How to Avoid Burnout

>> Robert: Today I'm talking with Andrew May assumed spelling one of our leading experts on performance and productivity and also of the

best selling book Flip the Switch. Andrew is the former Physical Performance Manager for the Australian Cricket Team and has worked

with Olympic athletes, well, in pretty well every sport from what I can see. Not content with mere elite athletes it states that Andrew

is also a successful entrepreneur having built and sold 3 health and well-being companies. Not surprisingly we're gonna talk about

how to perform at our peek while at our work, hello Andrew.

>> Andrew: Hello Robert.

>> Robert: So, Andrew one of the things that I've observed from reading your book and a number of things around about is you draw a

number of parallels between work, kind of performing at work and performing as an elite athlete, what are those parallels?

>> Andrew: I think there's different parallels, it's not everything's the same but what I've seen 15 years involved in elite sport,

what we get inaudible is recovery. You look at the best athletes; you look at Lance Armstrong 7 Tour De France titles, Roger

Fedra assumed spelling with 5 Wimbledon and the mighty Australian Cricket Team, maintaining dominance for 11 plus years. We work

out a proper structured recovery program so in sport athletes will play hard but then they recover hard. Now, I do most of my work

in the business world only 10% in sport but we muck it up in fact we inaudible it up 'cause I think corporate people they play hard

all week and then the weekends they spend catching up doing emails trying to get into the office while it's quiet. As a result there's

a part of my business growing quicker than any other part, it's working with people who suffer burn out.

>> Robert: Right, and it's prolific isn't it, I guess if we look around us we see in telecommunications industry everyone is kind of

on to us in business to, ya know, walk around with these little gizmos that mean that people can get to us anywhere any time. I mean,

is that good or --

>> Andrew: Well, you see people flying; now you're allowed, on certain airlines, a little bit extra time to check your text messages

or send an email on the BlackBerry. Are we really that busy that we can't afford to have 2 or 3 minutes off in a runway? Now,

the technology's great it means you can work from home, it means you can work across boundaries but I think there has to be time when

we turn the button off 'cause what happens otherwise you are on demand. And we have this new term in psychology called CPA, --

>> Robert: CPA

>> Andrew: constant, partial, attention so you've got 10% of your attention here, 5% here, 15 there, 30 here, it's when you get home

and your friends or family or loved ones said, how was your day and you go, really, really, busy and they hit you with the upper cut

inaudible. They say, well, what did you actually do, and you go, well, that's a great question 'cause I sort of sent 40 emails,

I had 5 interruptions, I started 2 proposals, didn't finish one and, ya know, you have --

>> Robert: You were looking at my desk.

>> Andrew: It's like therapy.

>> Robert: So, okay, I mean I guess any of us in business, ya know, we hear this don't we, this is a message that we do get told and

in particular I guess when things are getting busier and faster, it's a time when we do tend to get people saying, look, ya know what

you've got to cut away from it, you've got to take time out. So, what do we actually do though, ya know, we hear all this what do we

do, how do we do it?

>> Andrew: Well, I think exactly in the introduction you said, "In sport what are the parallels," well one parallel that people can

really learn from today is to look at here's my calendar throughout a year, sure there's gonna be times where you need to be on, there's

times when you need to send emails, the BlackBerry, the mobile phone to be on demand but work out times where you are off the grid, they

may include weekends. And what I'd love everyone watching this is to plan a proper holiday, now, a proper holiday is not a client

I'm working with is might I have the best holiday.

>> Robert: Why was it so good?

>> Andrew: I lied down under the palm trees and I had full mobile reception and the BlackBerry. So, why is everyone inaudible I said,

'cause I knew what was happening all the time. So what I'd like people to do --

>> Robert: That's not a holiday is it?

>> Andrew: No it's not because you're still connected your mind is still working and, again, in sport we send people away for at least

2 or 3 weeks so for business people watching this only you, I'd love you to have a 2 or 3 week break and then the next step up on that

is try and have a mini break every quarter. So every 3 months try and go away for 2 or 3 days, I'm sure you'll like this you're busy

as well in your job multiple roles. When you go away from a break you come back on Monday you're sharper, your brain is not --

>> Robert: But when you say, ya know, okay, sitting here watching this I think you're right, okay, this guy's telling me I need to take

a 3 week break I need to go away every 3 months and I can imagine some people thinking, ya know, he just doesn't know what my business

is like.

>> Andrew: You haven't seen my life.

>> Robert: Yeah, you haven't seen my life so what do you say to that person?

>> Andrew: I'd say that's a very, very true point, I'd say, first of all, look at what you could do every week. So every week try and

do some activities, which I call off activities or smaller activities, so try to schedule in some time.

>> Robert: So for example what --

>> Andrew: Well, it might be going for a walk with your partner, it could be going out to dinner with the mobile phone off, it could

be going to the gym, it could be getting a message, it could be go and learning to dance, just doing something outside of work. Now

when we get stressed we take out the activities that enrich us, we take out the activities --

>> Robert: The first things to go.

>> Andrew: yeah, they're the first things that should go back.

>> Robert: Okay, so you're saying that in every, pretty well in every day you said we should have something.

>> Andrew: Some days it's not gonna be possible you have those days where it's just crazy but at least in a week if you have 2 or 3 activities

that connect you with what's really important, and I'm not saying work is not important but we tend to get so consumed by work we don't

do any of those fun areas in our life we tend to disconnect from our loved ones. But I'll take a step back 'cause it's a valid point

people watching this going, we'd all like to have a holiday and then a break but I can't do that but what you can do is control your

workload and one of the biggest productivity bummers is people are just -- I was thinking the right word for it --

>> Robert: Bummers is a good word.

>> Andrew: is when you're working on demand all day, so that example of constant partial attention is when you're sitting there and

you're doing email badminton. Now, I'm sure, and anyone watching this you never sit down at a job interview and they say, now, here's

your job description and it's got, you shall answer email every time it comes in, you shall spend 3 or 4 hours --

>> Robert: You'll have your concentration disturbed constantly.

>> Andrew: you shall be on demand. So what people need to do is try and change the rules a little bit. I think with email chunk

your checking times, now, there's times where you all to need it with important proposals but if you send me and email and I respond

straight away, we do that 3 times that's called an expectation. You do it the fourth time and I don't respond you get annoyed.

>> Robert: Yeah, I see that so much with people that work in the services industry where, as you say expectation, you react respond very

quickly to a client's query then that is the expectation they're gonna want that every time and I'm not saying that we don't, shouldn't

respond to our clients in a very timely manner but if it's too fast people know they can get you all the time they'll try and get you

all the time.

>> Andrew: And the key word starts with expectations, if you let clients know that maybe half a day a week on a Tuesday or a Thursday

morning where I'll work in forced isolation and then to me that's another productivity too, have a couple times a week where you turn

off the email, you turn off the phone and work uninterrupted, try and control the --

>> Robert: It's forced isolation.

>> Andrew: Forced, you put yourself in jail for half a day.

>> Robert: Yeah, okay.

>> Andrew: And I'm sure you've found this, when you have a time where you can just work on proposals or chunk all the time together, in

that half a day you often get more done than you do in a whole week with interruptions.

>> Robert: Yeah, absolutely, I guess the thing is, well, we don't consider enough with these technologies there's the -- there is voice-

mail, we can turn things off, ya know, we don't have to be on our email all the time, do we? So, it's just getting into the habit

of, as you say, checking email perhaps at a certain time, making sure we've got blocks for down time, leisure, exercise you kind of

mentioned, and having some holidays in the diaries and --

>> Andrew: inaudible

>> Robert: Five, good, okay.

>> Andrew: So, number one is go to email school.

>> Robert: Email school.

>> Andrew: Look at how many emails you're sending in a day, I actually believe, personally, 80% of emails we send are rubbish, 80% of

emails we respond to are rubbish. And you know when you do get an email, "Hi Robert I'm not sure about the interview questions we're

going through," and then you send it and I'm not sure we play email tennis 3 or 4 times.

>> Robert: With a phone call we could have --

>> Andrew: You can pick up the phone or even look over your cubicle for some people and say, "Hey, are you Robert, I've emailed you 50

times a day how about we chat about that?" Chunk your checking times 2 or 3 times a day. The second productivity tip I'd say is have

fleeting meetings. I don't know what happened years ago but we had this myth that we had to meet for 1 hour, maybe it was because

all the diaries had 1 hour time slots.

>> Robert: Yeah

>> Andrew: If you can meet in 20 minutes, make for 20 and get to the point otherwise we spend half the day on email, another quarter

of the day in meetings and then we go, oh, now I'll do my work --

>> Robert: Yeah, the day's gone.

>> Andrew: why we stay so late.

>> Robert: That was number two?

>> Andrew: Third tip, work to your energy personality.

>> Robert: Work to your energy personality, okay.

>> Andrew: Are you a morning person, an evening or are you somewhere in between?

>> Robert: You asking me?

>> Andrew: Yeah

>> Robert: It's actually changed since I've become a parent; I certainly wasn't a morning person. I'd say I'm a morning person now

actually, morning and I also like evening. I exercise in the middle of the day I like to do good work in the morning and I don't mind

working a bit late at night.

>> Andrew: So you're what we call a tiger. There's 3 basic energy personalities, now, people watching this are true morning person

they are the gazelles and that's about 15% of the population. And you know a gazelle 'cause they set the alarm clock for 6 AM and they

spring out of bed at 5:30 and they usually go for a walk or a run or --

>> Robert: I'm not one of them, okay.

>> Andrew: and they love mornings they get to work and they say, "Good morning."

>> Robert: Right

>> Andrew: Now, there's 15 or 20% of the people who think that stink, they're called bears. So bears their concentration curve picks

up more around mid morning to early afternoon and while I give it terms like gazelle's, bears, and tigers the research on this is

Chronobiology and they're doing a lot especially in the northern states. On the northern hemisphere is showing that your performance

can improve by 25 to 30% if you work on your energy personality, so meaning you are more creative. As a tiger you probably work better

in the morning, you have the dip at lunch and then mid afternoon.

>> Robert: Yeah, that's certainly me.

>> Andrew: So you can control your interruptions in that morning space and in the afternoon space --

>> Robert: So, you say that in the beginning that to, what was it, to be aware of your --

>> Andrew: Your energy personality.

>> Robert: energy personality, okay.

>> Andrew: And this is where people stuff it up, say you're a morning person or a gazelle, ya know, 'cause you love mornings, you get

there and you're all alone. The biggest killer in productivity is you get to work and do 80 miles for the first 2 or 3 hours.

>> Robert: I'll get to that when I finish the in-box.

>> Andrew: By then you're concentration curve is down and you're fighting against your own body rhythm.

>> Robert: Right

>> Andrew: Where bears should stay away from gazelles in the morning they don't get along well until about 10 AM, and inaudible should

do 80 miles in the morning while their brains are working --

>> Robert: Okay, terrific, that was number 3, 4.

>> Andrew: 4 is work in forced isolation.

>> Robert: Work in forced isolation.

>> Andrew: Put those imaginary bars around you and lock yourself away --

>> Robert: Okay

>> Andrew: I'd say at least for 3 hours to half a day. If you do that half a day a week I guarantee people watching this will have

a huge difference in productivity.

>> Robert: Absolutely, I totally agree.

>> Andrew: Create inaudible, get email rules first, fleeting meetings, work to your energy personality so there's a plan to this then

you should free up a half a day where you can work on those creative, those high inaudible tasks where you need to plan, strategize

and inaudible.

>> Robert: Fabulous, number 5.

>> Andrew: Recharge

>> Robert: Recharge, okay.

>> Andrew: Hit the "Re" button so recharge, relax, refresh, take the holidays, take the mini breaks every quarter and every week do some

activities that put a bit of a smile on your face that make you feel like you're living again. And I really believe if you follow that

process you'll get a lot more done in a lot less time.

>> Robert: Fantastic, Andrew, thank you so much for spending time with us you made it all sound so easy and it clearly works for athletes

so let's try it for business, thank you again.

>> Andrew: Can I just say --

>> Robert: Oh, one more, yes.

>> Andrew: It's not easy.

>> Robert: It's not easy, no.

>> Andrew: One of the reasons I teach this and one of the reasons I think I have success teaching this is I stuffed it up for years.

>> Robert: Okay

>> Andrew: You think, why am I saying that, 'cause I want to be realistic that this is hard and I think it takes people sometimes to

get to rock bottom until they change. But rather seeing people in my burn-out clinic I'd love them to put some of these strategies

in place, it takes a while to make or break a habit, it's gonna be hard when you first start but I just implore people to try --

>> Robert: Give it a go.

>> Andrew: and work differently.

>> Robert: Okay, Andrew, thank you so much, thanks for joining us.

>> Andrew: Thank you.