 to have with me as a guest today, Connor Swenson. And Connor is the CEO of Horgewell, co-found with Claire Deenan. They work with leader teams and leaders to sustain high performance. And he is also host of a brand new course that we have with 42 courses, available productivity. So just before we start properly, I will just ask you all if possible to mute yourselves so that we don't get any chat in the background whilst I'm talking to Connor. Thanks very much. And so despite huge advances in technology, AI, robotics, we're busier and more burnt out than ever. And in some studies, we read they say that more than two thirds of employees globally are not engaged with their work. What on earth is happening? We're delighted, as I said, to have Connor with us here today. And Connor, for the people who've joined us today who don't already know you, maybe you can give them a little introduction about yourself, your background and how you came about creating Horgewell. Sure. And welcome everyone, and thanks for the introduction. Yeah, I'm originally from the US, born and raised in Minnesota, currently zooming in from Lisbon, Portugal, our new home. But I think my story with this course and these topics began when I joined Google in New York City. Pretty soon after graduating university and I came in to Google through a back door. I like to say a very non-traditional hiring route. I kind of eat my way in and I felt a lot of imposter syndrome when I got there. I looked around and people have these very fancy sounding degrees and were very brilliant and bright people. And I thought, wow, how am I going to succeed in a place like this? And so I started looking for answers and this is when I first fell into the world of productivity and time management. I was trying to figure out how could I get better at work? How could I not just keep up with the pace of Google but perform at my very best? And a lot of the things I learned in those early years were helpful. I got more efficient at managing my emails and my inbox, more organized, more structured. However, I started to realize that the more I kind of focused on just productivity, the more I started to just feel exhausted and tired and maybe people on the call can relate. It's like you show up to work, you open up, you know, maybe your emails open up first thing when you wake up. But you get to the office and it's just back-to-back meetings, endless calls, the inbox is always overflowing. And the race to get through everything is never won. And I started looking for new approaches. And I moved with Google to San Francisco where I met Jake and John who wrote the book Make Time, which I'll be referencing in the course. Those were some of the early inklings of changing my approach to productivity and time management, putting efficiency to one side but focusing more on how I could be most effective. And then a lot of it kind of snowballed into when I moved to London in 2016 with Google. I joined a team culture that was a bit toxic and I did what I knew best. I turned to productivity to deal with the stress of a team that wasn't really performing. And I burnt myself out. I started to become really cynical. I wasn't engaged at all. I just felt kind of helpless and I would complain forever and always to anyone who would listen about my predicament and I realized something had to change. My life was by suffering, my relationships were suffering. So I started to dive a little bit deeper into untangle. Some of the inner issues I was facing and I started practicing meditation and mindfulness. I started really moving my body a lot more, exercising more, taking care of my mental health. And I started to see that I used to look at that type of stuff as not productive because it wasn't helping me check off to do this. But I started to realize, wow, the more I take care of myself, manage my own mental and emotional health, the more present and engaged I feel that work, the more effective I become. And I was really happy to find a new approach and I started seeing success. It led to some amazing promotions and eventually I wanted to share what I was learning with the world. So I left Google, I started Forgewell just around the time of the pandemic. I quit two weeks before we heard of COVID-19. And the last three years have been amazing. So we, me, my wife, a team of talented facilitators, we work with companies like Google, my ex-employer, L'Oreal, Squarespace, We help these teams kind of find that balance between well-being and performance and help them be burnout. So it's always hard to wrap up a 10-year sort of story in three minutes, but I am looking at the clock. I think that's probably enough of the bio to get people interested. So I'll stop there. I'm sure there's plenty of people on the call, Connor, who really understand what you're talking about. And I heard you say there that you were balancing efficiency versus being effective. Yeah. What, how do you categorize the difference between those two words? Yeah. You know, it's a tough one. There's nothing wrong with being efficient. I think efficiency is about sort of saving time, getting things done as fast as possible. But it kind of applies to anything. So you look at your to-do list, you have 50 tasks, how efficiently can you clock through all those tasks? But it doesn't really ask the question of like, which of these tasks is most important? Like, which of these truly matter? And I think effectiveness is more about focusing on the right things. And often in the world that we live in, it comes that we have to sacrifice some of the efficiency. Because when we get stuck on this sort of hamster wheel of trying to churn through every email in our inbox, it leaves us drained and there's no time left over to focus on the big important stuff. So I advocate for a different approach, which is start by asking yourself what's important to you, your team, your family, your community, build that into your calendar, build that into your routines and worry less about finishing everything under to-do list, emptying your inbox. It's a game that really can't be won. And I think we have a, I talk about this in the course, but we go back to Frederick Taylor, who's very famous in the world of time management. He came up with a theory called Taylorism and he was around at the time of the Industrial Revolution. He literally, Luis was in factories with a stopwatch blocking people seeing, if I give them a slightly larger shovel, is that going to increase the efficiency of the person digging out, you know, coal in the pit or working in the factory? He was literally doing this and he birthed this new industry, which was amazing. It gave us, you know, really effective, really productive factories. But when you think about it, we've applied some of these ideas that are 100 years old to our modern day work, which is so different. It's much more important to be creative, to think laterally, to be strategic, to collaborate. And a lot of these things aren't done when you're thinking about how can I most efficiently do this? What's the quickest way to save off, save a few extra minutes? And so I try to kind of dispel some of these old ideas about efficiency and productivity. I think, you know, I still use some of these tools. I still think there's great ways to be a bit more efficient to do things, nothing wrong with that. But I think if you're only focused on that and you forget to ask yourself, well, what's really important by spend all day doing 100 tasks that don't really matter? And I totally ignore the one that does. Have I been that effective? Probably not. Good answer. And I'm sure things there that, as I say, lots of people are relating to comments that you're making, because of course we all go off into the workforce. We start jobs, we've been interviewed, but very few of us receive any kind of training in terms of the how to actually how to do your job. You know, just as you say, the managing your emails, choosing where to go, choosing which tasks to do first. Yeah, this is one of the, you've hit it on the nose. It's one of the major challenges today is like most jobs that we're doing haven't really been done before. It's not often a playbook for many jobs in the sort of knowledge economy where we work with our minds. And it's very difficult, even for people when I ask them to write down the lists of we do an activity in our make time workshops called Stacker Inc. Your Life. And we say, okay, put on your list, like what are the big projects and areas of responsibility? Not your to-do list, but like what are the sort of spheres of work that you've got? And even that's difficult for people to conceptualize because a lot of people, you know, the research shows that in a normal day, a person works across nine different spheres. So nine different projects or areas in a given day. So you might wake up and you manage a team. And so you might think one of my spheres is just dealing with questions that are coming from my team. Okay, then you might sit on a leadership committee for diversity inclusion that meets every month. So then you have some tasks over here to do this. Okay, but then the main part of your job is maybe running this global marketing team. So you have to think about what's the overall goal for the year? What are our key campaigns and creative projects? And to see it gets very complex for people even to think about like, what are the projects that I have and what are the areas of responsibility? And I think that's why it's very easy to just be very reactive at work. And it's very easy to just wake up and look at your emails as a sign of what you need to get done today. But oftentimes the answer of what really needs to get done, it's not always staring at you in your inbox. It's that sort of project, that thing that is in your mind, but it's kind of getting pushed off someday, maybe when I have time. So yeah, I think conceptualizing knowledge work also just figuring out how teams work together, you know, the medium in which we work is very important. So when a team works only in Slack, it's a very different style of work than if a team works only in email or only in face-to-face meetings. And most teams never have a conversation about how are we going to effectively collaborate with all of these tools? Which tool works for what? Maybe no decision has been made and is that shared, because I get this all the time from people at large companies I work with. It's like, I'm trying to get some work done, and then I get four different messages in Microsoft Teams. And if I don't reply to them in five minutes, I get 10 more. And if I don't get that, they email me, and if I don't reply to the email in 20 minutes, they call me. And it's like that is just so overwhelming for so many people, because it's never been addressed of like, what are our expectations with all of this? And it's a big challenge that we don't have all the answers to, but we're trying to unpick it for teams that we work with. They're great subjects that you've brought up. As you say, even just addressing things like whatever is your productivity tool that you're using, just basically having an agreement as to what's the time period within which we expect people to respond. It's just basic little things like that. But as you say, there's so many different productivity tools, it's hard to set a rule for just one of them. Yeah, and it's changing so fast. People, their big problem was email, and for many people it is today, but now I work with a lot of teams that they don't even touch email. So now Slack is the challenge, and Slack has been around for 2016, I guess, six years. In five years, there's going to be a whole new suite of tools, and so we're constantly having to sort of adapt. And I think this is tough. One of the benefits perhaps of working in a factory was you had people whose job was to help you become more efficient. And maybe they didn't like that because they were watching you with a stopwatch and saying, Louise, you made 20 widgets yesterday, but 12 today, what's happening? Let's go. But you had people that were spending time thinking, how do you become more efficient? Whereas now in Cal Newport, who I love a lot, he talks about this too, it's like somehow this has now become each individual's responsibility. So each of us now has a personal responsibility, it seems, to manage our own productivity and to figure out what tools we're going to use, and what are our processes, and we have to keep on top of it because there's new tools and new ways and people are joining. And in big companies, there's reorganizations, you have new teammates and new collaborators. So I think the smartest organizations are trying to offload that from employees a little bit and say, yeah, we can teach you a few personal tools, techniques that you can use. But we, as a company or as an organization, we're going to have some guidelines and we're going to help you guys, we're going to think about how we all communicate because it's kind of everyone left to their own devices these days. And that's a big challenge, I think. Well, obviously we don't want this to just become a sort of chum fest where we all agree that all of the problems that we do have and we're all keen to chat as well about solutions. All of you who joined us today and say you're very welcome and do please put your questions into the chat for a corner. So starting to sort of turn it and be a little bit more solutions focused. Chris and I were chatting actually before this about the whole subject of procrastination. And then Nina in the chat there's also talking about procrastination. So what would you say would be sort of your first approach in terms of advising somebody who says, you know, I just really seem to procrastinate on things and never get down to or like you hide your worst job at the bottom of your list and that type of thing. Tough, a tough one to crack procrastination. You know, it's an avoidance strategy that I think we all use. And it depends like on the tasks so it's like, maybe we're procrastinating on something because we don't actually know where how to start. Sometimes that's sometimes it's very practical for people it's just like, they have a big challenge, and they it's too vague. So my advice would be okay. Think to yourself or if you can't talk with one of your colleagues and just figure out like, what's the smallest, like, most obvious next step that I can do, and build yourself kind of, you know, an on ramp into that project or work because it's really just, it feels too vague that and we're like, it's like, we would give ourselves finished presentation but we're like, shit I haven't started the presentation so like okay what's the first step and and think about that so that can be good. The second thing it can be, you know, there's just a maybe a fear of failure I think a lot of procrastination is more, more of an emotional decision. So, if it's a, if it's something that's just that there's some fear that like, well maybe if I do this, I won't be good enough or maybe this presentation is not going to be as as smart as the one that I saw my co worker gave last week. In that case, I would tell you reach out to somebody, find some support and just share with them like look I'm trying to trying to figure this thing out. Could you help me could we talk through some ideas on this. When we're isolated and alone which way too many people are, we forget that our most valuable resources often another human being. So when there's sort of a fear behind it and I think you should talk to somebody. If you're procrastinating it for a long time you might just ask yourself, is this is this actually important to me. Because sometimes we just don't we look at a task and like it's just, I don't want to do it it's actually and then over time you might just feel like, oh I procrastinated long enough that it's no longer an issue and in which case I think procrastination can be a good strategy. So, I think to Chris's point to is it needed. Yeah, for creative work. I'm not sure. I would say that you need to necessarily procrastinate but I would say that a lot of creativity is not going to come at your computer. So, in the work day, a lot of it is going to be is going to come while you're out on an afternoon walk while you're in the canteen having a coffee with your coworker while you're in the bath or the shower on the treadmill in the morning. And we really do need to make space and make time for that in our lives because creativity is is often happening when we are, we've been thinking about a task, and it's been absorbing our attention, but then we're doing something else, and the mind is almost magically picking that thing and then you have aha moments. And that's the that's a problem in today's world is people are so back to back, so busy and then anytime that we have free time we're tethered to our devices that we're not giving our mind that time and needs to just tether and just kind of be an open space and so, you know, a lot of famous creatives going back generations had practices for this of, you know, long afternoon walks or taking weeks off and going on ski trips and in the Alps is a is a, you know, these types of things that you think oh this isn't productive but it can be very creative. My last tip my favorite way to be procrastination I do it a lot is I join these virtual co-working sessions. I use focus mates are flown two of my my favorite companies I know affiliation but these are they both work you sign up you get matched with other people, and you do a live session you say Luis, my goal is, I'm going to finish a, you know, the brief for this agency, I'm going to send it out. You have 50 minutes and then Luis goes I'm finishing my taxes and I go good luck and we put ourselves on mute, you're in a zoom room and you work and at the end you go and tell them and did you do it did you not, and it's so effective for me personally. I love using that technique it's a lot of stuff going on there social pressure, the accountability of speaking what you're going to do having a time restricted window. So I love virtual co-working, and it's blown up in the last few years so I recommend trying it if you haven't. That's really interesting Connor it's not something I've heard of. So I'm just going to repeat those two, you said focus mates. Yeah, well that feeds also quite well into another question I wanted to ask you about sort of when when you're talking about taking breaks is sort of proactively using some type of time blocking tool or scheduling your own diary to remind you to take breaks things like that what do you think about about that time do you use anything like that yourself or is there a method work for you. Absolutely. Can I share my screen. Absolutely I'd love that. All right, here's my, my desktop, you can see. Can you see this little timer up here. Okay, yeah. So this is a tool that I use it's called time out. And I gave I gave him like five pounds that a couple years ago so you know I've I've you can do it for free but you can see the window that I'm sharing that says yeah so I use this all day, I love it there's tons that you can download on Mac and I'm sure you can do it on windows too. So, I set these little micro breaks every 30 minutes, take a five minute break. So that's kind of Pomodoro style. Yeah, you know when the break comes it kind of pops up on my screen I just stretch my body. Yeah, it's super nice this you can change what it does right now it's got these fall leaves. You know you can postpone the break if you're really in the midst, and then I have like a normal break going, which is about every 90 minutes that I take a 20 minute break so I love this this tool. It gives me just nice little reminders. You know, it depends on flexible I don't, I don't always, you know, some days like today I'm kind of in some back to back so I have some shorter meetings they don't always have time but I'd say 80% of my days I'm using those just to give me a little nudge and I find when I do take those breaks proactively. I feel so much more energized by the end of the day. So it's really funny that like a five minutes here I just, you know, get up, stretch, stand on the balcony if I can or, you know, take a longer break I go step outside or I just you know go go clean up in the kitchen do something with them my hands. At the end of the day I feel so much better so I really encourage that. You know there isn't any scientific research backing the Pomodoro method which is 25 minutes of focus five minute break 25 five, usually about three rounds and then you take a longer but there is a lot of evidence that we and our attention and our energy fluctuate quite naturally every 90 minutes or so through what's called ultradian rhythms, probably if you're on the call you've heard of a circadian rhythm which is a 24 hour cycle we have a lot of circadian rhythms our body temperature changes on a 24 hour cycle are sleep and wake wakefulness they exist on a circadian rhythm you probably heard of that so generally every 24 hours, there's a window that our body wants to sleep. Now we have the same thing within a 24 hour cycle called ultradian rhythms, the body has also cycles that exist longer than a day, so a menstrual cycle for instance is a longer than a day, you know, 28 day cycle or so. That's right. But with an ultradian rhythm, every day you're kind of going through these natural like peaks and then valleys of energy. So I try to time my breaks roughly in those in those increments and I just pay attention and that's where mindfulness is so powerful. Mindfulness being like awareness of just what's happening how do I feel like where's my attention. And now after doing this for you know many many years. I can just sense I start to just feel a little bit more like I wanted distraction I my focus starts waning around that 90 minutes mark. Then I know okay time to take a break. This is the optimal break time. If you can if you can manage that that's a great amount of time to, to allow the body to decompress a lot of amazing biochemical stuff would happen when you're really relaxing in that break you flush the body of stress hormones and cortisol which build up when you're focused. So it's time to kind of allow you to mentally reset as well and think about what I want to do next. So I use break timers and I'm a big nerd with all this type of stuff and that tool that you use there Chris that you showed us that was called time. Time out, it's called time out. Okay, that's great. And I find that really interesting what you're saying about, maybe, you know, taking a step back and recognizing our own bodily rhythms, because the opposite of that is we can start to get crossed with ourselves and you think, oh, I just can't focus or what's going on, you know, you've been shundering away for however long I know nearly two hours and you're like, why can't I just why can't I concentrate anymore, but just actually acknowledging that you have this cycle is would be more so much more productive at that stage. You're acknowledging for a fact that you're human. You're an animal that has that has animal needs. We're not robots. Yeah, we have a very, you know, our energy, especially the cognitive resource that we can deploy every day it's limited. And I think it's for people to, you know, I find the study of attention and consciousness and awareness and so interesting to pay attention, because it's not that it's not that being focused is like the best state of attention. Like, if you're if you're focused you have the blinders on you're like, you're really in this, you know, like, eyes are on the task or lasered in. But like, as important as focus is this more open awareness, like when we can be sitting in a park, and we can be taking in the sky and the clouds and hearing the birds chirping and watching people and the kids playing. We experience the senses of being alive and in those moments we feel, we feel happy and joyful and maybe ideas come up to us or we get clarity. And like that's also a state of attention and it's like, we need to be I think that's the problem with productivity is I think it fetishizes sometimes this idea of just like focus and like getting it done but we kind of oscillate and we do naturally oscillate and we can't you cannot. There's no one that can focus for eight hours in a row. Biologically it's not happening so like, we have to appreciate that we can we can kind of get our focus in, and we can really protect that right we can. We can take steps to minimize interruptions and close out those things that maybe we don't want to spend time on but get in the way and we really really use those couple hours a day, but then to recognize. Okay, when am I stepping back and then that's when you fill up the cup. When you actually pull back from that state you relax you're open were as humans were designed, you know, all of these states of attention they exist for reasons. They didn't have evolved otherwise so I, I don't I also want to say that mind wandering and daydreaming are vital super important parts of being and we just got to be careful sometimes that when we need to do something and we want to get to know if we're kind of daydreaming and we're scrolling tick tock or Instagram again and again and then we're building up stress because we haven't done this thing. That's that's what that's what the conversation I have with teams is like how do we, how do we use the focus we have put it where it matters, feel good about our work, but take care of ourselves because it's two sides of the same coin. Obviously, we've made great strides in the workplace in recent years with just acknowledgement of the importance of recognizing wellness, diversity we were just made so many great strides, but the fact remains there's still plenty of dinosaurs out there who still think they're really chundering away for eight hours a day. I don't know, do you have any tips in terms of, you know, if I was a part of a team where the only attitude is just what we're permanently firefighting get on with it. You know how do I sort of bring it up within a meeting, you know that I'd like to, you know, introduce maybe a better way of working. I, it's, it's a tough one I would, if it's really bad. And it's driving you crazy. And it's burnt out and, and it doesn't seem to change then I would, I'd also say, are there other options. Like, is this the place that you have to work but I'm not going to encourage anyone on this job to go and quit their employer and to quit your jobs out there. But you might start a conversation and maybe share is an article, maybe a podcast that you found interesting and say, Hey, you know, I heard, I heard this little bit about, you know, multitasking I listened to a great episode. I just did myself on armchair expert Doc Shepard's podcast with Gloria marks, who is someone I cite in the Sustainable Productivity course she's an expert on multitasking attention at UC Irvine. It's a really fun interview and she talks about the perils of multitasking and how it's bad for our performance and it's bad for our health and our well being. I do it. And I might share a podcast like that with my team and say I found this super interesting. Like, what do you guys think. Does this spark any ideas, like as a lightweight. So I think starting a conversation. I think another thing you can do is, is, you know, you could speak to your manager you could speak to the team and say guys like we're firefighting all the time, but I really want to build in some periods of the day where you can stay focused because this is really disruptive for me. And there's evidence, you know, you can cite a few stats and figures find some your own say evidence that being interrupted all the time isn't good for our focus. How about, I'm going to try to do this on Monday Wednesday, for one hour each day. I think it's going to help me protect this time. And I would say start really small like propose something you want to try out frame it as an experiment. You know, not I'm doing this forever but hey for the next few weeks for a month. You know maybe we can maybe we can try it together maybe we can do this. And I think, yeah, starting a conversation, proposing a small experiment that you're going to do or doing with your team, and then also leading by example. I think a lot of us, we feel we, we just have to respond we should respond to everything as fast as possible we have a lot of expectations but a lot of when I unpick this with leaders and the people we coach. It's a lot of it's it's a self expectation, and we kind of are we're we've built up this idea of what it looks like to be effective and productive and we're living out this story. And we don't ever take a second to question, is anyone really making me do this or am I doing this. So I encourage people to sometimes ask, maybe there, maybe there is a bit more latitude for me to pull back from that reactionary cycle. But if you do that, and you start to practice the things we talked about in the course. Your well being is going to go up your performance and predict if you're going to go up. And everyone who I've worked with me and in my own experience. It's done these things consistently that the reaction is never. What the hell like, how come you seem so happy and like you're getting a lot of stuff done Louise like what the like this is annoying most time. You start going, wow. What are you doing. How, how, how come you're doing that so interesting so you take breaks or in the day what do you use that's interesting. Leading by examples is the most powerful way to shape that culture anyways and to do these things. The results speak for themselves because people will get curious. And if an organization or a team is is adamant that you should never take a break you should never leave your computer, you have to be checking your email and slack 24 seven then I think it's a dinosaur I think you should consider other options. Really great advice, kind of Chris as well has just referred there to changes in AI and I, I mentioned as we opened that, you know, we make huge strides and advances. We're still seem to work just as hard. I mean there's hundreds. I say, I think I read there that already been 2000 plus, you know, if these are maybe it's two million flip a neck. There's a lot of things have been registered since the, you know, advance of chat GPT of AI tools to help us in productivity and they always not great you know something that would have taken me eight hours to put together I can have a draft there now just in five minutes. It's not necessarily better though is it. What are your feelings about these rapid advance very fast advances you seem to be making at the moment. I mean, when I started doing this type of of work with myself and then within teams at Google. I was quite convinced. And this is now like six, seven years ago that what's going to separate people in the workforce are the human skills, you know the emotional intelligence the ability to collaborate the ability to think, you know, outside the box for lack of a better phrase but because back then we already started to see like lots of mundane stuff is getting automated so lots of the busy work. And, you know, study say that the majority of our time for as knowledge workers is spent on the busy work scheduling meetings rescheduling meetings, talking about the project but not actually doing the work in the project. I was convinced back then that that that's going to separate us and now I'm way more convinced that if you're going to succeed in the new world. It's going to be the, the ability to use your greatest gift, which is your attention and and to put that onto problems that actually matter. So, I do think I is going to do a wonderful service in terms of our efficiency. And it's already done a lot for me I'm using chat tbt every day now and testing it and trying it in new ways in our business I love what I see. I'm taking, doing with this, this, this health issue and so I've been taking some more supplements and I had it graph out and make a table of all of the things and put put into my daily supplement routine and it's amazing like it would have taken me like four hours it in three minutes. I think the challenge is we're going to, we're going to be required to do harder and harder stuff at work because all of the easy stuff is going to have been offloaded. And so, being able to muster that that skill of focus and creativity is going to become even more paramount. But I think the risk is that we do need a balance in the day like we can't be 100% on as I mentioned all the time and in replying to emails and having those little chats about you know the small little work things and then and read looking at the diaries. Those things when they're low cognitive effort, you know we, we replenish a little bit during those types of tasks. So, I think that's one of the challenges to is like, what will the world look like, are they going to expect that you do three to four hours of work where you're really engage and you're doing really important thinking and collaborating. And then that's it. Because the rest of the stuff is handled by AI I mean that would be a best case scenario. But I think a lot of it remains unseen but I think I'm very interested by it, you know, change is going to come and our ability to adapt with it and to be able to move with it I think is. The skill we all need. And that's why I think just being excited to learn being curious to learn. That's why I think 42 courses what you guys are doing is amazing because you're making learning fun and interesting and showing it's a lifelong journey and I feel like that's the key skill as well as like being open, being ready excited curious how do I use these tools. The stuff that we talk about in sustainable productivity is going to be equally important and I think you know, I think AI is going to help us with our well being and monitoring some of these things but it's going to go both ways because you have, you know, I saw a story of a big UK fintech, you know, tracking everyone's computer time at the office and saying you need 80% of your day in front of your computer and I, you know, AI and that's going to make tracking everything that's also it brings us back to the Taylorism conversation I don't think that's going to help anyone feel happier at work. If every minute is being logged. Very, very wise words Connor. Well, I can see a questionnaire from a layer and I don't know if you've got enough bandwidth yourself a layer to join us and put your question. Hello, are you still with us. I'll carry on and ask the question. So a layer has said, how do we manage expectations from startups or founders to constantly work their people to reach KPIs. I don't know what that last sentence means but yes certainly we're set to set tasks. Sometimes they don't really seem to be to any end do they this is the thing when we're asked to do something from, from higher up I think maybe that's what a layer is alluding to can you see the question there Connor. I see it is it is it. Do you work in a startup. Can you hear me, we can hear you do go ahead and love to hear from you. Hi, I'm Connor hi Louise so I've been listening and it's very exciting and interesting so I currently work at a startup which is YC backed. And I will say that we have about three to four founders, we have four founders actually. And I don't necessarily do believe that to some degree there's a concentration of power that's not found his way to trickle down as equally as possible and so what we have is a situation where founders have ideas. And if you have the idea to a clock in the morning at 9am there should be some sort of fleshed out plan on how to execute a plan that was kept that was brought up at two o'clock in the morning. And then when we do have public holidays, we are told to not necessarily recognize them we should just be on call. And I'm not sure we are developing a very sustainable way of moving because I also think that to some degree remote work has made people feel like they're talking to machines on the other end of the screen. So yeah, just want to know what would you say, managing expectations and letting people know that you are actually a human being. Thanks, thanks. That's a tough one. My frank answer is, if you work for a YC back startup that has going to have super aggressive growth goals because they need to reach a 10 X valuation, then I wouldn't expect a sustainable culture. I would expect it to be, you know, 60 70 hours a week pushing really hard, because that's what startups in the YC world are like and so I don't know how to manage expectations and that style of company I think that I can't knock that approach I think that's how a lot of startups do grow is through just sheer determination of will and excessive amounts of work. I don't think it can be sustained, you know, a lot of times I work with startups that are now, you know, 800 to 1000 or plus. Then they're having the question of now we've now we're at series D or E. We need to now build in a more sustainable culture and that's I think that these types of things are very helpful but that's it's tough when you if you're if you're in an environment like that. I think it's, it's, it's kind of the, the, the norm and I would be surprised if my boss messaged me at 2am and then expect me to have done something by 9am that sounds a little bit outside of my boss, but it's a tough one so I don't have a good answer for you I'm sorry but yeah the, you know, the best you can do is just tell people how you best work and how you know what's working for you and and when some of these issues come up you can flag them and say is there a better way to communicate these types of asks and yeah look after yourself in the process. Thanks, thanks so much a layer of your question and as she quite rightly highlight so depending on the type of company if it's a startup and you can understand there would be different expectations to keep things chundering along. I mean toward the end of the event and so interesting you've given us so much practical advice, Hannah. I mean there's no doubt that as a result of the global pandemic work practices change substantially and very very quickly and in many ways we're still trying to find out what is the best way for each individual company to work most effectively in in this new world increased flexibility doesn't necessarily work for everybody and a lot of people had difficulty in terms of the sort of overflow of work. Now to balance it but I think you've given us some very good practical tools there from the conversation and as you say the importance of just recognizing that we're humans that need to take a rest now and again it's very very important. I mentioned Cal Newport's book. Are there any other books that you think are are useful in this particular area I particularly like, I forgot what fortitude is a new book by Bruce Daisley. That's, that's great. Yeah, that's a great book. Have you got any recommendations. I have a stolen focus by Johan Hardy 4000 weeks by Oliver Berkman to that I've loved. I always have a copy here by shameless plug but this is, you know the book I, I teach a lot of companies didn't write it but it's called make time, how to focus on what matters every day. So that's a great guide for, you know, focusing and take care of yourself along the way. So those are those are three that I recommend for sure. They're great suggestions maybe we'll do a blog following this to collect together. Yeah, productivity books are really great suggestions. So just before we wrap up there. Maybe you could just give us you know your sort of top top three, top three tips for for being productive without burning out in the workplace. That's a, that's good when I think I would recommend people to choose one big thing every day to make their, their most important priority and we call that a highlight and make time and devote an hour, hour and a half to that every day and feel really good if, if you make progress on that project, you can still check off to dues and attend your meetings but having a having a focal point to your day is really valuable. I would encourage people to take some time to look at their, their screens and their environment and ask themselves, you know, what is going to help me stay focused and on task and what's going to distract from that and if you have 35 tabs open as Chris said in the chat. I really recommend trying a day where you only have tabs open related to what you're working on and think about it like gardening. You got to prune back some of the weeds and they'll come back the tabs will open but the end of each day you can shut things down and and I really encourage focus on the environment and the third piece is to take breaks, we talked about that but give yourself some time to rest and recover. Move your body and those breaks, get outside, read some fresh air, getting away from screens will likely help. So my, my top three tips for you today. Thanks. Thanks so much. It's been really, really kind of feel refreshed having spoken with you today. So I hope that everybody else has the same sort of feeling from this quality. Thank you all for joining us. Thank you. You are all very, very welcome to you with us today and I do hope you'll join us again for future events. Thank you so much everybody.