Michael Bungay Stanier: Do More Great Work
EPISODE 187
When you’re up to your eyeballs answering emails, returning phone calls, attending meetings, and scrambling to get that project done, you can turn to this inspirational, motivating, and at times playful book, Do More Great Work: Stop the Busywork. Start the Work That Matters by Michael Bungay Stanier. In fifteen exercises, Do More Great Work shows how you can finally do more of the work that pushes you forward, stretches your creativity, and truly satisfies you.
The exercises are “maps”—brilliantly simple visual tools that help you find, start, and sustain Great Work.
INTRO
Michael and the definition of bad work, when he spoke to Googlers in Mountain View on February 24, 2011
Wombat (2m51)
GOOD TO GREAT
Michael’s definition of great work, and what you care about
Light yourself up (2m13)
HABITS
Michael discusses 21st-century signs to build new habits, including Charles Duhigg and BJ Fogg
Define your habits (3m40)
Michael discusses what we can learn from Dan Coyle and Leo Babauta, and deep practice
Work on yourself (3m34)
OUTRO
Michael and Brian from Optimize talk about the three things you need in order to do great work
Focus, courage, and resilience (3m20)
READING LIST
You can find the book on Amazon Here: Do More Great Work: Stop the Busywork, and Start the Work That Matters
TRANSCRIPT
Hello and welcome to the moonshots podcast. It's episode 187. I'm your cohost Mike Parsons. And as always I'm joined by the man with a plan, Mr. Mark Pearson Freeland. Good morning, mark.
Hey, good morning, Mike. This is both a good, but also bittersweet episode today as we bring a brand new author into the moonshots library, but at the same time, we end our current se series on productivity.
Oh, mark. I think There, there are no tears being shed here. I think we are productive. I think we're all champing at the bit to unleash our energy in the right direction. And I think today's author is a perfect place to do that. Don't you?
Yeah, I couldn't agree more today, listeners, we are diving into Michael Bungay Stanier who wrote a great book, do more great work, stop the busy work and start the work that matters.
[00:00:57] Mike productivity. Starting [00:01:00] the work that matters. This seems like a perfect bookend to our series. Doesn't it?
It does. It's a, and it's a pretty brutally direct title do more great work, but irrefutable, nonetheless, that's what we're all trying to do here. And we started the series very much about managing your time, managing your energy prioritization, clearing the decks focus.
Finding what you're meant to do and in a funny way as two co-hosts, we've chosen the perfect bookend to this series because Michael MBS. He, he just brings it all together. Doesn't he? That's his superpower.
Yeah, he is bringing it all together. He's reminding us, as we'll find out through the show today, 187 is the illusion, that you could call it when we're up to our eyeballs.
As he says, with all these different things that are going on our lives, whether it's phone calls or meetings, whether they're virtual or real life. Or answering emails or just getting notifications. It's a bit of a [00:02:00] scramble, isn't it, Mike, to get your good work done. And I think what we're going to find out and what be revealed today with Michael is a little bit of let's call it brutal honesty and a little bit of formation into how we can shift our focus as well as our behavior towards doing more great work.
That's what I. Yeah.
And I guess the emphasis here, he's not saying do more work, he's saying do more great work. And I think this is the perfect way to bring our productivity series together, I think, which is the focus on quality, not necessary. Quantity cuz I think we all feel a bit knackered don't we Mo I think we all feel like we're working really bloody hard.
So I think it, the emphasis should be on just doing better quality work, not necessarily more work itself.
It's funny, isn't it? We all at least there are people that I know, and I've been guilty of it too, where we sit back and say, wow, I've done a lot of work today. And your assumption is that's all been great work, because.
My definition of great is when I'm really busy. But you're totally right. Sometimes. That doesn't necessarily mean it's been good just because you've done a lot of stuff and the quantity has been very high doesn't necessarily mean it's very good or even great. Yeah. And I think you're right.
As we will find out from Michael, it is that definition. Isn't it? That definition. Honesty that we've gotta have, as we reflect on the work that we do and how you know, good to great. Maybe it.
Yeah. And I think I would even say that the sort of highly journalized, world record busyness that we experienced I'm gonna say I have found it almost strangely and not even unpleasantly addictive in that when you have the chance.
To slow down, reflect and so forth. It does, it feels awkward. I'm gonna go as far as saying it, you can even feel a little bit guilty. You know what I mean?
Yeah. When you are prioritizing doing, let's say less work, but more impactful work. So the quality piece. Yeah, you're right. When I'm not sitting there answering email after email, slack notification after slack notification.
And I think, oh, what have I done? I've certainly maybe done some deep work. Maybe I've really cracked a problem that I've been sitting on for age. But I haven't been able to answer and stay on top of my inbox suddenly. I think where's my priority. Should it be in answering 50 emails every morning?
Or should it be actually just defining and being disciplined with myself and saying, okay this is. This is the work that's gonna matter, reply to that email can come later.
Indeed. And that's the battle we in and Michael BGA stainer in his book do more great work is gonna pull together a number of big moonshot things.
He is gonna illuminate the path and. The most appropriate place of course, to illuminate the path would be to talk about wombats, everything
Michael Bungay Stanier: you do falls into one of three different categories. It's either bad work, good work or great work, bad work, good work, or great work. And it's a model. It's a simple model and I love models.
I know my theory is all models are wrong, but some are useful. And I think this is a wrong, useful model. Okay. So bad work, good work and great work. And what I like about this is it's intuitive, right? You start to get a sense of what it is right away. So what do you think I am talking about when I say bad work?
What do you think? This is an interactive session, by the way. So yeah, it's it's not a rhetorical question. What do you reckon? His work? His work. Yeah. His reputation does procedure, so I understand that. Yeah. bad work. What do you reckon? Laziness. Laziness could [00:06:00] be. Yeah. What else?
Bureaucracy, bureaucracy. Now you're getting there. What. Doesn't make you feel satisfied. Doesn't make you feel satisfied. You guys are on the right path, but you're being a bit polite about it. Right? Bad work is the mind numbing soul sucking life denying, stab myself in the eye with a pen because the pain doesn't stop type of work.
It's bureaucracy. It's pointless meetings. It's paperwork. It's processes that tangle you up. It's it just is there. And I wanna give you two ways for you to think about and remember bad work. Here's a question. Does anybody know what this animal is? wall there. Aqui bear. You're on the right continent, but you are so wrong, right?
Not aqui bear. What else? It's not a Tasmanian devil. It's not a wall. Bear. Wallabies are like baby kangaroos. It's a Womba right. It's a Womba and there's a reason I am showing you a Womba okay. Apart from going, come on people. Why haven't you been to Australia and actually met of wombat? They're cute.
They're like small, hairy hippos a Womba stands for a waste of money, bandwidth and time. And I think that's actually a pretty good definition of what bad work is. Waste of money, bandwidth, and time. I'll give you another way of remembering bad work. In the UK, there's a company called richer.
Sounds very successful. They've been in the Guinness book of world records for years for having really high retail sales for square foot. So they know what they're doing and they have something at richer sounds called. the cut, the crap committee and the job of the cut, the crap committee is basically to go hunting WOBA it basically says, look in a complex organization where we try and set up rules and structures so that we stay focused on what we're trying to do.
Bad work just inevitably happens. It grows like weeds through the sidewalk and the cut, the craft committee. They take high potential managers every year, put 'em on this committee and their job is to try and eliminate some of the bad work that is just springing up around.
Mike, apart from that fantastic segue at the beginning where our listeners maybe thought, wait a second.
What's going on here? The connection between Michael Stan, a series on productivity and WOBA yeah, I think what Michael's doing here again in classic Michael MBS. Characteristic fashion is bringing to light a pretty new idea that is perhaps being honest with ourselves, which is the definition being a waste of money, bandwidth and time as bad
work.
And mark. Let's and he talked about it. It is soul sucking. And I think we've all been in those moments where we feel like what we are doing is a waste of time, money, effort, bandwidth, but it just has to be done. This is the enemy of productivity because nothing good can come of work. That is sucking out your soul or it's just one big fat, [00:09:00] hairy wom bat.
You gotta call that stuff out. If you've got too much of that in your day. I think mark, like the alert the siren that is sounding here is if you are experiencing that on a daily or weekly basis, then. You have to ask yourself, what can I change so I can do more great work because that soul sucking work that is like bad stuff.
That's is that's like smoking cigarettes. That's just like cancerous. It's not gonna lead to you to a good place.
Is it? Yeah. I, and I think that's something that we'll forget about. If you're doing bad work, that is not rewarding, or it challenges maybe your values that maybe you've identified through journaling and so on, or whether it's just something that you find a bit Dull.
It is pretty demotivating, isn't it? And I think the knock on effect from let's say doing bad work, the soul sucking work is you are not the best version of yourself. Maybe you are taking corners, cutting corners. Maybe you are taking it out on your colleagues. Maybe you're being a bad team player or a bad leader, or there's a lot of areas that I think.
Just the simple act of doing bad work, that soul sucking work that it impacts upon is something that maybe we don't appreciate until it's too late. Why did my business fail? I got stuck in doing the bad work soul sucking work, as opposed to the reason maybe why I started the business, which is adventure entrepreneurialism innovation in the space.
I think. You don't necessarily realize it's bad work. And I think this is what Michael's calling out to us. You don't recognize the bad work has got in the way of you doing your great work until maybe it's too late. And instead, if you are more proactive about it, you can identify it sooner. Yeah.
Yeah. This is obviously this kind of work we're calling it out, cuz I think, there's nothing wrong with having work that is hard.
And maybe on the occasion, I mean you say dull work mark. I think, the reality is there's some dull work every now and then I think what we're doing here is if it's happening a lot, With frequency and regularity. You have to ask yourself if you are getting into a place where this is a complete waste of time, money, bandwidth, that's next level.
After dull, that's just like
damn
bad stuff. So you get yourself out of that. That's the cool to action from bun Buny stainy here. And his book do more work is a call to arms and coming up on the show, we've got like a whole. Like just a really wonderful collection of advice, tips, frameworks, and ideas on how you can do more great work.
But mark, there are people doing great work right here right now. And there's 47 of them. Isn't it. Oh,
my goodness, Mike, it's amazing how many members have joined us since even our last show? There's some great people out there. Aren't there, Mike. So as tradition now dictates. We shall do our roll call now, unfortunately, Mike, we're gonna have to start extending this show.
We should be careful mark about what we threatened to do on this show, because , we did say if we got 50. Members we would launch our merch line and our listeners have heard the call they've signed up. They've become members and we're only three people away. So we shared the designs, which you can just check out on our social or go to our members page.
And mark, I believe that we will cross the magic 50 line in the coming period. So I think we're looking at next month of July or in fact this show will be live in July. Yeah in July, I think we can tease that we will have our official merch launch and they are looking why find the the tease.
I wonder if we should do some other things that mark maybe some posters or stuff. Cause I think, we got some really great feedback on the design. So what do you think, mark? Should we maybe do a poster or.
I think a poster would suit some of those designs, but I've gotta be honest.
I think we should open it up to our members and our listeners. Oh yeah. You guys think now we've teased the tease. Now let us know if you think that a poster or some other. Type of equipment or release is of interest. Whether it's, I dunno I dunno what we make
cup tote bags, coffee cups.
We can go a bit crazy here but seriously, thank you to, to all our members, very grateful for your support, because it helps us pull together all of our production, all of our hosting. All of those little bills that it hit us every month to put this show together. And we really keen to, to do the the traditional the classic moonshots podcast ad free.
This is not brought to you by Squarespace. It's just brought to you by you because you guys are the ones that are supporting us. So thank you ever so much for your support and You're doing good work. Hopefully we are doing okay as well. And I think mark, it's time to go back to this little masterpiece, the book, do more great work.
What do you
think? Yeah, I think we've understood now from Michael from one of his talks at Google in 2011. Let's now hear from Michael again and actually understand the, not only the definition of great work, but how it can actually light you up.
What do you reckon? Great. Work's about something you have a passion for sure.
What else? Second time you lose track of time. You've had that moment in a kind of flow moment where kind of time speeds up and slows down or at the same time. Yep. Great. What else? exactly love that. An effective use of money, bandwidth and time, opposite to the Womba. So that's exactly it. This is the work that you were like when I signed up for Google, this is what I wanted to be doing.
It's the work that lights you up. It's the work that has some meaning to you. It's the work that you care about? . You know how sometimes it is when you're down the pub and somebody says, okay, so we are doing the small talk thing. So what do you do? And sometimes when you get asked that question, your heart sinks a little bit, right?
And you're like, and then you wind up your internal PR agent and you make your job look a little bit shinier than it actually is. And part of you is going, am I trying to convince them I have a really good job or am I trying to convince me? I have a really awesome job, right? That's a good work moment, but when you're doing great work, you've got a great work project going on.
And somebody says to what are you up to? And you start telling em about great work. You basically start chasing 'em around the pub, and that's back and away from you going, God, dude, we're doing small talk here. Relax, calm down. Okay. The challenge with great work. The challenge with great work is this people are hungry for more of it, but on the one hand, it's like you are at a crossroads.
On the one hand, you have all the excitement that you're talking about with great work, the work that you care about, the work that you're proud about, the work that gets you in at work early, that work that you wake up thinking about. Cause you're so excited about it, but at the same time, you're standing at this crossroads there's fear as well.
Cuz fear because this is the new work, the different work, the work. Step pushes you to the edge of your own level of comfort, your own level of competence, your own level of certainty. So we have this challenge with great work. On the one hand, we want more of it. Cause it's the work that has meaning it's the work that has impact.
On the other hand, we have this attraction and comfort with good work. Good work is like this sort of black hole that keeps pulling us back in keeping us safe because it's comfortable and it's familiar and it keeps us busy and it makes us sense that we know what we're doing.
Good is the enemy of great mark.
Oh my gosh. And how much have we discovered doing this show together that you gotta learn to get a bit uncomfortable, to get comfortable being uncomfortable? Everywhere we go, mark, we hear this story time and time again, life. Is hard, there are problems and you need to in Yoko, willing style, learn to say problems.
Good, good. And here we have it. Michael Buno is doing exactly the same thing. The stretch for great work includes hardship. So just get used to it because by design. We in self-protection mode will always urge to easy over hard. We are literally gen literally genetically going, don't put yourself at risk here.
It's David Gogan says, when you think you are spent [00:19:00] and you have to give up, he said there is so much on the other side of. So much. And what we have to realize is our greatest enemy here is self doubt. Our greatest enemy is that kicking in of, oh, I'm tired. I should really rest up now. Because that is why mediocracy is everywhere. And so few people do great work. So few people achieve greatness. And one of the core ideas in doing this is get used to the idea that it's gonna hurt a bit and that's okay. That's okay. And all the great stories that we hear of people that have done amazing things on the sports field, in the office for culture, for society, all of them.
Have sacrificed an undergone hardship. So we cannot afford to be tricked by all these side hustle promises and six pack abs in six seconds. That's a lie. Get used to it. Taking days, weeks, months, years, it can take a lifetime and that's okay. If you really do wanna light yourself. Like Michael talks about get used to the hard stuff.
Is this not one of the biggest themes of our showman?
It's just a huge topic, isn't it? We did a deep dive into resilience back in starting with Angela Duckworth with grit. Do we remember that? Show 146 as well as Eric greetings with resilience and Ross Eley, the art of resilience and all of these.
Concepts thoughts spirits, I suppose you could call them the spirit of not quitting is so essential for the success of entrepreneurs. We covered it with Napoleon hill think can grow rich, even all of the. Building blocks of being successful or driven, or essentially, maybe just happy is by investing in the discipline.
I think it is of not turning around when things are too hard and instead identifying that. Road less traveled the path of more resistance as a productive choice because it's ultimately within your control to choose that route. And instead, if you are ING away from that slight difficulty, that good work, as Michael says, the safe work, the let's be honest.
Sometimes the easy work, the thing that makes it look like you are product. Because you can send 50 emails in a morning and therefore look like you've been productive, but as we know, quantity is not necessarily quality. And I think this is where that connection between Michael with productivity as well as resilience is really coming to life for me.
Yes.
And you mentioned Angela Duckworth just to bring this point home. She led a team that studied. 11,258 cadets at west point, the toughest, the hardest military academy, at least in the us. And she, statistically quantitatively found that grit determination were the most predominant factors of success.
Not brains, not bra, not potential. Hard work resilience, staying the course, getting used to being in an uncomfortable place. And this is exactly what Michael is bringing together for us. Put your energy on things that matter. Find those things. That you're meant to do so you can do more great work and know that you are actually doing well when it starts to hurt a little bit, when it's like a little rough round the edges, if it was also [00:23:00] easy and pain free, then everybody would be doing it and we wouldn't need this book, right?
Yeah.
Yeah. Oh I think again, to make a connection to one of our moonshot favorites, Mike, Ron holiday. And the book he did on courage. He really spoke to us around thinking of yourself as a product, think that you are the product and therefore you need to work on yourself. This idea of habits, practical tactics as well as more mental models and frameworks in order to choose to work hard and to take on challenges when they appear is right in this space.
Isn't it. It's again, calling out that great work is sometimes. Part that's a little bit harder. We might need a little bit more stoicism or personal reassurance in our own heads before taking on [00:24:00] that challenge. But it's still so important that again has existed for thousands of years. To look towards something that, maybe you need a little bit more courage to actually go and achieve.
Just staying on the relationship between Ryan Holiday and Michael Bunge stainer is the other book that came to my mind. You mentioned courage. It's obstacle is the way where he's basically Ryan holiday saying for 2000 years, the stoic have been saying. The obstacles going through the mountain is the way and this great wisdom is coming back in a very modern way for us right here right now.
And I think this is really starting to build a picture. We've got the Womba the waste of money bandwidth in time, but we've also got, get ready for it to be. Hard. And that's good. That's good. Yeah. And mark, sometimes there's another hard thing in life and getting into your podcast apps.
So Spotify or apple podcasts and leaving ratings and reviews. I know it can be a little bit hard. Can't it? Mark?
It can be a little bit hard, but you know what it is great once it's been done. And as we know, from all of our moonshot members and all of our moonshots individuals within the library, choosing that path slightly more resistance is great.
So if you C listening to us via. Apple podcasts, Spotify, any of the other podcast apps pop along into the app and leave us a rating, a review, because that really does help spread the moonshots message, the moonshots learning that we're doing every week across the world. Mike and we've really reached quite a number of the four corners of the globe.
Over the past couple of years, haven't we?
Yeah. And that's why the ratings and reviews are so important, cuz it helps new people discover the moonshots podcast and a big shout out for now. This is a great username, L Coco from France, what a fantastic name and Laro said, you'll hear really interesting topics and.
They really like how we analyze and take all these different angles and get into all the mindset stuff. Lako in off wrongs, as they would say. We really do thank you for your review. That's so fantastic. And for all of you listening right now Whether you're a member or not, there, it costs you absolutely nothing to open up your app.
So just go on and flick it open and go in, give it a thumbs up, give it a star, maybe pen, a few words about why you like the show. We'd really appreciate it. Cuz it really does help. So get in there, do the hard work, get comfortable being uncomfortable. Put yourself out there a little bit. Cuz mark, we're putting ourselves out there every single week.
Aren't.
Yeah, that's right. And it's nice when we do hear from listeners, such as Auro Coco, that we are covering topics that are interesting. And we really do try hard when we are breaking down the areas, the topics, the books, the authors, and the frameworks that we cover on the show. We do our hardest to make them Valuable listens.
So it's great to hear from listeners when you are reflecting on the things that we do cover and you're getting value from them. So thank you very much for everybody, including LA. There you go, Mike. I've said it enough times. Now I can rolls off the tongue. Thank you very much for leaving us.
I think our French listeners are having con connections right now and our inability to say name, but there you go.
But what those Frenchies are going to love is getting into habits, cuz we know that's a big part of the moonshots model. We know that's what you guys love. We've done shows on people like Charles Duhig and Michael actually discusses his work in one of our other favorites that. BJ fog.
Now you can't move these days without somebody giving you advice, seven steps to do this or five WATS to do that, but actually doing something with all that advice is pretty tricky.
I know you've found that. And in fact, we're laboring under old stories about how best to build new habits. Here are the two I think are most pernicious. The first is if you just do something for 21 days in a. That's it you're set or maybe this one, if you just clench your teeth and maybe your hands and maybe your buttocks really tightly and you try really hard this time, it'll all be okay.
And of course, neither of those work. So here's what I wanna share with you. Some 21st century science about building new habits and here's where I'm gonna start. We're half zombie. Research shows that we're operating in habit mode at least 45% of the time. That means we're on automatic. Let me explain how that happens.
Imagine your brain is an egg, the yolk, you can see it. There is the conscious mind. It's brilliant language and creativity and strategy. They all live there, but it's got limited capacity. It gets tired really quickly. Meantime all around it is the egg white. That's your unconscious mind. And it's this that runs most of your behavior, most of our behavior.
So you've gotta be smart to outsmart your own brain. You have to consciously manage your unconscious patterns. Here are two of the best tactics I know to do just that. And the first one comes from Charles DHI. He wrote the book, the power of habit, and he says, Rather than focusing only on the new behavior become aware of the trigger that sets off the old behavior.
Let me make this real for you. You behave like a monkey, but you wanna act like a beaver. You've heard nothing but good things about Canadians and who wouldn't want teeth that never stop growing. Just think of the money you're gonna save on those dentistry bills. But even with the best of intentions, you keep defaulting to monkey behavior.
And that's because you keep getting triggered by monkey contacts. People come up to you and go, Hey, do you wanna try a banana? Before, you know it, your unconscious patterns kick in and you've gone ape again, it's all connected. So this is the takeaway from Doig. When you become conscious of what triggers your old behavior, you can become mindful about replacing it with the new habit you really want.
The second insight comes from BJ fog. He created tiny habits, he's an academic, and he says, this define your new habit so that it takes 60 seconds or less to complete. In other words, make it simple and clear and absurdly easy to actually do. His favorite example is this. He says, after he brushes his teeth, his new habit is to floss one tooth.
Now, of course, once he gets started, he normally finishes the job. And in fact, the way I try and tackle this is I, my habit is I wanna sit on my meditation cushion for one minute a day. And I have to tell you, I found that far more successful and far less daunting than my first attempt at that habit, which is I'm gonna meditate for 20 minutes.
Every. So there we go. Two strategies to start building rock solid habits. First from Doig figure your trigger. Second from fog. Define a 62nd habit.
Mike, I think this is where Michael Bunge Stanier really comes into his own. He's breaking things down in such clear fashion that it's clear to me how I can try and change, how I can be a little bit more focused in my day when it comes to doing great.
Yeah. And what do you, how did you process that the whole monkey brain battle that was going on? How did you relate to that?
Look, we've spoken about monkey mind before haven't we? Yes. When your primal instinct again it, for me, it goes back to the idea of path of least resistance. You want find the easy route, route out the behavior of fight or flight.
Can come in when something looks a little bit hard, a little bit too tricky. No, I wanna protect myself and that's okay. That's very almost monkey mind esque, isn't it? But also the idea of getting distracted the whole time, getting maybe brought into things that seem productive just to get them off the list again, I would say is monkey mind.
So for me, what I think Michael or MBS is really calling out here is, and. Inviting us to do it is to take ownership of that mind, recognize it. See when you might be falling into that pattern. See when you might be perhaps stepping back into an old way of thinking or behaving. And suddenly you're repeating the same pattern that maybe you've had before that monkey mind pattern.
If you can recognize what perhaps has sparked that behavior, maybe it's an email. Maybe it's a conversation. Maybe you didn't sleep. Whatever it might be. Maybe you hungover. If you can recognize that trigger. You can then say, okay I just need to be a little bit more disciplined with myself today.
My, my monkey mind is gonna start coming up to me. I need to make sure that I don't fall into the trap as I've done before. Instead. Let me work on replacing that behavior, that mindset, that framework with something, a little bit more productive. What are you taking away from those breakdowns of Doha and fog that Michael did?
I did a slightly different angle. This was the idea of starting small. You'll remember that when we did the Tim Ferris show, that's another big thing he talks about. Like we're often burdening ourselves with massive expectation. And so when you start something new and let's say you start running and you're like, I'm gonna do a marathon in a month.
Right? That's ridiculous. That is a path. It's a disappointment, but maybe you start you are running by saying I'll walk each day and then one day a week, I'll do a three K run. And then the following week, maybe just increase it a little bit more. I think the point here is if you wanna start doing great.
Don't make your initial objectives too big. Actually, it's a, it's almost that slight, just that slight little nudge, one degree to the left or to the right starts you on a process. And then you're, overdelivering against expectations. You wanna floss your teeth, you wanna meditate. Whatever it is to start small and then fill the good vibes of having over delivered rather than the burden of, oh, I've set out to climb a massive mountain here and I've got very little time and then, you know what we abandon because it's just unrealistic.
That's really the takeaway that I have from that great breakdown by Michael, into BJ fog, as well as the habit series that we've done. Michael. Yes. If you take on a a habit that is maybe with too far out of your reach, like you say the running a marathon, I think that is going to.
Very disappointing. And I think that's, that would fall into Michael's definition of bad work. Yeah. The waste of of money bandwidth and time, because you're not necessarily giving it
your all, it's important to know. We're not saying don't have a big vision. Don't have a big, hairy, audacious goal, but how you frame that in your goals for the week or for the day start incredibly small, and then it's easy to outperform, right?
Beat expectations. How good is that?
Yeah I think that's actually quite a good call out. If you set a small one minute a day on your meditation cushion, or as we've spoken about before with journaling, write one word a day. There you go. Then you are always gonna be maybe a little bit surprised or even pleased with how far you get, because.
Michael says about BJ fog doing the one tooth of flossing a day. You end up doing the whole job anyway. Exactly. And then you feel good. Again, it's making your bed every morning by yeah.
It's and it's all part of that theme of just. Continuous improvement and the desire to work on yourself.
And this is exactly what Michael is discussing with a couple of other chaps here on the moonshots
Michael Bungay Stanier: podcast. Now I'm starting with Dan coil. He's the author of the talent code and the little book of talent. And these are both great books worth picking up coil. Got curious about why some places in the world seemed to be hotspots for talent.
From the Bronte sisters in Yorkshire to Ross, Russia, and Moscow for women's tennis from the Z boys in California and their skateboarding. They'd probably be called the Z boys. If they're in Canada to soccer players in Brazil. Now coil figured out that one of the secrets to building talent is deep practice.
And he says that one minute of deep practice is in effect more useful than just 10 minutes of regular practice. I reckon also to use a metaphor here. That's why espresso will always Trump a regular cup of coffee that said I am a bit of a coffee SN. So we've got deep practice. It's focused, it's intense.
And when you're in deep practice, you are wrapping Mylan around your neural pathways. Mylan works like insulating tape. So these neural pathways are deeper and they're sharper and they're faster and they're more effective. You work better when you've got more Mylan. So what is deep practice, where there are three steps to it.
Step one, chunk things down, break down the process you're practicing into the smaller steps possible. So for instance, in tennis, you don't wanna practice your serve where you wanna practice is just that one step of throwing the ball up in the air and truly mastering that as a habit. The second step is repetition and then repetition.
And then repetition. And it's not just repeating the same thing over and over again. You wanna try things out, you wanna slow it down, you wanna speed it up. All of this is to get us to that third step of deep practice, which is when you learn to really feel success, you wanna get a center when it's working and when it's working.
I imagine it's if you're a gymnast and you really stick the landing or maybe a diver, and when you enter the water without a splash, it's that feeling? That you're really trying to get in your bones. So that's deep practice from Dan Coyle, but now I wanna introduce you to another smart man, Leo Bower.
He is a guy behind the Zen habits blog. Now I've actually shared a cup of tea with Leo. That's me name dropping. And I have to tell you, he is actually as nice in person as you might expect from his writing. And he's got a ton of great posts on the Zen habits, blog worth checking. But here's the one thing that I've truly taken from Leo, and it's one of the reasons why your new year's resolutions die.
So horribly year after year, we just try and take on too much. We try and at the same time, Lose weight and exercise more and eat more healthily and talk to the ones that we love more often and watch less TV. And it goes on, this is in fact why January 21st is considered the most depressing day of the year.
Not only you get the credit card bill of December's excess, but that's when you finally give up on all these resolutions [00:40:00] yet. So Leo sing one thing at a time, focus your time and energy and effort on one thing, imagine your new habit as a delicate seedling. You wanna plant it, you wanna embed it, you wanna water it.
You wanna care for it. You wanna watch and see it grow and grow strong. Give it a chance to truly take root by giving it your attention.
Mike. These are great little tips, aren't they? They very, they feel to me achievable. I think that's again, the strength of Michael here. He's breaking down these big frameworks, big thoughts, big habits, big tips into ways that I feel are quite.
Comprehensible and actionable. And I think that's really the whole point. Isn't it. It's breaking down into secret sorry, into small steps. One thing at a time as a, we are just hearing and then making them into a daily habit. What are you taking from him then?
So it reminds me so much of James clear atomic habits.
That habits are not like a program for a short period of time. They really are a lifestyle. Aren't.
It's a total lifestyle. You have to stick with it. You have to reflect on it. You have to again, take ownership of it.
Exactly. And be prepared to just grind it out. Something we've come up that has come up a lot is this idea of compound interest that it's repeating the same stuff day after day, getting 1% better every day.
And it might feel small in the moment, but it'll only be upon reflection. You. Damn. Wow. I mastered that or that's going really well now. And I only just started this six months ago or 12 months ago. I think we can be a victim, not only of self doubt, but unrealistic expectations as on the other side of that.
That we all think snap of a finger and it's done right.
I think what was really interesting about I believe it was mark Manson with the subtle art of not giving out which was his idea. And I think it's spot on with exactly what you were just building there, Mike through those small steps through practice, through hard.
Is the way the pathway to talent to success. It is not necessarily something where you wake up one day and you can sing like I dunno, a very good singer. Andrew, pat maybe someone more contemporary, Mike talent and success is the product of that discipline and that hard work when you've got somebody.
Like any of the individuals we cover on the moonshot show, what we're learning from them is things don't just get handed to you. Joe Rogan was saying it as well. Through again, going back to the idea of resilience, isn't it, through the idea of working hard, you get your values, you figure out your behavior, your framework to success, but also you go that level deeper and you start to become mortality because you've put.
That practice and hard work. And I think that's really specifically what we're hearing from Michael with regards to Dan Cole, putting in the practice and the hard work, but I think it's true across any of the productivity series as well. Putting in the time putting in the hard work, is that secret to getting success?
What do you think?
I think that if you are listening to this show, mark, I think you. You wanna be better? And I think the greatest deconstruction we can do for our listeners right now, based on the work of Marco BGE St is really find the work you're meant to do. Make sure you're ready for some hard times in realizing your dreams and ambitions and the single best manifestation.
Is your habit system, right? What stuff are you doing every single day to make yourself better? Is it getting to bed early? Is it [00:44:00] your diet? Is it exercise, sleep, meditation, reflection, whatever it is, time blocking. Managing yourself, managing your calendar, reflecting on what's working, asking for feedback, whatever it is, work on yourself and do that through your habits.
I think the habit is the greatest vehicle that we have because as we learn from Michael BGA center, which I think is really amazing is that almost half of what we do is done subconsciously and habits are subconscious coming to life.
Yeah, I think you're totally right. If you can develop those habits into behaviors and practice, it does become subconscious.
Doesn't it? Again, with Robert Sharma and the 5:00 AM club, even though you might not need to wake up at five every day, if you start to put in that practice that. Habit. It becomes that little bit easier. Doesn't it. Again, going back to your example with the marathon, you're not gonna wake up one day and go out and do it instead.
It's going to be small steady increments that then ladder up to a huge benefit at the end, which is maybe completing that marathon, going out and doing something that you never thought possible. And I think what Michael's calling out here. With do more great work is he's inviting us to say, I want to build those great habits. I want to uncover and understand how I can go out and do better work, great work in this case. And it really does start with working on yourself. Doesn't it.
It really does. Let's do a quick before we play our last clip, let's do a fun little game. Let's do our top five habits that just come to my, so mark hit me with your first one.
If you had to say, if you if, imagine I want you to imagine that you are sitting with a bunch of high school students and they say, mark, what are the top? Yeah. Five things. Top five habits that have [00:46:00] led to your success. You would say drum roll number one.
Exercise every day. I love
it. Concur.
Ding, next one. Number two,
I would say reflect on yourself every day
journal every day. Number two. Very good ding.
I would say stretch and roll. Ooh, something that, that, again, brings to life your.
Ooh, I like that one. That's good. Number three, ding,
number four. I would say, do something each day that scares you or something that you don't really enjoy.
when it's shower or maybe it's being exposed to a new idea. Maybe it's something else to, in order to help you learn something.
That's a good number. That's a good one for number four, ding.
And then I think number five, Mike is do something that makes you happy each day. Hey, it could be seeing [00:47:00] a beautiful view or having a great cup of coffee or picking up the phone and having conversation with somebody that you get inspired by that I think would be my five.
Oh, that's good. That's good. I
like that. I did use my to-do list app to to look at my daily habits.
oh yeah. I've got mine in here as, wow.
What are my daily? Okay. I'm I have, I'm gonna try and pick some that are a bit different to yours, right? Yeah. Let, I'm gonna go a little bit on a different tangent here. Okay. So I, I do most, I think maybe even all of the things that you said I try to, at least, I think I'm gonna start with listening to a new song, every single.
I just wanna hear something that I've not heard before to expand my mind. I like that. I really like that. So that's one from me. We talked a lot about you, you mentioned there stretching and journaling something that's [00:48:00] a kind of, has a benefit on both of those sites is breathing exercise.
[00:48:03] I love the 4, 7, 8 breathing exercise is breathing for four hold for. Out for a very good at just getting you present. Obviously meditation, not the doesn't come easily to me. Mark . No monkey mind is running around like crazy but I love a good meditation. Another habit is listen to understand, ask questions before giving answers.
Oh, I like that. That's a good one. Yeah.
Yeah. And last one, which I find very powerful is to start every single day as if it's a brand new. Life.
Ooh, that's an interesting one.
You know how golf is? They have a bad hole and then they fall apart. yeah, I think we do that in life. We have one bad.
Totally agree. Yeah. And we just fall apart. Imagine if you could develop a practice or say today is brand new I don't care how good or bad. Yes, it was. Today's just brand new. I'm gonna make the most of. I
think that's a, oh, I like that one too. That's
a nice one. That's nice. Yeah, I try.
That's what I tried to do. That's a
nice one. I like that build.
That's good. Yeah. Look, I think a nice build would be not only hearing from Michael BGE St but also one of our favorite YouTube channels, which is Brian from optimiz. And here we're very lucky. We have both of them talking about the big, the magical three.
Tell me how you define courage and why you think it's such an important part of this process of discovering our great work. Yeah, these are great
questions, Brian. Thank you. So I say with, to do great work, you need three component parts, three characteristics. You need focus, which we've talked about.
Focus on who I am and focus on. Where are the opportunities we need courage and we need resilience, focus, courage, and resilience. Focus is. Seeking to understand what your great work is and where the opportunities might be. Courage is the willingness to take the first step and then the next step. And then the next step on that, because start to do great work starts to challenge your regular life, your regular sense of yourself, your regular relationships with other people.
Some to do great work will inevitably. Along with all the good times, those moments of being in flow and feeling like you're really committed to something brilliant. It will also create re resistance and disappointment in other people. . And when I go like this, you can tell when you're doing good work.
Because everybody's happy if you're doing great work somewhere, someone is a little disappointed, a little pissed, a little upset, a little let down. Because what you've done is you've said, I'm saying yes to this. And if I'm truly saying yes to this, if it's a strong yes. I must say no to this. And so many of us hedge our bets.
It's I'm gonna say yes to this kind of, so I can keep saying yes to as many other things as possible. Cause I don't really wanna let anybody down. Part of this is damn, I'm just gonna say yes to this. I'm gonna have the courage to understand the implications of that.
And say no, as a byproduct, have the courage to ask me to say no, because I have that deeper. Yes.
Pointed. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. And and yeah, and that, that takes a certain amount of bravery. Yep. You people have heard me talk about my, my, my mastermind group. And in fact, I've got two, one here in Toronto.
And one that meets in a different way, scattered around the west coast. And quite frankly, one of the key components for all of us in these mastermind groups is less focused, cuz we most, really got a sense of what we're working on and what's important, but it's courage and resilient courage to.
Be bold about taking the step resilience. Cause we all get to these points where we are like I give up it's too hard. Yep. To lie down and have a little sleep now because and there's that willingness to go. I'm not gonna be broken this by this. I'm gonna bend and I'm gonna bounce back and I'm gonna go.
I can keep going. But one of the ways you keep going, one of the ways you build resilience is through your relationships. I think , you talk about. You talk about your relationships a lot and the importance of your wife and now your child in your life. And I think one of the things that builds resilience is having those nourishing relationships.
And I could say the same about my wife. She is part of the reason I keep going is that, she hugs me when I need to be hugged and she kicks my ass when I need to be kicked. all good.
The Trium it, Mike focus, courage and resilience. If there were ever three areas that we cover on the moonshot show, I think Michael MBS, one guy Stanier has called them out.
Yeah. In
one show, he's done what it's taken us 186 shows to get to how hilarious is that.
But I think he's right. And again, it comes down to the lessons we have learned on habits. First of all. As well as the areas that we've really uncovered within the rest of the series on productivity, this confidence or courage to really focus on let's say one thing at a time let's be as David Allen was calling out finding that stress-free productivity, the hyper focus, I feel like Michael's really pulling us all together and closing it up.
What do you think.
I couldn't have wrapped up the show better. I couldn't have wrapped up what we're all about better. I think it's so wonderful that we've had the chance, not only to understand what we should do, but what we shouldn't do. It is, it's really a special piece of work and I'm keen to know mark.
If there was one thing that you are gonna work on, having listened to Michael Buno St. Today, what would it.
I, you know what, actually, this is quite a tough one because I think all of the areas have been really valuable and have compartment or compound built upon one another. But I do the Womba.
I think saying the acronym of waste of money, bandwidth and time that's fun. I think that's a nice build. What about you? Which one
standing up? I'm totally Ricky, mark. . As I'm an Australian and you are a Brit living in Australia, I feel that we can only hold onto one of our national treasures, which is the Womba and for our listeners I'm sorry, this is not a video podcast, cuz we'd be able to show you what a wombat looks like, but they're pretty, cuddly ill things.
And very unique to Australia. Mark, thank you ever so much for helping me decode somebody who has really encapsulated the spirit of the Moonshot's podcast. And thank you to you. Our listeners, this was show 187, where we heard so much good stuff from Michael Boge Steiner and. Tone do more great work.
And it started indeed with Australian animals, the Womba waste of time, money, and bandwidth. If you're on that path, you're on the wrong path. We need to be going on the right path where you light up and that means get ready for the hard stuff. And define your habits, work on yourself, take small steps, repeat them, and really acknowledge and capture when it's working and what's working do this and you'll be ready to embody three great characteristics, three things that will help you be the best version of yourself.
Focus, courage, and resilience. This is what we're all. Here on the moonshots podcast. We love learning out loud together with you, our listeners and our members. We are so grateful for you joining us on this journey to be the very best version of yourself. Okay. That's it. That's a wrap.