Making Business Matter (MBM)

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.

Sticky Learning Lunch Videos

M: Struggling to be Productive Because You're Working from Home?

I: Help! Cabin Fever is Starting to Take Hold

N: Confused about What to Wear When You are Working from Home?

D: Working from Home – Lots of Time – Not Sure Where to Start?

S: Working from the Kitchen Table and the Sofa will Drive You Nuts 

E: It is Hard to Know How People Feel when they Work from Home

T: The Tech You Use whilst Working from Home is Holding you Back 

G: Frustrated Because You Know You Need to Coach Your People – Goal 

R: Frustrated Because You Know You Need to Coach Your People – Reality

O: Frustrated Because You Know You Need to Coach Your People – Options

W: Frustrated Because You Know You Need to Coach Your People – Way Forward

1: Personal Development Plan – Not Sure What to Start? Part #1 

2: Personal Development Plan – Not Sure What to Start? Part #2

3: Personal Development Plan – Not Sure What to Start? Part #3

4: Personal Development Plan – Not Sure What to Start? Part #4

5: Personal Development Plan – Not Sure What to Start? Part #5 

1: The Cunning 4 Stage Sales Plan by Geoff Burch – Part #1

2: The Cunning 4 Stage Sales Plan by Geoff Burch – Part #2 

3: The Cunning 4 Stage Sales Plan by Geoff Burch – Part #3 

4: The Cunning 4 Stage Sales Plan by Geoff Burch – Part #4 

M: Having a Mental Health Conversation Bothers Me – Part #1: Mindset 

I: Having a Mental Health Conversation Bothers Me – Part #2: Importance

N: Having a Mental Health Conversation

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

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.

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

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....

Sticky Learning Lunches

#35: Keep Putting Off Your To-Do List?

Today's topic, Putting Off Tasks Part 2. 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:

Welcome to today's Sticky Learning Lunch with me, Nathan Simmons. Just the last couple of people coming into the room now, and we're just gonna get them in. And then we are gonna crack on because we've got some core content to cover. We're gonna carry on the theme of yesterday around procrastination. We're gonna dive even deeper into those seven excuses that, you know, these words that we use to validate why we don't do things, and then boil those down to the core values and core fears that we display that often come up and trigger these excuses.

Nathan Simmonds:

And when you understand this and get it right down to its root cause, it's gonna enable you to take better actions, more considered approaches to things and help to eliminate those things off your to-do list. So let's get everyone in the room. He says, where's my mouse on? There it is. Welcome to today's Sticky Learning. Hello, Andrea. Good to see you again. Colin. Darren, Fabian. Thank you Gareth. Good to see you again. Gina Howard. Karen Lynn. Nice. See you Petra. Thank you for being here. Ramah and Tim, handful of more people, handful more coming in.

Figure out your procrastination and be more productive

 

Nathan Simmonds:

First things first, as always, let's get the phones on flight mode. Zero the distraction, a hundred percent attention on where you're going today and what you are doing. And this is about investing your time in you to make you more incredible than yesterday. That's what we came here for. So, phones off. Fresh sheet, fresh sheet, fresh thinking at the top of that page. In your notepad, you're gonna write keepers, as I always say now, it's about things that you hear, things that you learned today that you want to keep hold of, that you want to remember, reignite and help to kind of reimagine and reinvigorate the thinking.

Nathan Simmonds:

As you know, as you reread those notes, new ideas percolate to the surface so you can come up with new ideas, new actions and and new thoughts that are gonna help you deliver even better result. Also, making sure you've got a drink, it's getting warmer over here, wherever you are, on, in, on the planet, on the globe at this point in time, making sure you've got a drink and you are ready for this.

Nathan Simmonds:

We are in 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 these sessions all about helping you be the best version of you in the work that you are doing right now. And if you are returning back to the office for that return as well, we are the leadership development and soft skills provider to the grocery and manufacturing industry.

Nathan Simmonds:

And I want to give you some of the skills up here that I've learned in 23 years of leadership and the last nine, maybe 10 years now, of coaching leaders and developing leaders. And share some of this content with you just to help push that thinking further. Where are we today? Someone's already told me how they're feeling On a scale of of 10, obviously a 7.5 is pretty good. How are we feeling today? First question is, how are we feeling today? One being terrible, 10 being phenomenal. How are we feeling on a sliding scale? What's going on for us? How are we feeling right now? Got nines. We've got a six. Okay, we're gonna work on that today. You've got nines, nines, nines up for it. Good. Seven.

Nathan Simmonds:

We've got a couple of sixes. Weather has brought the score down. Oh, well let's, let's lift this score up. Yesterday when we talked about it, it, I also said, you know, what's the one small action you can take today that's gonna create impact on something that needs to be on your to-do list or that you haven't ticked off of your to-do list. What's that one? Small action. Let me know in the questions. What's again, what was that one small action you said you would do yesterday to take action on that thing that you've been procrastinating on about? What was the one small action?

Nathan Simmonds:

I'll wait for those coming. 'cause That's gonna require a little bit more typing than just a number called a tax man. Nice. What did you call him? Admit I'm a procrastinator, paid up member of pa I need to ask myself though, why behind my lack of action on the same topic. Good. Called him a gi delivered bad news. If it was necessary, it was necessary. Focus on the one thing at a time. Absolutely.

Nathan Simmonds:

Your brain cannot focus on more than one thing at a time. And there are optical illusions that you know, that can show you this. Just even in the physical scientifically proven that multitasking doesn't exist. Just do the one thing. Focus on that. Get it done phenomenally. Well move on. Good. We've got some stuff up there. So what are we covering now then? Yesterday we looked at the seven excuses.

Nathan Simmonds:

I've got 'em listed down here. I'm not gonna go through those in too much depth. The first one, it's easy. So we don't bother doing it. You know, we find it's, it's maybe beneath us or it's just too easy to go and do something else. Now we fear failure and we're gonna talk a bit more about fears today. So rather than actually taking action on it, we procrastinate and leave it for as late as possible in case we know. 'cause We think we might produce a substandard quality of product at the end. But then what we do is we cut ourself off at the very last minute and produce a substandard product anyway because we didn't give ourselves enough time to do it.

Nathan Simmonds:

It's boring, quite frankly. We'd rather do something else 'cause it's less, it's, that's less interesting. Need for certainty. We've got down here as well. Now we, we can guarantee certain actions and certain outcomes. So we do them instead of doing the thing that might be a bit more difficult. We've also got here enjoy pressure. So sometimes some of us lead it to the last minute just 'cause we enjoy the thrill of being under pressure. But actually that has a detrimental impact on our health mentally and physically doing all nighters, drinking too much coffee using, doing these sorts of things. We don't

Nathan Simmonds:

Don't wanna take the responsibility. So we'd rather leave it for as long as possible and get someone else to make a decision so we don't have to take that responsibility. And if we don't like it, we can blame somebody else. And then finally, we think tomorrow it's gonna be easier. We think the future version of us will do it easier. So we're gonna leave it to tomorrow rather than doing it today. But then we go back to the top of the loop where it, well, maybe it's just too easy so I won't bother doing it. And we go back into a cycle of the seven excuses, right?

Nathan Simmonds:

That was the headlines from yesterday. If you didn't see it, that was the kind of the catchall there. What are we gonna be covering today? Right now we're gonna be looking at the four human needs and looking at the two fears that go alongside this. So we've got about 15 minutes to do this. The first need is the need for certainty. So the need for certainty is, is creating stability, creating security. I need to know where my house is. I need to know where money's coming from to pay the bills. I need to know where food is. I need to know where my family are. I need to know that they're supported. So these are your core certainties. Your core securities. Well, on the other side of this, we also have the need

Nathan Simmonds:

For uncertainty. And what that means is, you know, we want certain amount of novelty. We want a certain amount of different things to be happening in our lives. We want, you know, we want stimulus. We want things to be exciting occasionally. Why? Because if we go too much this way, life becomes boring. Now we, we look for security. We want everything to be just so, and we spend all our time trying to put things into compartments to make sure that we mitigate all the risks and everything. That there is no gamble. And we know, we know full well that if I do this, I get this as a result.

Nathan Simmonds:

But the challenge is that if we go too far this way, the moment that we have a curve ball come in, all the toys come out of the pram. We know that we have no flexibility. 'cause We spend all our time over here trying to balance it or make sure everything's gonna work exactly how it's meant to work. And the moment that something blows in from a different direction, everything goes into crisis. How many people have got people in their lives right now that absolutely have to know a hundred percent exactly what's going on all of the time?

Nathan Simmonds:

And the moment you give them, you know, and this kind, this happens at varying times when pressure's really high. You know, we talk about this in mental health, you know, having your stress pot, your stress tank. And when your stress tank gets full, you know, my wife can ask me for a, for a cup of tea and I will erupt, but it's just a cup of tea.

Nathan Simmonds:

It was the same cup of tea as it was yesterday, only fresher. But because of all the other stuff going on, you know, it causes me to, to explode. But as a human need, we all need a certain amount of security if we go too far the other way. And we are living in constant uncertainty. This is where they talk about the, the, the VUCA in in, in military terms, volatile, uncertain I forget the other part of it, you know, challenging or whatever critic. Crisis situations. If we are constantly living right in this space over here, what happens is, while brains tend to go into overload again,...

Sticky Learning Lunches

#34: Keep Putting Off Your To-Do List?

Today's topic, Annoyed That You Keep Putting Off Tasks Part 1. 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. Just gonna give it 30 seconds. Everyone has just suddenly compiling in at the, just a few seconds beforehand, which is great. It's fantastic to see you all. Colin, thank you Darren. Great to see you. Fabian, lovely to see you again. Gina. Always a pleasure. Howard, John. John, thank you for being here. Karen, good to see you again, Lynn. Alia sorry. Yeah, ela, Stuart, Tim, Vicki. There's some wonderful, there's some new faces here, which is always great to see.

Nathan Simmonds:

There's some I want, I don't wanna say old faces, 'cause in that would be wrong. You know, just some regulars. We've got some regulars in. And it's lovely to see you all. Thank you for being here. Just gonna give it 10 more seconds. Just wait for the last handful of full of people to arrive. Jane, good to see you again. Diane. Welcome Andrea. Thank you very much for being here. Just before we get in, on a scale of one's 10, one terrible, 10, phenomenal, how are we feeling today? How are we feeling?

Work on your procrastination and get your to-do list done

 

Nathan Simmonds:

Oh, and also just writing the comments. How are we feeling about learning some stuff about procrastination and how we overcome that state, one to 10, how are you feeling? And also, let me know how you're feeling about getting some tips around procrastination. We've got a seven. Can't wait. Good. Thank you very much, Karen. Nine, six. Tired. 10 up for it. That's a good trade.

Nathan Simmonds:

Seven. I wanted to put this off to be fair or to be honest. Thanks Howard for the joke. Good bit harassed. Ready for a break. Dunno. Can't make up my mind. Ha, funny people, funny, funny people, right? So let's dive into this. If anyone's coming in late, that's absolutely fine. Like I said, they might have been putting it off. They didn't wanna face the hard truth of what's actually gonna be talked about today. Let's get into this. Welcome to today's Sticky learning lunch with me, Nathan Simmons, senior leadership coach and trainer for MBM Making Business Matter.

Nathan Simmonds:

The home of sticky learning idea of these sessions is to give you skills to help you be the best version of you in the work that you do right now at home. And also preparing you for return, returning back to the office if that's the case. These sessions, we've got three sessions now all around procrastination. And I know from the previous trainings that I've delivered and the previous conversations that we've had, I've been drip feeding some elements around procrastination, some elements around mindset, and some ideas that are gonna help shift that.

Nathan Simmonds:

And what we wanted to do with these sessions is bring 'em together in a package of three learnings so that you can really understand at a deep level what is procrastination, how you are doing it, and also have a mechanism to overcome that in the best possible way and keep you moving forward. And that's what we wanna do. We wanna bring this to life for you to keep you, give you that momentum.

Nathan Simmonds:

First things first. Who here is a procrastinator yes or no in the comments? Who here is a procrastinator? We've got a yes, I've got an everyone tell you later. Maybe I can be sometimes last minute Charlie. A-K-A-A-K, a big time, sometimes good. And it's the same with Alcoholics Anonymous. Now the first thing about when you are, when you are an addict or you are an alcoholic, is to admit it. You have to take ownership of where you are with what's going on.

Nathan Simmonds:

Now, if you are not able to do that, you won't be able to put the actions in place or the steps in that are gonna help you move beyond that. We are all procrastinators. So that's the first thing I want to get you, you know, get really clear in your head that we all have a tendency to do it. How we work through it and how we use it to its advantage is different for different people

Nathan Simmonds:

And with the level of experience. So I wanted to cover that first, but quite here, we, I'll dive straight, I'll dive straight in too quickly. First things first, we've gotta set you up for success for this session, for the ongoing mobile phones. Let's make sure we're just zeroing out of distraction phones on flight mode, a hundred percent attention clean sheet for today.

Nathan Simmonds:

Write your procrastination at the top of it. Write keepers up there. And these, this, this sheet is gonna be the ideas that you want to go back and remind yourself about and reignite the thinking and remember what we talked about to kind of get the thinking going even further and embed the learning even deeper. Really important that we do this. So procrastination, we're all procrastinators.

Nathan Simmonds:

You have to take ownership of it. Why? I've got key elements here because it's inbuilt. So the first part I'm gonna cover today is it's a little bit of science. And then how you learn to dress it up. The science is that we all procrastinate. We have a central nervous system that is designed for comfort, yet we have a a spirit and a soul that is designed for growth. So what happens is, though, this central nervous system, this, this physical body that we have it, the idea is it's, is the brain is trying to keep us alive so that we can procreate and keep the species moving forward.

Nathan Simmonds:

And that's all any species is trying to do, is to adapt, to evolve and keep moving forward. So 200,000 years ago, what would happen is the amygdala that primordial part of your brain, the reptilian brain, the moment that you would go outside of the cave where you would go into something that or into an alien environment, that part of your brain would fire up and start to make you feel anxious or nervous or scared in order for you to go out there as quickly as possible and return back to the comfort, the creature comforts of your cave where you are safe so that you could continue to survive and your family would survive.

Nathan Simmonds:

But the problem is now, as we've got into 2020, regardless of what's going on, is your brain can't differentiate between a saber-tooth tiger or a job interview. It rates them at the same level of, of, of threat because that's the only thing your brain has has is a very binary kind of equation. Is it gonna eat me? Is it going to, you know, steal my food? Is it a threat or does it feel good? Can I move towards it?

Nathan Simmonds:

So the moment we start getting some of the, the, these brain signals and, and these frustrations and these anxieties coming up, the moment this happens, our brain starts to go into shut down. The, the logical part of our brain up here at the front closes down, and we go into fight, flight, flock, or freeze. And you've heard me mention this a couple of times in the training sessions, and this is what's hard starting to happen when we get into that and when we start getting, you know, that feeling, we then start to make excuses about why we don't want to do things or why we do want to do things.

Nathan Simmonds:

And this then comes out as procrastination. So what happens is we, we find ways to use our words that then justify why we are not doing things and we start to make excuses or we use socially acceptable mechanisms that distract us from actually doing what we need to be doing. 'cause It doesn't feel comfortable 'cause it's not normal because it's outside of our comfort zone.

Nathan Simmonds:

Hope this is useful so far high levels neuroscience, I'm not gonna go too in depth with that, but you just need to understand that this is actually your brain working and it's been doing it for 200,000 years or so and it's been doing it very effectively because we're still alive as a species just about right now in 2020. Bill Mollison, who's an interesting gentleman now sadly passed away. His phrase or quote that I learned from him is, you know, work with nature not against it. So if you understand that this is part of how your brain works, it's brain chemistry and it's your brain playing tricks on you to keep you alive. When you want to stop procrastinating, you just have to learn to play tricks on it back so you can keep yourself moving forward.

Nathan Simmonds:

Hope that's useful. Quick mouthful of tea. And then I'm gonna get into some common excuses that we use on a regular basis and to use as excuses to validate why we're not moving. So today what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna give you the seven common ones we use and then depending on time today within, I'm gonna boil that down even further tomorrow and get, start to give you that real clear insight as to why you're doing what you're doing and how to create that real deep focus and insight and alertness to help you move beyond it. So the first one, we've got the first excuse, excuse number one. It's easy.

Nathan Simmonds:

So what we have is actually modern technology and the way we work it is just making it easy to send a message, write an email, play Facebook Scrabble, do this, do that, you know, it's easy to avoid it now. Or it might be that the job's too easy to do. So because it's not physically challenging or mentally stimulating, we don't go towards it. So we put it off, nah, not important enough. And because then the distractions are easy, it's easy to flick onto social media and find yourself scrolling for 20 minutes rather than doing what you're meant to be doing.

Nathan Simmonds:

Why? Because social media isn't actually social, it's antisocial. So what they're using is these clever algorithms. But they are, again, mechanisms to fire up certain parts of your brain chemistry to make it feel good....