This is the Business English Podcast, Episode 143, Why Less Is More at Work.
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Hello, Lindsay. How are you? I'm feeling 110% today, Michelle.
I'm feeling fantastic. 110%. That's good.
That's good. But do you often feel that when you're doing work or other things really that you push yourself to be 110%?
Kind of, yeah. And it might not always be the best thing.
I kind of do. I sort of am a very hard worker almost to a fault sometimes.
And I really, I'm very earnest in my work.
Like I want to do everything right. I'm too thorough.
I think there's something to be said for doing the minimum at first until you've proved that that project is going to move forward or proving that this is a good idea for what you, I don't know.
There's steps, there are grades of effort we can put in as we progress further.
I just go all in at first immediately, which is too much.
Yeah. you know what i mean do you do do you mean do you mean you get like wrapped up in the details or yes oh absolutely i i do both i get two into the weeds that's a great expression to get into yeah i was thinking that expression too yeah bonus expression but i also try to get high level so i try to pull between the two and it doesn't work like you can you kind of either need to be in the weeds or high level Interesting.
I try to do both and then somewhere in the middle too.
It's not good. Yeah. I can definitely get into the weeds.
Like I can, I can get caught up in details of things and that can like slow me down and in certain, in certain types of work, like I'm, you know, more of a. creative thinker.
And I, you know, so that, so that can kind of like, I can kind of get obsessed with like checking things.
I'm like, Oh, did I do, you know, that kind of thing.
Yeah. Well, it's hard, right? Because someone has to pay attention to details, right?
Otherwise things won't get done properly.
But maybe it's a matter, I'm not sure. We'll see what we learned today, but maybe it's a matter of understanding this work session is about high level work.
This work session is about the weeds and I separate it. depending on what I'm working on.
Very interesting. Very interesting. So yeah.
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So join the crew. Love it. So, Lindsay, today we're going to talk about this great article that I found on the Harvard Harvard Business Review.
So that's HBR.org. And we are going to talk about this article and share our opinions.
And just it's going to be really interesting, this idea.
So the article is called To Business. Build a top-performing team.
Ask for 85% effort. So this is by... Interesting, right?
This is by Greg McKeown. Hope I pronounced that correctly.
But from June 8th, 2023. So fairly recently.
So that's what we're going to talk about today.
So, Lindsay, this article... discusses how much like how so much is expected of employees and how it's not enough to like how a lot of companies are now kind of expecting a lot of their employees and offering something for wellness Like so.
So, you know, it's like, you know, you have so much and then you add something for wellness and then it's kind of like, well, but you're still expecting so much.
So what the article says is it says, quote, instead of maximum effort equals maximum results, a better formula is optimal effort equals maximum results.
Less effort can actually lead to more success.
So I thought that was interesting. So what do you think of that idea, Lindsay?
What does that mean, optimal effort? Yeah, this is something... So I agree.
But I agree because it's a principle that I've learned over the last few years of business that often...
The people who work less do better. What I mean by that, it's sort of confusing, but I've seen, I've seen people like who have become very successful, let's say in the online and the podcasting space or the online business space, people will call themselves lazy.
But that actually means they don't want to get into the weeds like we've just talked about.
And when you get into the weeds, you become like on a hamster wheel.
You get on a hamster wheel and you can't actually grow a company that way.
And so what people do who are, quote unquote, lazy, they put systems into place so they don't have to deal with the weeds and that grows the company faster.
So I disagree. I think we should always come to work with 100%. effort wanting to do the very best for the company we work for, for ourselves, for our own integrity at work, we should be 100%.
It doesn't mean we're going to show up to work and say, I think 85 is enough.
I totally disagree with that. But from a business perspective, it's actually smarter to do a little less.
For example, if I want to partner All Ears English with a big company, and I want to... pitch us to a company and maybe for licensing, I'm not going to spend five hours creating a huge pitch deck before I even know if we're a match.
Instead, I'm going to throw out some simple questions by email, maybe have a meeting, see if we're philosophically aligned.
And then when I've proved there's a business case for working together, then I'll make that pitch deck.
But I'll make it as minimal as I can kind of minimal viable effort.
Does that make sense? Yeah, it does. It does.
Because, you know, otherwise, you can spend so much time doing something and it doesn't work out.
And so you have to, what do they say? Don't work hard, work smart.
Isn't that what they say? Yeah, that's the point.
That's what I mean. So I think we should always come to work saying I'm going to do the very best I can, you know, but sometimes that's actually working a little less. doing a little less.
Yeah. Right, right, right. Exactly. So guys, we also have episode 109 of the Business English podcast, which is how to talk about stress in English.
So a good one to kind of match with this.
Yes. Yeah, that ties in with this too. Tell us a little bit more about the article.
I'm interested. Yeah. Well, the article talks about burnout and how you need to take it easy a little bit to be productive.
So if you're working so hard all the time, you will burn out.
Lindsay, have you ever felt burnt out? Oh, my gosh, Michelle.
Totally. The worst case of burnout I had was around the holidays of last year when i came back from argentina like three weeks in argentina and immediately i was burnt out again it was incredible and i thought to myself what is what is wrong like what's going on and it does come back to this thing there's so many things we could be doing in our business workday so we have to be selective about what we do and how much effort we put in we stage our effort gradually we unleash it gradually not all at once Interesting.
Yeah, I think that's a really good point.
I mean, you know, one thing that mentioned was about how people doing like racing, actually racing do worst when they try their hardest early on.
Right. Like, I've definitely seen like, haven't you seen like races where like even horse races, like people, horses, whoever's racing, and then somebody is always in the lead and from the start.
And I feel like that person usually doesn't win.
Right. Totally. It's kind of like when you're dating someone, you're just checking them out.
Like you don't put that much effort into, you know, if you're imagining a partnership with a company, you don't put in that much effort at first.
You don't go all in at first. You ask questions, you're selective, you're careful, you hold back.
And then when you know it's a good opportunity, when you know this person is maybe marriage material, for example, as they say, then you're going to go after them.
You're going to go all in and be a, that's when it is the time for 110% effort, I believe.
Right, right. Yes, exactly. Yeah, it reminds me of that story, the tortoise and the hare, right?
Like, you know, that the if you like move too fast, you know, you think, oh, I'm just gonna, you know, it's so easy.
And I'm gonna be I'm faster, and I can get more done.
But actually, then you just can burn out, things can fizzle.
So yeah, it can be tricky. i remember reading that story as a kid did you read that as a kid yeah yeah of course of course it's always a good lesson yes but uh but yeah in the article it suggested some things for managers to start doing to working on this idea so guys if you are if you're a manager even if you're not a manager these are good things to think about so we're going to talk they listed a bunch we're just going to talk about three and so we'll talk about our opinions of these So the first one they talked about is they called it done for the daytime.
OK, so they said transformational managers insist on a reasonable time for employees to leave work.
So, Lindsay, what do you think about that?
Like having like, no, you're done. Yeah, I think this is so important.
Absolutely. Because we know that work expands to fit the time allotted, right?
That's a principle. I always agree with that.
I agree with that so much. It's so true.
We learn it every time we have to relearn this.
It's like we don't fully learn it. We realize it again and again.
So if I say, okay, our company works for four hours a day, that's it.
We're going to have very high level. Immediately you have to say, what's the important task?
And what can I what can I systematize? What can I assign to someone else?
Right. What am I going after? What am I going to wait to do later?
You'd actually probably get just as much work and growth done in the four hours than you would in the eight or the 10 or the 20.
I work probably I work like 11 hours a day.
Right. I work a lot. Maybe 10. Maybe not that much.
I don't know. Maybe nine hours a day. But I could probably do the same work in five hours. interesting oh so like do you plan to try and yeah yeah I was on a call yesterday with a guy who was saying that he has um started to say that he leaves the office at three every day you know and that's it like he just is gone so he gets all his work done between nine and three it's working for him so i don't know maybe we'll see you should do it you should do it i should try it what else michelle why not the other thing is they said to it says ask your employees to work at 85 so this is interesting so it actually says you can say you know like what does it feel like to be at 100 intensity and then follow up how can we can you keep this closer to the 85 level so That's interesting.
So what do you think of that, Lindsay, asking your employees to work at 85%?
What do you think? I think it's a little dangerous if you phrase it this way because it could get misunderstood, right?
I think what he means in this article is it's not that you're saying just be a little lazier, right?
Yeah, yeah. Let's rephrase that. I don't think he's saying like try a little less hard, be a little less aspirational.
I think he's saying be more selective about the work we do do and be smarter about what you do and how you assign, work out, systematize things.
But I think if you just say work at 85%, it's like saying go and run a race, but run at 85% of how fast you could go, which is not the right message.
That's what I think. Yeah. Right, right, right.
So you want to be clear with this. Definitely.
I would say something different. I would phrase that totally different.
I probably wouldn't use the percentages because it could be misunderstood.
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Exclusions apply. See details online. Okay, what else?
Is there something else here, Michelle? All right, this is one more I want to talk about.
So this is interesting. So it says, ask for decisions to be correct 85% of the time.
So again, Lindsay, this is interesting. Well, this one I agree with more.
What do you think, Michelle? Yeah, no, I understand what they're saying here.
So they basically say this is about perfectionism.
Yeah. Talk about they the article talks about excellence seeking perfectionists.
Right. And also failure avoiding perfectionists.
Right. So someone who feels like nervous that they're, you know, things aren't work aren't going as well.
So, yeah. But like this is basically if you ask for decisions to be correct, 85 percent of the time it says people might feel less stress.
But I also think, yeah, it just might make you like less anxious about decisions.
So you might make them faster and they're probably going to be the same decisions anyway.
It kind of like takes a burden off of you.
This is what I think. It takes a burden off of your mind to make a decision like, oh, if it's not OK, it's OK.
Like, I just like have to be correct most of the time.
And like, yeah, probably going to be correct anyway.
But it takes away that anxiety. What do you think?
Yeah, I like this. I think this would be something I would want to introduce to a team.
Right. This is something I would say, not the prior one, but this one, because if you don't do this, if you say you need to be correct in your decisions 100 percent of the time, you stifle innovation.
Right. Right. Of course, you're going to be wrong. probably more than 15 of the time right that's how we innovate like think about it all there's english all the things that we've tried that haven't quite worked out it's been a lot of things that we thought would be great and they just didn't work and but if we hadn't tried those things we wouldn't have learned and so absolutely especially in a small early stage company you have to do this it gets harder though for our listeners who work at the corporate level like more legacy companies that have been around forever i'm sure that Like, how do you create that culture of innovation?
You have to have that thinking of like 75% of the time, 60%, you know?
Right. Yeah, that's true. That's true. I totally agree.
I mean, Lindsay, there is so much more. It was hard for me to choose which ones to talk about from this article.
So guys, we encourage you to read this. But just before we go, a couple of key keywords, right, from today.
Burnout, right? That feeling of like, oh, I can't do it anymore.
So I'm experiencing burnout because my supervisor has made me work 70 hours a week for five weeks.
So that's tough. That's tough. Or stress.
There's so much stress in my office because of all these intense deadlines. yeah mm-hmm good um or expectations i want to adjust my expectations so my employees can work better overall so yeah some key ideas terms to walk away with today yeah i mean i for a takeaway guys you know especially if you're living in the states Check out Harvard Business Review.
We get it delivered to our house. It's a nice thick magazine.
You could spend hours reading through it.
And it's really good, especially for moving up to leadership levels in your company.
A lot of interesting things, provocative articles, things to think about.
I would say. Yeah. Yeah. I love the articles on there.
So that's great. But yeah, think about your if you're a manager, think about your management style or if you're an employee, think about your, you know, your working style.
And can anything be changed? Right. I'm also I also wonder if this is different across cultures, you know, do different.
Are there different expectations or like are there different value on, you know, these things like decision making and stress and things like that?
So interesting. Right. Right. Because I would just say a little something about the culture piece.
I think in another culture, maybe like Japan, I don't know for sure, but I lived there for a while.
I would imagine that question around, you have to be right 85% of the time would be presented more to the team rather than the individual.
My mind went immediately to one person making a decision.
Did you, did you go there? Yes. Yes. Okay.
So I think that's cultural. I have a feeling that in like a Japanese company, maybe some like Asian companies or other parts anywhere in the world, it might be about our team has to make this decision correctly 85% of the time.
So there's always a cultural label there, Michelle.
Fascinating. Yeah. Love it. Yeah. Good point, Lindsay.
So yeah, well, guys, check this article out.
Really, you know, think about all this stuff.
There's a lot to think about here. So, but we gave you some key terms.
So anyway, Hope you enjoyed today's episode and can start implementing some of these ideas.
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All right, Michelle, I'll talk to you next time.
Have a good day. Bye, Lindsay. You too. Bye.
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