Ged: [00:00:00] Welcome back to “Cardcast,” the podcast where Milan and I pick a card at random from a deck of cards just like this. A deck of cards that Milan has designed and created and produced. We pick a card at random from the deck. Let’s shuffle the deck and see what pops out.
Milan: Luxury to waste time. I think to be honest with you I kind of think that that title no longer applies. I think that my thinking evolved around it, and I don’t think of wasting time as a luxury anymore. I think it’s an absolute necessity for a CEO of all, of all levels. Like, if you can’t waste time, you probably are having difficulties with prioritization, and you’re probably one of those people wearing the badge of honor, and I’m really putting into
Ged: Yes.
Milan: Marks [00:01:00] here, of being busy.
I think that we just talked about it recently as well, right? You had, you had a story.
Ged: Yeah, yeah. I was talking to a CEO recently and and I- I– The– His first comment, which I think is almost instinctive when you talk to CEOs and entrepreneurs these days. Like, you know, “How are you going?” And the instinctive response was, “Ah, busy. Really, really busy.” You know? And that’s– As you say, that’s, that’s taken as a badge of honor these days.
You know, you’ve got to be busy to be contributing something, to be seen as being successful, valuable, worthwhile. And my perspective is completely different. And you, you, you said maybe the title of this card is, is wrong. I mean, I could suggest a different title, and that is busy is bad. Because from, from my perspective, you know, if you’re busy, you’ve got no time to think.
If you’re busy, you’ve got no time to look forward. You’ve got no time to imagine what the possibility is into the future. You’ve got no time to plan. You’ve got no [00:02:00] time to go on holiday. You’ve got no time to recharge. So busy, in my mind, is bad. And I know that cuts across what a lot of people think and, you know, today’s society suggests that everyone has to be busy.
Everyone has to be frantic. Everyone has to hustle. I just think it’s the wrong way of looking at things.
Milan: And y- you know, as you are talking so two, two items. One, the big, bad busy. That might be a good, good title for that card. And second, I actually find myself guilty of that as well, and it goes in slightly… I think that the psychology behind it is slightly different, and is at, at that point I am lazy to figure out how actually I am because I am so busy that I don’t want to think for that in that situation. But it doesn’t feel good, you know? It doesn’t feel good to even say that you’re busy because that also means like, you know, being busy without really accomplishing much. You know, it’s all of, all of that stuff. But going back to what you [00:03:00] said using time for other things than the busyness, right?
We were originally planning to record this particular episode while you were in Bali and I was
Ged: Yes.
Milan: In BC, right? So no fake background for anybody today. But – That is the point. You just need to disconnect from things, and I don’t think that for a CEO that’s a luxury. It’s an absolute, absolute necessity. Just spoke to somebody who took two weeks vacation for the first time in 30 years. Can you imagine that? Like, this, this is absolutely not, not healthy, right? And frankly, the business hasn’t been doing so well until they did Because now they come back finally with some fresh ideas, finally with something and, and saying, “Hey, this actually didn’t break.
I can actually rely on people to do this.” What you want to hear from from a CEO when you ask [00:04:00] them is the ideal scenario, which is “I’m really not doing much, but you know what? The business is running just fine.” Right? Kind of what would be the right, what would be the right answer or the answer where I as a coach would feel that the CEO is in the right place when it times to time m- when it comes to time management and their ability to waste time.
Ged: I frequently get calls from people who who want my time. They want, they wanna run something past me. They wanna bounce an idea off. They, you know, they’ve got something that there’s that’s on their mind and, and they invariably start with, “I know you’re really busy.” And I say, “No, I’m not. No, I’m not.
I’m not that busy. I’ve got lots of free time.” But that’s by design. Now that’s by design because I want to build my, my working life in that way, so I do have time to think. You know, the, you know, the… There’s, there’s lots and lots of really thick books out there, and they don’t read themselves, and you’ve gotta build [00:05:00] time into your schedule to be able to learn.
‘Cause if you’re not learning then you’re not keeping abreast. You’re not keeping ahead of your competition. So, you know, it’s– it doesn’t mean you’re not doing anything. It just mean you’re being really considered about what you’re doing in between those gaps of busyness. And, and make those gaps of busyness as, as small as you can.
And as you said, if you can’t make them small, you’ve got a delegation problem. You’ve got a B, C player problem because there should be people there that are taking things off your plate. And if they’re not, you haven’t got the right team around you
Milan: You might have a organizational design problem, right? The, the… That’s actually g- great. Like, let’s talk about it for a second. What are the things that are keeping us unproductively busy? And by unproductive, I mean it from our perspective, meaning, that you’re wasting a massive opportunity cost.
You’re, you’re, you’re, [00:06:00] you’re busy. You might be producing value. You might be thinking you’re productive- But you’re not doing it at the level at which you can perform in the company as the best, right? Where you can provide the most value of the organization because that’s what you need to do. Like, you know, you can, you can go and, and check 2 million of, of customer support emails, and that will keep you busy for a while. The question is, as a CEO, is that something that you should be doing, right? And you might feel like you need to, but there lies the problem. So low-value tasks, repetitive tasks that somehow for some reason are not, you know, delegated or they are not owned by somebody else, that ownership has not been given for some reason. What’s next? Need to step in where you shouldn’t,
Ged: Other people’s jobs.
Milan: Providing solutions when you should be delegating [00:07:00] problems,
Ged: Mm-hmm.
Milan: Right? You know, we talked about this in the time audit in the time audit episode quite a bit. You know, really, like what, what is it– How do you, how do you prioritize what is the stuff where you should be doing, where are you acting in your, your zone of genius? Plus again, a visionary in the company, you need space for those visions, right? You need the ability to you know, get the ideas in the shower or while walking on the beach or walking your dog or whatever it is that you’re doing. What else? What do you see often as a source of unproductive busyness?
Ged: I think there’s, there’s so many. I’m sort of looking– I’m look- thinking in the– through, through my mind. I had, I had a conversation with the leadership team just yesterday and, and they, they do have a B player problem in the leadership team. And it’s, [00:08:00] it’s being addressed but it sometimes takes time longer than, than you would, would like. And I guess they’ve been given an opportunity to step up. They’ve been given an opportunity to move up to the next level of leadership but they’re having real trouble of letting go of the things they used to do in the past. So it, it’s not their job anymore, but they feel comfort in doing them Because they can do them really, really well.
You know? And no matter how many times we say, “Well, yeah, that was your job and you’re really good at it, but that’s no longer your job now.” So we’re getting to the point of, you know, has that person been promoted beyond their abilities? Are they gonna be able to step up? Are they gonna be able to take on those new accountabilities and let go of the old?
Well, that will, that will play out over the next few weeks, the next couple of months, I imagine. But it’s a, it’s a real challenge because that’s what got you to where you are. You know, that’s, that’s… Being really good at something is what got you there, so it’s very difficult stopping doing it ’cause [00:09:00] that’s your identity.
I’m great at this. You know, if I do this really, really well, then we’ll be successful. We’ll win. We’ll, we’ll do a good job. So the, the busyness often comes in insidiously from not stopping doing things that you should have stopped a while ago, or not stopping doing things that you could have given to someone else.
Given to someone else to give them the opportunity to step up, giving them the opportunity to, to pick up new skills, new experience, things like that.
Milan: You know, I, I love the randomness in the cards, right? Because the, the fact that you know, we’re struggling sometimes and so we know so many examples, but we didn’t prepare a list
Ged: Yep.
Milan: To them because we didn’t know that this card would come up.
Ged: That’s right.
Milan: I
Ged: Yeah. And
Milan: They both went to the same place
Ged: It [00:10:00] might be
Milan: Job to break through,[00:11:00]
Ged: A bad board.
Milan: Yeah, but you can’t do that if you know, if you’re holding yourself back in your zone of comfort, which is what you’re talking about, right?
Like, you know what? Instead of dealing with this board stuff, I would rather do some coding because I’m really good at it, and it’s actually fun, and then I’ll spend fourteen hours in it, and then, then, then, yes, I can, I can proudly declare that I am be- I am very busy. But being busy and doing the right things are two, two very, very different can of worms, right?
Ged: Yeah. Yeah, I, I observe a, a CEO who has come through the sort of founder-led sales build a very, very successful business with him as the main sales guy. You know, focusing on his sales work, even though their pipeline is absolutely full, and there’s a raging fire going on in operations, you know. But he doesn’t wanna go there because yeah, that’s, that’s not his comfort zone.
But we, we’ve drifted a little bit here, haven’t we? And these are all [00:12:00] useful topics, but the… We should be talking about why having time as a luxury to waste is a good thing, as opposed to the things that stop us from having time to waste. If we have the luxury to waste time, we can read, we can learn about things going on in our market, we can study our competitors, we can observe the market.
You know, we can go to conferences and learn about what’s going on all the way around, you know. We can go to conferences in other industries to see if there’s anything happening there that we could bring into our industry. Yeah. We– This is not being lazy. We’re not wasting the time. We’re just using the time to elevate what we’re doing rather than bring it down.
Yes.
Milan: I just wanted to say that, that that actually as a CEO, as a true CEO, you never waste time, right? Because whatever you’re doing, even if it’s sleeping, [00:13:00] you know, is for the benefit of what you’re doing because e-even taking care of yourself is an
Ged: Absolutely right. Yeah.
Milan: So
Ged: Mm-hmm.
Milan: That is the true wasting time because it’s wasting your time on tasks that you shouldn’t be doing. You should be doing something else, including going for a walk or, or sleeping because
Ged: Mm-hmm.
Milan: Ultimately provide more value or create more value because, you know, that’s the job. Than than you would getting mired in those little things because you don’t feel like you deserve the luxury of, know, executive assistant who can take a whole bunch of these things off your
Ged: Yeah [00:14:00] But we’ve built a whole language around this, haven’t we? You know, I’ll sleep when I’m dead. Well, you know, you actually won’t, but the death will probably come earlier than you– than it should do. You know, if, if you’re not getting seven, eight hours good sleep every night, you know, you’re probably leading yourself down a bit of a, bit of a rocky path in, into the future.
You know, and if you’re working that hard, you’re probably not spending the time that you should be spending with your, your family, you know, your wife, your children your, your friends. You know, the people that you get energy from. You know, so th-this is as much a, a mental health thing and a physical health thing than it is a success thing.
Now, get those two things right, the success will invariably come. Get those two things wrong, then it’s probably gonna be a short journey.
Milan: Yeah. And, and you know, your body will give up, you know, if you’re talking about the, about the health piece. Like eventually the body tells you, “Hey, if you don’t want to rest in any other way, then hospital it is.”
Ged: Yep.
Milan: You know, that’s,
Ged: Mm-hmm.[00:15:00]
Milan: Like the one thing that you absolutely need those moments for is a important ability of every visionary CEO, and that’s the ability to time travel. Right? Yourself in the future, setting the
Ged: Yeah.
Milan: How the future… There is a episode, you know, on imagining the future, right? You cannot do that from the whirlwind. You have to step away from it, and sometimes something that looks like not doing anything is actually providing you with that energy and providing you with that mental space for your brain to do the true work, which is creating those visions, learning for it, as you, as you mentioned. You know, gathering the information that you need in order
Ged: Mm-hmm.
Milan: That vision. And actually a conversation with a CEO recently, I was really [00:16:00] concerned that because they are really, really busy, that that stuff hasn’t been happening, that they’ve been so m- in the, in the bottom, and they are in a very, very quickly changing industry, so the visionary is absolutely critical. So I challenged them on it, and they said, “No, no, no, no. That’s pretty clear. This is what’s going to happen. This is da, da, da. I have that all figured out, and I’m thinking about it. Don’t worry.” I was like, “Okay, that’s what I wanted to hear just to make sure.” I didn’t want to hear, “Oh, I haven’t had chance to think about it for…” You know, they are busy, but they did make time for that, and they know that the busyness is actually temporary given some changes that their organization is coming through and that they’re going through, and that’s fine, right? As long as they maintain budget, the time budget for these things that we consider important, and they, they…
Frankly, only they can do. That’s the one thing they cannot delegate to anybody. They can have a conversation with someone, but ultimately it’s them because it’s their [00:17:00] responsibility and their accountability to point the company into the right direction, and you can’t do that you’ve been there already in your mind.
It’s actually another learning from a pilot school that you know, I apply in my coaching, which is don’t ever point the airplane into a place you haven’t been to yet in your mind.
Ged: Yes. Yeah,
Milan: This
Ged: Yeah.
Milan: The, this is the, this is the end state, and now we’re managing towards that,” and then we do it again, and then we do it again. The airplane’s flying you, you’re not flying the airplane
Ged: Yeah. And we’re not talking literal time travel here, we’re just looking at projecting ourselves forward so we can look back into the past. And a great book for that is Time as a Tool by Dr. Benjamin Hardy. You know, that’s a, that’s a really good book to explore that sort of, that concept. Hmm.
Milan: I actually think that that’s the most most literal form of time travel we’ll ever be able to do. So I don’t think that that qualification was necessary, but
Ged: Yeah. Well, maybe there’s another card there, right? [00:18:00] Maybe there’s another card.
Milan: Oh, there absolutely is.
Ged: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Okay, luxury to waste time, and I think the real message here is y- you’re actually wasting time if you’re doing low value, low energy work. So the, the name is wrong, but it probably puts the message across. We need to have time that we can use in a considered way, time that works well for us.
You’re not wasting it. It’s a luxury, it’s actually essential, but you need to find that time.
Milan: Good wrap.
Ged: That ended up being longer than I thought it would.
