastination and be more productive

 

Nathan Simmonds:

On a scale of one to 10, whereabouts are you on actually moving toward getting that thing done? 10, one, not at all. 10 being complete action or taking action? We've got an eight. Good. We've got 10. Good. So those things that you said, happy days. Yeah. Nice. Got another 10 in there. So those things that you said you were procrastinating on about, even with two 20 minute conversations or two 30 minute conversations, you've now come up with one small action that you could take and you have taken, and you are now moving forward to get that thing done.

Nathan Simmonds:

Howard, no need to apologize that you are with us. That's all that matters. This is it. This is as simple as that. When you see it as too big and it's over overpowering, you know, it's too big. It is. You know, it's the big hairy ugly frog that we don't wanna eat. You know, we, we find reasons and we make the excuses to put it off, but actually one small action moves you closer towards it. How do you now feel in one word about that thing that you are procrastinating about?

Nathan Simmonds:

Knowing now that you've taken at least, you know, 1, 2, 3 actions against it. How do you feel about that thing? You are procrastinating about? new faces in the room. I love this. Good to see you, Basan. Thank you for being here. Lynn. Petra, good to see you again. Ramla. Rock and roll, productive. This is exactly what it's about. You know, there was a reason why you are procrastinating about that thing. How long has that thing that you've been procrastinating about being in your mentor, on your mentor to-do list? How long has it been there for?

Nathan Simmonds:

Do you have the wherewithal to take action once I'm in control? Several years, two days? Absolutely. Now, it might be two days worth of procrastination, or several years, but actually now you've taken an action. You're mo you know, you've now taking one small step. The journey of a thousand miles, as we all know, you know, it starts with one step. And the successes of tomorrow are made by the actions that we take today. Or they may seem like cliche memes or, or quotes. It's the truth and the moment, you can see the excuses that you are saying that we talked about in day one.

Nathan Simmonds:

Those seven excuses, easy, boring, certainty, thrill, whatever it might be, when we hear those words, we can understand that we're procrastinating. When we boil it down, we can then understand which one of the four values that we're, we're, we're moving towards, and which one of those two fears is starting to come up. This hope, this is all plugging into some of the thinking that's you, you're starting to see how you're talking, how you're behaving about certain things. And when you can see this a little bit more clearly, it just gives you an opportunity to do something a little bit differently.

Nathan Simmonds:

Good. And we haven't even got into today's session yet. I was just giving you the warmup of, you know, plugging in from yesterday and the day before. Quick recap. So everyone, you are in the room. Thank you for being here. Welcome to today's Sticky Learning lunch with me, Nathan Simmons, senior leadership coach and trainer for MBM, making Business Matter, the Home of Learning. And we are the leadership development and soft skills provider to the grocery and manufacturing industry. Idea of these sessions is to give you new ideas, uncommon thinking, delivered in uncommon ways to help you get uncommon results.

Nathan Simmonds:

More success, more successful than other people have been in their thinking and their approaches and their delivery. That's what this is about. And I'm gonna give you these micro learnings to help you be the best version of you in the work that you do right now and preparing you potentially for the return to work if that hasn't happened yet. Good phones, I've already done mine. For those that arrived afterwards. Phones on flight mode, a hundred percent attention, top of a fresh page. Let's get some, a fresh page for fresh thinking at the top of that page. Keep us, these are the things you wanna remember, remind yourself about.

Nathan Simmonds:

And when you go back and read it to reignite that thinking and help you really make this, this learning stick, that's what it's about. Making sure the behavioral change goes in, it stays there and you do something differently. Let's do this. Day three of procrastination, excuses. We covered human needs, the fears. Where does all this come from? So what we have, or when this comes up is we learn at a very early age that right and wrong is a binary equation. We learn that failure is bad and that you know that it's, you know, the failure is painful and success is good.

Nathan Simmonds:

And we learn to steer away from the failure. And we learn this as a is a simple yes or no. It's ones and zeros primarily. Where we learn this though is, you know, in, in early life, it's where we learn this first two fears is around the age of kind of 2, 3, 4 years old. We start to learn these fears. It's taught to us by our parents and our grandparents. They did the best that they could with the best that they had and to, you know, to deliver the best possible result they could. And that was in our parents, in know, in our, in our upbringing, which is where we are at right now.

Nathan Simmonds:

When we start to understand these behaviors and where these fears come from, we can start to unpick them when we then go to school. Who here, and I may have mentioned this before, I ask you guys here, who here remembers spelling tests at school? Yes or no? Who did spelling tests when they were at school? I am presuming this is probably a fairly international thing. Yes. Okay. So you would get, you know, when you were younger, you would get given 10 words and you would go home and you would learn those 10 words.

Nathan Simmonds:

And then next week you would you know, you would do your spelling test. Everyone remember this. And you would sit there and the teacher would read out the word, and then you diligently write it down and you get to the end of the words and hope that you, you know, you've done all your your revision and you'd learned these words by heart and how to spell them. And then you get to school and you write them down, and then you pass 'em to the person to the left. You know, correct me if I'm wrong, everyone, remember everyone with me on this, you know, you've written your 10 words down and you pass 'em to the person to the left, and you have to tick across them.

Nathan Simmonds:

And you are doing this for the person to your right. And the person to your left is doing this for you. And then what happens, you know, you get a series of ticks and crosses and then the teacher calls up the, the celebrates who got 10 out 10. Everyone's like, yeah, I got 10 out of 10. And maybe you didn't, maybe you got six out of 10, maybe you got five out of 10. And what are the sort of things, do you remember what the, the, the person to your left or to your right, whoever you gave your spelling test. Do you remember what they used to call you when now your so-called friends would call you when you didn't get know the highest score, or you've got the lowest score for whatever reason.

Nathan Simmonds:

And you don't have to write them in the, in the, in the chat box or the question box. You know, your so-called friends because we dunno any better. Then they're calling you thick or they're calling you stupid. So you start to learn this behavior. You know, they, okay, the people that get 10 out, 10, they get celebrated. But the people over here that don't know, that doesn't feel good. What we do is we experience insults and we start to learn that right and wrong is that binary equation. We start to learn, like I say that fear the failure comes with a price of pain. It doesn't feel good, and success feels good and is celebrated. So we always have to be moving towards success.

Nathan Simmonds:

But the interesting dynamic of this is that fear, sorry, that failure isn't the opposite of success. Failure is the route to success. You cannot have one without the other. They're not opposite ends of some of a spectrum. They're a continuum. They're part of the same thing. Night and day aren't opposites. They're one thing. They're a natural flow of harmony of how nature works. Now, up and down, left and right, doesn't matter. One isn't the opposite of the other....