[00:00:00] DANIEL: Hey there, Spacemakers. I'm Daniel Sih, joined by my good friend and co-host, Matt Bain. We bring you The Spacemakers, a podcast to help you shift the way you live and work. More than a podcast, this pod course will take you on a carefully curated journey around a simple but profound idea, that the habits and practices that fuel success in our 20s and 30s are the very barriers that hinder maturity in our 40s and 50s.

[00:00:29] DANIEL: Big thanks to our sponsor, Banjo's Bakery Cafes, who are expanding across Australia and looking for new franchisees. If you've always wanted to work for yourself and want to fast track success, visit franchise.banjos.com.au and save 10 percent on franchise fees by mentioning Spacemakers.

[00:00:46] NARRATOR: The Spacemakers with Daniel Sih and Matt Bain.

[00:00:50] DANIEL: Hey, welcome back everyone to The Spacemakers, a podcast where we talk about how to make space for a meaningful, intentional life. And I'm here with my good [00:01:00] friend and co-host Matt Bain.

[00:01:02] MATT: Hi Dan. Hi everyone.

[00:01:03] DANIEL: Great. And we are here talking about a big idea for season two. We're talking about how to make space for life's inevitable resets.

[00:01:12] DANIEL: The idea that the types of habits and practices that set us up for success in our 20s and 30s are actually the ones we need to intentionally undo and rethink in order to live a more productive life when we're older. And this particular episode is about productivity and we're going to talk about what it might look like to be productive through the different stages of life and again, how we need to undo particular habits in order to be productive through midlife.

[00:01:41] DANIEL: Yeah, it's a big one. It's a big topic for this series. Another big topic. Yeah, we talked about happiness last time, but this is another one. Yes. So I was thinking about a conversation I had last week. So I have a productivity masterclass, which I run year on year with a few groups of six leaders. And so we meet for just over an hour every fortnight.[00:02:00]

[00:02:00] DANIEL: And over six months, we go through basically my full productivity suite of frameworks. The idea isn't just to talk about information. It's to set people up with a set of habits that they can live out from week in week out after that. But I always love this class because I learned from all these intelligent, creative leaders from different professions and I learned stuff myself.

[00:02:22] DANIEL: And one of them said a comment that I thought was very relevant to this podcast and I learned something from it. She said, the challenge for me is that I'm not just learning new habits, but I'm unlearning old ones and that's harder. Yes. Yes. And I thought that was really profound because it's one thing to get information.

[00:02:43] DANIEL: It's even one thing to reflect on that information and to try to learn new productivity habits, particularly in your midlife or when you're leading organisations. But it's another thing to unlearn old habits in order to learn new ones. And that's actually the process I take people on in [00:03:00] productivity masterclass.

[00:03:01] DANIEL: But I think that's the process that we all have to journey along as we move from our twenties and thirties to our later life.

[00:03:08] MATT: Yeah, that's good. That's almost exactly what my banjo teacher said to me in the first lesson. When he asked, have you ever played banjo before? I said, no. And he said, that's a good thing.

[00:03:15] MATT: There's nothing to unlearn.

[00:03:16] DANIEL: Oh, excellent. That's a great point. Uh, did you ever learn the banjo?

[00:03:20] MATT: Oh, look, you know, I did. I started a band, the Ramp Shacklers. You never heard of us? We were like old country when it was cool.

[00:03:27] DANIEL: Was it dad rock?

[00:03:28] MATT: It was pre dad rock.

[00:03:30] DANIEL: Pre dad rock. I love it.

[00:03:32] MATT: Alternative country rock.

[00:03:35] DANIEL: Alternative country rock. So we're talking about learning habits, and I think that's a good uh, key part of what it means to be productive through the landscape of life. When I think about unlearning habits, I actually think about something that I unlearned when I was young. So I used to play water polo and I used to think I was pretty good at swimming.

[00:03:52] DANIEL: I was smart at reading the play. I was fairly good at, you know, let's say ball skills and knowing how to shoot. But when I hit university, [00:04:00] not only am I not kind of big enough for water polo, but I just couldn't keep up with the pace. It doesn't matter how good you are with ball skills and how smart you are, you actually have to be able to swim as fast as everyone else.

[00:04:10] DANIEL: And it wasn't just fitness. No matter how much I swam, I just couldn't quite keep up because I'd never done squad swimming. I hadn't actually learned to swim fast. And then when I became a physiotherapist, I ended up with this great group of people and we used to swim at the hydrotherapy pool in my rehab hospital.

[00:04:25] DANIEL: We used to swim like Tuesdays and Thursdays and there were a whole heap of great swimmers. And someone once said to me, you know, Dan, you actually don't know how to swim. Can I teach you? Which is a little bit offensive when you've played water polo for quite a few years. But honestly, she was completely right.

[00:04:42] DANIEL: I actually didn't know how to swim. Meaning, when you swim freestyle, your power comes by rotating your body almost 180 degrees through the water, and you stretch out. And you pull in the stroke, but it's through the rotation of the body, whereas I used to just swim with my body flat and just [00:05:00] splash my arms wildly in the air.

[00:05:01] DANIEL: Flat with stuff. Exactly. And look, I, it was fine when I was just swimming in school, but I had to unlearn that. And what was super hard is she basically made me stop swimming quickly and I had to literally go back. all the way to like A, B, C, D, so I could learn how to swim again. And it felt unnatural. It was just, it was weird.

[00:05:24] DANIEL: But after about six months, it became a new habit. And I was swimming much faster than I ever swam before, realizing that I had to put in a lot less effort to get a lot faster. And, and so I think that's the process of unlearning in order to learn something new. And I think that describes exactly what we're talking about in terms of the midlife squeeze.

[00:05:43] DANIEL: And how to reshape what it means to get the right things done. Yeah, that's great. So you and I have talked about how would we describe that overarching shift from being productive and successful when we're young to reshaping and relearning productivity when we're older. And it's [00:06:00] essentially about going from saying yes to everything to start saying no to a lot more to be more selective.

[00:06:06] DANIEL: Yeah, maybe even no to most things. No to most things, yeah. But when you're young, it's great advice to say yes to most things, and then eventually it becomes wise to say no to most things. And that shift is quite dramatic and difficult for many of us to achieve, unlearning the way you used to do things.

[00:06:24] MATT: Yeah, yeah. That's right. So like, you know, we've heard plenty of American podcasts probably and American authors like use that baseball analogy, right? So swing at everything when you're young. And then when you're older, be a lot more selective doesn't quite work with a cricket bat. It doesn't, it doesn't, but the thing that I really like about that analogy is that swinging after a while and everything else becomes instinctive.

[00:06:45] MATT: So you're almost able to unlearn - what we're talking about is unlearning and something that's instinctual.

[00:06:49] DANIEL: Yeah. So at the start, you literally swing, swing, swing, and then you tidy it up. Yeah, that makes sense. So we're going to go into detail about this stuff, but why don't we pause and [00:07:00] feedback on the activity from last time.

[00:07:01] MATT: Yeah. So we asked people to do one or two things. We asked people in their twenties and thirties, so that stage of life, to take what we kind of conceptualise as a preventative measure. Yeah. And that is find one or two people in your life who you think are at risk of being neglected or perhaps kind of just dropping, dropping off your kind of social calendar and you value them.

[00:07:21] MATT: So the call was book something in with them, like a regular, fortnightly, monthly, quarterly activity that involves some face to face interaction and be intentional about that. So use our action triggers, time, place, and have a good plan as to how you're going to do it, but then put it in your calendar.

[00:07:38] MATT: Contact them and put in your calendar. Make sure it's regular.

[00:07:40] DANIEL: It's a pattern. Yeah. That's the key. Make it a pattern. Don't just assume that friendship will happen by being spontaneous because it's getting harder and harder for that, particularly as you kind of get busy with life and family. Yeah. Create a rhythm, even if it's an occasional rhythm, even quarterly, you know, if you catch up with someone four times a year and have a really meaningful conversation, a beer, [00:08:00] a meal or a bushwalk, it'll actually significantly increase your relationships as opposed to hoping you'll catch up every six to 12 months.

[00:08:08] DANIEL: Yeah, that's it. That's it. Okay. So that was for younger people or for anyone who feels like they need to do it. Yeah. And the other thing is that if you're in your 40s or 50s or 60s and you feel like you've already kind of neglected friends.

[00:08:18] MATT: And I reckon that's 99.9 percent of us, 99.2 percent

[00:08:23] DANIEL: I would say, be more accurate Matt.

[00:08:25] DANIEL: We suggested that we lower the bar and don't necessarily start with a rhythm, although I think that is the solution. And we're going to talk about that more in the friendship episode. But just start by reaching out to someone who's on your mind and actually reconnect in some way.

[00:08:38] MATT: Yeah, that's good. Yeah.

[00:08:39] MATT: So start off easy as in text or phone, but then book just one, one face to face meeting or interaction. Yeah, that makes sense.

[00:08:45] DANIEL: So how did you go with that activity?

[00:08:47] MATT: So at this stage of my life, I just don't have that much capacity for the, you know, next, next, or my short. I've got like a whole crew of old friends who I love to see that, you [00:09:00] know, we've got a great history, but realistically I just don't have very much opportunity to spontaneously see them.

[00:09:05] MATT: So I worked out a rhythm. So we're going to be looking at booking something in like a restaurant meal, effectively like same time every month. For the remainder of the year, starting next month. So I just sent out a group text saying, hey everyone, it’d be great to see you. This particular restaurant, this particular time, and I'm gonna try to keep it on this pattern.

[00:09:22] MATT: Yep. For the remainder of the year. That sounds good. Okay. How about you?

[00:09:24] DANIEL: So, okay, I'm a geek, I'm a productivity guy, right? So I thought, how would I approach this? Mm-hmm, using my strengths, we'll call 'em strengths, although they're really neuroticism, and, uh, that's right. And so reframe. It's a good start, man.

[00:09:36] DANIEL: So I've created a current and future state of friendship. So because I like that research that the quality of your friendships at the age of 50 is one of the key determinants of the quality of your life and how long you live when you're 80. Right. Which I think is really profound. And I'm only a few years away from 50.

[00:09:52] DANIEL: So I figured if my current state is, you know, I've got old friends. Lots of people I care about, but honestly, I've been so busy. I have not had the types of [00:10:00] community and relationship that I had even three or four years ago, pre COVID.

[00:10:03] MATT: Yeah.

[00:10:03] DANIEL: I think I lost some of my social muscles actually by going into isolation.

[00:10:06] DANIEL: I've never quite gotten it back. I want a future state. So I wrote down a bunch of people who are already close, but I want to spend more time regularly with. And I wrote a few people down. You know, names of people who I like, who I reckon we could grow in friendship. I'd like to spend more of my life with these people.

[00:10:23] DANIEL: And they're kind of in my future state. I won't tell them that. Uh, but if you're listening to the podcast and I've given you a phone call, you can go, you can guess what list you're on. But anyway, the point is I, I want to start actively pursuing a coffee with someone, you know, once a month, that doesn't sound like a lot, but you know, that's 12 coffees with 12 different people.

[00:10:40] DANIEL: And then we'll, I suppose by that I'm, I'm hoping I'll rebuild my social muscles and, and therefore have more capacity to, to actually extend those relationships. So I look back in three years and it's like, oh yeah, this made a difference.

[00:10:51] MATT: Yeah. That's good. Congratulations. Well done.

[00:10:53] DANIEL: No, well don't say that until I've done it, but I've got a plan.

[00:10:57] MATT: But yeah, yeah. And now what, you've kind of committed to it.

[00:10:59] DANIEL: And I'm just [00:11:00] letting you know, we won't be catching up again.

[00:11:03] MATT: Well, that's okay. It saves me from telling you that I won't be seeing you at dinner.

[00:11:07] DANIEL: So yeah, I didn't get that text. How come I didn't get that text? All right, moving on.

[00:11:17] DANIEL: All right. So let's look at our framework. I mean, you and I are in the business of productivity, coaching, training, consulting. So we've worked with thousands of different people over the years, obviously read a stack of stuff on productivity. And you know, when we talk about how would we put productivity as a framework into this idea that life changes in your 20s and 30s to 40s, 50s, 60s.

[00:11:38] DANIEL: The one thing we would suggest that needs to change is what we say yes to, and what we say no or not yet to. So why don't we talk about the 20s and 30s, the stage of life which we called early adulthood. And then compare the types of wise advice for productivity that you would give for someone in that age group compared to someone later in life.

[00:11:58] DANIEL: Yeah, that's it. That's it. [00:12:00] Look, so when I was young, someone once said to me, just give everything a go. You know, they didn't say, say yes to everything, but the premise was you're young. You've got no responsibilities. You've got a bit of disposable income. You've got heaps of energy. Just do stuff, you know, travel the world.

[00:12:19] DANIEL: Build relationships, don't be so worried about trying new career options, you know, turn up, give stuff your best, expand your horizons, but essentially say yes to a lot. Now, you and I have talked about the analogy of swing at everything, and I think that's actually commonly good advice. So I think if someone in their twenties was to come to me and say, you know, what's some great advice about setting up a great career?

[00:12:44] DANIEL: Part of what I would say is try lots of stuff, you know, say yes to a lot of things and build valuable skills and experiences along the way. Yeah. So get a lot of stuff done. Get a lot of stuff done. A wide spread of a lot [00:13:00] of stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Which makes a lot of sense, right? You've got the energy. Yeah. You don't know a lot of stuff and you don't actually really know your strengths.

[00:13:07] DANIEL: You don't really know what your set of passions will be. So basically get on with stuff and, and, and get things moving.

[00:13:12] MATT: Yeah, that's good. And also the only thing that I'd add is that commonly, typically, not always, but typically in that stage of life, you just haven't got the same amount of responsibilities and dependents that you may have later on.

[00:13:23] DANIEL: Yeah. It takes a, it takes a, a lot of people I coach are genuinely thinking about a career stage in their late forties, early fifties, but it's, it's a lot riskier, particularly if you haven't done that a number of times in the decades before, whereas it's really not that risky to risk everything when you're 20.

[00:13:40] DANIEL: Like if you lose it all at 22. Start again. Yeah. I mean, like it, it still feels risky, but it's a different layer of risk. Yeah. So that's the time you want to start building up your risk muscles.

[00:13:50] MATT: Just on that and super quick. There's a guy called Kevin Kelly. One of his bits of like sage wisdom was the advice that I give to a young person now is basically live in your [00:14:00] car.

[00:14:00] MATT: for like a year or one bedroom, like apartment and really eat nothing but rice for a year. Right. So after you've done that, you will always have a good idea of what like worst case scenario is. And when you're young again, before you get any dependence, you can take the big swings.

[00:14:11] DANIEL: Well, that's awesome.

[00:14:14] DANIEL: Cause then you can say to your kids later on, oh, mate, guys, you complain about everything. You're so entitled. When I was young, I used to live in my car.

[00:14:22] MATT: Oh, there you are.

[00:14:22] DANIEL: You can give that a go. Um, but But that's the first bit of advice. Okay. When you're young, try lots of stuff. Say yes to stuff, build skills.

[00:14:30] DANIEL: And that's what it means to be productive. Then you hit your forties, fifties, your midlife squeeze. And I would say you, you have to start to unlearn everything. Just like I had to unlearn how to swim in order to swim differently. There are two particular things we want to dive into a bit more because they set the foundation for why you need to do things differently when you get older.

[00:14:50] DANIEL: The first one we'll talk about is developing basic systems, and the second one we'll talk about later is the different types of intelligence that happen. Yeah. So in [00:15:00] terms of the first thing you and I would say is when you're in your twenties and thirties, while you want to say yes to a lot of stuff, you still need to build basic productivity systems.

[00:15:10] DANIEL: What am I, what I mean by that is you really do need to put into practice some overarching methodology and set of skills to achieve stuff. Because yes, you can, you've got the energy, you can push on, you can work your guts out and get stuff done through brute force. And that can work for a while, but it'll stop working very quickly once you hit your midlife.

[00:15:30] DANIEL: And so you might as well start to build a container for yourself in terms of productivity that you can build on and shape later on. What I mean by that is when I put it all together as a system, and then that foundation will allow you to launch into whatever area of life you want to extend into.

[00:15:47] DANIEL: Without being bogged down constantly by the fact that you don't have basic organisational systems at a professional level. Does that make sense?

[00:15:52] MATT: It makes complete sense. That's great. Yeah. So basically like that foundation that you're building, putting those tracks in, it's going to serve you for a long time.

[00:15:58] MATT: I like, Dan, it's like you’re [00:16:00] future proofing to some degree, and you've been kind to your future self. So get that stuff again, squared away in the twenties and thirties.

[00:16:05] DANIEL: So that's the first thing. The second thing. is about recognising the change that will happen in your intelligence. And you, you might want to explain that because that will set us up for how we shape things in our forties, fifties, sixties.

[00:16:18] MATT: Yeah. So, um, so like, I think like the big message is whilst we're talking about a change, we're talking about a change that will lead from having particular strengths because of our physiology in the first, again, twenties and thirties to having a different kind of strength in our, you know, forties onwards.

[00:16:33] MATT: Right. So to start off with a couple of anecdotes. The majority of great scientific discoveries, and I'm talking about something that has been rewarded with things like Nobel Prizes, and they come from people, pioneers, in their late thirties. Okay? Their late thirties. After that, it drops off drastically. Yeah.

[00:16:50] DANIEL: Didn't Einstein say something along the lines of, if you haven't made your great scientific contribution by the age of thirty, you're uh, like 30 I think he said, you're unlikely to do it. Now the [00:17:00] stats don't quite match that. Don't quite match that. But it's close. That's a great, the great scientific discoveries that lead to later Nobel prizes almost always happen before 40.

[00:17:10] MATT: So, so air traffic controllers. Uh, pretty much mandated to retire when they hit the age of 56. Okay. Yeah. Okay. And overall, in terms of our professional, if you're like a regular kind of like knowledge worker, someone who's a like white collar professional, chances are that your peak, your professional peak will be somewhere between the late thirties.

[00:17:32] MATT: to the early fifties and after that. So, and this all comes back to our physiology.

[00:17:36] DANIEL: So air traffic controllers, I'm imagining being because there's high risk safety. You have to, it's a bit like elite sports people, like at 35, you have to stop playing because you'd be on your peak. Yeah. Yeah. And the risks are too great, but this is a cognitive type of decline.

[00:17:52] DANIEL: Is that where that's coming from?

[00:17:53] MATT: Yeah. Yeah. That's where it's coming from. So risk. So things are bad with air traffic controllers. They go really bad, really quick. And again, like the kind of [00:18:00] work is so cognitively demanding. So that's what I want to get to. Right. In terms of physiology, here's what seems to have happened.

[00:18:05] MATT: And this is all from a book that we've both read from, Strength of Strength by Arthur Brooks. So Brooks talks about the two different types of intelligence. Okay. So he doesn't like, he says that the, the old kind of paradigm of just saying, if you like, raw IQ is too simplistic. So based on a bunch of different research that he cites and that he studied, he's, he describes the first kind of intelligence as fluid.

[00:18:27] MATT: And so this comes about through the development of our prefrontal cortex. And this is associated with things like executive functioning, like working memory and the ability to be able to do like rapid analysis and quick problem solving, yeah, as well. And to be able to take in like vast amounts of new information.

[00:18:46] MATT: Yes. You can learn a bit fast. You can learn really, really fast. Yeah. So you can learn very, very quickly and you can recall things quickly. And also critically there's, there's a function that's associated with the prefrontal cortex, which is all about inhibiting [00:19:00] our ability to be distracted easily, so I can shut that down.

[00:19:03] MATT: I don't get so easily distracted.

[00:19:04] DANIEL: Yeah. Okay. So this is why when I was younger, I could study with music on. Yeah. Or I could drive with music on and actually feel like it helped enhance my driving, for example. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. That's right. Now, actually, I find too much noise is actually harder to deal with because my brain has changed.

[00:19:18] DANIEL: Yeah. Is that the same kind of thing?

[00:19:20] MATT: Yeah. Yeah. So like pretty much we're talking about multitasking and I know to some, you know, to some degree that's a complete fallacy in and of itself. There's no such thing, but our ability to be able to tolerate different stimuli at the same time decreases with age.

[00:19:33] MATT: we're young, twenties, again, up to like late thirties, it's at a - so he gives like the awesome example like you just did to some degree of, when I tell my kids, hey kids, like don't try to watch TV and listen to music at the same time and study. Don't do it, 'cause you can't multitask. Yeah. And you can't focus Really?

[00:19:50] MATT: I can't multitask, I can't focus 'cause I'm older.

[00:19:53] DANIEL: You're waving a red rag to a bull, 'cause as a productivity consultant, I do need to clarify. I know. So you [00:20:00] cannot wait. You cannot multitask. Mm-Hmm. Meaning you can't have two attention rich inputs at the same time. So you can sing in the shower, you can, I don't know, have a conversation while you're doing the dishes because one's a habitual task, but you can't do a math problem and think about something to do with your next project at the same time.

[00:20:15] DANIEL: So what you're doing is your brain is context switching like a metronome left, right, left, right. The only difference when you have fluid intelligence and you're younger is that flipping and that context switching doesn't seem to have as much cost. So you can look like you're doing these multiple things at the same time because it doesn't hurt your brain as much.

[00:20:35] DANIEL: So multitasking is never a good idea, but you can hide it longer. Just like you can hide eating sugar and not sleeping when you're young. It doesn't seem to destroy your health, even though it's never good for your health.

[00:20:44] MATT: Yeah.

[00:20:44] DANIEL: Okay. I just want to clarify.

[00:20:45] MATT: No, it's good. I almost feel like we should have like a PSA announcement down the bottom of the screen here.

[00:20:50] MATT: So yeah, just remember kids. Multitasking isn't a thing, it doesn't exist. Sorry, we're talking about rapid context switching. That's right. Rapid context switching, not multitasking.

[00:20:58] DANIEL: But it looks [00:21:00] like, it looks like you can get away with rapid context switching. Yeah. Just like you can get away with sugar.

[00:21:06] MATT: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's right. So again, up to, it seems like late thirties perhaps, and you've, and, and your prefrontal cortex is firing. You have this ability. It's almost like, it's almost like being, your brain is a library and your librarian is super fit. So they can take new books to get donated or whatever, or bought by the library.

[00:21:24] MATT: They can file them super quickly. And then when it comes to pulling those books out, my librarian can quickly and nimbly go and grab the, retrieve the book straight away and bring it back to me. So that's all great. But then again, for most of us. come the late thirties, all the way through to the early fifties at latest, all of us suffer a degradation of our prefrontal cortex.

[00:21:43] MATT: So it does start to decline. If you like, it starts to drop off. Right. So now again, said librarian is a bit more creaky. Okay. And what's happened is that the library over all this time has gotten stacked with books, books and books. So if you asked me to like, you know, do something really simple, like [00:22:00] recall, you know, let's say who directed like the last Top Gun movie or something like that.

[00:22:03] MATT: Again, my librarian will be hobbling around going through all these books, trying to retrieve the book all about Top Gun Maverick. Okay. And bring it back here. So. my, so what I used to be able to do with my fluid intelligence is now rapidly declining, and that's really frustrating. That's really scary. It means I literally can't keep up with my younger self.

[00:22:23] MATT: And if I, I double down and just try, I don't know, I do a whole lot of Sudoku or something like that, right. I'm not, I'm still not going to be able to somehow make up for that loss of what you can call fluid intelligence. That's the first thought. So that's the bad news. The good news is that this second intelligence seems to kind of kick into gear again, when our first is on the decline.

[00:22:41] MATT: And again, Brooks like terms that based on his research and his studies of other people's studies, he calls that crystallised intelligence. Okay. Crystallised intelligence. And he gives a lot of examples of usually as you get older, you actually get more articulate and increased vocab. That seems to go with older age and crystallised intelligence.

[00:22:58] MATT: And he points out that [00:23:00] again, there are some professions that lend themselves to flourishing later on in life, such as being a doctor. A historian, as well as an applied mathematician. And so there seems to be, whilst again our fluid intelligence is on the decline, this second intelligence, crystallised intelligence, actually gives us more capacity for things like synthesising all this information that we've collected.

[00:23:22] MATT: Over the years, and also interpreting what it is that we've learnt and collected and then passing it on, communicating and conveying it.

[00:23:31] DANIEL: So the benefit of the library is you actually have a lot more books, have a lot more experience of life to draw from, so you might not be as sharp in reading a book or, and picking up the nuances straight away, but you can synthesise and collect and collate and crystallise all this experience.

[00:23:48] DANIEL: Yeah. And end up basically teaching, coaching, creating, as a result of it, which is probably closer to what the ancients would call wisdom. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So while there's a [00:24:00] disadvantage, it's not like sports. If you're an elite athlete, you eventually lose the ability to perform at that high level. Yeah.

[00:24:06] DANIEL: And then, I mean, maybe you become a coach or a trainee, you get to use other skills. Yes. But in terms of intelligence, yes, we lose our ability to create scientific discoveries that might lead to Nobel prizes, but we increase our ability to write, coach, speak, train, manage, do a whole lot of other tasks.

[00:24:24] MATT: Yeah. And really critically, like going back to your sports analogy, you couldn't be that coach earlier in life when you were the player. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:24:33] DANIEL: So how does that relate to productivity very specifically?  

[00:24:36] MATT: Yeah. Absolutely. Yes, that's a great question. It means in terms of what we turn our attention to trying to achieve and do, I think particularly like in this midlife slump, as we've coined it, we want to work with our physiology and with this new kind of intelligence, if you like.

[00:24:51] MATT: So with our crystallised intelligence, we want to kind of focus our efforts in such a way that's consistent and conducive with that rather than doubling down and just trying harder [00:25:00] to kind of restart and rejig. Absolute intelligence.

[00:25:03] DANIEL: I'm showing my age, but I'm thinking of the old Rocky movie where, you know, he lost the ability to actually win his bout by strength and muscles and he had to actually get super smart and basically just wear the person down by using his right or his left.

[00:25:15] DANIEL: Like there's, in the sense of you start to work to your strengths and you start changing the way you work in order to get benefits of who you are now, but that requires unlearning what you used to do. And if we go back to the multitasking analogy, I can't believe I brought up Rocky. But um, as we go back to the multitasking analogy, yeah, rapid context switching.

[00:25:35] DANIEL: Yeah, exactly. You absolutely in your midlife have to start taking digital distractions seriously. If you want to have any meaningful outcome. Yeah. And I see this all the time in the people I work with, you have to turn off email alerts. You have to stop having Outlook on a second screen, having teams open all the time and notifications.

[00:25:55] DANIEL: Otherwise you literally will end up just going from one thing to the next thing to the next thing and your [00:26:00] ability to perform will consistently decline and you'll feel like you're overwhelmed, stretched, busier and more reactive than ever before, but not necessarily achieving what matters. Cause like you fundamentally have to start saying no to a whole lot of.

[00:26:12] DANIEL: Um, small inputs in order to say yes to the, to the one or two things that you can truly give your attention to, which are usually deep work, concentrated tasks that require that focus and energy where you put in all that consolidated knowledge and crystallised intelligence that you've developed over the years and produce something that has meaning and value.

[00:26:30] DANIEL: So that only occurs if you can discipline yourself to start pushing away from the multitasking churn of life. That's a big, big thing.

[00:26:51] DANIEL: So Matt, we've talked about why you need basic systems to get things done when you're young and more complex systems when you're older. We've talked about fluid and crystallised intelligence and [00:27:00] how that changes your opportunities as you go through the stages of life. Why don't we have a brief conversation about what do you have to unlearn?

[00:27:07] DANIEL: What does success look like from a productivity perspective when you're in the midlife slump? So why don't we start with crystallised intelligence? We've already talked about it a bit, but is there anything else you'd specifically say to someone?

[00:27:19] MATT: Yeah. Only, only I've got a friend who's between 40 and 50 and their first career had involved a lot of people kind of oriented and facing work and they really liked that.

[00:27:29] MATT: But then they made this big shift again in their, you know, mid, midlife slump kind of age. So like in their forties, and got involved in the health, like, you know, doing frontline health work. And I remember they told me when the first couple of weeks on the job and they were side by side with all these really much younger peers, again, been all through the same training pathway, had the same level of education now first day, like on the actual job.

[00:27:52] MATT: And his peers were just picking up all this information really quickly, be able to recall it, take it in and then spit it back out super quickly. So it was nursing. Is [00:28:00] that right? Yeah. Yeah. That's right. Yeah. And so my friend is, is there thinking, well, I just can't keep up with these people, you know, my peers, my much younger colleagues in terms of, again, information coming in and be able to spit it back out.

[00:28:11] MATT: I can't even keep up like with the younger version of me. I would've, I would've been so much better at this like 10 years ago. Later on when it came to the actual, like personal patient care, my friend had all this experience and accumulated wisdom because of their past career to be able to draw on, put together and synthesise.

[00:28:30] DANIEL: So I imagine he could lead and manage very quickly. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And tend to people so well and so quickly. Yes. Example. Okay. So if you are in that, so if you're in a midlife slump and you're feeling dissatisfied and thinking about how do I either reboot my career or change the way in which I work, start to think about how can I move towards coaching, managing, synthesising, using my skills and experience to [00:29:00] provide added value or deep work as opposed to how can I work harder and faster and align your roles where possible with.

[00:29:08] DANIEL: Your new formed level of intelligence. Yes. That's right. So that's the first thing. And the second thing we talked about is systems. Yes. And this is where, you know, my, the bread and butter of what I do is train and coach and work with senior leaders and professionals who are trying to work out how do I get space in my life because they find themselves having been successful through their twenties and thirties established near the top of their various careers or professions and absolutely smashed for time, struggling to get.

[00:29:37] DANIEL: Any concentrated time wrestling with multitasking and just having distraction after distraction, interruption after interruption in open offices or even at home and they just dunno what to do about it. So this, this is that unlearning that needs to happen in order to thrive as a senior leader later in life.

[00:29:55] DANIEL: And so I've traditionally talked about four foundational [00:30:00] ideas when it comes to the basis of productivity. You know, we talked about even in your 20s, I think you need these four ideas, but I add a fifth when it comes to the midlife slump. So the four would be, we used to call the cope habits, capture, organise, plan and execute.

[00:30:16] DANIEL: So you have to have a capture tool when it comes to your productivity system. And by that, rather than keeping everything in your head, you know, an email comes in, you self-generate an idea, someone has a conversation with you in a meeting and says, can you do this? You don't want to walk around with it all in your head.

[00:30:31] DANIEL: Even if you have fluid intelligence, it's just a dumb idea because your working memory should be used for other things. And so you need a way of capturing those inputs in a particular place or a few places so that you can outsource your memory and increase your capacity to deal with stuff. So that's the same for everyone.

[00:30:47] DANIEL: Capture organises the idea that you do not want a single level list, you don't want a task list, otherwise you'll end up just doing lots of small stuff. What you need is a two-level list where [00:31:00] you have key projects that have significance, so the kind of strategic goals you want to achieve, and then the next one or two very clear actions related to them, so a list with projects and tasks.

[00:31:11] DANIEL: That's again for everyone. So that you can achieve the things that matter most day by day. Okay, so number three is plan or multi-level planning. So you basically need to plan your year, your week, your day, rather than just turn up and see what's in email, and see what happens in your calendar in terms of meetings, and let that shape your day.

[00:31:32] DANIEL: Particularly what are your goals? How do you have a weekly plan and how do you time block the stuff in your calendar that matters? That's not simple, but it's super foundational and there are lightweight ways of doing that. And the last one is execute. You know, when you're actually in the moment, you've got an hour of free time and you want to achieve a particular task, how do you do it rather than procrastinate?

[00:31:49] DANIEL: Yep. You know, strategies you might've heard of like eat the frog or Pomodoro. There's lots of strategies and that would include processing your inbox to zero using our email ninja methodologies.

[00:31:58] MATT: Can I multitask? [00:32:00]

[00:32:00] DANIEL: If you want to pretend to multitask, Matt, you can at any age, but those things are foundational for anyone.

[00:32:05] DANIEL: Yep. at any age. Like they're the kind of the core foundational aspects of what it means to have a productivity system and then integrate together. But I spend most of my time in, let's say, masterclass or a significant amount of time talking about the last one, which I say ask the coper habits and R is about reduce.

[00:32:24] DANIEL: Because the biggest problem that leaders face is that they just have too many commitments. You can organise the heck out of yourself and have all the right efficiency systems in place. But if you have 120 percent or 130 percent commitment overload, it doesn't matter what system you have. You won't be productive.

[00:32:42] DANIEL: You won't be able to achieve things that actually matter. And by productivity, I never mean getting more done and I never mean being efficient. What I mean is knowing what truly matters in your life and forming habits and practices to intentionally live that life in a sustainable [00:33:00] way. That's what I mean by productivity.

[00:33:01] DANIEL: So essentially when we hit our forties, fifties, you know, and we're in highly kind of responsible roles, you have to spend a whole lot of time reducing commitments and that takes a lot of practice. To say no to a whole lot of stuff, which involves not just eliminating and subtracting responsibilities, which I think is very, very important, or even automating using technology.

[00:33:24] DANIEL: So you're out of the picture. That's good. So it's not as simple as just saying no. No, it's not as simple as saying no, but it is as simple as saying the way to thrive and to be truly productive in your midlife is to do fewer things. You know, very focused, efficient way, and that requires a fundamental shift in how you work.

[00:33:46] DANIEL: I mean, have you seen that with people you've worked with?

[00:33:49] MATT: Oh yeah, certainly. And I've seen it in my own life. If you're, if you've done okay, and if you've been fortunate, then I think what makes it even trickier is that a lot of the [00:34:00] stuff that you have to say no to are going to be really good opportunities, really worthy causes, like things that in a perfect world you would have the space for, you could do it all.

[00:34:09] MATT: And that's what makes it really, really difficult.

[00:34:11] DANIEL: So, yeah, that's a great point, Matt. It's um, it's super helpful to put boundaries down and know how to say no for a greater yes. So we have an e book and actually an audio book called How to Say No for a Greater Yes. We put it together because people wrestle, like ourselves, with how to say no, uh, so both the science of no, the skills of saying no in a professional way, and also why no is emotional work and how to kind of change your mindset to allow you to set healthier self-care boundaries.

[00:34:41] DANIEL: Uh, so if you're interested, it's all free. Go to spacemakers.au/no, that's spacemakers.au/no, you'll get the free book and a free audio book narrated by yours truly. Uh, if you want to hear more of my voice, but, uh, it's just one hour and it will be super helpful.

[00:34:58] MATT: Cool. Nice. [00:35:00] So before we take our standard 30 second pause chance to reflect, this quote from James Clear, who we talked about a lot, great author and has a lot of really useful stuff to say in this space.

[00:35:10] MATT: He writes, when you say no, you are only saying no to one option. When you say yes, you are saying no to every other option. No is a decision. Yes is a responsibility. Be careful what and who you say yes to. It will shape your day, your career, your family, your life. So let's take 30 seconds, sit, have a reflect and process what we've talked about thus far.[00:36:00]

[00:36:21] MATT: So, we've had 30 seconds of silence, pondering the wisdom of James Clear. Hopefully you and I are to a point. Hopefully you and I are to a point, yeah, that's right. It is hard to say no to people, it's not going to make you feel very happy, but if you're already like in your midlife slump, you already feel unhappy, so just embrace it.

[00:36:36] MATT: But as usual, we want to make it really practical and really concrete too, so we've got our two exercises. One for those of you who are in your twenties and thirties, and one for those of you who are in your forties and fifties. So the first one, if you're in your twenties and thirties, again, this is all about, if you like, and we've used this analogy before, this picture before, building your container in the earlier part of life.

[00:36:58] MATT: So we'd like [00:37:00] you to say yes to something. This week between this show and the next that involves and we're going to be very specific about this sensible risk. Okay. So sensible risk. So that can be something like that involves, say like new relationships, maybe like learning a new skill. Critically, we want it to be something that gets you out of your immediate comfort zone.

[00:37:18] MATT: Okay. So like you could say, it's an appropriate, suitable stretch. If you're in your forties, your fifties, again, like chances are, as we've already discussed, if you're like us, you're already feeling overloaded and far too stretched. So we'd like you to say no, again, appropriately, appropriately to as many things as possible this week.

[00:37:37] MATT: Again, so this is also going to be a stretch, but it will be a stretch in the other sense in that it may cost you emotionally. It's probably going to make you feel a little bit uncomfortable. Yeah. And that's cause you know, you care about yourself, you care about other people, but again, think about saying no for the greater yes, which is your own self-care and probably the care of the people who are closest and dearest to you as well.

[00:37:59] MATT: And again, we'd [00:38:00] strongly encourage you to jump on the YouTube channel.

[00:38:02] DANIEL: Yeah. And also download the ebook because there's also a handout there. Look again, I've, I've coached a lot of people in this space and the no's are fascinating. You know, someone said no in one of my masterclass groups, no to a bit more work on a weekend and they booked in a caravan trip.

[00:38:16] DANIEL: Like I think every four weeks or something just on the weekend, but they weren't getting away. So that was their no, others have said no to bigger things. They've been asked to take on projects or new responsibilities, and they've actually found a way of saying no. And they've often come back and said, hey, I'm surprised that.

[00:38:33] DANIEL: I got away with it. Like when I actually said no and gave my reasons, it was like, okay. Or it might be just no to smaller stuff, but it's still, like you said, has to be a little bit of a risk. Yeah. To summarise, if you're younger, say yes to something risky and do it this week. Think about what you'll do when you do it and actually create that action trigger.

[00:38:54] DANIEL: Commit to something today. If you're older and you feel overwhelmed, and you've already got a lot of [00:39:00] opportunities in life, take the risk and say no to something, even if that means delegating, outsourcing, eliminating, automating, it could be a strategy to help you get there. And if you really want to dive deep into this, download my ebook and audio book at spacemakers.au/no.

[00:39:17] DANIEL: Next week, we're going to dive into friendship, and we're going to deepen the conversation about why friendship is important, how to go about building meaningful networks when you're younger, and how to regain, I suppose, a minimal viable product of meaningful friendships even when you're stretched for time as you get older.

[00:39:40] DANIEL: Yeah, that's right. Working on our social fitness. Social fitness based on the research. I'm really looking forward to this. And until next time, make space. See ya.

[00:39:49] NARRATOR: The Spacemakers, with Daniel Sih and Matt Bain.

[00:39:52] DANIEL: A warm thanks to our sponsor, Banjo's Bakery Cafes, who are expanding across Australia and looking for new franchisees.

[00:39:59] DANIEL: If you've always [00:40:00] wanted to work for yourself and want to fast track success, visit franchise.banjo.com

[00:40:10] NARRATOR: If you'd like to support this podcast, share an episode with a friend, leave a review, or subscribe to our blog post at spacemakers.au. Until next time, make space.