CHAPTER 10
CHUNK IT

The cost of Freak Out is our sanity, because we feel like we're making millimetres of progress in a million different directions, but not going anywhere fast. This is where our friends are sick of hearing how we are going to save the world, and our teams play bingo on the number of motivational clichés we use and roll their eyes because really nothing has changed.

The thing that we hold dear — our gut instinct, our intuition — seems to be giving us the wrong message because nothing is happening, or certainly not happening the way that we had hoped it would.

After the last chapter, though, we've got a blueprint mapped out. You've incorporated the stuff that matters and the plan looks epic. It's amazing, your best work yet. The Freak Out has started to subside because now you have a clear direction and it looks doable — it's big, hard work, but still doable.

This is the danger zone that very few of us talk about. The reason it's a danger zone is because our anxiety has been significantly reduced by the planning. Working in clinical settings I would see this with individuals all the time. The anxiety and unrest prompted them to pick up the phone and make an appointment, and the need for things to change instigated them attending the appointment. The situation had become bad enough to be a catalyst for action. Do a good job as a psychologist of alleviating that anxiety, however, and the drive to get uncomfortable again is gone. We need to move out of this danger zone.

FROM IDEA TO ACTION

When we are in the midst of overwhelm, we often take time out to write ourselves a to-do list. Getting everything out of our head and down on paper means we now know what needs to get done — and we feel on top of it. But what do we then do? We pop the kettle on, cuddle up on the couch with a magazine, switch on our latest TV series, and promise ourselves we'll get round to the list later. Woah, there, buddy — don't be sitting back and celebrating that epic Gantt chart just yet.

This is the moment when we need to realise that having a grand plan isn't the end of the road. At some point we've actually got to do the work, and get into the grind of executing. And that's not as sexy as the planning. In fact, it can be downright boring. This stuff is hard. It takes resources and energy, and you might even get it wrong along the way.

Remember: perfection is not the goal, progress is. And when we explore neuroscience, we find that our brains are actually hardwired for progress. So let's make this internal drive work for us, rather than against us.

HARNESSING DOPAMINE

Dopamine is a neurochemical hormone associated with motivation, focus and mood, playing key roles in our habit formation, memory and many other high-order cognitive functions. Its most important job, though? Being our internal reward drug. You feel proud of finishing off something on your to-do list? Bam. Dopamine. Every time you take a step towards your goal, you get a dopamine hit. Take another step, you get another hit. It's what gets us off the couch, and taking action in the world.

The hormone is arguably the most addictive substance known to human beings. Individuals who have detoxed off chronic substance use will often feel a ‘craving' long after the illicit drugs have left their systems — that's dopamine. Dopamine is the neurochemical response that sits behind our drive to play poker machines — because we don't know when the machine will ‘pay out', when it does we get a hit of dopamine.

Do you ever feel like you can't be separated from your phone for an extended period of time? Do you constantly check for text messages, Facebook notifications, tweets? Do you find it impossible to ignore the ‘ding' of an email? Dopamine is the reason. When your phone or computer ‘pay out' via an email or text, you get a dopamine reward, and so you want to keep seeking this. This is why it's impossible to concentrate after you hear the ‘ding' of a notification. Your brain is wired to check it out. You know that you get a hit of dopamine simply looking at your phone because of the seeking and reward you've previously experienced through this device. So if you want to ditch the distractions, turning your phone to silent won't work. You've got to physically leave it in another room.

Dopamine causes ‘seeking' behaviour — that is, to want, desire and seek out, increasing goal-directed behaviour. Dopamine makes you curious about ideas and fuels your search for information. It's the reason that you jump on the internet for two minutes to grab a recipe for pancakes, and find yourself reading about Kim Kardashian's latest antics 40 minutes later. Dopamine is our ‘wanting' chemical, and we generally seek more than we feel satisfied with.

Dopamine is a selfish chemical — hedonist-driven, it's all about getting things done now, focusing on short-term wins and not worrying about running over long-term goals in the process. But we can harness this chemical to our advantage if we engineer how we get things done. Dopamine increases when we're organised and finish tasks, regardless of the size of the task, regardless of the importance of the task. Physically checking something off a to-do list satisfies our brain.

Here are a few ways we can boost and harness the power of dopamine for good:

• Get creative: beautiful environments, coloured pens and good design will boost your motivation to do the work.
• Movement: taking the stairs or going for a walk in your lunch break boosts dopamine levels too — exercise doesn't have to be arduous in order to be effective. Get up from your desk and have a boogie! Factoring in movement breaks into your day will see you achieving more than slogging out back-to-back hours.
• Music: get into the zone of activity by putting on your fav grooves. Dopamine loves that stuff.

Harness the ‘reward circuitry' in your brain by ditching the distractions of doing small tasks, and set up a system to be making progress in the directions that matter. Break down your map into chunks and you'll shift the big ideas into specific, tickable actions. And then you can soak up the dopamine that you'll get when you get stuff done.

Harness the ‘reward circuitry' in your brain by ditching the distractions of doing small tasks, and set up a system to be making progress in the directions that matter.

WORK LIKE A ROCK STAR

Don't you love the swagger of a front man? You'll remember I confessed in the introduction to this book to listening to Keith Urban. I'm not ashamed of this, either. Nor should I be. But I do have another confession to make on the music front.

My other confession is I've fallen under the spell of a few charismatic front men over the years. The ‘noughties' saw me dreamy over Paul Dempsey from indie-band Something for Kate far too often. Before that, for the best part of the 1990s it was Eddie. Yep, Eddie Vedder — the legend of grunge metal and lead man for Seattle superstars Pearl Jam — had my heart. That growling voice. That angst and darkness. In retrospect, Eddie had a fair bit to do with me becoming a psychologist I think. I could've soothed his troubled soul.

And the 1980s. Of course, the '80s! As a teenager, I was completely obsessed with the powerfully masculine George Michael from Wham! (Ummm … whoops!)

So, like many others, I've always had a fascination for the swagger of the rock star. And my latest fascination? Chris Martin from Coldplay. I've already raved about what an outstanding band they are. As the front man, Chris is a genius. To be fair, my and Chris's relationship (it's a relationship, right?) didn't start out as instant infatuation. Sure, I liked tracks like ‘Yellow', off their first album Parachutes, but I'd always found him to be … well, there's no kind way to put this … a bit dweeby and introverted. He kinda reminded me of a kid I went to high school with who was the quiet music genius who kept to himself — and was the teenage epitome of uncool.

But in 2002 I found myself among 10 000 of my closest friends at the music festival Splendour in the Grass at Byron Bay. Daz and I squeezed our way forward in the crowd — never mind that we were the only people over 30 anywhere in the mosh pit — and waited for Coldplay to come out and close the two-day festival. To be honest, I was tired, my feet hurt and the human sardine can that had formed near the stage was hardly my idea of fun (I can hear you whispering, ‘Ya old fart' from here), but Daz was a big fan and had been waiting to see them. And then Chris Martin walked out. And there's no polite way to say it: he fucking owned that stage.

Oh. My. God.

Literally. I mean, he was god-like. Powerful. Passionate. Possessed. And I was infatuated.

That's what rock stars do. They have the ability to — when the moment requires it — get into a state and just own it. And that's what we're going to do in this chapter; we're going to make you a rock star by breaking down your time and then every week programming a jukebox of hits for you so you can strut the stage rather than slink away when in Freak Out.

BREAK IT DOWN

In order to create a sense of momentum in your actions and to shift your ideas into concrete tasks, we need to break it down. For example, if you need to write a book, break it down into the chapters. To achieve a financial target at work, break it down into milestone targets.

Because every goal is different, here we're going to use the units that are most consistent for any idea, project or pursuit — that is, breaking it down into chunks of time.

The three main elements we're going to work with are:

• 90-day targets
• 30-day themes
• 7-day focus.

It's from these quarterly targets, monthly themes, and the weekly focus that our actions kick into gear. They cover the fun stuff, the boring stuff, and the stuff that just has to get done in order to get moving. Through these different time frames, you can make sure you're doing the work that will move you closer to your end goal.

90-DAY TARGETS

Chances are you'll have key things that you want to achieve over the year ahead. You might even have some New Year's resolutions that you have stuck with. The first chunk to focus on now in moving forward is setting your 90-day targets. Project yourself forward to the end of the coming quarter — what do you want to have finished?

PROJECTS THAT MATTER

Peter Cook is an Australian thought leader who is obsessed with implementation and, in particular, he talks about creating projects that matter. These aren't just the work-type projects that get mandated to us by our organisations, or the home-type projects that involve doing the washing; these are projects that are important to you. They might be organising your photo collections, or they might be attending more networking events. What you could create a project around is unlimited — although the project needs to be specific enough for you to be able to say whether you have achieved it or not. For example, ‘getting healthier' is hard to measure, but ‘moving every day' is a project you can tick off.

Within your 90-day time frame, design no more than three primary projects that matter. Leo Babauta, founder of Zen Habits, purports if we have more than three main projects we are focusing on at once, we can get distracted from our goals. One of your three projects needs to be a personal project. (In his presentations, Cook tells the story of the personal project of asking his now-wife to marry him. It was an epic project that involved an interstate flight, friends and feasts.)

What are your three projects for the next 90 days?

CREATING ACCOUNTABILITY

Chris Martin doesn't just sit back and write songs when he feels like it; he's got a team of people who hold him accountable to stepping up. You need to gather your people around you who do the same. Setting your projects is the start, and sticking to these requires a level of accountability. When it comes to focusing on the next 90-day projects, four levels of accountability are possible. Choose the one you are going to focus on in order to get the job done:

• personal: accountable to yourself (this takes some serious, no bull-shit pulling from you to work, though)
• peer: accountable to a friend (it's gotta be your ‘you need to do this' friend, not your ‘stuff it, let's head to the coast for the week' friend)
• positional: accountable to your boss, shareholders, stakeholders, kids (this is the big guns — if you've been around a three-year-old lately you'll know their memory of the promises you make are rock-solid)
• public: accountable to people within the general public (#hashtagit, track it; you never know who'll pull you back in line).

Who is going to keep you accountable?

30-DAY THEMES

Gretchen Rubin, New York Times best-selling author of The Happiness Project, committed to pursuing happiness through having a monthly focus. Each month she would focus on different aspects of exploring happiness, from getting more sleep and decluttering her home to building connections. In the same way, you can break down your 90-day projects into a 30-day theme. The start of each month gives you a fresh slate to step into.

Connect your themes to your 90-day projects. What do you need to step into more in order to turn these projects into a reality? Use your responses as ideas for your monthly theme.

Some of the key themes that might give you guidance are:

• movement
• connection
• curiosity
• rest
• play
• creativity
• nourishment
• presence
• connection
• gratitude
• rest
• surprises
• processes.

What theme are you (or your team) going to step into for the next 30 days?

7-DAY FOCUS (THE 10 HOURS THAT MATTER)

When it comes to shifting into action, your focus isn't on cramming more into your day. If you're a person who needs 10 hours of sleep per night, then get it. I'm not going to say, ‘Suck it up, sleeping's for when you're dead'. What I will say, though, is maximise and prioritise ten key hours in your week, and use this time wisely.

During these ten focused, waking hours, you can make a fundamental difference to your entire life. What sort of difference they make is all about how you program these ten hours.

To clarify, I don't mean you need to program your entire week, minute by minute. What I'm talking about is being super smart in programming these ten focused hours. Like a jukebox, you get to program what goes in, so that you enjoy what comes out. If you don't program this time, you'll be left listening to Kenny Rogers on replay. Honestly, if you give me ten hours of your best, it will change your life.

Once you have these ten hours, you can then divide them up into three different areas, specifically 5 + 3 + 2:

• 5 × ‘rock and roll' hours every week
• 3 × ‘alternative listening' hours every week
• 2 × ‘easy listening' hours every week.

Let's explore these three areas in more detail.

ROCK AND ROLL: 5 HOURS

The first five hours to schedule into your calendar each week are your ‘rock and roll' hours. This is time for pedal to the metal, all effort in, mass productivity time. This time is about getting rid of distractions and just getting stuff done. These are five times one-hour slots throughout your week that you will dedicate to getting stuff done. Aligning these hours to the times when you are most alert and awake will ensure that your biology is on your side too.

At the start of your week spend time going over your calendar and schedule in these rock and roll hours. The reason to do this on a weekly basis is that it's likely that every week is different. Shift and schedule this time around meetings and other commitments.

Now some of you might be thinking, Five hours a week is not much for productivity. I've got a tonne more stuff to get done. But have a think about professional sporting teams, such as those in the AFL (Australian Football League) that we have here in Australia. Players in the AFL teams are professionals whose full-time job is to play the game. The reality is, though, while their full-time job is football, the ‘business end' is actually only about two hours a week, for about 22 weeks of the year, sometimes 26 (depending on whether they get into the finals and how successful they are). The same goes for you and these five hours. This is ‘game day' time, so deep dive into the work that shifts and makes a difference. The rest of your week is for planning, strategy, meetings, connecting.

The following are key tips to help get the most out of these rock and roll hours:

• Shut your damn door: get rid of all the distractions. If you're a boss or manager and you've got an open door policy, it's very likely your day is filled with interruptions. Remember: it's only five hours a week, so let people know and shut the door. They can come flooding back in when you're done. Get the most out of that hour, and it will repay back to your team tenfold in terms of you being able to be completely present with them when you are connecting and talking with them, because you know that what you needed to get done has been done.
• Leave your phone behind: if you work in an open-plan office or you can't shut the door, often you need to find another space for these rock and roll hours, but you know what happens when you leave the office, right? People ring you to find out where you are. Divert your phone, leave your phone behind, let people know, go somewhere else, and do what needs to be done. Sometimes your mass productivity, your rock and roll hours, are actually networking or connecting with people. This rule still applies. Give them your full attention. Don't have your phone as a distraction and a reminder of what else is waiting back at the office. Just leave your phone behind.
• Set a clear time frame: make the time you schedule in no less than half-hour blocks because you need at least this length of time to get immersed in an activity. For me, I prefer one-hour blocks. Set the clock, stay to the end. Then the full time you've allocated is a race and a frenzy — you're not fluffing around for the first ten minutes, or being proud of yourself for what you've achieved for the last ten minutes. If you've allocated an hour, maximise the full 60 minutes; once the 60 minutes is up, step away.
• Reward yourself: what the research tells us about how habits are formed is that a habit becomes ingrained when we get a reward at the end. You need to have a solid transition and a solid break. It might even be for a couple of minutes, but go and grab a coffee, go for a quick walk around the office, or duck outside for a moment. Create a break and a reward for yourself.

The next block of time you need to schedule in is creating space to think differently — your ‘alternative listening' hours.

ALTERNATIVE LISTENING: 3 HOURS

Your ‘alternative listening' time is three hours in your week where you explore alternative ways and perspectives. The idea here is a bit like a professional swimmer who does yoga as an alternative training, or an athlete who cross-trains in a totally different field. It's about you thinking about alternative channels and different perspectives on the work that you need to do.

One of the biggest gripes I hear people say is, ‘I just don't have time to work on my business because I'm so busy working in it'. This is similar to, as a manager, hearing people say, ‘Look, I don't have time to work on culture or how my team get along because we've just got stuff that we have to do'. You need to make time for that stuff, and you need to square it away because people won't hand it to you. (Your boss isn't likely to come to you and say, ‘Hey, how about you just take an hour to go and think about how you're doing your job or how we could do it better'.)

Here are a few ideas for places to explore new ways of thinking:

• TED Talks: 20-minute presentations from experts and thought leaders from around the world on various topics and the latest research.
• Podcasts: check out the top podcasts on iTunes in various categories. For me, Jonathan Fields' Good Life Project is my go-to podcast. #brilliant
• Slow thinking time: clarity requires space, so give yourself enough time for ideas to bubble up.
• Play ‘Apples and Oranges': this is an activity that was shared by great friends of ours, design experts from Jaxzyn Design, Jen and Dougal Jackson. The goal is to compare an industry different from the one you are in and look at what they do that you could incorporate into your world. In a work context, you might say to your team, ‘This time we're going to look at the hospitality industry,' and they then have a week to investigate and acquire ideas themselves, after which you come together for a lunch and talk about what people have uncovered and what they think that industry does really well that could put into place with your team.

EASY LISTENING: 2 HOURS

The two ‘easy listening' hours each week are for active, planned relaxation. This is actually about creating white space in your week, because really, how often do we have it?

We never do. We jump in the car and we're either on the phone or we're listening to the radio. We're constantly in contact with people from the moment we wake up to the moment we fall into bed.

So here are the rules for your easy listening hours:

1. They need to not be part of your regular routine. If you normally get up and go for a walk in the morning, these hours are not part of that. If you normally go to yoga on a Wednesday afternoon, they're not part of that either.
2. Vigorous exercise doesn't count. I know that may sound kind of counterintuitive, because you might go, ‘Look, that's my “me-time”. That's my complete downtime'. But research shows that the hormones produced when we're doing vigorous exercise, although great for our body and our mind in a whole range of different ways, aren't about providing downtime. You might get some great ideas when you're doing exercise (I know I do) but you're not experiencing downtime for your body or your brain.
3. You should feel energised and refreshed. After these hours you should feel like you've had a massive night's sleep, and recharged and ready to get back into it.
4. They should be tech-free. Leave the devices behind so you can quiet the mind.

Remember: your rock and roll hours are your peak hours. They are the time to rip in, no excuses. It's not about the number of hours, but how you use these hours.

When it comes to the alternative hours, ditch the distractions — just get rid of them.

When it comes to the easy listening hours, create white space to hear nothing, to just chill out and be in the downtime.

For all of the hours in your jukebox, focus is the key, and being the watchdog of your time is critical. Avoid the trap of cluttering up your calendar with commitments that derail your focus. Carve out the time to get the key actions done in order to make progress.

DECISION-MAKING

You are a decision-making machine — literally and metaphorically. The ability of human beings to discern information quickly, filter out the irrelevant data and grasp onto what is relevant in this given circumstance to make a call is unsurpassed. All of that happens in the nanosecond that you reach for the choc-chip muffin and cup of tea. You are an expert at decision-making.

Where things start to go haywire, however, is when we throw cognitive load into the mix and decision-fatigue kicks in. Pay attention to the little decisions every day that you don't need to be making, and remove decision-fatigue by getting streamlined in your processes. Consider the following:

• Wear a similar outfit for similar tasks.
• Have the same lunch on the same days — we have ‘sushi Monday' in our team.
• Park in the same area at the shopping centre.
• Put your clothes out the night before.
• Check emails only at certain times throughout the day.

Reducing the cognitive load by removing these small decisions means you can focus on the more important decisions, and start seeing your progress.