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Welcome to Before Breakfast. A production of iHeartRadio.
Good morning. This is Laura.
Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's episode is going to be a longer one, part of the series where I interview fascinating people about how they take their days from great to awesome and any advice they have for the rest of us.
So today I am delighted to welcome Eric Fisher to Before Breakfast. Fest. Eric is the host of the long -running productivity podcast Beyond the To -Do List. So Eric, welcome to the show.
Thanks for having me.
I'm glad to be here.
Why don't you tell our listeners a little bit about yourself?
Yeah, well, gosh, I've been heavily involved in online marketing and social media and obviously podcasting, consulting and working in all of that for a very long time.
But the thing I think most people would know me for is my podcast that's based on productivity, beyond the to -do list, which is hitting about 600 episodes somewhere here and I've been doing it for 13 years, talking with people like yourself, as well as many other experts in the field, as well as fringe people that, you know, you wouldn't normally think of how to get the most out of your day, but do it in a, I don't know, non -hustle culture kind of a way, I guess.
So how did you get started in this productivity world?
I don't have a good origin story, but maybe you do yeah well i think i always needed it i definitely have adhd uh i got diagnosed years ago and that was no surprise to me then i actually got re -diagnosed recently and i'm kind of starting a new journey there um in terms of you know re -acclimating as an adult with that but i was the one who always had a little you know notebook flip open pad of paper and a pencil just writing ideas and capturing, didn't really think of that as productivity per se, but once, you know, early 2000s through 2005, somewhere in there, David Allen's book, Getting Things
Done came out and the internet.
And I was, you know, I was doing a lot of sitting in a cubicle, data entry time, and then I would get done faster than other people that were doing the same job.
And so I'd surf the web and I would find podcasts when they came out, but also just different sites like Merlin man and a few other things and started just, Oh my gosh, I love this stuff.
Like this is basically it's self -management it's, you know, you it's leadership, but leadership of yourselves and of course others.
But that's where I started to realize, Oh, so the way that I can kind of cope, or I guess a better term would be manage as well as even exceed and thrive with ADHD is to have productivity systems in place.
And that's where I started to cobble together scaffolding and structures and workflows and then married that with podcasting once I had started getting into that and doing that and started the show around.
I'd been on other shows and co -hosted things, but summer of 2012.
So now it's been 13 years.
Yeah, you have been podcasting for a long time.
I guess people really were podcasting in 2012.
It was early, but again, 20 years ago at the time of this recording right now, somewhere in the June, July month was months was when Steve Jobs gets on stage and announces we've added podcasting to iTunes.
And I'm like, I don't know what that is.
And then there's an update sitting there at that data entry computer.
And I'm like, all right, bio break, coffee, reset, sit down, go to plug in my headphones and listen to music again and start typing.
And I see this tab over there and I'm like, podcast, what is that?
Clicked in and I'm like, oh, this is like TiVo for radio for people that remember what TiVo is.
I can pause and unpause these things that aren't just music.
I can be entertained as well as educated and learn while I'm sitting here.
This is breaking my brain right now.
It's funny to think about the iPod giving its name to podcasting since we moved on from iPods a while ago.
Anyway, you've interviewed so many people And shared so many tips on your show over the years.
I wonder what some of your favorite ones are, like the ones that you actually use in your daily life.
Yeah. One of the biggest ones for me was just because it's easy when we're staring at screens all day and then have other screens nearby to be distracted constantly.
And one of the cool things was kind of treating those distractions in a, let's say, meditational kind of approach. And what I mean by that is having an analog system, a pen or pencil, and like a legal pad sitting there that while I'm sitting and doing and focusing, like I'm talking to you, and if a thought pops into my head, slide that over, acknowledge the thought, write it down, and then slide it away.
and notice I'm not saying grab the phone or grab a, you know, open another window or, you know, pick up a tablet.
It's analog to your shifting it and in your, you know, workfold brain.
It's not adding more digital on top of digital stacking things.
And what it does is it lets you acknowledge the thought kind of like meditation, accept the thought and then push it back away.
And those of us who've been who are parents or have been parents of small children know that this is like treating your inner brain like a toddler.
It's not saying no, it's saying not right now.
And what happens is, is those distractions, and this is how I've found it to work, is that the more that I allow myself to acknowledge, instead of fighting against the thought, like you'd say, no, no, no, not now to a toddler, instead just say in a moment or when this time comes or you know here's what you know so acknowledge treat it with fairness and kindness and not necessarily judgment and then let it go away and you know sometimes you might have great ideas during that time but you've dedicated that calendar time to a certain task you're on a call you're in a meeting you're or you're in a meeting
with yourself you're doing a thing but then after that by again having a little calendar break definitely not jamming your calendar so full that you've got no buffer time in between things you can use that buffer time to one take a break but to take a look at that notebook triage it is there anything in here that popped up in my brain panic wise from uh during that work session that that I need to address now?
Or where can I park those things later?
And just by addressing that, that meditational calm kind of way instead of, oh my gosh, I just remembered like there's an emergency thing.
Well, you can take care of that in 20 minutes when you finish the thing you already made a commitment to.
I call that the later list as in, I'll get to it later.
Yes. Love it. I love that tip.
Well, we're going to take a short ad break and then I will be back Back with more from Eric Fisher.
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Well, I am back talking with Eric Fisher, host of the Beyond the To -Do List podcast. He was just sharing the idea of writing down things in order to make yourself less distracted.
I wonder if you have some other tips that stuck with you?
This one is one I'm trying to actually make a habit right now.
It came out of the idea that, again, and it kind of flows with the one I just talked about, which is, you know, our perception of time and our hurried brain that always feels like it's working off of a sugar high instead of consistent, you know, reasoned, measured activity.
activity and what i do with this is basically first thing in the morning and you can this can take whatever form you know insert your form of what this is for you but for me it's first thing in the morning the dog wants a walk well they both do but i only take one because only one of them likes me so uh we go out and i put no headphones in i don't put on i know i leave the phone at home them i don't take anything with me but the dog and we walk and then my brain yeah it does kind of the thing where it's like remembering oh what am i doing today things like that but i try not to think about anything
i just kind of let my mind wander in other words i'm letting my mind breathe i'm warming up not just my body physically which does play into the mental and emotional and and everything, but letting my brain acclimate to the day.
I'm waking up, and honestly, some people are like, you're crazy.
Take coffee with you if you need to.
I don't. I'll do that after I get back.
It's kind of a reward, but it's that allowing of that time where you're not in, I am being very intentional, but I am not intentionally doing any work.
Now, that's not not to say that our subconscious isn't doing stuff and needs to but i've just found that that's one great way to set the tone for the day first thing instead of you know scanning and scrolling for fires that inevitably most of the time aren't really even there do you remember i mean we most most mornings we're waking up we're like is there anything that's like calling to my attention first thing it should be what you want not what others want well this is a way of kind of setting that that tone for the day.
And again, you're not picking up a device and scrolling over the never ending buffet that is always there of information that you could get.
We're never at a lack for somebody else who's posted something, news that has come out, et cetera, et cetera.
That's always there.
Take the time before you even take a look at that.
Yeah, we are big fans of morning routines on this show.
Do you have anything else you do as part of your morning routine beyond walking your dog?
So after that and after having, you know, that breathing, brain breathing time, what I will do is I will go over the list that I have for myself for the day.
I check the calendar.
I check my to do list. And what I kind of do actually before the day before is, you know, hand off off the baton to my future self, I will close loops.
I will leave loops in places where it's possible for me to pick.
Like, in other words, this is where you start on this project.
Like, I will almost be super explicit about saying this is where you left off.
This is the next thing you need to do so that next morning me doesn't need to think about it at all.
The baton is being passed because I mean, that's one of the, we know this from studying racing.
One of the biggest things is that baton toss.
You screw that up and you lose like so much time and the other team passes you.
Now, this is a, you know, a competition with yourself, but still.
You've mentioned that one of your big ideas these days is peaceful productivity.
What is that? Yeah, it really means having a, I mean, again, we all want to have plans.
We want to execute on those plans.
For me, and this is even, you know, I would relate this to something that, you know, the walk kind of makes me think of is that time where, you know, we have these, we have our best thoughts in the shower is the same kind of goes.
It's, it's allowing those times to exist in your schedule where no one can reach you and you're not needing to be reached.
Like you, you know, okay.
Nobody should need me.
I'm going to go do that.
Like, in other words, I mean, go back to parenting, like the rare times you could get a shower in because the kids are around.
It's like, okay, they're all all set up nothing's going to happen no emergencies now i'm going to enter into me time it's hygiene whatever but it's not that in other words it's work and so allowing those times to be in place the other thing is is i just try not to stack the day filled with stuff back to back to back to back i love to have buffer time in between the things i do have and to have those things be as important as possible the big picture stuff now we know there's lots of little picture or admin type things but I will group those together those are some of the things that always pop
up when I do the legal pad trick that I was talking about a moment ago those are the things that then oh yeah you're right me I need to do that tell you what I'll give you a time and a place for that in this calendar block called admin on such and such a day.
And it's like a good, you know, it's a half hour, no more, no less.
And I'll group all those two minute activities right into there.
That's where it goes.
And so then you actually gain more trust in your system and in yourself by doing that.
So you've shared a lot of great tips from the show, but I'm wondering and talking with so many people over the years, is there anything that you've heard a lot, but you don't do because it just doesn't work for you yeah i think that one of the things for me we've all heard that multitasking is bad and i think it's that our perception of what that is is bad you can set up multiple things to go and be automated and do their thing and you can switch between those softwares like i mean i speak especially to ai as our you know thing that we've been using now for almost two years.
You can set up workflows for that and have it run and then I can switch back.
I will often do this.
I will answer emails and then flip back into AI and type something else and further it along in the process or dialogue and then flip back to email.
And that kind of breaks it up.
That's actually a healthy thing for me with ADHD.
You'd think, oh no, stay on focus.
it's focused time you need to do you know no actually by jumping back and forth it does give me a little bit or enough i should say of a variety of switching tasks that so so when we say multitasking we're i mean i'm doing two things at once but i'm not i'm switching tasks and and again if i were to add a third or fourth thing in there that's where we get into trouble and it's It's like, which thing, what, whoop, ah, no. And then I move none of them forward as fast. But if I can switch like two things and it's gonna kind of be the right things, but play with that a little bit.
Figure out what are some of those things that like maybe you do something, do two things that you don't wanna do at the same time.
And then because you're switching back and forth, you feel that perception of time moving faster and that momentum and you're getting two things done and then you check them off.
so we have to do the right form of multitasking got it well we're going to take one more quick ad break and then i will be back with more from eric fisher every business has an ambition paypal open is the platform designed to help you grow into yours with business loans so you can expand and access to hundreds of millions of paypal customers worldwide and your customers can pay all the ways they want with paypal venmo pay later and And all major cards, so you can focus on scaling up.
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So I am back talking with Eric Fisher, host of the long -running podcast Beyond the To -Do List. I know podcasting has gone through a lot of changes in the last few years.
I mean, what do you see as the future of podcasting?
I think it just continues to grow, that's for sure.
More and more people know about it, know what it is, and are consuming it in some form or fashion, whether that's audio or video, or audio on a video platform like YouTube.
All these different platforms are starting to offer this, like Spotify and YouTube.
I have to assume, because video podcasting is not new.
I used to watch video podcasts back in that 05, 07, 09 time, and they would download automatically through my Apple devices, and I would watch them, certain ones, so it's not like it's a new thing, but more and more people have access to it, and more and more people are aware of it, and so it's, you know, and I think the other key piece is, I love that there's now shows, or there has been all along, but there's now shows that are shorter like yours are, except for this one, this episode, I should say.
But having that as like little pockets of information that you can say, OK, what's that one thing, that one takeaway?
What's that one experiment, if you will, that I can try from that episode?
I think I think there's definitely still more room to grow.
I mean, again, 20 plus years now, but a lot of people didn't know about it for the last 10 or for the first 10.
And some have have just even found it in the last five so it continues to grow and i'm loving it well here's hoping we get to keep growing eric i always ask my guests this question what is something you have done recently to take a day from great to awesome yeah i would say again i'm gonna lean on my adhd brain and one of the things that i've found is doing something spontaneous and surprising so So for me, it's, hey, there's that new coffee shop that I've never tried.
Let's go there. Let's sit there.
Let's soak in the atmosphere, try something new.
And it gives you a new environment and a new, you know, sight, sound, smells, all the sensory stuff.
And that really can open you up in your imagination, your creativity, and all of that.
And again, it doesn't have to be just something that's consuming or consumable.
bull it can be going to a different place it can be even listening to different type of music or it can be but i i stress that it's usually something sensory for me that really makes things uh different um the one other thing make it maybe relational call up that person that you haven't talked to i mean it's been six months since we've like talked you know yes people you still use phones and have voice calls um do that have that uh two weeks ago i saw a friend i hadn't seen in a year and he happened to be in town and me and some other friends we all met up and it was like yay so doing some of those
things that reinforce um surprise and joy and creativity and just fun because i mean what's the point of productivity if we're not like enjoying our life life because of it.
We definitely should enjoy life.
Do you ever find it challenging to come up with so many ideas?
I think that's not the problem.
I think I have more ideas than I can do anything with.
I think one of the sayings that, you know, I think I said this first. I don't know.
I've never heard anyone else say it is that good ideas come from many ideas.
So the many can mean a lot of them are crap.
But some of those crap ones put together with other crap ones start to to come into, oh, that's a good idea, but what's the great idea for, and then, oh, there's a good idea and two crap ideas put together.
So, and now it's a great idea.
So again, this is another one of those reasons why we have like the legal pad trick I talked about earlier, capturing things, but also having that kind of back burner simmering in some sort of maybe digital brain where those ideas are captured.
And when you're looking for stuff that, you know, you know, I don't quite quite have it yet, but maybe I've got something stored in my, not in my real brain, not in my physical brain, but my digital brain.
And you start to search for something topically related and it comes up.
And this is actually where some of the AI stuff comes in.
If you give it access to some of that digital brain stuff and say, Hey, I'm looking for an idea I had that was about such and such and dah, dah, dah.
And they, well, it looks like, you know, two months ago, you had this brief snippet of a something.
Is that, you know, is that related in your mind?
Oh yes. There There you go.
So treating, you know, AI like an intern that can track your stuff.
Yes. AI can be our interns, I guess, before we get to the point where AI becomes all of our bosses.
Eric, what are you looking forward to these days?
I'm really looking forward to just some of the things I've got on the horizon.
A couple of different things with like a group of nonprofits that I'm speaking with in October.
That's going to be really cool.
All about podcasting and how they can use that.
I'm really looking forward to seeing kind of the questions they throw at me because they've a lot of them are interested in using it, but haven't used it yet.
So that's that's one.
Got some other speaking things coming on coming up in the future and honestly, just kind of growing and expanding and working with some of the stuff.
like I have a partnership with Blinkist, that app where we put short versions of my show in there.
I'm making more of those coming up.
Lots of cool stuff like that.
And just, just, you know, enjoying the life of productivity instead of the doing of the productivity.
That sounds good. Where can people find you?
The best way is to go to beyond the to do list dot com.
There's a contact form there as well well as some of the links to like socials that'll take you to my LinkedIn or other things like that where you can reach out.
Yes, please check out Beyond the To Do List. It's a great show.
Eric, thank you so much for joining us.
And thank you to everyone for listening.
If you have feedback about this or any other episode, you can always reach me at laura at lauravandercam .com.
In the meantime, this is Laura.
Thanks for listening.
And here's to making the most of our time.
Thanks for listening to Before Breakfast. If you've got questions, ideas, or feedback, you can reach me at laura at lauravandercam .com.
Before Breakfast is a production of iHeartMedia.
For more podcasts from iHeartMedia, please visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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