Productivity and Reimagining Space with Donna McGeorge

Episode 6: Productivity and Reimagining Space with Donna McGeorge

Donna McGeorge is the productivity coach at REIMAGINEHR

Trina Sunday: Welcome. I’m joined by Donna McGeorge today. She is the productivity coach. Not just any productivity coach, people, the productivity coach. And she’s passionate about helping people to work smarter so we can overcome overwhelm, take back control and focus on what’s important. Wouldn’t that be nice? Donna’s worked with managers and leaders with organisations over Australia and Asia Pacific for the last 20 years and she is all about helping people to learn to manage their time and their people well, to produce great performance and results, which is what we are all about here at,  reimagine HR. So Donna knows that when we decide to be intentional, that we can just surprise ourselves, right, with what we can achieve. And so I am super excited to welcome Donna today. Thanks for joining me.

Donna McGeorge: I’m super excited to be here too.

Trina Sunday: Thank you. When I met you last year, I was in Brisbane. I’d come to Brisbane and I listened to you talk and we were talking about everyone. Finding time, finding time, finding time. And you blew my mind when you started talking about space being the new rich. And I went home from Brys Vegas with a completely different reflection and thought and have been leaning into that ever since, which is part of why I reached out to you. So thanks for making the time.

A lot of HR leaders talk to me about workload and burnout

I mentioned to you that people talk to me. So a lot of my community, HR leaders, HR teams, business leaders, they’re talking to me about workload, the pressure to perform, how competitive, unrelenting their environments are.  no space, no time, no energy, fatigued,  all those really glowing, brilliant things that people talk about when they’re lost in the busyness. I’d love to know kind of what you hear when I talk about my community like that. And what shows up for you.

Donna McGeorge: Oh,  look the same. And I find it interesting because no one puts that in their job ads, do they? No one says, come join our organisation to be overwhelmed, out of control, probably fail at the important things, feel like work is relentless, drown in a sea of email and never have time for anything that’s really important. Right? And yet, when we show up at, ah, work, most of our workplaces have some version of that. So I was privileged to speak at the Human Resources convention, which is where we met. And having worked in HR for. Oh,  look, I’ve been in my own practice now for 20 years, but I hang around with HR folks and prior to that, I was an HR person as well. We’re like the plumbers with the leakiest pipes. We make sure that we attend to so many out, like, make sure everyone else is fine where wellness is taken care of, that they’re having their yoga Wednesdays as necessary. But gee, we’re lousy at doing it for ourselves. And so we often in the HR world end up being the ones that are feeling it the most because we tend to not take as good care of ourselves.

Trina Sunday: And I think that there’s,  there’s a lot in that because there’s lots of clients that I work with, they’re facing burnout ultimately.  there’s an obsession with more, more, delivering more, delivering more. And something’s got to give. Right. I did your capacity quiz ahead of our tour, which you have on your website, which is free. And I’ll put the link in the show notes because it’s phenomenal. And I got my capacity,  savings plan as part of your book, and a one day refund.

Can you talk to me a bit about space? I’m curious

I’m really curious to hear how you talk about space. So that was a really interesting perspective because we talk about time a lot. Can you talk to me a bit about space?

Donna McGeorge: Oh, gee.  For someone who’s a linguist, they’re probably going to say these two things sound like the same thing,  but they’re not at all. So for me, space is almost akin to attention. So we have our attention on, switched on so much that we’re. That we. Even when it goes quiet, we nearly don’t know what to do. And so we’ve become a little unaccustomed to space, or just space to think, space to breathe, space to just be. And certainly, uh. And I don’t really want this to be just about the ladies, but certainly any of the ladies who are listening, who are also working mums. We never seem to have any space for ourselves, so there’s a constant demand. It’s like people are always wanting a piece of us. So I came to the conclusion that space was the new rich from a multiple range of perspectives. And it started with me musing once in the Qantas lounge when I was travelling. And I looked around at how spacious it was. And of course, I’m not suggesting that all people who are in the Qantas lounge are rich, but it’s certainly taking up a lot of real estate in what would be a considerably expensive part of the world. Right. Airports, they’re very particular about how they use their space. I thought, oh, look at the space they’re giving us. Not to mention if you happen to be special. I got into it. Recently,  I got into one of the chairman’s lounges, which is only for vip’s. Now, I wasn’t the vip.

Trina Sunday: Just saying, how’d you sneak in there? Talk us through it?

Donna McGeorge: I just kind of. The door opened and I snuck in and then the door shut behind me. No, I was travelling with some very whiz bang, super duper executive who had access to it. And it was this considerable amount of space, and we were the only two people in it. And again, I thought, look at all this space. And then I started paying attention to that old thing that we used to think about when we were kids, is when you go to someone’s house and you make an assumption that they’re rich. And,  when I’m old now. So when I was younger, it used to be things like if they had a, I don’t know, a dishwasher or a microwave or a remote controlled television, right? Oh, they must be rich. A swimming pool, two story house, two cars, all those things. They must be rich. Now, when I walk into a house and I see a beautiful big world, it’s a bit like what’s behind me. Beautifully designed bookcases with room for plants and photos and a wooden duck, if I had one, candles and stuff. And I think, oh, they must be rich, because for many of us, we’re using every piece of available space in our house.

Space is the new rich, it’s actually free to get

So, which brings me to the capacity quiz that you did. We do this in our heads. We just have so much stuff in our heads that when we can stop and breathe quite literally and think it’s rare. And so that’s why I feel like it’s a. It’s a commodity that we need more of. And it’s free, actually. So even though I say space is the new rich, it’s actually free to get. To get it.

Trina Sunday: It’s all about access, though, right? You need to know what it’s. And I. It’s really interesting because you’re so right, especially because I have a small child. I have a kid in your forties. They said it would be fun, they said. But,  it’s one of these things where the cognitive load is real. And,  lots of the HR leaders I work with are women,  or identify as women. And so there is a whole kind of world that goes with that, and there’s a reality of that. But I think about space and the quiet and how uncomfortable we’ve come in that space. And I’ve heard about you defining space, and you talk about the space that you need for thinking and planning and growing. And we know that that’s what you need for happy, healthy, productive workforces and lives. So it’s like, well, how do we tap into this space?

Donna says people don’t have the capacity to adapt to changing circumstances

Malarkey, Donna, because you talk about, and I know when I did my capacity quiz, so let me share with people. So you talk about thinking, breathing, working and living space. So four spaces that if we have it, then you talk about our adaptive capacity. Can you tell me more about what adaptive capacity is for those that might not know? And then we can kind of unpack my results of where I need to focus some energy or not.

Donna McGeorge: Don’t look like that. It’s all good news at least,  and they can get to work on it. So adaptive capacity is my favourite thing. And basically, it has its roots in darwinian stuff. When Charles Darwin, look, some people say he didn’t say it, but we’ll just believe that he did because it’s quoted on so many Instagram pictures that I can’t be wrong, can’t be wrong.

Trina Sunday: It’s on Insta, not the strongest and.

Donna McGeorge: Fittest that survived, but it’s the species most able to adapt. And so what adaptive capacity is, and this comes from the world of manufacturing, where if a manufacturing plant is constantly working and producing stuff, it only takes one thing to break and the whole thing falls over. So they operate at minimal capacity, so they’ve got space to adapt and respond when things go wrong. And so with humans, it’s more around life changes. Stuff changes all the time, whether it’s having children or changing our workplaces or changing the economy or governments or whatever. We’re constantly bombarded with change. And I actually don’t believe that people ever resist change. And I know there’s a big intake of breath from your listeners right now, but actually it’s, they don’t have the capacity or the adaptive capacity for it. Because when we have the capacity, we can take time to look at the change, think about how it’s going to work for us. And the thing that’s most awesome about adaptive capacity is that we then have the space to take advantage of the opportunities that change presents us. But more often than not, we’re so swamped. Back to back meetings, gazillion emails, then we rush home, shove food down our jobs, shove food down our kids’ gobs, shove them off to bed, then sit down and do even more emails at night. We never have time to go. Wait, what was that article I was just reading about that could be a massive and profound change in my industry that I really should pay some attention to so we can begin to adapt. Like, don’t have time for that. So adaptive capacity is exactly that. And if any,  people are wanting to know how much specific capacity we should have? I,  talk about the 15% rule, which says that we need to have a gap of about 15% of space in our life. So if you look at your diary,  if you’ve got back to back all day, this does not include lunch, may I say? Yep, if you’ve got back to back, including lunch all day, then you have no adaptive capacity because you’re then trying to do that in your spare time. So I’m going to suggest you need at least an hour a day that you block out just to stop, breathe, think. I think the best volume of time to do that is if you say, rather than an hour a day, say you try to do four or 5 hours a week in one block. So maybe you block out Friday Arvos or something like that. Just having some space where no one is making any demand of you and you get to be very choiceful about what you use that time for. And straight up, that just gives you the moment you open your diary and you see that chunk of time, you will literally breathe, right? Because you see it there.

Trina Sunday: Because we all know what it feels like, right? When you open a diary and it’s full, like it’s back to back. I’m like, am I even going to get to go to the bathroom? Like, what? What does this look like? And it’s got to a level of, like, the meeting vortex. And I know in your book, the 25 minutes meeting, you tackle some of this as well. So that’s definitely, for those of us with meeting cultures in our organisations, it’s definitely worth leaning into, but it’s about consistency as well, right? Like, if you’ve got that 15%, then you’re leaving something in the tank to be able to kind of focus more energy into some of that thinking and the change. And I dare say,  in that busyness that I described in my community, it’s why we’re not innovating as much as we need to be. And,  we’re probably the slowest innovating profession that’s around at the moment. And I think that part of what’s contributing to that is not having the capacity to look at things that are new, to invest in our own growth and learning so we can level up what we do in terms of our people’s practices. I think it’s.

The accidental genius came about because someone was musing on a problem

Is it three m that talk about the 15% as well, in terms of accidental genius, I love that. It’s kind of because it’s where the gold comes from, right? And if you don’t have any time and space, then those thoughts are not going to come.

Donna McGeorge: They’ve been doing it for decades. Because the accidental genius that came about with the invention of the good old post it note, of which there’s a couple sitting on my desk right now, came about because someone was musing on a problem. Musing. When was the last time you sat back and just went, I’m going to muse for a bit on this problem. A and because they gave themselves the space to muse. You know the answer of, I wonder what would happen if we had a glue that did this? Actually, I think it came about. I think the real legend around this is it was a failed glue, and then the person was musing on, what would you do with a glue that didn’t stick the way you intended to? Let’s muse on that for a bit. Right? So, still all musing. And I know that when I speak to HR,  professionals, and I say things like, when was the last time you sat down and read the final review? Now, I’m not. This is not me pushing any particular political or news agenda on you, but all the magazines that’s from your industry or any literature that informs you about what’s going on. When was the last time you did that? And would you sit and do it at your desk?  The first answer I get is, oh, I don’t have time for that. And the second one is, no. People would think I’m slacking off, and I’m like, no, it’s probably your most important work is that stopping and just contemplating what’s going on in the world. And,  a lot of the time, what happens is, and this is also okay, it’s just, I guess you get one big dose of it. I go to the re conference once a year, and that’s where I get my stuff. And I’m like, yeah, good for you. Not quite good enough. It needs to be regular, on a daily basis that we’re giving ourselves a space.

Trina says daydreaming and boredom are symptoms of an addiction to activity

Now, before I can see a question in your eyes, I can see you ready to move on to something. Just want to,  kind of comment on this idea of we’re addicted to activity.

Trina Sunday: Yeah, talk me through that.

Donna McGeorge: Yeah, it’s a total dopamine thing. And we’ve been. We’ve been in trouble for daydreaming since we first started school. Like, I, I’m remembering little Donna, who probably was sitting, gazing out the window and being told very quickly by the teacher, stop daydreaming. And then, okay, then I might have started doodling, as I might have been processing, thinking. So that daydreaming is my brain going, you’ve just learned a bunch of stuff. Stuff. Stare at some trees right now while we process that for you. And then, okay, well, now I can’t stare out the window. Now I’ll doodle. And I’m putting myself in nearly a semi conscious state while I’m going. I just learned a whole bunch of plus ones today in maths and how to do time stables. Let my little brain process that. But we got in trouble because we weren’t concentrating and we weren’t paying attention, and we weren’t in this uptime state, which is why we all overdose on cortisol and adrenaline in our workplaces. So, for me, daydreaming, boredom, are all symptoms of an overdose and an addiction to activity. And so,  the first thing you want to do is on a week, so you could just in case you don’t want to bother anyone at work with this, on a weekend. How long can you sit without feeling like I really need to get up and do something? How long could you just sit and do nothing?

Trina Sunday: I would fail at that task incredibly.

Donna McGeorge: How long?

Trina Sunday: I don’t even know. Like, even a minute would feel excruciating, which is a problem, right?

Donna McGeorge: It is.

Trina Sunday: Like, it’s a massive problem. And I read it resonates so much because I’m Trina the dreamer. That was me. Trina the Dreamer.

Donna McGeorge: Ah, yeah.

Trina Sunday: And it is especially with creative outlets,  and the things that you express yourself differently to what our academic and learning environments are traditionally built to be.

Donna McGeorge: Mhm.

Trina Sunday: So for people like Trina the dreamer, who like to experience, process, and then just kind of chill out for a bit, it wasn’t really conducive for that. So that resonates a lot. But sitting there, although I do also think that I would love to sit on the couch for a long time and do nothing, but I have a little person that would make that impossible. So that’s also a little bit frustrating.

Donna McGeorge:  What lessons are you teaching your little person around that as well,  so how many times have you said, when your kids have come to you and said, I’m bored, and you immediately try and find some activity for them to do, right? Or,  are they watching you on the go the whole time? Or so are they learning that? So it could just start with sitting on the couch for an hour reading a book with your little one, which is just, let’s just slow down the pace of life and just be. Be with. Right. So I know anyone who’s thinking, doing nothing, baby steps. It could be reading a book. It could be. I do cross stitch and I find that most just say it’s very meditative, relaxing and calming for me. And so I cross stitch. So technically I’m not, I’m not doing anything, but I’m certainly not thinking about my work and I’m not doing emails and I’m not scrolling social media, I’m not pushing more stuff into my head. I’m actually chilled.

Trina Sunday: So, yeah. And it’s a reflection that I’ve had a lot over the last twelve months in terms of my own personal journey, because it is. And even with my little one, it’s. She’s on all the time and she’s a firecracker and she’s got energy for days and she’s just energy to burn. And so it is, it’s about finding space, finding the quiet and getting all zen about things, not being busy all the time. And so there is. It’s a habit and practice to build and I think, and going back to my capacity quiz, so it’s definitely,  so for those that are curious, what came up for me in terms of those four spaces, and again, a reminder, it’s the thinking, breathing, working and living space. And the area for me that seemed to be an issue most of the time is breathing space and that I need to make some improvements there. So that’s about saying no and letting go, people.

Donna McGeorge: Right.

Trina Sunday: Um.

Donna McGeorge: Is that it?

Trina Sunday: In a nutshell?

Donna McGeorge: Pretty much in a nutshell. And if you hadn’t told me you’d done it and you said, I’m thinking about doing your quiz, just knowing that you’re running podcasts, you’re running your own practise, you’ve got a child, you  know the way in which you’re doing. I probably would have guessed that. Because it’s the profile that fits most working women, because it’s also the profile that says, I feel like everyone constantly wants a piece of me, that there’s never a time that someone isn’t asking or demanding something of me, whether it’s at work or whether it’s at home with whatever family arrangements that I have. And so it is, it’s,  it’s hard because  it’s the one that needs the most help and it’s the one that never asks for it.

Trina Sunday: Yeah, it’s the self care space, right? It’s like when we put ourselves last or you are not at all on that list. And so it’s, again, it takes, it takes a lot to work through. And I heard you say, I heard you say once, no is a complete sentence. Mhm.

Donna McGeorge: I remember saying that at the conference because there was about 400 people in the audience and they all looked like you. They all just went, what?

Trina Sunday: Mike, are you serious? I can just say no?

Donna McGeorge: Yes. Have I just smiled on your face? Because that’s helpful, like in a cheerful way. Hey, can you do this thing for me? No.

Trina Sunday: Right, but it’s, but we do, we feel, we feel it with words though, right? Because we feel we have to justify why that is something we don’t want to bring into our space. But how do people get to that?

Donna McGeorge: Well, it could take ten years of therapy to unravel why we just can’t, huh? Say no. Right? Because we go, no. And then we feel the urge to explain why. And,  say, I’ve watched people do this. They start out saying,  let’s say it’s an invitation to a social event that I just have not got the capacity to go to. And so I start out by saying no. And then I go, oh,  because I’ve got just a whole bunch on right now. And then because the guilt then starts to kick in because you can see a little bit of disappointment in the other person. And so when I go, I’m sure it’s going to be a really great event.

People tend to respond better to asking for help than saying no, right

And look, maybe if I get my stuff done really early. Okay, well, fine, I’ll drop in. And so they start saying no.  and then they end up buying it back. Right? They do the great thing by saying no. Then they end up buying it back. So that’s a warning on the label.  Robert Cialdini, who wrote, you know when people say he wrote the book on, well, he did write the book on the psychology of influence and persuasion. And there is a rationale, or there is a case for giving a reason, because people tend to respond better to whether it’s a request for help or saying no if there’s a reason. So I need your help because I’m blah blah blah blah. And,  no, I can’t, because I’m blah blah blah blah blah. Here’s the thing, because we’re so shy at it. And again, I don’t know why. Look, if I was to be a bit religiously philosophical without wanting to be overly, I don’t know, sacrilegious, it could be 2000 years of insert religious dogma, right? That says and rules and stuff that says,  so guilt is very prevalent as a tool in many  religions,  better go to church on Sunday or you’ll go to hell kind of thing. And so I think that’s partly that, that we’re just, it’s ingrained in us. Partly because we like to be liked, we don’t want to let people down. And we haven’t yet made the distinction between taking care of myself makes me way more likeable than showing up grumpy to the most important people in my world, right? So I think it’s part of it. So you need to practise it. So I actually do this, I actually have a series of little phrases and my favourite is look, thank you. I actually don’t have the capacity for that right now.

Trina Sunday: Capacity is a magical word, right?

Donna McGeorge: Yeah.

Trina Sunday: And smile through it, gotta smile through it. At the end of the day,  even in a work context, capacity is the amount of work we can do in a given period of time, right?  and if you look at workforce capacity, it’s around,  with the resources we have. If we look at workforce capacity planning, it’s like no time can’t fit it in. And it’s one of those things where it’s easier if you don’t really like the people. There’s a fine line between being disrespectful and trying to practise this quite brutally, and just to show how I don’t always show up as a good human sometimes, but I was invited to something and I just said, yeah, no. Oh, why not? And I just said, I just really don’t want to. And that person, because I just had, I was beyond, like it was in one of those moments, right, where I was, my capacity was just blowing. Like I didn’t have any kind of emotional resilience left to kind of balance it out or even try to fulfil,  the six principles of persuasion and look at likability and  what, what Robert talks about. And I’m like, I just felt like I just, I just didn’t have it to give. I’m like, yeah, nah, I just don’t want to.

Donna McGeorge: What I love about that is the radical candour of that. Now, I, I’m not sure I have the gumption courage, whatever you want to say, to demonstrate that much radical candour, which is, you know. Yeah, I’m just a classic australian. Right?

Trina Sunday: Yeah.

Donna McGeorge: No, yeah. Nah, Taylor Swift picked up that beautifully in her concert. I don’t know whether you saw it, but she used that phrase on stage a couple of times.

Trina Sunday: I’m the one person in Australia that didn’t go.

Donna McGeorge: I didn’t go see her either. But, uh. You couldn’t open your eyes without seeing it. But anyhow, yeah.

Trina Sunday:  uh.

Donna McGeorge: Because you’re. You bang on. Whether it’s capacity for more work, whether it’s capacity on my weekends, whether it’s mental capacity to think about stuff, there is a finite amount you can have. And I know people say they can keep pushing and pushing and pushing, but I feel like it’s this balloon that you keep blowing air into. At some point, the balloon can only take so much before it’s going to pop. Right. And so I love that radical candour around doing that. I’m sure your listeners right now are thinking, oh, I could never do that. And so what’s your version of that that you can do with a smile on your face that you feel okay with and practise it? So mine is, I don’t go, yeah, nah, I go, look, thanks. Cause,  I’m going, look, thanks for that offer of a gazillion hours of work and I don’t have the capacity for that and resist the right now thing. Right. So my urge to go, I don’t have the capacity for that right now. And then they’re going to jump on that. Oh, well, when can you.

Trina Sunday: Yes.

Donna McGeorge: And now suddenly you’ve bought it back again. Right. So thank you. I don’t have the capacity for that. Full stop.

Trina Sunday: No. Complete sentence.

Donna McGeorge: Sentence. Right. No.

Trina Sunday: Who knew? So I probably didn’t need to add that I just don’t want to.

Trina: Humans respond well to authenticity. When you say yes, your brain says no

I should have just stopped it.

Donna McGeorge: Well, they asked why, right? So they said why? And you said, because I don’t want to. Now, if someone says, why and you don’t feel like demonstrating that much radical candour, you could just say, they say why? It just doesn’t work for me right now. Yeah. Or it’s just not in me. It’s not in my, I don’t know, plans. I have other things I need to do. All of which is true, which also means I don’t want to. Right.

Trina Sunday: And for those that are wondering, I did, I did and have maintained that relationship and got it to a place where,  there’s something to be said about being human in those moments, I think. And then just, yes, smile through it, but not the, like,  just genuinely. And I just, I laugh a lot.

Donna McGeorge: Humans respond well to authenticity. Right? So,  let’s just say I said to you, would you like to, I don’t have one, but if I said, would you be on my podcast? You went, yeah, no, I don’t want to. I’d probably go, oh, okay. And then my brain would probably go, that’s freaking refreshing because so many people would go, oh,  okay, sure. Let’s book it in and then ghost me via email or, or avoid it or can’t put it off, then cancel it. And these are the things we do. We say yes, our brain says no. And then we have this barrage of activities that we have to do to continue to maintain that avoidance, whereas it might be a bit brutal. Yeah, nah, I don’t want to. But boom, full stop. Let’s move on. Right? Yeah.

Trina Sunday: We’ve got other things to do, so let’s just do. Because that’s what happens when and what shows up in our work as well, right? Like, so we, then it’s where we find ourselves in when we don’t have the capacity, then that’s when we are over promising and not delivering and we lose credibility. So,  when I work with HR teams and it’s about, I can’t get a seat at the table and it’s like, then,  and again, coming back to the principles of persuasion, it’s kind of like it’s that credibility, it’s the,   it’s all of those aspects that,  you need to be able to deliver. Like there’s consistency. And so when you talk about having the 15% in your diary, then you’re going to have a buffer in there to be able to kind of give to more things. When you talk about being realistic around what you can commit to, it shows up in all spaces of our life, right? Like it’s a tool for life.

Donna McGeorge: What’s weird, particularly in corporate land where someone more senior. So my calendar’s full. So you said before you open your door on your calendars full, my brain goes, and there’s probably two or three things overlapping in certain timeframes that you’ve somehow said yes to or you’re expected to go to. So not only do you have one thing in the diary, you’re gonna have three or four that you’re trying to figure out how I’m gonna manage so it’s triply overwhelming, but we have this tendency to, I call it,  an assumption of unreasonableness where internal client or someone more senior says, hey, Trina, can I get you in my diary on Thursday at 03:00 and you’ve already got something in there? But because they’re more senior, you think they are. You assume they will be unreasonable if you say no, and then you think it is unreasonable for you to say no. And so I say, I wonder what would happen if we adopted an assumption of reasonableness. You’ve already got something at three. It is perfectly reasonable for you to say, I’ve already got something at three. Can we do it at four or can we do it tomorrow or can I do it next week? Or you get the sense of what it’s about and you go back and say, look, I could do three and I’m pretty sure you’re going to ask me about XYZ. If you give me till Monday, that gives me a couple of hours to prepare, or gives me some time to prepare what I think you’re after. Whereas what we do, and I assume that they’ll be perfectly reasonable about that, right? Because they’re humans.

Trina Sunday: Of course they are.

Donna McGeorge:  And yet we go, oh,  the CEO’s asked for a meeting, I have to accept it, really? What would happen if you didn’t? And, oh, I might get the sack now. Anyone who works in HR knows how hard it is to suck. Anyone. So just saying, no, I’m not going to attend a meeting is not going to get you sacked or it’s not a career limiting move or any of those things. It’s simply reasonable human beings managing unreasonable demand. Right.

Trina Sunday: And the question of reasonableness, say that ten times fast is also,  what would be tested in a general protection claim or anything else. So I would just.

Donna McGeorge: We get reasonableness, right?

What does productivity mean to you when you’re coaching clients and working with organisations

Trina Sunday: So I think, yes, stand strong in your reasonableness assumption because I think the word productivity as well. And I hope this isn’t offensive when I say this, but I feel like it’s become, given the work you do, an evil word in a work context, and I think we’ve made it something else. Like what does productivity kind of mean to you when you’re coaching your clients and when you’re working with organisations? How are people talking about it and do they get it?

Donna McGeorge: I don’t think they really get it. I just think it’s. So for me, this is not a popular word and maybe I’ll write a book about this one day. The joy of satisfaction, because I think it’s, are you getting done what needs to be done? Right? So I always just say to people, come straight back to you, whatever your KPI’s are okrs, whatever you’re working within your organisation, am I getting done what I said I would get done and that’s your guiding light. So that’s an indicator number one of am I being productive? The other measures are, ah, am I also being productive in all the other really important aspects of my world. So I measure my productivity. Not just what did I get done in a day, but my physical and mental condition at the end of the day. Do I go home and fall onto the couch and have nothing but monosyllabic answers for the most important people in my world and therefore have no energy or anything to give them? And so I would say I might have got a lot done, but that’s not good. I want to finish my day and then come home and have stuff left in the tank for that important stuff. So that’s kind of how I think about it, but it really is,  if I write down a list of all the most important things for me, am I getting those done? Yay. The only thing I say, and your listeners would be acutely aware of this is that we’re still, or we’ve come out of four to five decades of downsizing people, but never downsizing the workload. In fact, sometimes upsizing the workload. So if I was to think back on my past, and I know technology’s helped and there’s other legit reasons, but most people these days are probably doing the workload of three, right, just flat out. And it’s a hard, hard thing to talk to an organisation about saying that we need to in effect triple our workforce in order to have what we would consider a proper level of capacity of work. But it’s the truth. And so we got to figure out ways, I think, don’t wait for an organisation to fix it because they won’t, but to figure out how we can help ourselves and help our people manage that better. And so some of the strategies in here’s a bit of a plug. Sorry about that. This book, yes, that’s the one just talks about. Thank you. Simple daily ways that we can just find that extra bit of capacity in our days by working a bit smarter. And that’s really what I’m about, is I think we are pretty. Not Slack. Slack’s the wrong word. No one’s slack. I don’t think we work very optimally. Let’s put it that way so we could work more optimally if we followed a few simple techniques.

Trina Sunday: Yeah, yeah. That’s a really kind way of saying that it’s well played.

Donna McGeorge: Slack, as in we’re slacking off. I just mean that we don’t apply attention to, could I do this better? Could I have done this smarter? Yeah. Could I have done yesterday better? And how do I do today better? We don’t. That’s what we’re slack about. We never think about that. We don’t make time for that. Right? Yeah.

Trina Sunday: And I talk to my clients about that because it’s that reflection and people can say, oh, this, like, woo, woo, like reflective journals. And,  I’m like, no, no, if you don’t look at, how did I feel? And I love that, looking at productivity beyond what you smashed out during the day. But what condition were you in when you got home? Because I think that that’s really critical. And we don’t look at that. We apply a productivity lens around our work and not around the rest of our most important people who are not at our work. So I think that’s really awesome. But I think it is about kind of when we’re in that space, we know that organisations are asking, especially HR people, for big things, right? Like, give us high performing teams and help us to work optimally. M. It’s all about efficiency and cut, cut, cut.

Donna McGeorge: Oh.

Trina Sunday: But while you’re there, could you contribute to a positive, creating a positive culture in our organisation? And I’m like, um.

Donna McGeorge: It’s endless.

Trina Sunday: I’m exhausted just listening to it.

It’s why I’m seeing so much fatigue in HR especially

So again, like, this capacity and capacity being used in different contexts, like, I love that because it’s kind of like, well, we don’t have the capacity to do all of those things that take decades and are a long game.

Donna McGeorge: Mhm.

Trina Sunday: Because,  what we’d often then do is we’ll go harder, we work longer hours, we do more with less, as you talked about, because we’ve downsides. Like, those are the pitfalls, right? And so it’s trying to shift my mindset, which is part of why I wanted to reach out to you, because it’s just, it’s broken. Like, the way we look at it’s broken. It’s why I’m seeing so much fatigue in HR especially. And what HR teams have come through with COVID and that whole,  not having put that oxygen mask on, first type concept and then never really being able to lean back into it, normalising. Like it’s.

Donna McGeorge: They’ve just maintained that pace. Right. So you kind of think HR was the front line of the corporate world. Right? So we had, we know we had our frontline health workers dealing with all of that, but in the corporate world, it was HR that just worked the frontline workers. But this is true. Not just for HR, it’s true. The pace and the changes that we made.  Even though I talked about working from home, and so my work day started an hour earlier because I didn’t need to commute anymore. Right. That was one of the reasons I wrote that one day refund book. A lot of us have maintained that. Yep. Right. And so we’re still working these ridiculously long hours and doing ridiculously long days and having constant meetings about everything. So it’s almost like we expanded our workday and we just have never contracted it back. Right. Yeah. And I know you’re going to say, how can you help our people do that? And so I’ll jump. Donna?  yeah. Can I just fix all the problems of the world? That would be great.

Trina Sunday: Tips, tricks, hacks, levers.

Donna McGeorge: Right. I’m going to say, start with yourself first because I want all of your listeners and for you, Trina, to be your best selves. Right. So the first thing I’m going to say is don’t wait for policy, because you have to write the policies anyway if there are going to be any. But don’t wait for policies or for whoever they are up there to make decisions about this. You decide. From now on, for the rest of my life, I’m going to. I’m the boss of me and my time and my schedule and my energy. And I know when I do that, I do a better job. So the starting point is the afternoon. So whatever day of the week you’re on doesn’t matter, but you’re going to start by this afternoon. So,  whenever you’re listening to this, this afternoon, sit and think about what are three things you could do right now that will make tomorrow a bit easier? So, like, if you’ve got a family, for example, for me, that would be getting the kids’ school stuff all sorted and at the front door ready for an on time departure tomorrow morning to the Qantas lounge. Right. Okay. I’ve been doing a bit of travel lately, so,   you said, put your own mask on. I’m like, okay, let’s throw over and where’s the bubble exits? And,  there’s a whistle and a light if you need attention. And so if you don’t have kids, that’s okay. Right? All powered to you. But it might be, what outfit am I going to wear tomorrow? So make that decision before you go to bed. You’ll eat healthier if you do meal planning the night before. So what are some things I can do right now? So I do stuff like, I know tomorrow I have to work on that, a PowerPoint presentation. And so I might just spend 15 minutes right now just doing a five point outline of what I want that to be. And it’s a double whammy. I’ve given myself a starting point for tomorrow, so I’m not starting cold. I’ve also put it into my brain, so my brain will process it overnight. So the next morning, I’ll probably have a scathing idea about what I want to do in the presentation as well. So, for me, it’s, what could you do in the afternoon that your future self will thank you for? And that’s where it starts, and that’s where you get. That’s the stepping off the vicious cycle. You can’t start it in the morning because the kids are already ratty. The kids are already running around. You already couldn’t find little Susie’s soccer boots before you needed to head off for school. Today you’ve already. So the day’s already off to a crap start. Do it the night before. Yeah.

Trina Sunday: And because that’s a big part of what you talk about, isn’t it? It’s like deliberate action, deliberate intention, knowing exactly what’s important, what you need to fulfill, and then actually kind of deliberately focusing on that.

When are you the most productive, and when do you need to do best

I could talk to you for days, Donna, about, because I think the other,  when you talked about, do something for the next day and afternoons, I think it’s also about understanding the way that you work best. And from a personal perspective, that’s different for different people. And I think there’s some real opportunities to kind of lean into. When are you the most productive, and when do you need to do your best work at what times to be able to kind of get good results? And that’s. That’s something that you’ve talked a bit about. How do you think people figure out what that looks like in terms of their day?

Donna McGeorge: So most of us, so let’s say 75% to 80% of us have a chronotype or a body clock that says that we tend to be more mourning people. Uh uh. And some people like early birds versus night owls. Okay, so what are you? What’s that face about?

Trina Sunday: Yes, yes, yes. For those on the podcast are not watching this. I am absolutely a night owl.  Does that mean I should be? Donna’s gonna tell us.

Donna McGeorge: No, no, no. It just means that you know yourself better than I do. So  it’s like all very well to say Donna McGeorge should tell you what to do, but you know yourself better than I do. So you would know on the day when you are most alert. They’ll usually be two or 3 hours where you are at your most mentally alert. Now for you that could be the afternoon. The only time I’d say for some of my night owl friends is that sometimes our  prime time is bang on when we’re picking up kids from school and we’re doing homework and we’re so just be conscious of when that is. For early birds it tends to be anywhere between about eight and twelve. So it depends. So I’m actually getting up, I’m usually up around 5: 36 o’clock most mornings. I go for a walk, I have some brekkie, my work day. My brain starts to kick in at around eight. I  start my first kind of work around nine. And I like to use your phrase, smash stuff out until twelve and then I have lunch and then I spend the afternoon doing routine stuff that doesn’t require my brain work. And I try as hard as possible to book my meetings and podcast interviews and things of this as much as possible in the afternoon where I have that opportunity to be  that flexible. And so I’m going to say for most of you, test it. Don’t believe anything I say. Test it. Is the morning the time when you feel the most alert? If not, figure out which couple of hours in the day and then I’m going to say block out that time. Do not give it away willy nilly. That’s the time where your productivity, as in the stuff you can smash out will go through the roof. And you’re also working with the clock in your body rather than the one on the wall, which means your brain and body is tuned in for that. So you get kind of, it’s like a double whammy. I get even more and I feel good because I’m doing what my brain and body wants to do as opposed to, I’m sure you’ve had this, I know I have. Where you feel like you’re just dragging your sorry ass around the place just trying to get stuff done. This is so hard and I don’t want to think about it and. Right, whereas when you’re in that prime time you’re on and you’re good, you know?  yeah.

Trina Sunday: And so you need to know when that is right. And I think there’s an element of the way that I work that I’ve kidded myself into thinking that night hours. And so I’m intellectually tuned in enough to know that there’s reflection in that. And I think,  yes, I take longer to warm up in the morning. Everyone that’s ever worked with me would say this. So I do routine things in the morning. But still, that creative, innovative, thought leadership, content creation, those things,  a sweet spot is generally still kind of between,  ten and two kinds of things. And I think, mhm. Understanding what that productive window looks like, depending on the structure of your job, is really, really important to reflect on. Because if you want space and you want to make sure you’ve got capacity, then you need to make sure you can smash the things out at the times that are best for you. Otherwise the work takes twice as long and that takes up more space that you could be giving back to yourself.

Donna McGeorge: Or you make mistakes,  have to be repeated. So for the listeners, if you’re wondering how you do that, it’s a bit woo woo. Not quite as reflective woo woo, but a little bit woo woo. So you just set an automatic timer on your phone to remind you every hour. And you just give yourself a score out of ten on how energetic you’re feeling, right? So,  one would be, I really need a nap. And ah, a ten would be jumping and of course, everything in between. And I know sometimes you’re going to be thinking, it depends on the work I’m doing. And I’m going to say, I disagree because when I’m in my optimal state, I can do any shit job, right? I can do my baz, which is probably my most shitty job that I think about doing. So I can do anything in that space and I can power through it. So it isn’t necessarily am I liking what I’m doing right now is what’s my energy right now? And you do that for a couple of weeks and you’ll start to see a pattern and you’ll say, okay, yes. So you’re absolutely right about that. Am I created now? Because sometimes it happens when you have kids that if you have the kind of kid that does keep you up in the night, your body clock shifts. M it could be that if you’re,  as you are in Western Australia. Yes. And so you may be doing work later in the day or early. I don’t know, what would you be? It might be earlier. So that may not work, but,  it might just be that you’ve learned it through just bad habits of sitting up late watching telly. You may have learned it at uni when you did cramming assignments and study late at night. I just recently read something that said that it’s an evil, it was an evolutionary thing. The reason human beings wake up when the sun comes up, and lots of other critters do this as well, was a survival instinct. We had to be up and alert and ready to go so that we, if we were attacked or we were hungry or whatever, we could look after ourselves. And so the night owl version is rare ish and not, I want to call them mutants, but that’s really too strong a word,  because we are, we are physiologically designed to wake up when the sun comes up and go to sleep when the sun comes down. That’s how we trigger melatonin and all that sort of stuff. And so if you’re not doing that, you’re doing contrary to evolution and the human, I don’t know, physiology. Yeah.

Trina Sunday: So this little mutant, then,  would say that there’s probably,  there’s elements of, I think we work and do some of this night stuff, though, because we haven’t protected the space we need and haven’t had the capacity to fit in all the things. So it’s like anything, right? And in the council, we give our clients even, and the advisory services, it’s like, it’s root cause stuff, like fix the core problem, not what the symptoms are.  and so thank you for that.

If you were reimagining HR, what would that look like right now

And to close this out, Donna, I’m keen to know, if you were reimagining HR or the way we work, what would that look or feel like to you right now?

Donna McGeorge: And I know your listeners are going to be like, oh, not that again. I actually think AI is the actual technology that’s going to give us backspace that’s been promised to us since the bloody printing press was created a thousand years ago. Right? So for years, we’ve been told that technology is going to give you more leisure time. And in fact, the early iterations of email were meant to save us so much time. Right. But I dont think anyone says, God bless you, email for giving me back all this time. Like said, no one ever. I actually think HR talks about wanting to get out of the nitty gritty and get out of the reactionary and transactional aspects of HR and get into the strategic and planning and co creative and all design and all that kind of juicy, cool future stuff. So if I was reimagining it, I’d be saying, get on AI as fast as you possibly can. Move all the shit admin. Sorry for swearing. It’s a bit sweary. Move all the admin and stuff off your table and then make yourself available for that glorious work. And just. Just to challenge you a little bit. And this happened a long time ago. Flight centre.  I was working with them. I’m going to go maybe 15 years ago. So this is how ahead of their time there were. They just decided not to have any admin staff anymore. They just went, no admin, no receptionists, no one gets a secretary or assistant, you know. And they said, because if it’s that important, you’ll find a way to do it. If it’s not, it just won’t get done. And nothing much changed.

Trina Sunday: Interesting.

Donna McGeorge: So all this admin, so it’s almost like humans create admin. So if I was reimagining HR, I’d say, just stop doing some of the admin. I mean, what would happen?

Trina Sunday: Just stop it. Just say no.

Donna McGeorge: A whole bunch of people just vomited in their mouths right now. As I said that, as they’re listening.

Trina Sunday: To this, just say no.

Donna McGeorge: Right. Can you do this, Admin? No, I don’t want you. No, I don’t want to.

Trina Sunday: Can you imagine? Oh, I love it.

Donna, thank you so much for joining me. I’ve loved our chat and look forward to giving you an update on how productive I’ve become.

Donna McGeorge: Awesome. Can’t wait. Thanks, Trina.

Trina Sunday: Thank you.