 Hi! Hi energy. Hi, so welcome to the 42 causes podcast. Today, I am ridiculously honored to be speaking to Lady Claire and Sir Connor live from, oh, I can't remember you traveled around the world so much Spain, Portugal, where are you, America, Portugal, okay, fantastic. Very jealous. I'm in the UK again. Let's come back from Cape Town. So for those who don't know Connor and Claire, it's, well, my wife would describe you as two radiators. Whenever I start with Connor or Claire, it's always like speaking with the sunshine. You get a lot of energy. It's your incredible people with two very, very different backgrounds, but sort of ended up together, married and now working together, which I'm always massively impressed when people managed to do that. So congratulations. By the fact that you're smiling, I'm taking it it's all still going well. But yeah, just rather than me trying to explain what you do, I thought possibly easier if you maybe do it yourself. So yeah, Connor or Claire, whichever one wants to start first, like just say like a little bit about yourself so that everyone knows what it is that you do and why you are so amazing. Thanks, Chris. Right back at you, feeling the love. Yeah, we run a company together called Forgewell. And what it really is is sort of a training and education company. We work with businesses, organizations helping them basically build healthier and more high performance teams. And Claire and I both have our own backgrounds. I worked for quite a while at Google. She worked at PWC as well as an entrepreneur. So I think we bring varied experience to this, but we try to approach performance with kind of a health angle as well. And you know, a lot of the teams that we work with are having some issues with burnout or fatigue. And they're looking for ways that they can kind of approach work in a more sustainable and healthy fashion. And so we deliver live trainings, online courses, coaching. And yeah, that's us. What did I miss? You nailed it. It's a sink. It's good. Yeah, it's interesting. Did the health part come because Claire, you used to, you were running this amazing food company after PWC, I remember. It was like some really, was it health bars or something? Did that link into sort of the health nutrition side of things that must have given you a different angle, I'd imagine? I think I was always interested in health and nutrition. And I started a vegan snack company that basically aimed to make peanut butter cups or like chocolate treats that you've seen on the market, but with no refined sugars, gluten free, dairy free. And yeah, so I think my interest for health definitely had an impact on the type of food I made. But I wouldn't necessarily say that it relates hugely to the course that we've ended up doing. That's more personal interest in holistic health, I would say. Yeah, I would say we're both very health conscious though. So I think that that definitely factors into it. And so we're always trying to optimize sort of our health is alongside productivity and performance, I think is crucial. I say the company was just another way where I was trying to be able to have my cake and eat it too, have all the sweet things, all the great things in life, but still be healthy. It's just another facet. You've got Connor in your life, you don't need anything else sweet. They were absolutely amazing. So yeah, bravo for making those anyway. But I mean, Connor, what was, I guess like Simon Sinek would always ask, what's your why? Like what was the reason why you decided to, it's a big move, like a big move for both of you, quitting two incredibly prestigious jobs and then deciding like screw it, let's do it. Yeah, what was the kind of, was there like one trigger moment or was it a bunch of things? Like, yeah, what was the story? Yeah, well, I, as I said, I worked at Google for quite a while. I started my career there in New York. And, you know, when I joined, I kind of came in through the back door. I had sort of imposter syndrome. I had like a very non-traditional route into the hiring process. So when I got there, I was like surrounded by these brilliant people with very fancy degrees. I felt a bit of like an imposter. And I think in that light, I was, I was like, wow, I gotta, I gotta get really productive and really like effective and efficient if I'm going to succeed here. And I loved what Google is doing. There's so many cool projects. And so I was like, if I'm gonna be able to get placed onto these, I've got to get great at working. And so I applied myself with a lot of diligence to that sort of pursuit of productivity and worked out. Well, I got promoted. We got a cool job on San Francisco on this team called Google for Entrepreneurs. And yeah, I was working with a global team. We were opening up these startup hubs all over the world. And eventually I, I got to move to the London campus. And it was when I got to London, not too long after, but I kind of fell into a team dynamic that was a little dysfunctional. And not much was happening. And I really wanted to kind of change our course. And so I just started pushing really hard. I was like leaning heavily on all the stuff I learned in the world of productivity. And I was working really late. I was working on weekends. And I slowly realized like my attitude became very cynical. I was always complaining after work to anyone who would listen about what was happening. And I just started to sense I was like, I was kind of neglecting friendships, neglecting my health, which as we mentioned was so important to me. And I just started to feel those, those sort of signs of burnout and fatigue. And I realized I needed a new approach, like kind of grinding myself down wasn't, wasn't going to do it. And so that was the first sort of aha moment when I had to take a step back and think a little bit differently about how I was working, you know, what types of, what types of approaches I was bringing to my day today. And I just came into contact with some amazing people, Jake and John from the make time book, we've included them in the course. That was really a framework. I continue to teach it today that changed my life. I got real deep into meditation, emotional intelligence, really kind of that inward journey. So the search inside yourself program, that's very famous at Google. I took and then I started teaching elements of that I think are woven in the course. And yeah, I started to change. And I started to really see the benefits. And then very kind of informally, people were asking me like, what are you doing differently? Because you don't seem so stressed anymore. You know, I got a really great promotion very quickly and was managing Europe, Middle East and Africa. That's where you and I first met. I was, I was in Amsterdam for a conference. And, and I started to realize, wow, I'm doing these small things and making a huge difference. And people want to know. And I started sharing and I realized as I shared, I learned even more and it deep in my experience, it felt good. And that kind of catapulted me to, yeah, the company where I am today. And that, you know, took me a couple of years before I made the jump. But yeah, super happy I did. I mean, Claire, did you see this transitional when you, when you met Connor was he already a Zen master? He was, you were quite a Zen master, I would say. I definitely, I would say for me, I am not, productivity is not necessarily my passion. And it's something I'm probably resistant to because I'm good at getting a lot of stuff done quickly, but Connor kind of slowly ninja them into my life with experiments and different things, which I love doing. And I think I've seen such an incredible impact with all of the tools and techniques that we've used my passions probably more along the stress management and behavioral psychology elements of it. And yeah, but the tools, the tools really are amazing. They're so simple, but they work so well. And I went from really changing mindsets from always just trying to do as much as I could, working my job, working my other company after I got home from work to really thinking about what I wanted, thinking about what would make me happy and sort of changing the way I worked. And that's been pretty amazing. I mean, I guess a lot of people must have that, probably people listening that, you know, particularly if you work in these sort of, you know, if you work in advertising, marketing or anything to do with the tech world or consulting with PwC or anything like that, they are very stressful jobs. And you know, the workloads that companies give you, kind of especially if it's big company is kind of endless. So I guess there's a lot of it, like trying to set your barriers or like trying, you know, how do you push back against a company that's giving you a lot of stuff? Do you have to just, is it as simple as raising your hand and saying, hey, I'm too busy, go away? I would say it was a little bit different from me. I had a lot of boundaries set in place already because I needed to leave my job and be efficient in my job at a decent time so I could go and work on my chocolate company in the evening on the weekends. So I had those boundaries in place already but I would say for most people that I saw struggling, they don't know how to say no. They don't know how to prioritize or to focus on a particular task. And even myself, like I definitely would struggle with it. I don't know what, I don't think there's any secret element or secret source to kind of figuring out what works. You just have to try all of these different tools and tactics and figure out what works for you. Yeah. I mean, it's like the question we face all the time and why we get hired. It is difficult. I think we partially as this culture, so we live in an age in which there just seems to be just an endless amount of things to get done. And so that kind of infects working teams and organizations and we have technology which makes it feel like we can just do a million things at once but we're dealing with quite ancient hardware in a sense. So partially it's like recognizing a little bit that humans are somewhat limited in this capacity and actually, although it doesn't, it seems counterintuitive that slowing down and focusing on one thing at a time is going to get you further than trying to do it all at once. It's really true and there's a lot of research to support this. And I think, so yeah, we do come into companies and just say like, it's kind of this false dichotomy because they say, well, we can't reduce the workload because nothing will get done. And I say, well, if you don't reduce this workload, nothing is going to get done because people are so overwhelmed and busy that they can't actually make meaningful progress. And so they're going in a million different directions all at once. I love like the diagram from essentialism, which kind of shows it's just kind of like a little arrow and then it's kind of in 100 different directions, but the arrow only goes a very short distance because when you have 100 things you're going to do, you're just getting like an inch in each direction. But if you can just pick and choose a couple of things, you can extend that and you can actually go and make real progress on a few things. So I think that's really important. The second thing is we really now see that the problems companies are having with retention and employee engagement. So like there's a real cost that companies are paying for not dealing with this like overwhelming workload. And the cost is that people leave. And like this has sped up a lot since the pandemic. It's always changing. It's sometimes the employer's market, sometimes it's the employee's market, but especially for like the world class companies, and we're lucky to work with some of them companies like Google companies like L'Oreal, you know, they're competing for top talent and for them to lose top talent because of the internal conditions is like super painful and expensive. So I think now people are really open to hearing from us to say what do we need to do to slow things down to help people feel like they're more effective. And ultimately that ties back to their bottom line. But sometimes the biggest enemies ourselves because sometimes we're just the ones internally creating a million things for us to do and we're like, oh, I have too many things, my boss, my this, my that. But a lot of the times it does start with sort of an internal sense of like take a breath, like, okay, what's actually on my plate, what's really important, what's meaningful to me. And just making those decisions like day by day, moment by moment, really help a lot. Yeah, I am it was interesting you said sort of, you know, this isn't this isn't a new thing. It's kind of been around for a long time and part of the reason is probably because of historical stuff. I mean, and then I don't even mention so we've the reason why we're having this conversation is we made an incredible course together. It's called sustainable productivity. Plug the course. Probably should have started with that. Yeah, it's on 42 courses. It's actually one of our highest ranked course ranked courses we've ever made. So the most incredible feedback from people who have gone through the course to check it out. But yeah, one of the things you're talking about is this historical kind of evolution of the workplace. I just wondered if I know we mentioned it a bit in the course. I remember just being fascinated when you were talking about it. Like, is there any way you can just summarize some of that stuff? He can he can he's well he's well first. Yeah, I mean, I think there's there's a lot of ways to kind of splice like the historical evolution of work. I mean, kind of to make it really simple. I would say pre industrial revolution. So pre sort of like 18th century, like most most people were working in sort of an agrarian economy and which meant we were just mainly like farming and doing things related to that like small jobs. And so like the way in which people approach work was quite simple and productivity was usually the result of just like having more land, having more laborers, etc. And with the industrial revolution, which sort of spawned through some amazing inventions, like the steam engine, like the cotton gin, the telegraph, the railroad, I think we all have ideas of what that looks like, you know, kickstarted in Great Britain, have a really kind of spread over the world quite quickly. Like people people's working lives changed a lot because people left kind of rural countryside's moved into what became cities to work in factories. And, you know, this kind of happened very quickly in like the span of human evolution, because we are farming for like 10,000 years. And then all of a sudden, within like 100 years, a lot of people in in in more industrial in in the western world at least moved into factory work. So what happened is like people got very interested, like how do we make these factories more efficient, because people are trying to increase profit. And so this is where a lot of kind of interesting things come up. So you can think of like Henry Ford, and sort of like the Model T as a good example of this of like, figuring out how to restructure an assembly line was like a really important innovation in that time. It's like that same time when you get the word like a line manager, because right, you have people that are managing the line the assembly line. And so it very much becomes like how many widgets can you produce per hour. And so like the countries and the companies that do very well are those in which those factories get very, very efficient, very, very fast. The problem is like a lot of those ideas, we've inherited into this new age of work. And so like the information that's kind of like that I would say the third phase that we're sort of in the sort of information economy kind of kicks off in the 60s or 70s really gains pace in the 90s as like the personal computer becomes very widespread. And then in the last 30 years with the internet, it's becoming the kind of status quo for people to work in this knowledge work. And it gets really challenging because we in knowledge work is very different because the what the outputs we make, they're not so measurable. And like one brilliant idea can be worth so, so, so much value, but it might come in a very nonlinear way. Like that might come when you're out on a walk in a park, you know, and you're in the shower or you're going on a run at the gym. But like we're still confined to this idea that we need to sort of work these sort of 40 hour work weeks, which is again an advent of the Industrial Revolution. And we're struggling a lot with trying to figure out how do you how do you measure a person's productivity. And for most of us, we just think more and more and more. And so it gets us in this idea, I'm just going to send more emails, I'm going to check more things off my to do list. And we get in this is like efficiency. And like that's what the factory was all about efficiency. But with the modern world of work, it's much more about effectiveness. It's not like how many emails as you send today, it's like, what did you get done that made a difference to our key goals and objectives? And it might only be one or two actions you took that can move the needle. But it's hard for us to wrap our heads around that. And it's hard for us to come to grips with what that really looks like. And so I think this is an exciting time because we're figuring out how to motivate how to incentivize knowledge work, how to measure it, and how to do it in a way which doesn't lead to so much burnout. I guess it's super tough if you've got, because the world's so connected now, a lot of us are working with people in different time zones all over the place. And I wonder also, whether this is kind of what we put the value on as though most people I know sort of, they're almost judged by their hourly rate. And that seems possibly wrong. I remember seeing like there's a clip that goes around about, I think it was someone who's showing an example of making a logo for someone. And they're like, you know, cool. So, you know, you want this done really fast and like, yeah, yeah, yeah, really fast. And like, cool, like, all right, I've done it in, you know, one hour, that's going to be $20,000. And they're like, well, that's way too much. And they're like, okay, cool. Like, what if I took like three weeks and I charge you $20,000? And they're like, oh, yeah, I get what you mean. Like, I want it faster, but like, then I don't want to pay so much. It's like this weird, I think the way that we value wages and value kind of your hourly rate is also probably maybe a weird, weird way to go down. I don't know what, I mean, I haven't chatted to you about this before, but I wonder philosophically, well, there's another way, like, is it outpost based or something? But then I don't know, I don't know what the answer is. Sorry, this is a random conversation. No, I think it's really interesting. And I think when you were talking about it, it gives me a parallel to how employers value employees at work. A lot of time, you're valued by the amount of face time you put in, or who the right people you know are, whether, obviously you're valued on outputs as well, but it's not, it's not so direct. And I wonder if there is a better way of valuing people just because some people are more efficient or effective and get more things done. Do they have a higher value than those who drag that same task out over a longer period of time? They should, but then there's also seen as idle in some respects as well. So it's an interesting... Yeah, I don't know if you've seen this, but because of this whole thing with measuring time, there's a whole thing of devices you can use to tap your keyboard every five seconds so that you can stay active on your team's slack or on your Microsoft teams. There's these new devices and technologies because people are so afraid that if they step away, if they walk away and some employers are measuring that. And yeah, I think it's difficult. It's difficult because we're trying to measure what matters now is problem solving, creativity, innovation, sort of navigating through ambiguity. And there are, of course, there are still roles. There are still salespeople or customer support that are measured by how much they sell or how many tickets they resolve. But for a lot of people, to quantify the value of solving a problem can be very difficult. And so yeah, I think we do defaults. And there's just a legacy historic... There's a legacy culture that exists, which is sort of just this Mad Men era, just like, how late are you in the office? And then like, are you going out to drinks with your colleagues? And just kind of all of this sort of, just, are you there? And I think there's a value in spending time with your colleagues and being there and going out and having drinks, of course. But I think most people feel really chained a bit to work and they don't have the autonomy. And I think, Daniel Pink talks a lot about that, that autonomy, mastery and purpose are really important for people to have that motivation to succeed. And I think autonomy is, is really, really important in this. But yeah, measuring people's time and quantifying it is very hard. And incentivizes the wrong behaviors at the end of the day. Yeah, I agree. I mean, one of the things that it made me think of, you were saying there's a program that automatically taps the keyboard to show that you're still, you know, working active. It reminded me of like, maybe that's another use for chat GPT can sort of plug an API into like, create fake conversations with your work colleagues. With things like chat GPT coming along, I mean, particularly people working in the, in the creative space. I mean, I get a feeling it's about to revolutionize a lot of things. In that like, if we're looking at the stuff that we're looking at right now isn't perfect. But I mean, if this is kind of a version one, and it's already been used in so many incredible ways, you know, what's version three, four and five going to look like it's going to be quite scary. But what, what do you, how do you think these kind of things might impact, you know, things like sort of stress and productivity in the workplace and sort of the stuff that you talk about the sustainable productivity things. Do you think it is going to be something that, that helps or that, that maybe makes things more difficult? I think it can go both ways. I mean, one, like, it's certainly going to accelerate the, the change in the workplace. And I think we'll continue, like we're already seeing a lot of sort of like menial labor being automated. And I think, I think that's going to be a very easy thing for AI. So like a lot of jobs that don't have intellectual, they don't have a human intellectual element will be very easily automated. So that creates on one side, it's a positive because it means that hopefully more people can work in jobs that are more interesting and more fun and more challenging. And it's not just like typing, typing numbers into a spreadsheet. But then this also creates another, another challenge, because I think many people aren't necessarily prepared for that autonomy and that responsibility. And I think that's where the tools we teach and sustainable productivity are, are really important because you know, when you do have a really simple kind of, all right, just, you know, chug through this or do these three things, it's kind of mindless. Like, you don't really need the, the sort of focus and the energy that we're talking about in the course. But it's more when you enter into that place where it's like, this, you know, all the busy work is gone. So like now we're just left doing the hard stuff. Well, like that's where these tools really matter. And I think there's, I think they're going to be super helpful for us in terms of supporting our creativity, helping us connect new ideas. You know, I'm seeing a lot of, a lot of really cool stuff happen from, from groups I follow on Twitter and that, you know, journaling with ChatGBT. And I do think, I don't know if ChatGBT, but I think AI in general will help with the wellness and the stress stuff because we're getting closer and closer to having understandings of biomarkers and behaviors that might point us to earlier stages of, you know, the exhaustion and fatigue before you get to stress. So if we have tools like that, and if that is more broadly available, then we might be able to educate people and people can have, you know, in the same way that you might have the Apple Watch tells you every 30 minutes, you should stand up and like move your body a little bit. You know, we might see that there is, you know, AI that's able to tell you based on your work output, hey, like, you know, you've been sat here for three hours, you did two, two and a half hours of meetings, and now you're answering emails, like, we can tell that your, you know, your speed of comprehension or cognition is going down. Like, we're going to force you to take a walk and you're like, oh, you know, that would be the hope is that these things like support us in being more human. That would be genius. Imagine if you, you had a sort of your, your own AI assistant that looked after your calendar and it just pushes back automatically to your boss and says, look, Claire and Connor are really busy right now. Three weeks time. Yeah, I think it's a nice idea. Yeah, conversation. I'm not sure that something like that will happen. Yeah, there are some like, I see reclaimed.ai is like a kind of AI enhanced calendar that that does, you kind of give it your inputs, how much focus time you want, and then it will kind of nudge you and tell you, look, you have too many meetings, and then you kind of rate yourself so it learns about you better. I think that's amazing because I've spent like 10 years taking little notes and reflections and trying to figure out like, when's the best time to do this work for me? Like, how do I feel on this day? Is this a good day for that meeting? How many meetings is too much? And it's very, you know, kind of ad hoc and it'd be great to have tools like that that can help you and just be like, you said, you've said 10 times now that if you do more than four meetings in a row, you really feel like shit. And so we're not going to let you do this meeting and you're like, oh, thanks. Thanks, AI. Thanks, AI. I wanted to write the letter to my boss, though, telling me. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, there's honesty. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Who's your boss, Chris? Who's your boss? Just a ping. What's up, Jake, for you? Yeah, I mean, Jake is all the people I work with. But there was one thing I think it was clear you mentioned earlier when you were chatting, you were saying that it's often hard hard to stay focused. And I know one of the things that you mentioned in the course, which I loved is like, I think you call it a one minute reset. Is that right? Mm hmm. What's the, what's, tell me how that one goes. Well, tell, I know how it goes. Tell the people how that one goes. So I think with the one minute reset, essentially, I've actually totally forgot this one. But I think, I think where it is, it's the one minute reset. Should we take a one minute reset right now? Yeah, we'll take a one minute reset. But whenever you're feeling, yeah, whenever you're feeling overwhelmed, or you're doing too much, or you feel like you're just in your emails, taking a one minute reset to kind of step back, take a scan, see what you're doing, see if you're actually focused on what you want to do before you take a deep breath and actually go back into it can be really helpful. And like, there's a huge piece where, you know, our bodies and our minds are so connected. And using that one minute reset to do some deep breathing can really slow down the body function, slow down the mind function, and actually put you in a much more focused zone to be able to move forward. That would be my remembrance of the one minute reset, but feel free to. Yeah, that's fine. Yeah, that's fine. Which is now just a nice thing to do when you're like, you know, you just find yourself deep into something that's not very important and you're feeling feeling that overwhelm. I always, I like to just shut the laptop and just like even close as many tabs and and just do like a little cleaning of the of the desk, but like in a virtual way, cleaning up the screen. That's really nice. And yeah, we don't talk about this in the course, but there's there's there's another cool tool you can kind of pair with that, which is to basically look off into the horizon. So yeah, basically when you're focusing, like there's a real optical part that's related to the eyes. So like when you focus, you're looking at something that's very close. And so that that triggers all these like neurochemical reactions in your body to to kind of pay more attention and like releases some cortisol and some epinephrine adrenaline to help you, but like you can't stay closely focused on something forever. Most of us probably can't do it for like two minutes, but generally, you know, with practice, you can do it for an hour, hour and a half. And then if you look at something like far off in the horizon, it basically gives you like an optical reset and it allows your eyes basically de-focus. And as a result, your eyes are like attached to your brain in a literal sense. So you you feel a sense of like, like decompression. And that can kind of give you just a little bit of a pause to decide what's the next most important thing, because I think that's we kind of freak out about productivity and prioritization. And we think we have to have these perfect plans and like have to have everything dialed in. But like really, when it comes down to your day is just like lived in these like five minute increments where you're like all of the focus and like you keep doing it, you keep doing it, but then you just can kind of go way off course. And all you really need is like that one minute reset is so nice. And you can do some tools like that to just be like, all right. The last hour on TikTok wasn't worth it. But like, what's the next five or 10 minutes going to look like? And like that can, all you need is like five minutes to change your day in a huge way to start back in on something important. We did it today. I was honestly having such a shit day, like I'm like two days, three days off of caffeine and feeling like doing a little bit of a elimination diet. And I'm just like, Oh, and I went out to Claire and I was like, I just I'm doing nothing. And she helped me like put stuff on paper. And we're like, what's one thing I made a little cup of tea. And then you just kind of, all right, let's get back to it. So I think these things, we do them every day and we're not perfect at all. There's no like, no perfection in the system. I think that's the thing that become integrated and sorry. Go ahead. I was just going to say it's amazing how these small, it's these small things that can have such a profound impact. And that's a sort of, you know, whenever we chat, I always pick that up. It's like, it's not, you know, often when you, when you get into these problems, you, you know, sometimes it can feel like overwhelming. And then just like, wow, like, where do I even begin to start to try and fix this? And it's whenever I chat with you both, it's always really lovely to see that there are actually a lot of these things are very simple things that you can do that have a profound impact. So yeah, anyway, sorry. Yeah, I think we're just, we're just simpletons. So honestly, anything complex, I've never been able to keep. And so this maybe other people can do that. But I just, I'm like a super basic person. So they get that. But I think they are just things that end up getting integrated into your life. And like, whether you call it a one minute reset, you call it a deep breath, you call it looking out into the distance, which also has benefits of leaving you a lot more refreshed at the end of the day. They're all little things that become part of your life that you don't even realize you're doing anymore, but have such a large impact on your overall well being. Yeah. And I think just the way that you, the way that you put things together in this course, and I'm sure in the workshops that you do is so lovely. Because I mean, when you, you know, if you look up sort of productivity online, it's just sort of full of these like, super hectic apps that sort of mostly scare the bejesus out of me. And it's just so nice sort of listening to people who just say things in plain English and don't make it seem so overwhelmed. I mean, is that, is that something that you, that you come up against when you're doing sort of client work? It's like, oh, yeah, like we tried this, I don't know, really expensive, some overly complicated thing. And it's just sort of actually hasn't helped us like, they're like, we worked with McKinsey last year, we had this really expensive project, but nothing's happened. No, no dings on McKinsey. But I think that, that typically that does happen. I think Kona has also a unique skill set where he is able to distill all of this information that he has in his head into a very, very simple way that people can understand. I'm always really impressed by it. I think when clients see him lead a workshop, he gives them digestible content that they can understand. But it's also really practical, and you can put into place right away. And I think that's always something that sticks out to clients amongst above anything else really. Yeah, I think I was going to say, when my wife took your course, I mean, one of her big takeaways was that kind of finding her golden hour. She just said that that made such a big, big difference in her life, such a simple idea. Yeah, it's a simple, it's a simple one. And they make sense. They're almost like, they're kind of, yeah, we always say that's like, they're like, most of them are common sense, just not common practice. So when we come into companies, it's like, I don't, there's not, if you've been, if you've, if you've, if you've studied self development, if you've, if you've looked at this at all, like what we're going to tell you is, you know, you might learn, what might have a couple of tricks up our sleeves, like the horizon stare at these things that, but like mostly it's like slowing down, choosing a few things each day to focus on, like blocking out your distractions, taking breaks, getting away from the screen, energizing. And yeah, I think, you know, we do come up with it, like we come up against it with clients, because they, you know, they do want new things. But I think what we try to share with them is like, it's like, this whole process is just about like forgetting and remembering, forgetting and remembering. And we're just there to like, kind of remind and help people remember, like, what's important to you. And a lot of people know that, like a lot of people know what, like their values are the principle, like they know things, but they're like, they get, they get distracted from it, right? And like, what are the things that energize you? A lot of people, like intuitively, they know those things, but they're just like, Oh, right, like I needed that reminder to go on the afternoon walk or to call a friend and I'm feeling a bit down. And then also just the reminders that like, you're, you're in control. And that, that's probably what we've heard a lot recently is, is when we come in and we're, we're kind of advocating for a more proactive approach to your, your workday, like being, being proactive with putting breaks onto your calendar, being proactive with scheduling that golden hour and telling your colleagues, like, there's no way I'm doing a meeting or this hour, like this is, this is the hour I'm going to do something really important. And a lot of, a lot of people come back to us and they're like, Oh, right, like I do, I am able to say that I'm taking this hour, I am able to move this meeting. And so I think sometimes we just, you know, we just get stuck because we kind of fall back into a pattern and we feel like life is happening to us rather than for us in a sense. And so we, I don't know, I think a lot of what we're doing is just reminding people of these things and, and showing them these things work, you know, it just takes practice and you don't have to be perfect. You just have to keep starting again, starting again. I love that. Well, just, just to summarize in case people don't know what it is, the golden hour is basically like your, your sort of best, best hour of energy. So like, you know, depending on who you are, like, some of us are going to feel great right after we wake up. Some of us are going to feel great in like the kind of seven to eight o'clock window, like it really depends. The majority of us, it turns out are more inclined towards the morning. And so basically figuring out like, when's your highest energy? And then figuring out like, what's the most important? What's like the biggest thing you want to do? What's the most like fulfilling task or project you want to spend on and do it in that time? So it's just like that principle, like time is very relative. So it's like an hour for me, from like four to five o'clock, it's not equal to an hour from 10 to 11. So I'm going to be much more careful in the morning, 10 to 11, that I'm being, you know, spending that time well and when wisely, because I know that it's very relative. So I think that's how it, how I explain it. Yeah. Do you have out of interest, do you both have different, different golden hours or are they kind of the same? We're both pretty big morning people. I would say our best hours are probably nine till 12. Right. Maybe earlier than nine. But yeah, those morning hours are very important for us. So we try and schedule meetings or any kind of internal catch ups. We do that later in the day and try and get creative work, writing time, everything in the morning. I know you're a night owl. I find, I find I can think very clearly in the morning. And then, and then I can, I can do stuff maybe a little bit easier later on. And I think for me it's, it's often, I think it's probably the same whether you're a morning person or an evening person. I know that's a gross simplification, but I'd imagine the commonality between the two is that often it's about finding these times when you know you're not going to be getting loads of emails and like having notifications picking up at you, even if you can't see them, you kind of know that there are certain times of the day when things are just quiet. Often when you find these, I don't know whether you get the same thing. Often when I'm, you know, if I take like an hour in the morning, or maybe like from nine to 10 or something, and I'm just doing thinking, part of me is also a little bit anxious that, oh my God, during that time, I know there's going to be loads of things coming in, even if I can't see them, even if I turn off the notifications and then when I see them, I'm like, ah, why didn't I do that? Like now I've got to catch up on all this stuff. Like how do you, how do you, yeah, but then you've just, you've just done your, like, I think it is a, it is a, it is a tension and like you've, everyone's job is very different, right? So like you're running a company, you have employees. So, you know, you take all the advice we have with a grain of salt and you have to apply it to, to sort of your own life. I mean, my, my general feeling is like, if I've used that hour, the highlight time, the golden hour in a good way, I feel so accomplished and fulfilled that even if I come out of that and I've got a bunch of emails, it doesn't bother me because like I have, I have the rest of the day to kind of go after those things. I, I think I also set up an expectation with my, like the people we work with, our clients, our team, that we're a bit slower to respond. Like we're not typically like, we're going to reply right away because we think we, we, we prioritize like thoughtfulness and space to reflect and like a slower sort of more purposeful approach and like that comes at a cost of sort of responsiveness. And so I also don't worry so much if clients of ours, you know, I, I say to my email signature, I'm like, it takes me two days to kind of get back and, and this is, this is how we operate. And to be honest, most of them tend to love it because they're like, this is great. And I've seen them, I've had, I've had a lot of people, I stole that from someone on, on Twitter. And I've had a lot of people copy that for me as well, our clients. But to answer your specific question, because we know you're also do a role where you have to respond to customers, which creates a very different need. If you can think just as well as you can in the evening, and that works for you and you have the space to do it, that's your time. You, you take that evening time to work. If you can do it in the morning, you really like focusing in the morning, do it two to three times a week and have the other times. The best part of this is like, you can really design it to whatever fits best for you. So I think, like Connor said, you just take everything that we've suggested with a pinch of salt and just experiment to figure out, and that's one of the biggest parts of, of what we teach as well, just keep on experimenting, keep on iterating, figure out what works for you, different times of your life, different parts are going to work better for you. So just take it as a constant experiment. Yeah, yeah. And I love, I love your, the other thing I use all the time after taking your course is, is time blocking. So such a small thing, but so powerful. And also, I think it's something that most people can do quite easily, particularly like when you, most people have shared, shared schedulers now, nowadays in most companies, they're really kind of in the cloud and shared all the time. So you just like say, you know, put in, don't, don't put in like necessarily thinking time, like just make the title something serious. Why that hour is blocked out in your, in your diary. But I used to do that at PWC, just be like, important meeting proposal for the CEO. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, brilliant. But, um, yeah, look, thank you so much. I know we've, we've, I've taken up a lot of your time. So I really appreciate you both taking the time to, to say hi. It's always an absolute honor. And yeah, I mean, for anyone is, he's, doesn't know, for Claire and Connor's work, you know, go check out the Sustainable Productivity course, or visit forgewell. Is it forgewell.com? Or for daco, daco cutting edge. Yeah. We're so effective for dropping that. Yeah. Awesome. And yeah, forgewell is F O R G E W E L L forgewell. Yes. And, or you can look them up on, on Twitter and all the other normal social media things. Yeah. Yeah. Is there any, any, any, any parting words of wisdom from, from yourselves, Claire and Connor? Anything, any sort of top tip you, you've learned that you want to lead, lead with people or any favorite quote, anything can be anything. No pressure. You go. I mean, yeah, I, I got a million things to say, obviously. Just kidding. I mean, I'll also plug our, our newsletter, 1% wisdom, because this is, this is like the same, the same idea I come back to all the time. So you can, you can find that on forgewell. It's on substack. You'll, you can just Google that. But yeah, I think when we're approaching, thank you. Thank you. I think when approaching like any of any big goals or like we're trying to get more productive or get better with our well being and our wellness, it's very tempting to want to just go all in and do everything all at once. But it's really hard to sustain that and most people fail and then most people give up. And kind of the name 1% of wisdom, how we came from it is, is one part is we, I'm super inspired by James Clear. So he talks a lot about this in atomic habits, which is like, if you just dedicate yourself to 1% better every day, it's exponential growth over time, 37x in a year. And that these like small actions create these huge compound results over time. And I've seen that in so many facets in my, in my work life and my fitness and my personal life. And the other twist to the 1% name is Patabi Joyce, who's a very famous Yogi often said that yoga is 1% theory and 99% practice. And I think that's the same for these ideas and self development as a whole is like theory, theory is fine and great and ideas and it's all very helpful. Our course is packed with them, but ultimately it's about taking action and just like practicing these things. And so I just, that's my, my motivational way to end for people is just to try to think like what's 1 thing you can do that'll like bring you closer to the direction of your goals, like make it small, make it repeatable. And yeah, if you miss, if you screw up, like don't worry, just start again. And something I'll just add to that is I think people just should give themselves a break. You know, we live in a system that we talk about in the course, it's broken. We live in a system where it's structured for us to do more and more and for us to be on that treadmill. So yeah, just give yourself a break. Do like Conor said, 1% changes, small changes every day and they will have an impact over a long period of time that you won't even realize you're making. Perfect, perfect. So if you're listening to this, take a break and stop what you're doing. Look into the horizon and from ripples, waves will appear and your life will change for the better. Yeah, that's a nice one. Thank you Chris. Thank you Chris. I hope to see you again soon. If you're ever in the UK, let me know and I'd love a good excuse to go to Portugal. I miss the sunshine. You're welcome anytime. Thank you, thank you. I'll see you tomorrow. Thanks so much again. Cheers. Cheers.