Peggy Sullivan’s Journey from Busyness to Recovery

[00:00:03] Hi, I'm Dr. Russell Thackeray and welcome to Resilience Unravelled, a podcast with new ideas, new thoughts and new thinking about resilience. Guests with remarkable stories, products and services that can really power up your own mindset and resilience. You can also go to our site for more information, to ask questions or to access some of our resources at resilienceunravelled.com. Let's get started.

[00:00:32] Hello and welcome back to Resilience Unravelled and to a subject actually that we covered hundreds of episodes before. And it's really interesting because it's a subject that never goes away. It's a subject that is the bane of our lives and it's the hallmark of business today. So I want to talk to our new guest today who's called Peggy Sullivan. And Peggy, it's a joy to talk to you, not least because you have the easiest name in the world to say.

[00:00:58] And sometimes I do get people and I'm looking at their names and I'm thinking, how do I say that? Will they really be upset if I get it wrong? So first of all, hello, Peggy, how are you? I am terrific. And how are you, Russell? Oh, good. Where in the world are you, Peggy? Because I pick up the twang. Yeah, I'm in Palm Beach, Florida. OK. Oh, wow.

[00:01:21] Tell us a little bit about our resiliency muscle and learn how to pivot and know that life is full of challenge and change and just to learn how to lean into it. Yeah. Sometimes there is no solution. I'm just getting on with it, isn't it? And you've got a choice about how you do that. And you just pick the choice. This means get on with it. Anyway, before I start shouting about my opinions, I'm here to listen to you. So tell me just a little bit about yourself. What's your background?

[00:01:49] Yeah, my name is Peggy and I am a busyness addict in recovery. And for me, throughout most of my career, there's been too much to do and too little time. So I got really curious about how I could get out of this state of what I call time poverty and into a state of time wealth. And I've done a lot of research to understand what processes look best.

[00:02:17] And so that's a little bit about me. First half of my career in corporate America. Last half being an entrepreneur and a speaker and a writer and a problem solver. And I'm guessing from your accent, do forgive me if I've got this wrong, but it sounds like you're from the deep south. Is that right? And you've moved to Florida. Have you always been a Florida person? No, I actually have a upstate New York accent, a New York accent. I'm really sorry.

[00:02:47] That's all right. That's exactly what you're hearing, because all of the coaching I've ever done, I can't seem to lose it. So it's me. Do forgive me. I've got the wrong part of the country. So there you go. No, no, no. I'm quite intrigued by this idea that we all have 24 hours, but there's this thing called time poverty. So can you tell me a bit about that?

[00:03:08] Yeah, I am a researcher and I get very curious and I ask a lot of questions and I've done a lot of research on what is the biggest challenge that you face? And the results that I get back and have gotten back for years and years is I don't have time for what's important.

[00:03:29] And so I've been on this mad quest to develop a process that helps people align their time with what's important. And it's what I call a three-step busy busting framework, but it works in 97% of the people who follow the framework. So it's an unusual framework and I'd be happy to share it with you at some time.

[00:03:57] Yeah, we'll come to the framework in a minute, if I may, just because I want to actually get everyone excited at the thought. But also I just want to think a little bit more about the research you've done. So I'm quite interested to see as an ex-researcher what the research was all about and what you found. Yeah, I've done a tremendous amount of research and I also work a lot corporately. So I have a lot of data from organizations and people who participate in my research studies.

[00:04:24] But we tend to think that busy is better and that we get a lot done. But if you look at what and how we spend our time, we actually spend our time on a lot of unproductive low-value things. And so I like to uncover what those are because in different cultures, in different organizations, they just vary like people vary. And the thing that I love to do is really understand what low-value activities.

[00:04:54] And what do I mean by low-value activities? It could be something as simple as a multitask. And multitask makes you make mistakes and it actually takes you three times longer. Or maybe you have too many meetings and the stats on meetings is 83% of people internationally spend one-third of their time in meetings and only 30% are productive. So we basically waste 11 hours.

[00:05:25] That research, there's just so many different pieces and things that have come out of it. And I think for me, one of the most interesting things is that we do this to ourselves. We overstep our calendars. So we have no time for things that are meaningful and things that we're passionate about and purpose-driven. We don't get to them because we overstep our schedules.

[00:05:53] And so we don't have time for what's important. So it's interesting to look at the data. It's definitely really interesting. I think there's another piece of data I've always liked. Sorry, I'm data, you're data. Let's call the whole thing off sort of thing. I remember seeing a piece of research that something, I can't remember the precise percentages, so do forgive me, but it was something like 80% of meeting leaders thought of meeting and being productive and useful. And in the same meetings, only 12% of the attendees thought that.

[00:06:23] So there's a sort of thing in meetings where people who are running them are having a lovely time and people who are sitting in them are suffering. And it is a massive time suck. You also talk there about something which is quite interesting, isn't it? You say we are stuffing our diaries. But a lot of people maybe in the middle of an organisation are having their diaries stuffed as well, aren't they? Especially with new ways of scheduling. So people are just finding meetings arriving in their diaries. Is that something you find too?

[00:06:50] Yeah, if you don't control your calendar ultimately, then you don't control the power you have really over your life and your purpose and how you spend your days. So I always encourage people to take the power back. And if you are being overstuffed with stuff, I think I always encourage people to speak to the meeting organizers and ask yourself, do I add value? Do I get value?

[00:07:18] Because if I don't add value or get value, why am I in this meeting? It has to be purposeful. And so a lot of times people will all of a sudden figure out, hey, I'm in four hours of meetings a day just because people want me there, not because I'm adding value or giving value.

[00:07:37] And then I'm like, talk to the meeting organizer or talk to your manager and point this out and remind them what your job is all about and what you were hired to do and how you need to focus on moving that along instead of this overstuffed environment. And usually people are very forgiving about meetings.

[00:08:00] You ask permission to just not go anymore because you want to spend your time on the tasks that really have return on investment for the organization. Most people will be like, yeah, you want to do that? I'm in. I'll send you a written overview or less frequent. Or I'm not going to go to a meeting if there isn't an objective and if there isn't an agenda.

[00:08:26] And so there are ways to get around that, that all of a sudden give you more freedom in your schedule to do the things that are important. And it's interesting, isn't it? Because you describe yourself as being a busyness addict, a recovering business addict. I can't remember the phrase you use. But of course, people forget that actually there's a heck of a lot of dopamine and what seems like importance and reward and going to meetings or being busy. Because if you're busy, you must be popular, you must be effective, you must be this, that and the other. And I think there was an old phrase years ago, wasn't it?

[00:08:56] That you always give work to the person who's the most busy because they get it done. And that's an unhelpful myth, isn't it? Yeah. Hustle Society tells us that busyness is good. It's a status symbol. The doctor you can't get in to see for eight months. He must be really good. He's worth the wait. The person that puts in 11-hour days, they've been promoted three times. Aren't they a rock star?

[00:09:20] But we don't always think about the impact of our busyness and what it has on the people that we work with, our friends, our family, the people we care about. And then I think the other thing is just really, as you suggested, there is a dopamine hit. Every time we get something done, we get this release of adrenaline. So we love that. So we want to do it again and again. And that's why busyness is so addictive.

[00:09:49] And people normally think an addiction is about alcohol or drugs. But actually, the Psychiatric Association, the International Psychiatric Association or Addiction Organization, they both say that busyness is like a compulsive itch. And it takes you away from what you should be doing and what you need to be doing.

[00:10:15] And anything that is compulsive like that is an addiction. And so you need to treat it like an addiction. But part of the problem here has always been the degree to which the solution that have been proposed in the past just don't work in a modern environment. So there's the big rocks, middle rock, small rock, sand thing. There's the old important and urgent quadrants and such, which are all lovely.

[00:10:40] But the fact that we've all been trained in them, we're increasingly busy tells me they don't work. So I'm guessing you've got a different approach to this then. I do. A very different approach that I've researched and tested over the last 12 years. And about 97% of the people that use this technique find that they have time for what's important. It takes a couple of weeks to get into it.

[00:11:06] But this busy busting framework, which I developed, was all about step one is about subtraction and eliminating these low value activities we just get stuck in. Step two is about replacing that dopamine that we get from checking things off the list, even if they're not meaningful things.

[00:11:29] I have some customers who actually write things on their to-do list that are easy so they can check them off and have a sense of accomplishment. And so I say, that's ridiculous. You can get the same hit of adrenaline by doing something I call happiness rituals. And they make a bunch of sense in the workplace and at the individual level.

[00:11:54] And they actually improve productivity and performance and engagement. And most of the time, they last three to five minutes. So, for example, every morning I get up early and I don't like getting up early. So I put on my fuzzy pink slippers and for three minutes I have a Peggy Sullivan dance party. And that gets my endorphins going. And then that's good for a little bit.

[00:12:21] And then at around 11 o'clock, I eat a couple of pieces of dark chocolate and I close my eyes and I smell it. And just enjoy it for three minutes. And both of those things are like pushing the reset button. And you can do them within an organization.

[00:12:38] When I worked for a very large healthcare organization and managed over 10,000 customer service agents, I was trying to figure out what can I do to their job is hard working in healthcare and customer service. And where I landed that actually improved their productivity and their performance was introducing workplace happiness rituals into their day.

[00:13:05] And it just was a mood reset, a mind reset, an energizer. And it just really helped. So that's step two. So would you diarize those things so they're protected in the diary? Is that part of your approach? Absolutely. Yes. And for me, I'm really big into time blocking. At the end of my day, I block time out for the unexpected, the unanticipated, because in today's world, it always happens.

[00:13:34] So, you know, give yourself some time when your mind is really good. And it's also about understanding your flow state. When is the best time for you to do certain creative activities, for you to do certain intellectual activities, exercise, eat, all of that. Knowing and understanding and optimizing your flow state is just an amazing thing.

[00:14:02] I remember Dan Pink talking about this a little while ago and talking about it's not productivity isn't what you do, it's when you do it. And I think this is an important point, isn't it? That he links it and says it's a pretty broad budget brush approach, but you're saying it's more individualized. That makes sense. So is this sort of these sort of treats that you have, these sort of minutes of downtime, are they, again, something that you pick for yourself? Or is there like a selection you can pick from?

[00:14:29] Because some people who aren't used to this thing find it very hard to start, don't they? Yeah, I say start with the things that give you joy, right? Start with the things that tickle your happiness. And for me, dark chocolate does it all the time. I love dark chocolate. I love dancing. Sometimes it's about human connection and having some time to connect with a human being and not do my work.

[00:14:57] So I understand what these things are and what my pattern is. And so I'm able to be in my thrive state pretty much all the time because I know what I need. And most people don't know what they need. And it's complicated.

[00:15:15] There are a lot of applications, apps out there, and things like that can really help you that are built on hundreds and thousands of data points so that they will individualize what you need. Because what you need is going to be different than what I need. You may thrive on six hours sleep. I thrive on eight hours sleep. Some people thrive on three meals a day.

[00:15:43] I thrive on six meals a day. You really need to understand what energizes you and what that looks like. And really then make sure that you're optimizing your opportunity to be successful. Interesting. I know it's on your site, which is PeggySullivanSpeaker.com, that you've got something called a Busy Barometer. So you mentioned an app. Is this one of those apps? Yeah, the Busy Barometer.

[00:16:10] I work with industrial psychologists and senior HR leaders to understand low-value activities as human beings we typically get hung up on. And we don't even recognize them as low-value activities. So this Busy Barometer, what it does is it's a four-minute study. It asks you a series of 22 questions. And it will tell you, gee, these are your low-value activities.

[00:16:40] And by the way, this is what you should do to maximize it. So it's really based on thousands of data points and very individualized. But that's why we start with eliminating these things that we spend our time on that really don't get us anywhere. And that's what the Busy Barometer does. Okay. So you've mentioned a few times low-value activities, and you said there's lots of them.

[00:17:08] So can you give me some examples of what those things might be? Yeah. We already talked about too many meetings. We talked a little bit about multitasking. We didn't talk about the email rabbit hole and how so many people start their day catching up on email and end up spending a couple of hours on it unintentionally.

[00:17:31] And then there are a lot of other things that also really make us not as productive during the day. Do you take breaks in your day? What are your eating patterns? What are your sleeping patterns? Are you connecting with other people? There's just a series of really 22 data points that were recognized that I test for.

[00:17:57] And they really range from how you work with other people, how much time you spend in meetings, how you engage in social media, just how you deal with interruptions. You know, when an interruption comes, do you say yes and lean into it, even though you know you're going to pay a switching task by changing and leaning into that interruption?

[00:18:21] And you give it permission to suck up your time and then you end up paying what's called a switching task, which can be 17, up to 17 to 30 minutes, which that's a deep, dark hole too. Yes, that's right. And people forget about switching tasks or switch tasks, whatever you call them, depends on your country. And it's really important, isn't it? And it's this idea that you're going to focus on one thing properly at a time.

[00:18:48] And there's this myth, isn't there, about women being better at multitasking than men. And it's just garbage because the brain's not wired to multitask at all, really. We can do lots of things badly at the same time, but it's doing things well. It is key, isn't it? He talks a little bit about values as well. And so unpack that a bit for me as well, please. Yeah, being the research geek that I am, I used to talk a lot about something I call values management,

[00:19:15] which is instead of leaning into time management, which we all do, but we know it doesn't work. It's a couple of billion dollar industry, but still 96% of human beings end their day not having time for what's important. So time management isn't working. And what I suggest is that you replace it with something that's called values management and making sure you're crystal clear on what your values are.

[00:19:44] And then you have some way of making sure that you're living your value in a repeatable way and a way of catching yourself if you're losing out on the core value. But even when I started to lean into this values management, I would get in front of large audiences and I'd ask them, what are your values?

[00:20:06] And so they usually write one or two things down and then they get to a point where they start to Google their values or look at their next, what does Johnny next door has? And it got me really curious as to what are the values that when we get to the end of the day, we feel like our cup is full and that we had a really great, productive, satisfying, purposeful day.

[00:20:35] And it turns out there are four core values that help us get there. Energy management. And so that's really managing your mood, managing your self-care, just how you take care of yourself. There's also something that I call growth and that helps you reflect your resiliency muscle. My father always used to say, and he was an immigrant and wasn't a concentration camp.

[00:21:03] And he went through a lot of change in his life. And he used to say, toots, a day without learning something new is a lost opportunity. I always used to ask him, why, God? Explain that to me. And he always used to say, when you learn how to flex your learning muscle, you learn how to do hard things. You learn that you can adapt.

[00:21:27] All of a sudden you get more confidence in chaotic change and you have the tools that you need. So that's two. Three is human connection. And we're all so social media oriented, but actually nothing beats human connection for what it does for stimulating the brain and all of these adverse things that happen when we spend too much time on our own.

[00:21:57] And then the last value that's really important is authenticity, but not in the traditional way. It's not about stepping into your own power, but it's more about two ears and one mouth. Making sure that you listen and that you hear other people and you can lean into the power of we, not the power of me. Makes sense. Now, I'm just going to say this, Peggy.

[00:22:25] You've described all those values brilliantly. And of course, if I forget them, it would be really handy to have a place where they might have been written down. I don't suppose you've done us a favour and written a book by any chance. I have written a book. It's called Beyond Busyness. My website has the core values. I've written blogs about the core values. So there are lots of ways to get to it.

[00:22:49] But the interesting thing is that it's in the high 90 percentile that people feel more satisfied, more fulfilled when they align their time with their values versus a time management type thing. And hard scheduling and hard coding those things in are good. I talk about them in my book. And my book is really, it's a comedy of sorts because I love making people laugh.

[00:23:18] And when people laugh, they learn. And when things are fun and interesting, it's really a non-traditional book, so to speak. There's a lot of storytelling, a lot of laughter, a lot of I can't believe somebody put that in writing moments. Very good. It's on Amazon and it's got a sort of white and pink cover, half and half, which is quite funky. And your site is PeggySullivanSpeaker.com.

[00:23:47] And there's loads of pictures of you in all sorts of different strange positions jumping up and down, leaping around the place, which is really good. And tons of videos and things. So I'm going to say that we've spent 25 minutes and you've been highly effective at getting your message over, which is really the key, wasn't it? Thank you so much, Peggy. It's been really great. Is there anything else you want to add that we haven't talked about?

[00:24:08] No, just I love Resilience Unraveled and the whole idea of having lots of conversations about that, because truly, I think resiliency is one of the skills that we also all ignore too much. And it's really perhaps one of the most important skills to navigate in today's world. So thank you for the work that you do. Yeah. Thank you.

[00:24:36] It's been an absolute joy to meet you and tons of practical tips and a great book to get our myths on. And I like it because it's not too, apparently, one of the, it's got loads and loads of wonderful reviews and they all say it's not too long. So you've been, you've done that thing about saving the reader time as well. So it's all right across your brand, isn't it? I love it. Yeah. Peggy, it's been a joy. Thank you so much for joining us today. Hi, I hope you found that episode useful and entertaining.

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