the advanced specialists at the Center for Innovative G. Y N Care developed groundbreaking, minimally invasive techniques to treat fibroids, endometriosis and other G y N conditions in response to growing concerns over the Corona virus. C i G. C now offers e visits. No giant conditions. Don't stop affecting your life. See, I g. C. Wants to be here for you as you seek options to find relief from debilitating gynecologic symptoms such as abnormal bleeding and pelvic pain. With telemedicine options Now available, Book a consultation at innovative julienne dot com or call 888 surgery That's innovative. G y n dot com or 888 surgery Welcome back to the Arctic Charm podcast. I'm a J and I'm Johnny and we are currently on Lock down here in the state of California, and we hope each and every one of our listeners is safely isolating and healthy during this crisis.

Of course, many of us have been forced to work from home for the first time, which we've covered on a few previous episodes, and today we're really excited to have a frequent guest on and a great author of one of our favorite books give and take Adam Grant. This is one of the reasons why I love doing the show. When you listen to somebody, you read so much of their stuff and then you have an opportunity to talk to them. And then not only that, dig in deeper some of the burning questions that we've had in reading his research. You know, it's been seven years since his book Given Take came out, which is recommended reading for all of our boot camp participants. And I'm sure a lot of our audience members have read the book. So I'm excited to see what has changed. What is his perspective on that book as well as How can we get through this current situation? Adams joining us today to talk about overcoming procrastination,

how to deal with loneliness at work in what we can do with the challenges that lie ahead of us. So I'm excited to chat with Adam. Now, if you're new to the show, we are all about actual tips and strategies on how to supercharge or social skills and turn that small talk into smart talk. Surround yourself with the army of high status individuals to grow your social capital and unlock your hidden charisma to crush it in business. Love in life. Now, if you like the show, don't forget to subscribe and tell your friends. And, of course, if you're looking to make your lock down or quarantine more productive, check out our core confidence group mentoring program. You get access to our network with daily live videos. For me,

Johnny and the AOC team core common. It's all about the finding your life and rewriting the story of who you are. Each week you meet on Sunday mornings at 9 a.m. Pacific, which your virtual group and coaches we have weekly challenges. A push you outside your comfort zone. Grill your confidence and deep in your connection with family, friends and co workers and every mission is Corona virus quarantine friendly, so you don't even have to put yourself in danger while this is going on. We cover topics like dealing with negative emotions, defining your values, living in the present moment, identifying your limiting beliefs and achieving crystal clear goals. Now join a group of supportive and like minded Arctic charm listeners to bond and grow during this crisis. Expander an hour can connect virtually to reach your true potential. Our next group kicks off April 26 at 9 a.m. Pacific. We're accepting applications now with limited seats.

Left toe learn Maurin. Apply today head on over to the arctic charm dot com slash corps. That's the art of charm dot com slash c o r E. Now let's get started with Show. Today we have none other than Adam Grant with us. Adam is a psychologist and author specializing in organizational psychology. He's the offer of many great books given take originals, and he even co authored Option B with Facebook. Sheryl Sandberg Adam is a professor at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania, where he received his tenure at the Young Age of 28. He's also the host of a great podcast called Work Life, and this is his third time on our show. Welcome to the show, Adam. So good to have you back. So obviously as,

ah, organizational psychologist, there is a lot to think about and deal with when it comes to all of us now working from home, being quarantined, really, our lives changed rather dramatically. Many of us unplanned even. What are your thoughts? Obviously, in this environment with

the Corona virus, well, I've been calling for more companies to allow flex time and make it easy for people to work from home for a few years now. And I was especially convinced after there was this great call center experiment where people are randomly assigned to have a chance to do their call center jobs from home and their productivity went up by 13% the odds of quitting in the next six months dropped in half. Well, I looked at that and said, OK, what's what's driving that? Well, one thing might be there just saving time like they don't have to commute or get dressed. Another factor is they really appreciate the autonomy they're being given. And, you know, it's a signal of trust from their employer that creates loyalty. They're more motivated. And then, of course,

there's also the flexibility to work when they want and when it's productive for them. And if you stop there, this sounds really great. What I didn't anticipate that we're all dealing with now is one. We're not doing this by choice. We're all now forced to work from home. And so I think that sense of autonomy is lost. Too many of us have our kids at home, too. It's a lot harder and planned schedule is trying to coordinate multiple. And so I think this is a much more difficult work from home experiment than what most companies have ever run or dealt with before.

And to go along with that. I think it's also for and at least in agent eyes experience in dealing with some of the young kids and interns and employees that we had who have worked from home. There has always been those people who seem to relish it and work really well. And for those people who just sort of fall apart in that environment because it is new and that environment leads to certain habits and decisions that are not going to lead you to be very productive.

I think this is a lot easier for obviously for introverts, for people who are comfortable working independently. You know, for people who love to be surrounded by people or community,

this has been a lot harder, and I think many of us go through a slower transition where maybe we start working from home one or two days a week and still balance going into the office. But this happened rather suddenly and across the board for everyone. So it has certainly been quite the adjustment for many of us who aren't used to working remote at all.

You know, it's interesting, because as a writer, I basically worked from home my whole career. But then I have all these other hats that I wear where you know, I'm on campus, teaching classes on the record, giving keynote speeches and doing consulting projects, and so essentially a bunch of the different pieces of my job disappeared. And now I just have the work from home component, and it's interesting. I feel like in some ways I have more work time. But in other ways, I really miss being out in the world, engaged with people you know in a face to face way. And I realized this is just so much easier for people who didn't who do knowledge work. If you're in a manufacturing job or a service job, this is incredibly difficult, and I think we're just the very beginning of trying to figure out how do we redesign jobs to make this work from a

distance, Absolutely. And I think digging a little bit more into the science A lot of our listeners are in leadership roles, and management through remote work is a lot different than in person work. And what is your experience in the science? Tell us about being an effective leader when your team is dispersed and not on site.

All right, a jam in a shock. You hear you ready for this? Yeah, I'm ready. Okay. The science says it's exactly the same, except harder in many ways, not blowing good luck. I think that it's clear from a lot of the research I've read that having to lead virtually amplifies a bunch of challenges but also opens up a few opportunities. The challenge is air clear. It's difficult to get people on the same page. Thio create a sense of common mission to coordinate and communicate. People may lose a sense of motivation. I think it's worth talking about some of the things that if they're not made easier, at least they change. So I think one thing that changes is the leader.

All of a sudden, you haven't excused to be checking in with people at scale in a way that before you sort of had to do one on one. So let's say, Johnny, if I work for you, if you send me a survey every week to find out what was going on in my head, I think it would take until about week three. Before I said, You're a terrible boss. If you want to figure out what I'm experiencing, you should probably meet with me one on one weekly and ask me, Right? Yes. And you know, I think now there's a degree of both necessity and license that leaders have to say. You know what?

Let's do a weekly pulse check. I know Qualtrics has rolled out. Ah Qualtrics remote pulse. Where there's a standard survey you can you can give out, it's available for you. And it's just a simple way for leaders to find out at the group level is opposed to one on one. What are the biggest challenges and concerns that their employees air facing? And so it's a powerful learning opportunity.

There's a certain amount of discipline that you need to have to make this work, and obviously everyone has their own obstacles at home. As you mentioned Adam, some folks might have little ones running around, and you got to make them a tuna fish sandwich at noon. And some of us are working with our spouses for the first time and find trying to find room in that house. And when you give people deadlines, it's nice for those deadlines to be met. But if you have somebody who's not disciplined, who just was like, Whoa, I don't have to have this done till Friday noon, so I'll start on it Friday morning. It's like, Well, you know, you could do that, But how long can you keep that up before the other people that you're working with start to realize it? This person is just pushing off everything. They're just waiting to hit those deadlines there, not really as motivated as everyone else on the team who are hitting milestones throughout those projects.

I think that's that's a concern. I worry just a CZ much about the the opposite problem, which is people feeling a tremendous amount of stress and pressure to stay on top of their jobs so that they get to keep their jobs and I think it's a leader at The first thing I want to remember is that a lot of people are experiencing tremendous job insecurity right now. You know, they know that many companies are laying off employees that their furloughs and plenty of workplace is hiring freezes. And they're open questions about whether you're gonna be able to stay employed if you can't get your work done. And I think for any leader that's worried about people slacking off, I would I would just reinforce that message first and foremost. But then to your point, there gonna be some people who are less motivated than others or just they're just more overwhelmed and have more to manage at home. I think if that's the case, the first thing is to recognize that as a leader, it's not really your job to motivate people directly. It's your job to help them figure out what motivates them and empower them. Thio try toe to put whatever those factors are in place at D. C. Who's one of the godfathers of intrinsic motivation,

has long said that we have to stop thinking about motivation is something we do to other people and start thinking about it is something that they do to themselves. And so as a leader, if I've got somebody who's not motivated, I want to actually interview them a little bit and say, OK, A J I know you've fallen behind on some deadlines, totally understand that this is an extremely difficult time right now. And, you know, frankly, I'd be surprised if anybody is getting things done on time. You know, to the extent that that you've been lagging more than other people would love to find out what's going on, what's keeping you from being ableto stand track, and what conditions can I put in place that will make things easier for you? And then,

you know, I might have a follow up conversation about what are your favorite and least favorite projects. What are the times of day that you feel most in at least motivated? And the goal is, you know, is not a micro manage. You tow, ask you questions and hold up a mirror so you can see your reflection more clearly. And then you can start to design those conditions a little bit more and your workday

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but I know for many of our listeners this has created new challenges, especially when it comes to being productive and feeling good about your work station. You're absolutely right. And having a designated clean workstation allows you to be at your best. And when you're at your best, your creativity and product activity is at its best. Bullies. Workplace furniture is designed for health flow and balance, not during these uncertain times fully is helping people and businesses across the U. S, Canada and Europe make the transition to working from home with modern, environmentally friendly and ethically manufactured office furniture fully sent us over a few pieces, and I have to say, I've fallen in love with my Jarvis standing desk at the touch of a button. I can raise or lower it, depending if I want to sit or stand,

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stand lean, raise lower. I feel like it's always supporting me, no matter how I'm sitting or standing, whether you're shopping for yourself or your entire team fully is here for you. If you need help transitioning your team, please call him. Take $50 off your Jarvis standing desk when you visit fully dot com slash charm. That's fully f u l l y dot com slash charm Fully everything you need to find your workflow. And I think for a lot of us in leadership positions were also not thinking about what this isolation is doing to our team members and their loneliness factor. So I think there's this juggling of productivity and not realizing that well, there's also the social element to work in the meaning that we get from feeling connected to our teammates and being around each other that you just can't mimic, mean even us here trying to have this conversation. It's totally different than being in the same room together. And many of us were feeling lonely at work before this and and now it's been exacerbated. I know that was a topic on one of your recent shows around this loneliness at work, and what we can do is leaders to tap into the community aspect of supporting our team.

Yeah, ironically or not, we decided in the fall to do an episode of my work life podcast on luminous at work, and it was basically done, and then the pandemic hit said Wait, hold on. We need to go back to the drawing board and and zoom in on some of the unique aspects of loneliness that are part of this kind of isolation and remote work experience. And I think the big takeaway from me after reading a lot of research on loneliness after talking to people who have dealt with it, who have tried to change it in their workplaces and even at the national policy level and governments, My biggest takeaway is that you don't need friendships to avoid loneliness. You know, when a lot of people think about not feeling lonely, they think, Okay, I need a best friend at work or I need a you know, a tight knit circle of colleagues that I'm really close to and we'll go on vacation together and I'll have them over for dinner. And,

yeah, that can. That can certainly fight luminous, but it's not gonna happen right now. So I guess what I took away from some of my favorite work on this is what by my mentor, Jane Dutton calls a high quality connection. And in Jane's world, when she studies, this high quality connection is not necessarily an enduring relationship. It's a momentary sense of feeling scene and feeling energized by somebody else. And in the data, it only takes about 40 seconds of interaction between two people to experience a high quality connection. And so, you know, I think is we see people checking in on facetime and doing zoom calls and even just texting. There's real power and saying,

You know what? If there are a few people that I don't normally interact with, But I just you know, I haven't heard from them in six or seven months and I don't really know how this crisis is affecting them. Let me just check in for a minute or two and say, Hey, look, I know you're swamped. Just want to see how you're doing. Just scheduling one or two of those conversations in a day can have a huge impact on your sense of loneliness one, because you have, ah, different kind of interaction that you built in, which is often more meaningful if you haven't talked to somebody in a while. That it would be if you're doing the daily checkup

and to

you also feel like you matter, you know you're tryingto listen to them and support them in a way that makes you feel helpful. And that seems to be one of the most powerful antidotes to loneliness that we have is feeling like you've been able to give something to somebody

else, and a topic we talk about a lot on the show is leading from the seat that you're in. And even if you're not in a leadership role per se right now where you're managing other team members, you can still be a leader in fighting that loneliness and isolation in reaching out to other team members. And you can be a leader by showing up to the zoom a little bit early and asking them how they're doing as everyone's getting ready to go on and get the meeting started. You know, I think a lot of us make this wrong decision in my mind to focus so much on team productivity and getting that to do list shortened and those tasks off. But we don't take enough time just investing in our team members mental well being and their connection to one another to really enhance that productivity. Does the science back that up? That amore connected team, a less isolated team, is actually more productive.

Yeah, we have decades of evidence on the quality of relationships in a team being an important driver of performance and vice versa. Excuse me. Vice versa. Team underperforms. Relationships and connections often suffer, and that could become a vicious cycle over time. I think for a lot of you know, a lot of people in a team, it makes sense to say, You know what? Let's take 5 to 10 minutes of each meeting that we d'oh, Let's just check in and find out what's going on. We'll have everybody share a quick story or, you know well, even if you have a daily meeting, we're gonna have each person,

you know kind of doing update each day. The hope is that in a week or two, if you got a reasonable size team, you've heard from everybody. The other thing, though, is I don't think this always has to be separated completely from work. So some people are very far on the integrating end of the spectrum. They're thrilled to talk about their kids at work. They're happy to bring their work home. Some of us are more kind to be segment, sirs, and say, you know what I like a boundary between work and home, and that boundary has been shattered in the past few weeks. We're all that BBC dad now.

Kids came into his his interview. You know, whether we want to be or not, and so to recognize that there are some segment airs out there. There are some ways to facilitate connection that don't require a CZ much of the personal or the home boundary being bridged. And one of those ways is there's an experiment. I love that Lea Thompson did, where she was trying to get people to brainstorm creatively, and she randomly assigned some of them to just do a simple exercise, which was You pair up and you tell an embarrassing story to your partner and that just five minutes or so of sharing an embarrassing story increase creativity in the group afterward. Because people experience more psychological safety, they felt like, all right, I opened up to this person. This is somebody I can trust, and now I can let my bold ideas fly,

and at first I was like embarrassing story. Do I really want to ask people to share those as a leader

and then As I thought about it, I landed it. Okay, I can share mine first. And then it's very clear to people that they have the discretion to choose something that's not gonna be so embarrassing that it ruins their credibility in any way. And people seem to get a real kick out of this. So, you know, I don't know that that's the exercise for everyone, but it's the kind of thing I would try if I've got a team of people who are maybe a little more reluctant to open up on the home

front. You know, that's interesting that you mention that because a long time ago, when we had first started some of our earlier programs, one of the things that we would do was have everyone in the group draw an embarrassing picture and hand it to the person next to them. Yes, and it just it broke the ice and allowed everyone to relax. And what was funny about it is people held onto the picture for years because after we eat, they handed it to the person of the left. Had you folded up and put it in their pocket or put in their wallet. And the joke was, no matter how tough you think you are, the person next to you has this embarrassing picture that you drew. And so there was that incident, camaraderie. And as I said, people would write me years later.

Go Look what I found in my wallet. Or do you remember this? And they held on to that. And that creates this by in that you would have a viewer in the office building those connections and that buy in is what? What motivates you to not want to let your teammates down?

Johnny, I've never heard anything like that before. And I have to ask you what did you draw?

Well, uh, let's just say that we had everyone draw a an animated picture of their privates, and they could draw in whatever fashion they wanted, so their people were very creative. But it was so embarrassing that it just everyone then had each other's cartoon private to the person. And what bargain?

All right, this this

just got not safe for work way. Could probably cut that one little slice out.

Yeah, I'm sorry I asked,

but it worked. Well, be happy. We're not on video because you would have seen I got a stack of him.

Oh, man, that's

a little bit. Obviously, remote work is not new. So in your experienced with organizations, is there any unorthodox things that organizations who are 100% remote work are doing well? That sort of break the mold for this connection, camaraderie and really building the culture that leads to productivity.

You know, I'd love to see better evidence on that. I don't think we know a whole lot about what works and what doesn't. I'd say one of the more creative steps that I've seen over time actually give you two. One is I've just learned about this recently, and a couple cos people are doing virtual home office tours. You signed into the meeting. Hey, here's where I'm working today and you know, it's another one of those small windows into what makes you a human being, as opposed to just a professional high achiever that allows people to feel a bit more connected. One of things that Warby Parker did years ago was when they opened up their first office, which was not at headquarters, So headquarters was in New York. They opened up in office. Gosh, I want to say it was Nashville er somewhere that was far enough away,

that people felt like they might be in a different culture. And they decided that one of the ways they were gonna facilitate connection was they would turn on a webcam in both offices and just leave it on, said that you could see the your co workers in the other place. And I thought that was so interesting because people would you know it sometimes on their lunch break. They just walked by and wave to the camera. They'd meet people on the other end, and I don't know how practical it is to leave open a Zoom Channel or blue jeans channel in different People's home offices. But it didn't dawn on me that if people have a protected space where they're working from that, you know, sometimes, especially if you're an extra Burt, just knowing that somebody else is is there waiting for your work or ready for you to bounce something off of them as if they were sitting next to you. I think it's a mistake that in a lot of places were only using these virtual technologies. When we have a meeting, as opposed to saying, you know we could we could be connected throughout the date of the people that we normally sit right next to you.

And there is some evidence to back this up. If you do it well anyway, I mean it. Will and her colleagues have studied software teams that work virtually, and they show that if you are online at the same hours that you are more creative and more productive. And the term they used to describe the pattern is called Burstein ISS. The communication is literally bursting with ideas and an energy, and I thought the mechanism behind this was okay. You know, somebody was responding. I'm getting ideas from them, were able to build on each other. We help each other, and that may be part of the story. But you need and her colleagues find something else, which is interesting, that it's motivating and engaging to know that somebody else is about to receive the work that you're doing and that they're right there as opposed to there being a time lag. And I think you can strengthen that connection, probably make make collaboration a little burst ear just by staying connected to people.

Well, I remember we did, Ah, creative live a few years ago, and we were up in their lunch room in San Francisco, and they had exactly that. They had webcams in all the break room's across all their offices, and anyone on their break could walk through the camera, were waving to people in New York and vice versa. And I thought, It's just such a unique perspective to connect completely remote workplaces with the team that's in another time zone who probably isn't on lunch. But they were popping in around lunchtime just to say hi to all their friends in San Francisco and vice versa, which I definitely felt even more connected with people that I had never met before in the New York office, just by Abel being able to see their lunch room and what life was like for them on another coast.

Wow, I think that's exactly the kind of step that would be helpful for a lot of people. I don't know that it's for me is an introvert, but I'll recommend it to anyone who's missing that sense of connection.

What I have also found a few people doing now is they're struggling themselves that procrastination. And I'd love to unpack the science of this as well. And one of things is there doing these group one hour zoom sessions where we work together. So you hop in the zoom. There's really no interaction between one another and you get to see each other working. And you kind of feed off that energy like you would if you were in your cubicle in a normal 9 to 5 situation where you see someone else working next to you like, Hey, I'm gonna bust through my work instead of in this environment now where we really are even more distracted. You know, you think about when we weren't all working from home. Well, it would certainly rub your boss the wrong way if you're sitting on your phone checking Instagram through the whole

meeting. I'm sorry, a j. I wasn't paying attention.

I'm right here in this. I'm shocked that we're not and we're distracted, you know, we got notifications flying on our computers. We got all of this stuff going on that's pulling our attention away. And, of course, procrastination is creeping in So, from a productivity standpoint, is someone who wants to battle back procrastination. What is the science say? What are the best strategy is for us to win that procrastination battle while we work from home.

I think you've already hit on one of the most effective steps, which is to interact with someone who's productive. There's a Dylan minor study where if you randomly end up sitting next to someone who's highly productive, your own productivity spikes by about 10% it seems like either their habits or contagious or you don't want to be the slacker next to the first and who's getting a lot done. And so I think, you know, choosing to coordinate work or interact with people who seem to be highly motivated and efficient. That's a decent first step. I've been digging into the science of procrastination quite a bit for the last few years, so my own research on it with the former student, Gee Haitian, been talking to lots of experts reading various studies, and the big aha for me was that I was thought of as somebody who doesn't procrastinate much. I always thought of procrastinators is lazy, and that's not at all with the data support. The data suggests that procrastination is is not a work ethic problem. It's an emotion regulation problem that people procrastinate because there's a task that stirs up some kind of unpleasant emotion.

It might be a task is really boring. It could be that a task makes you anxious and you feel like you know it's just overwhelming or you don't have the skills for it or you might bomb in some way, shape or form. It might be The task brings up feelings of ambivalence, and we could make a whole list of reasons why people would feel negative emotions or mixed emotions toward a task. But what's powerful about that Ah ha, is it opens up the realization that a lot of the stuff we do while we're procrastinating is actually pretty effort intensive. So if you've if you've ever organized your entire closet, you're procrastinating on something else, Okay? You weren't being lazy, right? You were doing something. You were active. It just wasn't the task you were supposed to be doing. And I think want to understand.

Procrastination is emotion, regulation problem. You can start to diagnose what are the negative emotions that particular tasks are activating for you. And how do you change those emotions? So let's get an example. What's, uh what's the task that that one of you procrastinates

on? I would say, definitely tackling my inbox.

Okay, actually, think about it right now. How many meals do you have in your inbox?

I probably have about 100 plus that need toe

respond to okay. And when you think about opening that inbox right now, I'm looking at those 100 plus e mails. What's what's the dominant

emotion, anguish, anxiety. Why? Because it's a lot of little tedious asks from other people and many times things that I don't necessarily need to be involved in or don't make me productive.

Okay, good. That's a useful example. So you pinpointed an emotion that leaves you to procrastinate on dealing with your inbox. Next step, then, is to say, OK, can I either reframe the task or change the task in a way that alters the emotional experience? So of those asks how many of them are coming from people that you actually care about helping? I'd say about half. Okay, so potentially half of those e mails are her less anxiety or anguished evoking than the other half? Yes. So I might say, OK, start with that half then,

you know, and the others that would start to wonder. Okay, Can those be delegated? Is there, you know, is there a stock response to frequently asked questions that you can generate? Right? Is there is there some way of of automating or least matching the task so that it doesn't create the emotion with every single email in the in box? Yeah,

I've certainly work towards that. You know, we've tried to move all of our internal communication to slack, and that's where I live. And that makes me happy, because I'm I'm working and moving the team forward. And right now we said this last week. I think this is the greatest time in the history of the world to network with other people because we're all sitting in front of our computers. We are not on planes were not going to events. We're all looking for a connection. But that said, my inbox is now overflowing with people trying to take advantage of that. So being flooded with networking opportunities and hey, I saw that linked in. I could do this. I can sell you something. So that's really where the anxiety

comes from. Yeah, that's fair, I guess the other thing that comes to mind then is I feel like we're in a situation now. We're just even more screen overloaded. Then we've ever been in the past because the face to face connection is is gone, and I've watched for a couple years. Collier mind Dan Ariel Lee responded this in a very interesting way. So dancer, behavioral economist He spends a lot of his time, you know, thinking about how to manage things that we do in efficiently and tradeoffs between different projects and behaviors. And what Dan will often do is you sent me an email and you don't hear back for a day or two, and you're thinking, Wow, Dan's really slacking these days. And then he records a voice memo and says, It's you and

I've got a few of these from him

where you know he just talks for 30 or 60 seconds. But it's so much more meaningful than getting a typed response. And it took him less time than, you know, sitting there trying to craft the perfect email response, and I wonder whether you know, for anybody who's inbox overloaded if you just took, let's say, 10 minutes to record 10 voice memos every day, one minute each. How quickly would you get through your inbox?

You know, that's hilarious. I know a J pretty well after working with him for about 14 years. And I know if I sent him a bunch of 62nd voice memos heat, I would get a call. One. What are you doing? You want to know? It gives me even more anxiety is my virtual voicemail. I do those audio's or boxer remember that boxer used to give me so much anxiety. Now I have to listen to you. Ramble just wrote a few words that I could read, but they're not clenching my anxiety in the workplace.

Hold on. No, you're I think you're falling victim to projection bias Just don't want to receive those. Doesn't mean that other people wouldn't want to receive

them from you. Yeah, that I would

definitely agree with you, but you could always do. Is is say you could put a little text expander in in your e mails that says My favorite way of receiving communication is a message that's in some text based form as opposed, Opposed to voice. I've learned that some people enjoy receiving voice messages and also that there are times when it's more efficient for me. So you just got a voice message. Tell me if you hate it and I won't say you're nothing.

I feel like we need another acronym for no response necessary with that seriously, like no audio response necessary. And I feel like, you know, procrastination gets a bad rap. A lot of people have that thought that Hey, listen, it's just being lazy. Why can't you find the willpower to do the task at hand? But now we're adding this whole other layer of a distracted workplace. We've been laughing about it sort of dancing around it, but kids jumping on us, not having a dedicated workspace at home that we had sort of planned out. You know, I've been on the phone with some of our clients, and they're like, I'm in a small New York apartment. My desk is literally next to my bed and I'm climbing up the walls here, and I think that's also leading to some productivity. What has a science said around your work environment and what we can do to make it more productive?

Uh, you know, I feel like my takeaway from the science of designing your workspace is almost entirely idiosyncratic. So there are probably some individual differences that we could draw some insight from. So, for example, extroverts or, more likely than introverts to be more productive on simple tasks when they're listening to music, I don't think that'll surprise anyone. I don't know how true this is for everyone, but if we go back to those preferences for integrating versus segmenting different spheres of your life, it seems to be more important for segment. Sirs have a work space that's not there. Relax ation space space where as an integrator, perfectly happy to have their you know, their phone next to their bed and they're they're laptop on their bed for a segment, or that kind of freaks them out.

But I think that frankly, too many of us spend too much time trying to learn from other people on this. What we ought to do is run our own experiments and say, OK, I've got a week coming up where I'm gonna have a chance to work in a whole bunch of different many arrangements and let me very those throughout the day and throughout the week and track my own productivity and try to learn what works best for me. And interestingly, what you enjoy is not always what makes you most productive. There's some arrangements that feel comfortable that are not going to put you in your most efficient and focus frame of mind. So I think for me, the test is always where do I find flow? You know, what's the environment where I get so absorbed that I lose sight of time and place and even a sense of self? And, um, I guess the main thing I've noticed is I am much more likely to find flow in the chair that I sat in yesterday s o Whatever task I'm doing that I found flow in today. I'm gonna go right back to that particular position tomorrow and I'm gonna keep working there until it stops working for me.

Certainly what's going to be important? And I love this idea of experimenting. You have this time figured out we were just hold What was that yesterday? That we're at least gonna be in quarantine for another month. So that's plenty of time to start some of the things that you've been putting off. It's plenty of time to figure out what works best for you. But most importantly, during this shake up and everyone's worlds being flipped upside down, the possibility is very high that life isn't going back for everybody the way it was. And there is a lot of companies who are gonna look at this ago. Why did we have a brick and mortar place? Why did we have offices? Look at what we've been able to get done. For a lot of people, this could be the new normal.

I think it could be reminding of the study that was done for a while. Back with it was people in London I think was the London tube that stopped working or there was a strike and they couldn't take their normal routes to work. And so people had to find a different way to go. And once the tube was working again, something like 1/4 of people and enough continuing with their new route. And they've been in many cases going 10 15 years. One way never occurred to them. There was a better way out there. I think that this experiment that we're all forced into right now could be a version of that where, you know, people try different ways of working. It might be a different time that you wake up and go to bed. Yeah, it might be. You know that that different workspace that you set up, it might be the sequencing of your tasks where you thought as a morning person, you should do your creative work in the morning.

But actually, the evidence suggests that often were more creative when we're a little bit unfocused. And so, as a morning person, I will often have more creative ideas at night. And if you're a night owl, sometimes you're your boldest thoughts. Come up in the morning. Once we've been kind of pushed or nudge thio, try out these different routines. We may well find that that is more effective

for us. Well, I feel like and listen to this. It mirrors so much the health and wellness science as well. It's like, yes, there are a bunch of different ways to lose weight. But you got to figure out which one works best for you in which one you constrict thio and sounds very similar. When it comes to productivity. There are some things that'll work for you, your favorite chair getting back to that flow state. There are other things that will work for others having to constantly be on the move, spontaneous and change. Why don't we take a second and pretend we're fortune tellers here? Let's appeared to the future. What are you most excited about when we come out of this, for how work will be changed and the advances in productivity and what we can achieve and what he also most concerned about as we come out of this quarantine, whenever that may be,

I'll start with the concern. I think the biggest concern is that a lot of companies, they're gonna go out of business and a lot of people are gonna be out of jobs. In some cases, it's gonna be very easy to go back to business as usual. But I've watched if you look at what's happening in the restaurant industry right now is an example. I've watched even a lot of successful businesses begin to struggle very quickly. And I worry that, you know, there's not gonna be the capital or really the energy and a lot of places to start over from scratch. That's probably my biggest fear from ah, work standpoint in terms of what I'm most excited about. I think the probably the best possible news is people appreciate things they used to take for granted. I've been surprised by the number of people who said, You know what? I kind of miss my commute, and I'm not suggesting that anyone is gonna grow to love communing. It's one of the most consistent drivers of job dissatisfaction, but,

you know, being

able to say this is not the worst thing in the world and I remember what it was like. Thio not really be able to leave my house or coming to work and see my colleagues face to face. I think that's probably something that's gonna lead to a deeper sense of appreciation once we're back more to a standard work life.

That appreciation extends itself to others and having empathy for everyone else's situation, especially when you appreciate yours that much more. You begin to look at others, and what happens when we become content is we start living on the extremes. And if you look at social media and where it waas culturally leading up to this, we were living very far into the extremes. And this turning everyone's worlds upside down puts everyone in a position to think about what is actually important and what really matters. And certainly coming out of this, that appreciation that you mentioned is going to be dear. And I my hopes, is that it extends to others as well our appreciation for others in her situation.

I hope so, too. I think we've known for a while that one of the ways people find gratitude is imagining how things could be worse. And the problem with that is for a lot of people in daily life, that counterfactual is not It's not that stallion. You don't walk around thinking, huh? You know what I'm like? I'm lucky I can walk out of my house today, and I think this is the kind of seismic event that make those memories much more accessible than they ever would have been otherwise.

I completely agree. I feel like my biggest concern and challenge we're facing. We come out of this is the mental health. Told that this is gonna take? I think we're all cognizant of the economic impact. Everyone's worried about their jobs. But even when we return back to quote unquote normal, there is going to be this isolation and emotional toll that it's taken on us and our distrust of one another. Am I going to get the virus by going into the store by interacting with people? Should I just get delivery? Should I not interaction? I'd be more isolated to stay safe. I don't think that's just gonna dissipate when the rate of infection slows and we come out the other side. I think there's going to be those fears that are exacerbated. And I hope that our leaders don't use them to their advantage to drive wedges between us even further. Certainly in situations where we're nervous about getting invisible virus, we're not quite sure who has it.

Even if you are asymptomatic, we're now hearing that you can transmit it, so I think that fear is gonna permeate and continue to permeate even when we do come out of isolation and I'm nervous about how that's gonna impact those businesses that rely on the social aspect. Yes, there are some businesses that can shift to completely remote. But like you said, there are some jobs that will just not come back as fast as we hope, because people founders won't have the energy or the capital to sink back into restarting, whether that's a restaurant or a store. Wherever those social components of business and commerce intersect, you know, they have been upended arguably forever from this moment.

Yeah, I think that's that's exactly right. And look, there's an old saying that it's hard to predict the future and historians can even predict the past. So I'm not. I'm not one to try to forecast what's gonna happen moving forward, but I think this is something we all need to brace ourselves for.

I'll always love having Adam on the show because he not only brings a wealth of knowledge and perspective, but he cuts through all the B s with science. And of course, that's what we love here on the show, always great catching up with Adam. He's one of those guys who really digs an idea. For instance, let's take an idea like value. That sounds great, Everybody. But everyone is like, Well, what proof do you have that something like that actually works, and you can always point to his books. It is wonderful. So this week showed out, goes to none other than our friend Woody Belfour.

He is quite the inspiration, and he's always joining me on our lives every morning at 8 30 And it's just great to see familiar faces be like Woody. Join Johnny for coffee every morning at 8:30 a.m. Pacific on our Instagram, Facebook and Twitter, all of which, at the art of charm, you can also email us and send us your questions, too. Questions at the Arctic charm dot com or had on over to the arctic charm dot com slash questions. We want to help you during this crisis. Now, remember, if you're new to the show and you want to know more about what we teach here at the art of charm, go check out our toolbox episodes at the art of charm dot com slash toolbox. That's where you'll get the fundamentals of networking, persuasion and influence such as body language,

eye contact, vocal tone, ality as well as some of our best episodes on building and maintaining relationships, which we all need right now. Don't forget about Ras. See challenge. It's free, and you can go to the Arctic charm dot com slash challenge to Facebook group that has over 16,000 people. And we're always there every day to say hello, and you can do all of these challenges from the comfort of your own home. So start improving your networking and connection skills and inspiring those around you to develop a personal and professional relationship with you. It's free, it's unisex, and it's a great way to get the ball rolling and get some forward momentum. And, of course,

if you want to go deeper during this quarantine, join us in our core confidence group, coaching zoom sessions every week with your group and coach Michael, who's been a guest on the show as well as me and Johnny, where we focus on building out your beliefs, redefining your story of who you are and helping you live in the present moment. To achieve those crystal clear goals, join a group of supportive and like minded Arctic charm listeners to bond and grow during this crisis. Toe learn Maur. Apply today head on over to the arctic charm dot com slash corps. That's the art of charm dot com slash c o R E. Now, stay tuned. We're gonna be dropping part two of this great conversation with Adam a little later this week. Also, could you do us in the entire Arctic Storm team a big favor,

head on over to iTunes and rate and review this podcast? It would really mean the world to us. The Arctic char podcast is produced by Michael Harold and Eric Montgomery and engineered by Sanjay and Bradley Denham, a cast media studios and sunny Downtown Hollywood until next week. I'm Johnny and I'm a J Stay safe. Yeah,