I'm I'm saying Burgh, welcome to the podcast.

Thank you for having me, Paul.

It is great to have you on.

We've got so much shit to talk about.

Whenever I looked into your bio and the stuff that you've done, you know, the first thing that struck me is that I think that you're a fellow p academic.

Yeah.

Yeah, I can't.

I made it up to describe myself, right, But I looked at you and.

I'm like, there's a fellow pracademic right there.

Yeah, yeah, I'd like to think so, And.

When did you When did you kind of I know it wasn't no vert, but when.

Did you think this is what I want to do.

I want to be not just doing working within an organization.

I want to actually be bringing lots of research and knowledge to wider communities.

Was there a point?

I think probably pretty early on in my career, so in my twenties, after I finished what was like a life sentence in organizational psychology, that is, at university.

No, it was just seven years.

You don't get that for murder, I don't think.

But anyway, it was a long time at university, and I just I was struck by the fact that when I got into like the real world and my first proper job was in advertising, working as a consumer psychologist, I just couldn't believe how much great stuff there was in all the academic papers that i'd literally been immersed in for seven years at UNI, that I'd learned so much from, and then no.

One was using them in real life.

But I just thought, this is so strange because even just in the field of consumer psychology, and you know, my field.

So much broader than that.

Now, I'm like, there's so much.

That we can learn from this and that I can help brands utilize to you know, improve their brand image and improved by a behavior.

So it was I.

Guess it was a mission from pretty early on in my career to go, let's actually bring all this great science and make it super practical.

And obviously, you know, for the last couple of decades I've been applying that more in the workplace and helping people be more productive, helping them feel better and you know, do better work.

For consumer psychologists, so that's interesting, right, And how brands can influence us to.

Buy their products.

What's the sneakiest little trick that you have come across in consumer psychology.

Can you think of one in terms of priming people's brillands as you're thinking about it.

I once saw a presentation by guy and he was asking us whether we preferred watermelon or banana, right, and like ninety percent of the audience said watermelon, which is highly unusual.

But then he chilled us a few slides back where he had done a microflash of a watermelon on the screen that was too quick for you to consciously recognize it, but your subconscious pretty and actually picked it up, like holy shit.

And there's a whole heap of priming out there in psychology.

Is there anything that jumps to mind about how brands can influence us in ways that we're not consciously aware of.

Yeah, look, it reminds me of a study I read.

So I used to be really into the psychology of just people's in store retail behavior, and there was quite a well known study that was done looking at how could you influence people's behavior in a bottle shop selling alcohol?

And they played different kinds of music on different days, and I remember, you know, when they played French music, the bottle shop sold more French wine, you know, whereas when this all you know, played other types of music that would influence behavior in another direction.

So you know, I do think the priming research is very interesting, and in that case, you know, being primed with music.

Yeah.

I also remember when I studied neuroscience then telling us about oxytocin and hi a light touch and particularly across the back of the shoulders actually built trust and could influence behavior.

And about three days before I had been in a close shop that was quite fancy that had a seal on and I normally wouldn't have bought any stuff, and I remember that the shop assistance she put this jacket on me and she went, oh, that's a really nice fit, and just lightly rubbed her fingers across my back and I ended up buying the jacket.

Right.

But then I've noticed that when you go into story they do that sort of shit.

Right, That's funny because like if a man did that to me in the shop, I would think pre cram.

Maybe it works the other way.

I don't know, I think, yeah, probably, I think it would be creepy the other way.

But let's look, let's talk about I want to talk about three of your books, right because they piqued my interest, and the first one is your book, The Health Habit.

I think a cheerlidest one, isn't it?

Yes?

It is yes?

And so you you.

Talk all about there about about little hacks and habits and things that we can do around our health.

And and I often talk about the knowing doing.

Gap that exists in people, like most of our listeners thinking said it's sitting here know what they need to do right around their health.

For some it will be I know I need to exercise more, and some will be I know I need to drink less, I know to give up smoking, I know I need to eat better.

And what has there been.

A gap in your life that kind of stimulated you to dig in to this research where you've been for a while going I know I need to do this shit, but I just haven't been doing it, and that you've used a little technique that you talk about in the book.

Hmmm, that is a That is a good question, because I think what I've done, and I've been doing this for years, is that I've I've simply because I'm so familiar with the psychology of habit change that I just kind of naturally apply that in my life when I'm trying to change your behavior.

So there's there's at any given point in time, there's probably not too many behaviors that I'm like, oh, that is very problematic.

I really want to change that, because I'm just constantly hacking my way through, Like you know, an example of that is, you know, I've had a very regular exercise routine for many years.

Like we're like probably in terms of like resistance training, which is all the rage with certainly, you know, we're like I'm in my late forties, so certainly in that bracket.

I think a lot of women are just starting to learn about the importance of strength training.

But I have been doing.

That pretty consistently, about four times a week for about six years now, and simply because like I'm able to just create these you know, psychological hacks in my life that just make it fairly automatic.

And likewise with cardio training, I actually hate cardio training.

But I've got a really expensive exercise bike and I know I should use it, but I really don't enjoy it.

And so a few years ago I thought, well, how can I hack this?

And one of my favorite strategies is temptation bundling, where you yeah, where you pair the unpleasurable activity, the thing that you know that you have to do and change it to something you want to do by pairing that thing with something that is desirable, enjoyable, pleasurable.

And so for me, one of my guilty pleasures is watching the US Bachelor, and it has to be the US version because like maximum bitchiness.

Extra tuckiness.

Yeah, exactly exactly.

And at the time, like, I was really into that show and I would feel very very guilty sitting on the couch and watching it, like.

It was just a terrible feeling.

And I thought, well, why don't I know, pop my iPad on my exercise bike and I will have a rule that I'm only allowed to watch The Bachelor when I'm on the exercise bike.

And suddenly I started to really look forward to being on the bike.

Because I'm like, oh, I get to find out what's happening.

I get to find out who's getting roses and ooh exciting.

And it meant that I would get through seasons of The Bachelor very very slowly, and I would read all the spoilers before the end of the season.

But it did not detract from my enjoyment, and it turned the bike riding into a very strong habit.

I actually did a very very similar thing like Zone two cardio.

I forgat hate it.

It just bores me to tears, but.

I have to do it because I had sort of recent issues with my heart, so I had to do it.

And I've been doing CrossFit religiously.

I love it and I hate Zone two.

And I thought I bought myself an exercise bike and I stuck it in the theater room.

And it's like I'm only allowed to watch the EPL soccer if I'm on the back.

That is the gig.

Because it bloody well works right, and it's but you have to have the discipline, though, don't you, Because I mean, this is the easy thing.

We are very good at talking ourselves out of intended behaviors and and pulling up all sorts of reasons why we can't.

Right.

Yeah.

Look, I like to think that there are ways to avoid rely on discipline or relying on will power.

I mean, like I happen to be very high on conscientiousness if we're looking at, you know, like the Big five personality traits.

But I don't think that.

That should be the key when we're trying to change our behavior, because if we're just relying on discipline or will power or just being a really conscientious person, I think we're setting ourselves up for failure because there are going to be days that are just crappy days where you're feeling really stressed or unmotivated or exhausted, and you don't want to have to rely on this thing, you know, willpower or discipline that can be quite fleeting.

So I so that's why I think temptation bundling works really well.

And you know, there's other strategies that we can talk about.

I also think it's great for parenting.

I've got an eleven year old daughter around I, you know, and and there are many things that she does not enjoy that she just needs to deal with, like having her hair brushed.

And she issued was that all eleven year old girls hate having their hair brushed, and so she's like, can we temptation bundling that?

Can we temptation bundle the hair brushing please, mum?

And you know, where she gets to do something enjoyable, like listen to an audio book or you know, watch five minutes of TV while I brush your hair.

And so temptation bundling is like a really big thing in our house, and it's very good for parenting.

Oh no, no, I agree.

And in the school holidays when my kids were younger, we had a rule that they had to get sixty activity points before they were allowed to get on a screen, right, And so they had to actually go and get it done.

When I was talking about the discipline, I meant the discipline to keep with the tempt with the bundling and not to unwine the bundling.

Right.

So if you've said I'm only allowed to do this, then it's got to be a ruler.

I'm a big fan of having occasional not too many occasional rules.

Right, I'll give you, I'll give you an example of this and then and then you can let me know if there's anything similar that you've done.

So cold shares, right, very good for you.

And I don't particularly like the cold particularly having moved from from Northern Ireland, but I read a whole heap of research on cold sharers and I thought I need to do this stuff.

And I started initially saying I'm going to do it four days a week.

And what I find is that on a Monday morning, I'd be standing in the show and this, and I'd be going, right, I got to do my cold shoar, and this little voice would.

Come in my head and go, it's only Monday.

You only have to do it four days a week.

You don't have to do it today.

And it then turned into a willpower fight.

Right, So I created and if then behavior.

If I have a show, then I turn it to cold for thirty seconds and made it a rule.

And because if it's a rule, then you just have to do it.

And I don't like to overuse those rules.

But is there anything any sort of strategy that you use like that?

Yeah?

Look, I I operate really well with rules, definitely, but I know.

The conscientiousness coming here.

Yeah, that's right, and I can I if something is really black and white, like for example, I, you know, it's completely addicted to sugar and like for most of my twenties and thirties and probably teenage years as well.

And I realized it was becoming a problem a few months after my daughter was born, and I thought, I just have to I have to quit this behavior.

Like I you know, one night, I think when Frankie was three months old, I was craving sugar or chocolate so badly, and I like, you know, looked in the pantry and the fridge, it couldn't find anything.

And then I thought, oh, well, there's this tupperware container of raw sugar in the pantry.

Maybe maybe I'll just have some raw sugar, like how bad my addiction was.

And I got it out and I got a taste burn and I started like he's burning sugar into my mouth.

And at that point in time, my husband, he's now my ex husband, not for that reason.

He walked in and I saw myself through his eyes and I just thought, ah, I need to stop.

And so I just I set a rule for myself.

I just said, I don't eat sugar, I don't eat chocolate, I don't do dessert.

Like using that kind of self talk with the language I don't do this is incredibly powerful according to research, and it certainly worked for me in terms of really quitting sugar.

But what I was going to say for those that don't operate all that well with rules, and I find that people they're either you know, really good with rule based kind of things in their life or they're not is I've read some great research around the power of whole passes and hall passes is the concept I think is traditionally applied to marriages, where like, you know, you talk about your celebrity hall pass, like, oh, you know, if you know, if I could have a night with such and such, that would be fight, and like that is a hall pass.

I don't actually think that it works in marriages all that well.

Not that I've tried it, but.

Hall passes work really well when we're trying to adopt a daily, let's say, healthy behavior for ourselves.

So there was one.

Particular study that recruited people that had a walking goal and they looked at them for a period of thirty days, and they tracked how many steps they took, and everyone had a goal I think to do about twenty percent more than their current average.

So it was a bit of a stretch for everyone, and one group they had to meet their target every day, and the other group were actually given two hall passes per week, so there were two days that they could pick in each of those four weeks of the study where they didn't have to hit their walking goal.

And what the research has found is that those that had that hall pass option actually ended up walking more steps than the everyday group.

And when they had a fail when they didn't meet their goal, they actually bounced back more quickly, And so I think it's a really good strategy for people.

You know, like you talk about the shower goal.

Obviously that was only four times a week, but if that was, say a daily goal, then I would say, okay, Paul, why don't you give yourself two whole passes and Monday just might be a whole past day because it avoids that oh what let psychologists call the what the hell effect?

Oh yes, I've you know, binged on chocolate, so ah, what the hell?

I might as well?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yes, yeah, that's exactly.

Have your year on a great trend for like four weeks and then you have a weekend of shit and you go it's all over.

I'm useless, and yeah, the baby goes open the bath wad.

I love that And bodybuilders because I used to interact with a lot of bodybuilders, not that I was one, but and they would talk about cheek days a lot and the importance of those chea days.

And I think it's that little there's a little psychological thing in the back of your mind in that I don't have to be one hundred percent right.

I actually use that when I'm talking to people about nutrition.

I talk about a Lohhi diet as in low human interference, but the eighty twenty RUW which we use in our house.

And I have a nineteen year old boy and I sorry, nineteen year old girl and a fifteen year old boy who self regulate around the eighty twenty round.

So about eighty percent of the stuff that goes in your gub should have been alive recently and minimally interfered with by humans, and the other twenty percent is your treat stuff, right, because we all need to let loose a little bit, you know.

I don't think he can be one hundred percent discipline one hundred percent of the time.

That is, I think that's a recipe for orthorexia, which is this new kind of diagnosis that's come out about obsessive exercising and eating.

I think people can go down that path.

So yeah, I love that idea of whole passes and what other Oh, actually.

There was one you mentioned a little bit earlier on.

We were talking about I do and those sorts of things which kind of links it into identity.

So how important is it with you around identity?

I've worked with people before and you know, if they if they want to lose weird or they want to stop smoking, I'm like, you've got to visualize yourself as a non smoker and beg that part of my identity, why would I have that cigarette because I'm a non smoker?

And what's your thoughts on that whole identity thing and trying to create that identity in your head and a bit of mental imagery, whether that plays into it.

Yeah, our identity and how we see ourselves is so important because as humans, we're just programmed to not want to act in a way that is inconsistent with our own self identity, how we see ourselves, and we're just going to programmed that way.

So it's a useful thing to take advantage of.

I know, for me, like I I grew up all through school, I wasn't a very sporty kid.

I was pretty.

Uncoordinated and I you know, and my self identity was that I'm well, I'm I'm not fit, I'm not strong, I'm unco and that was my self identity.

And you know, in my twenties, I you know, like a lot of women, I thought well that you know, I should go to the gym because that's important, and you know, exercise makes you look better and all those you know, unhelpful things that I think, you know, particularly women are fed, although you know, I think more and more men are getting fed those messages as well.

And then, you.

Know, I think it was Yeah, it would have been in my forties.

I think that something clicked where, you know, I was doing a lot of the strength training and I was getting you know, really good gains on the lifts that I was working on.

Not that I was you know, bodybuild or anything like that, but I started to see myself as really strong and really fit, and particularly for my age group.

And I think that that was really really helpful in me very much prioritizing exercise in my life because I do see myself as strong, and I do see myself as fit, and I see myself as someone that really enjoys movement now and that I'm good at it.

And therefore, if I, you know, have a week where you know, like unless I'm sick or something, if I have a week where you know, I don't go to the GM or I don't exercise, I feel really uncomfortable about that.

And to be honest, it just so rarely happens because it's part of my identity.

You met in your DNA.

No, right, it really is.

It really is.

And at first it's a bit of a psychological trick because you know, if you go from no exercise to exercise, then you're kind of going to have to pretend, kind of fake it till you make it if you like.

But there will reach a point where you make it.

I you know what, I like a little tweak on that fake it until you become it.

Hm.

I love that, Yeah, because there it's part of the identity.

Right.

What other little strategies have you found to be really effective for people, whether it's around food or exercise, or sleep or any of those sort of health habits.

Man, I could go into any one of those.

I mean, I'm very passionate about sleep, So.

For me, let's dig into that then, because I think there's a lot of people who have shit are sleep right.

So I I was someone that in my twenties and also in my thirties, I really struggled with insomnia.

So I remember in my twenties I was living in Sydney for a fair chunk of my twenties and in the advertising job that I mentioned earlier.

My daily commute to work involved driving from my home is about like twenty thirty minute drive going over to the Sydney Harbor Bridge and to the agency that I worked at in North Sydney.

And I remember one.

Morning I was on my normal drive and I was feeling exhausted, as I always did, and you know, it was about eight am, I think, and I remember thinking to myself this random thought.

I thought, I wonder if there are some people who right now are not actually feeling exhausted.

And it dawned on me that maybe this constant feeling of exhaustion that I just felt all the time, I would never wake up feeling refreshed.

I thought, maybe I'm the abnormal one here.

And so I got to work and I googled sleep doctor Sydney and I made an appointment to see a sleep doctor and he then ordered a I think they called polysomnographs, where essentially like an overnight sleep test, which is just like there, you're.

All wild up.

It's like you take it insomniac and then you attach about forty wires to them and goes sleep sleep yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And I remember I was done, I got about five hours sleep, which I thought, oh my god, I can't believe I slept at all.

And and I went back to said sleep doctor to get the results, and he said, the good news is that there's nothing physiologically wrong with you, like you don't know sleep happening, You don't have you know, any of the various sort of sleep disorders that one might have that can cause insomnia.

And he said, but the bad news is that it's psychological and there's no magic pill that we can give you to fix that.

So what I then started to do, you know, essentially prescribed, if you like, by this sleep doctor, is sleep reduction therapy, where yeah, where he's okay, I want you to tell me, like, how many hours are you spending in bed a night?

And at the time, I was getting into bed at about nine pm and staying in bed till about seven am, so a ten hour shift, and that sounds really long.

But my rational thought process was, well.

The longer I spend in bed, the higher the chance I have of actually catching some sleep.

So that seemed really sensible to me.

And then the sleep doctor asked me, well, how many hours of those ten do you think you're actually asleep for and you know, at this point in time, I didn't have an aura ring, so I was just guessing, and I said, I reckon about six hours.

And he said, okay, here's what you're going to do for the next few days is you are going to keep your wake time.

You'll get out of bedtime the same seven am, but you are only going to be in bed for six hours, given that's how many hours you think you're sleeping, and so you were going to stay up until one in the morning.

And my jaw hit the floor.

I'm like, I don't I don't even know how to do that.

That I did it.

I did it for a few nights, and by the time I went into bed at one am, I was exhausted and I fell asleep and I slept for those six hours, because what you're training yourself to do is to associate your bed with sleep as opposed to ruminating and catastrophizing and stressing.

And then, so how sleep restriction therapy then works is that once you are staying asleep for that period of time that you're in bed, you can then get into bed so half an hour earlier.

Do that for a few nights, and then you know, keep essentially winding the clock back until you're in bed for however many hours you think you need, you know, which for most people is between seven to nine hours.

Yeah, no, that's verty cool that because it builds up the sleep pressure, right, And actually that there was a professor at i'm pretty such Victoria University who devised this ring, which I actually got as part of his study because just because I was interested in it.

And basically, you would put the ring on it night this is for insomniacs, and you would get into bed and it would buzz after fifteen minutes, and then you had.

To get up and get out of the room and.

Go and sit and read a book until you've felt tired, and then you get into bed and then boom.

The same thing would happen again.

And that would happen four or five or six times until the sleep pressure built up and built up and built up to.

The point where you're like, oh, why is this frigging ring going off?

And then but this sleep pressure was so great that then boom, these insomniacs fell asleep and within a week cured people of insomnia.

Right, So thank god, I love that.

I love that and That's such an important strategy because you do not want your bed to be a place that you associate with like rumination and stressing.

As I always say in workshops, your brain needs to know that your bed is where you go to sleep and if you're lucky, a bit of boofty mcgoofy every night.

It's not for television, it's not for laptops, not for more both phones, not for ruminating.

So get your ass out of bed and go and sit down into the sleep pressure and it's the best of that.

Right for people who struggle with sleep.

Let's talk about because we talked a little bit about identity, there are what about values.

Have you done any digging into the idea of linking behaviors.

Or goals to personal values at all?

Hmm?

Yeah, Look, I mean it definitely matters.

I think I've wrote a little bit about this in The Health Habit, and I have written a little bit about it actually in the most recent book that I've been working on.

It doesn't come out till mid next year, but it's all about energy and how can we come back from burnout and exhaustion, and certainly if we are thinking about our values, actually just even identifying a couple of values that makes us more likely to act in line with those, which then ultimately gives us more energy and happiness.

So certainly there's like there's a strong link there, you know, I do.

I am a big believer, you know, as cliche as it sounds in just remembering, just like why am I doing this?

Why?

Yeah?

What's my wife?

It's such a cliche, But I think where it's important is like when you are just sort of you know, bogged down in the minutia, you're feeling overwhelmed or stressed, or you're procrastinating.

I know, I find that really useful, and I think that's sort of you know, it's adjacent to your values.

Really yeah, I like.

For me personally, values and aligning thos with your behavior.

It's like, for me, one of mine is authenticity, and Maris and ex military are like a tipple, right.

And the one thing that really pulled my alcohol back was linking it to being authentic because I'm a corporate speaker and I talk about peak performance all the time, and I thought I'm being inauthentic if I'm on the stage telling people about peak performance and drinking alcohol four nights a week, right if you even if you're and lots of people do, right, it's just a few glasses of wine.

And I thought, well, actually that's not consistent with those values.

But one other thing that I think is underappreciated in the area of health behavior change is about personal accountability.

And I'll tell you a little story and then get your view on this.

This is the nuclear option, right, And I've used this on a couple of people and I found it's almost full proof.

And it was through a self experiment tation that I was for all my life I've been between eighty and eighty two killed when out all my life wasn't an eighty kilo baby.

But you know, since I was an adult eighty to eighty two kilos.

And on my fortieth birthday, I went back to Ireland and caught up with a whole bunch of meutes, spent ten days in Ireland and reacquainted myself with Guinness.

Came back home and stood on the scales.

Just after Christmas, and I was eighty four kilos, which I'd never been in my life.

So what I did is I thought about this and then I went to a maid of mine.

About three days later, a guy who I respected.

I took a.

Thousand dollars out of the bank, right, which was significant money to me then, and I put it in an envelope and I gave it to him, and I said, if I don't send you a photograph by the end of January of me standing on the scales at eighty kilos which was my fighting weight when I boxed right at eighty kilos, you are to take that thousand dollars and you're to put it into the collection box of the nearest Catholic church.

Right.

The reason for that is I'm a recovering Catholic.

I was brought up as a Catholic of Northern Ireland, and I really.

Do not like the institution right now.

And the reason why I think that's important.

And then I find this this thing called Kick.

I think it was.

It was about habits to know if you ever come across that.

Website where you you would set a goal and you would and then ascribe a certain amount of money, and you would have a third party who and who would say and that money would go into an escrower count and if you didn't achieve that goal by a certain date, that money got given to a charity of your choice, Right, And I thought, what a cop out that is, because you're actually going to feel on a behavior and feel a little bit good about it because you're actually giving it to charity.

I thought, no, no, no, no, no, give it to something that you detest.

Yeah, And the whole idea of that is about.

Combining those things around human behavior, which is the desire to achieve the goal and the fear of missing out on something as well.

Right.

And I don't know if you've seen the bisbas stuff about some people are more motivated around the desire to achieve something that some people are more motivated about the fear.

But the closer we get to the goal, the more we go into the fear of missing out.

So I thought, that's the nuclear strategy that drives both those things, because you want to achieve the behavior, but it's like, there's no way.

I'm giving my money to that person or that institution.

Yes, any thoughts on that and any other little nuclear behaviors that you've come across.

Look, I mean that's very effective.

Psychologists call that a commitment device, and it's a hard commitment device when money is involved.

And you know.

I've used them myself.

I've got friends and even teammates.

I know that I had one teammate that was trying to change her behavior around something.

She was trying to read more books and she.

Is a crazy mad Leads supporter and Manchester United to the devil and she I think she was going to do something if she didn't make this goal.

I think she was going to buy herself a Manchester and take a picture.

Yeah, take a picture of herself and put it on the socials.

Luckily she met her goal.

But I think it's I think it's very effective, you know, Like look, one of my one of my favorite ways to try to redesign your behavior when you're trying to do more of something or trying to do less of something, like you know, let's just take like you know, I think a lot of people have the goal to spend less time on their phone and don't scroll before bed, and you know that obviously, you know, does have an impact on our sleep.

Is to what I talk about in the health habit as changing the default.

So however you set up your environment, if you think about your physical environment like your home environment or your office environment, and your digital environment, like what's happening on the homescreen of your phone, for example, we're programmed to do whatever the default is.

So let's take not scrolling before bed.

If you charge your phone next to your bed, which the vast majority of people do, the default behavior then is to just keep scrolling until you, you know, fall asleep with your phone on your head or whatever.

But if we can change the default to make the default choice the one that we're trying to do, like the desirable choice, if you like, then we're much more likely to succeed at behavior change.

So just by making the simple change, which I know so many people have, you know, we talk about it a lot.

Add inventium to our clients is just charge your phone in a different room.

And even like if you're trying to say, cut down on mindless scrolling throughout the day, if you have to think about, like how many minutes during the day, and I'd be curious for you, Paul, like how many minutes during your waking hours, let's say sixteen hours during the day.

Is your phone not within arm's reach?

What do you reckon it is?

For you?

Yeah, it's it wouldn't be a SHETLLD.

My phone is often around, but I do make a conscious effort to keep it away on weekends, right, But it has to be it has to be conscious.

And yeah, because it's like I mean, it's like our phones are like an extension of ourselves.

And so I heard this tip from a guest I had on the How I Work podcast and his guy professor Adam Alter, and he said, the more you can design your environment to have your phone not within arms reach, yeah, I love it, the easier it is to stop unhelpful scrolling behavior.

So, you know, I try to think about that in my own life.

I'll often, you know, I reckon, I've probably got a good few hours a day where my phone is not within arms reach, Like I'll deliberately leave it in another room to where I know I'm going to be for the next few hours.

And that just dramatically changed my relationship with my phone.

I think.

I think it's hugely important today because people just get sucked into the vortex stimting.

It's really interesting.

I mean, I've read a frightening statistic the other day that in America, the average amount of time that.

Teenagers spend on their phones is six hours a day.

Yeah.

Yeah, And I've started talking about this in corporate workshops, right, six hours a day.

If you extrapolate that over your life and assume that that's a consistent behavior throughout your life, if you live to the age of eighty, which most of us will surpass, that is a total of twenty years on your phone, every second of every minute of every day for twenty years, Like, is that the life that you want?

And then you can just you can do the low Well, if it's two hours a day, if it's three hours a day that I'm on my phone, that's a decade of your life looking at frigging other people's lives, living very curiously through them.

It's just preposterous, isn't it.

But what you talked about, that whole environmental setup, I actually I really like that setting up your environment for what you want.

And I like little behaviors that are enabling behaviors.

And I'll tell a little stories, see if you've get anything similar.

So years and years ago I decided because at a corporate workshop, I remember talking about two people and it was like, you know, what do you do when you get home?

It was about that, and.

So many people said I change into my pajamas.

I was gobsmacked about how many people said they changed into their pajamas or their TACKI decks or whatever.

And I thought, what Jesus, The whole priming effect of that right is sit down on your arse for the evening, have a glass of wine in front of the TV.

So I then I instigated the behavior that I have to this day that even if I'm traveling, I come home at eleven o'clock at night, I get changed into my exercise gear.

Right, I'll get changed.

Into my exercise gear even if I then take it off to go to bed, because the whole prime and I think you have to make it.

It's one of those things.

I make a rule and I find that you get changed into your exercise gear.

That little priming is about your active right have more emotion.

And then I started changing my exercise gear and do thirty squads and it just changes your energy instantly.

Is the little texts or techniques that you've used or find in the research that are similar to that that what I call enabling behaviors that then eneable another behavior.

Yeah, I'll take that a step further.

So, so my consultancy Inventium so where we're Behavior changed training company.

So we work with corporates help them change behavior for the better.

And about five years ago now, we decided to become a remote first organization, so we got rid of our office leases in Melbourne and Sydney around the time that COVID hit.

We're already hybrid, so we're used to working from home and we just thought we're just going to completely remove officers from the equation and we just work from wherever, which is for most of us, are home.

And so I'm you know, I'm speaking to you now from my home office, which is also where I do the How I Work podcast and you know, anything Inventium related.

And you know, generally, because I spend my days, you know, unless I'm out doing keynote speaking or you know, in the Melbourne studio doing podcast interviews, I'm generally just at home, so I can only be seen from the waist up.

So I will almost always have like leggings or trackies and my sneakers on underneath.

I generally, I'm you know, I'm a pretty casual dresser, so I've often just got like a T shirt or a sweater or a jumper, so it's essentially active wear.

And I do that because I know, if I'm wearing my sneakers, I'm much more likely to just go for random walks during the day as opposed to going, oh, well, I need to get changed out of you know, my jeans or my heels.

Not that I own high heels, but you know, theoretically, it's like I always just want to be ready for movement.

So that's that's kind of how I've tried to change my default behavior.

And it's been really deliberate and it's been really really effective.

To let me show you something funny.

Yeah, so for those who are just lessening, I'm wearing a polo shirt on top, and I've got shorts and trainers on and all the time, and I do my podcast here, I do zoom.

Meetings here, and I'm always the butt.

Just two minutes before I call, I run in and put on a decent looking top and take off my exercise.

So we are completely aligned on that one.

That's funny, Okay, So let's let's let's shift over and talk about another area of expertise of yours and your book time Wise And I love this And one of the reviewers said it is the Oscars for management thinking cool is that ship when you heard that.

Oh yeah, yeah, look that that was an award I want.

Actually the think is fifty Award for innovation, So that was that was also very unexpected, that award.

But yes, like lovely lovely, Yeah no, that.

That's pretty cool.

So so you in there, you know, there's the whole thing.

Work smarter, not harder, right, So give us some little tips, just random ones that you can think of from the book, Like what what are some of the most effective strategies or techniques that you have found, whether it's about increasing productivity, whether it's about reducing procrastination, staying focused, getting into.

Flow, you know, choose your choose your adventure.

Yeah, look that the ones that that are just completely ingrained for me.

Let me go through a few.

Because I've literally on the How I Work podcast, I've probably heard thousands of different strategies at this point in time.

Look, working to your chronotype is a big one, and it's something I've done for years, so I think that you know, more people are kind of a bit familiar with chronotypes.

But essentially it's like are you a morning person, are you a night person?

Or are you somewhere in between?

Like at its most simple and what I can do, I'll send you a link to put in the show notes so people can self assess what they might be.

And you know, the important thing is is that you know, so many of us when we think about our work days, is that we're playing defense.

You know, we're responding to whatever meetings have been put in our diary, whatever phone calls are incoming, emails that are incoming, and it's like, you know, we're we're you know, it's like we're playing whack a mole.

I kind of think, but to con you do the sporting analogy where we can be most effective rather than playing defense and.

Just being like, oh okay, we've got to deal with that.

I've got to deal with that is actually.

Playing offense and thinking how can I proactively design my day so it's going to actually be in line with when I am most alert and when I am focused.

And so I'm what it's called a lark.

I'm like a morning person.

I you know, without an alarm, I naturally wake at about six am, sometimes six point thirty.

And so for me, I know that when I'm thinking about my most important work or my deep work, like call Newport writes about, I am at my peak.

You know, between about sort of eight to eleven AM, and so I typically won't schedule meetings for that time, and my assistant knows not to put meetings in my diary at that time unless they're like mission critical, because.

That's my deep work time.

Like that's when I'm doing my most important work where I really need to focus.

So that's one thing, and that is just completely ingrained into how I work.

I could not imagine working in a different way now something else.

And you know, look a lot of productivity people will speak about.

This is just the power of timeboxing.

So when I am thinking about my deep work, it doesn't just say deep work for three hours in my diary.

I've actually booked meetings with myself to work on the things that I know are the most important things I need to be working on right now.

So like, I'm looking at my diary at the moment, and you know, I need to, you know, work on a particular web page and marketing strategy for a new product that we're launching in a couple of weeks, and so I have got a two hour meeting booked with myself tomorrow to do that.

And so what impact that has is that when I sit down at my computer tomorrow to start my deep work session.

Is I'm not procrastinating.

I'm not going, Oh, what should I work on?

What's it right now?

Instead I'm like, oh, it's in my diary.

It's a meeting.

You wouldn't like see a meeting with someone else in your diary and going I don't know if i'll attend or not, like, of course you're going to attend.

So I find that that really works the same for me in terms of just keeping me accountable, keeping me focused, and trying to reduce procrastination.

Do you know the other benefit I find of time boxing, because I'm a fan of that as well, where you actually you know, I'm a big fan of lests, and I'd have these lists and stuff, but then I started just putting them in in times in my diary, and I realized that my realgious optimism bias was manifesting itself because I'd be going, Oh, get this done and this done and this done, and then just consistently behind the ball and realize that just I'm overly optimistic about how much stuff that I could get done, so so that I think I totally agree on both of those things.

I am like you.

I'm a lok.

I do my best work early in the morning, but that time boxing was really really helpful.

And I want to say, just on that poll, I remember I've had cal Newport on how I work a couple of time Oh cool, I have, And I remember I asked him about, you know, just how do you get accurate with time boxing?

And I know from his experience he said, the more you do it, the more.

Accurate you get.

And what I actually do for myself, and I've certainly found that to be true.

But I will always err on the side of overestimating, like by at least half an hour, because that way I can really feel like I'm winning because typically it won't take me as long as what I've got in my diary.

And it's kind of, you know, it's like it's rigging the game so that you win.

But you know, from a motivation point of view, that feels really good.

Absolutely Like the people that don't time box, I would say, overestimate how much time you think something is going to take, rather than setting yourself up for failure.

And the other thing I would add to that is scheduling regular breaks.

You know, I'm a big fan of of.

The whole idea of cognitive gears that that when you're fresh and your your mind is fresh, your energy is good.

That's when you do the difficult stuff right, the deep work, the strategic stuff, the creative stuff, and then you just do you're running the mill stuff and whenever you're you're you're less cognitively fresh.

And the thing that brought that home to me was the study of judges and it was a huge So I don't know if you you've come across this.

Judge people people.

Coming up for parole, right and what they find, just for the listeners is that there you were way more likely to get parole if you got to the judge first thing in the morning or just after they've had a break.

And the worst time to go in front of a judge for parole was just before lunch, at the end of the day, when we're cognitively drein because the brian becomes more negative.

Right, Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

I also do like to, you know, think about making the big decisions in the morning for that reason.

You know, when we are typically fresher and.

A lot of people the first thing they do in the morning is they check their email and they're doing low quality work, they're doing gear for work whenever they're breeding.

Is actually primed.

And I actually think, and I say this.

More and more that if your eyes hit your phone before your feet hit the ground, your life is screwed.

Like how many people then you'll have seen it.

We'll just wake up in the morning and they'll and and again, this is the whole idea of your phones besides your bed.

And they'll wake up.

In the morning, they'll roll over and they grab their phone, and they're getting inputs, inputs, inputs before they even think about their day, before they think about how they want to show up, Like all of that's gone, and and jesu, it's just the amount of people who do that shit.

It's just unbelievable, isn't it.

Sure it's great for productivity, is it?

It's terrible.

It's terrible.

Like you're you're basically starting your day to let other people set your priorities, which is not a good thing.

No, it's not a good thing.

So so let what about distractions and any little techniques about managing distractions, so particularly for people who work from home, right and and and I'll put my hand up and confess to this before my wife gets on the tail.

So it's I get distracted by by two things.

I get distracted by the news, and I get distracted by sport, whether it's soccer, EPL or boxing.

There am I distractions?

So what what advice would you give to me?

And I'm kind of going to sit like this because I think and it's going to be uncomfortable.

Well, look, like, firstly, don't rely on willpower when it comes to distractions.

So I think like one of the more effective strategies that I've found, and certainly you know something that we have worked with many many of our clients on is getting website or application blocking software on your computer and say that so, I mean, look, it's it's like it's a brute Corse technique and it's really really effective, like you can't override it, but it's a bit of a pain in the ass too.

So the most popular ones freedom Freedom Dot two I think is the website.

I think that's still the most popular one.

My favorite on the phone, I mean, you know, look, you can change your settings now, you know on iPhone and Android devices to lock yourself out of things.

But I do really like the app Forest, which is forest is in like trees forest, where you program it to basically.

How it works.

Let's just say you want to do sixty minutes of deep work.

You set the tim around forest for sixty minutes, and during that time it grows a digital tree.

Oh and if you check your phone during that time, you kill the tree.

And yes, it's just a digital tree.

Although I think they're donating real trees.

I think somewhere real trees.

I think they are.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, but it's like you kill the tree, and no one wants to kill any kind of a tree, even if it's digital.

So I found that, like when I was trying to train myself many years ago, I found those two things really really helpful.

Probably though the thing with my phone is that just keep it out of arms reach.

That's that's really the thing that works best for me.

Yeah.

Yeah, I actually charged mine on the other side of the room.

I started doing it because I was charging it there, and it's just I don't know if you saw the research on called it's called Briandry in the paper.

If your mobile phone is currently sitting on your desk upside down on silent, it reduces your working memory capacity and your fluid intelligence aby at least ten percent, because they're just attention thieves, aren't they texting?

They could be like on Instagram post you should check.

Yeah, exactly, Sorry I cut you off there.

You were about to say something else.

Yeah.

I also really like advice that I got from near El, who is quite a well known author.

Yeah.

I've had him on the podcast.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I've spoken to him a couple of times, and he talks about like just writing the wave of discomfort because you can feel it coming on when you know the thing that you're working on feels hard and I want to just relieve myself with a quick scroll on the socials or checking the news.

And he says, just like set the time up for ten minutes and just be aware of those uncomfortable feelings and say to yourself, look, if I'm still feeling this way in ten minutes.

I will let myself scroll on the socials.

And typically ten minutes is about.

Long enough for that discomfort to pass and then you just get back into flow and you can keep on going.

So I find that that's quite a helpful simple strategy to use.

Yeah, no, that's very good.

And then flipping that towards the end of the day, whenever you walk into your house and the little voice in your head goes.

You've had a hard day.

You need a glass of wine.

You go ten minutes.

I'm just going to weit ten minutes.

I'm going to do twenty squats and I'm going to we it ten minutes.

And it's not food proof, but there's actually very very useful for people who have that, and a lot of people have that automatic.

You know, it's six o'clock, it's wine, a clark.

It's just getting through that that I think is really useful.

Now we are almost out of time.

I did want to ask you one thing, because you have another great book about the creativity formula.

Can we switch on creativity?

Can we warm our bar brallins for creativity?

Just one question on this?

Yeah, one hundred percent.

Like when it comes to creativity, it's gosh, it's about thirty percent genetically predetermined, but the rest is up to us.

A certainly, my favorite hack for thinking creatively is just going on a phone free walk where I've got a problem that I'm trying to solve and I just walk in silence and I ponder and I see what thoughts come to me, and almost every time I will return to my office with a fresh set of ideas.

M Yeah, interesting.

I remember reading about the neuroscience of the Aha moment, and it's about gamma activity in the Brian.

But just before that gamma and that Aha moment, the Brian had to be an alpha state.

And what you're doing in going for a walk is you're reducing your stress.

You're taking your brain out of beaten, You're putting it into alpha state.

So I love that, Yeah, because it's just it's the way the brain works, right, Very cool, I might say this is this has been awesome.

We can talk about this for ours because there's a whole heap of stuff that you've got.

I can't believe you've got another book on the way.

That's that's pretty cool.

So where can people go to.

Find out more about you, about your books, about your workshops, about INVENTINGUM in general.

Where do we send them?

Well, if you're into kind of you know, self development improvement stuff, check out the How I Work podcast.

And for me, I am very easy to find on the socials.

LinkedIn is probably where I spend most time.

So Amantha imbat like Samantha with out the s and like Timber without the tea, and my LinkedIn generally leads to all sorts of places like the Inventing website and Theamantha dot com website.

So that's the easiest awesome.

We will put that in socials.

Thank you for sharing your wealth of knowledge and keep being an awesome procademic.

Thank you, Paul, thank you