Welcome to Passive Real Estate Investing. I’m your host, Marco Santarelli, you know, how many different apps do you have on your phone open right now? Or how many tabs do you have open on your internet browser and how many different email threads and Facebook messages do you have going on at any given time? If you’re like most people, you probably have lots of each of these things too many. In fact, multitasking might be a bigger problem than you think. Not only is it splitting our time into fragments, but it is not helpful nor is it efficient. And it actually is counterproductive today. And with my guests, you’re going to learn why multitasking. And I say that in air quotes, isn’t even an accurate name for what it describes and why you should set designated hours for your time, whether it be at the office home or any other place of activity and how you can find more time to do the things that you actually love. How can you actually free up to 40 hours a month of extra time that you can put to whatever you want to put it towards? So with that, I’d like to introduce my guest and we can talk more about this concept of multitasking and why it is actually a lie.
All right, it’s my pleasure to welcome Dave Crenshaw to the show. Dave develops professional leaders in fortune 500 companies and universities and organizations of every size. He has appeared in time USA today, fast company and the BBC news. And I’m sure many other places which he will fill you in on his courses on LinkedIn learning have been viewed tens of millions of times. His five books have been published in eight languages. The most popular of which is the Myth of Multitasking, which is a time management bestseller. And as an author speaker and online instructor, Dave has transformed the lives and careers of hundreds, of thousands of people around the world. Dave, welcome to the show.
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Thanks Marco. Glad to be here.
Well, it’s great to have you on. So, you know, I kind of read a bio of you and I’m sure I missed a couple of things. Maybe tell us a little bit more about yourself and what you do and where you came from.
Well, okay. So a couple of unusual things that aren’t in the bio is one, unlike a lot of time management, you hear a lot of time management experts, productivity experts. These are people who have always had it together, right? Always been organized. I was diagnosed as off the charts, ADHD. In fact, the term that the psychologist use was freaking off the charts. So focus organization, like you see my really nice, this is not a background. This is my real office. This is fantastic. But 20 ish years ago, you had to use a shovel to get from the front door to the desk. It was complete chaos all the time. Wow. So when I’m talking about things like focus and organization and productivity, I’m coming from the standpoint of somebody who understands how incredibly difficult that is for most people. And so I adapt what I’m teaching to that. And the other thing that wasn’t in the bio is I was mentioned by the Chuck Norris in the official Chuck Norris factbook. That’s about the coolest thing that could happen to anybody.
That’s awesome. Right on. I’m sure you were stoked when you heard that.
Oh my gosh! I couldn’t believe it. I thought it was a Chuck Norris joke. Yeah.
That’s awesome. Well, you know, I’m kind of intrigued to have you on the show because I am terrible when it comes to multitasking. I feel like I’m juggling at least two, sometimes 15 things at the same time. And I don’t know if this is going to sound like bragging, but I think I’ve become good at it. And I’m not saying it’s right or it works. And I think you’re going to probably dispel that myth here today, but I am notorious for doing two things at once, but I’ve come to learn from your book and other books as well, but especially your book that there’s a cost in doing that, that I’ve probably been wasting a lot of time thinking that I am being productive. But the reality is, is I’m actually losing more time. So let’s kind of start at the very beginning here, you know, the whole lie or myth of multitasking basically has seeped into every aspect of our lives, especially with the digital age and us, you know, carrying cell phones and having all these messaging apps, you know, we’re constantly doing something like driving and checking our Facebook feed or whatever it may be, but it’s almost like a disease. So let’s just start off with the very basic question. What is multitasking? So for people who are not clear on what it means, let’s start off with what that is and then tell us why is it a lie or why is this the whole thing a myth?
Well, the answer is sort of both questions is the same, which is multitasking itself is an inaccurate word. And in the book I advocate that we completely remove the word from our vocabulary because it creates a lot of problems. Your brain is not able to do multiple attention requiring tasks at the same time. And the book first came out in 2008, this is a fully revised and updated version of it. And there’ve been mounds of studies. I mean just pile of evidence, this high from people who are much more scientifically minded than I am that demonstrate that your brain has this limitation. It’s not a limitation of creativity or performance. It’s simply a limitation of function. Meaning when you focus on one task, you have to set another task aside and you have to give this task attention. So when people think they’re multitasking, what they’re really doing most often is what I call, switch tasking and switch taskings, where you’re trying to listen to this podcast while you’re answering an email, you’re not doing both. You’re switching away from this podcast. You’re focusing on the email and then you’re switching away from the email and going back to this podcast. And every time you switch, you incur switching costs. The three most obvious examples of switching costs are things take longer. So when you try to multitask, you’re not getting done things faster, you’re getting it done slower. You make more mistakes and you increase your stress levels. So rather than getting at switch tasking, our goal should be to try to reduce how much it actually happens in our day.
Interesting. So I’m just thinking of something as you were talking, and this wasn’t something I was thinking about before, but you reminded me of a book that I read a while back. I’m sure you’re familiar with it called a Deep Work from Cal Ewing. I think the concept and what you’re talking about plays into what he talks about, where you basically just engaged yourself into the one task that you’re focused on and go real deep into it and ignore everything else around you. And that just forces your productivity to go up is what you’re talking about, explaining why deep work works.
Yes. And a step further. I don’t view myself so much as like the research expert or the one who’s going to explain why I’m more interested in how to stop it from happening. So I’m more behaviorist. I’m more interested in helping people learn new patterns of behavior because it’s more productive. So in other words, yes, if the goal is to do that kind of deep focused work, what we need to do is we need to start implementing ways to protect ourselves from attention switches. There are two kinds of attention switches. There are the passive ones, meaning they’re coming at us. Someone giving us a phone, call someone, sending a text message, our phone beeping with a notification. And then there are the active ones. Those are the ones that we do ourselves, where we think about the laundry that we were supposed to pick up yesterday. We think about, Oh my gosh, I should’ve contacted someone or we stop. And we go, we’re watching a video and we go, where have I seen that actor before? Let me look this up an IMDV right. And we type it in our phone. All of these switches, whether they’re passive or active are just chewing up our day and they’re contributing to the stress and the feeling of overwhelm that all of us are experiencing right now.
Yeah. My biggest problem would be the active switch tasking because I do it to myself. I’ve kind of learned and conditioned myself to be that way. And I know it’s a bad habit and I need to break it. So I mean, it doesn’t sound like the passive switch tasking is within your control. All you can do is just do things to prevent it from happening, which I know you talk about in the book. It’s just, how do you shield yourself from things like that. But before you talk about that, a lot of people might be saying to themselves right now, you know, these interruptions, especially things that cause you to have these passive switch tasking situations, aren’t these just a fact of life. Aren’t these things that are uncontrollable. And if it is controllable, how do you actually control it?
Yeah. So is it completely realistic to get rid of all the switches in your day? And the answer is no, and I’ve never said anything that would try to encourage that line of thinking. That’s just going to get you frustrated because you’re right. That’s the world that we live in. We are going to have these interactions. What I am saying though, is that a lot of them, if not, most of them are avoidable, there are things that we can do. And I’ll just give one example. You know, a lot of people say, well, I’ve got to check my email. I’ve got to stay on top of email to be a good professional, to stay on top of my business. I’ve got to be responsive. And I would say yes, but you don’t need to be as responsive as you think. For example, you know, there was a study done by rescue time, which is a, is a nice little app that can help you stay focused. They found that the average person checks their messages once every six minutes, that’s 10 times per hour. Right? And then if you consider that every time you have one of those switches, there’s a cost associated with it where you’re actually paying maybe two to three to four, five minutes of switching costs. That means you’re not getting anything. You’re maybe working 25, 30 minutes out of every hour. So instead the question becomes, how long can you go in your industry with who you are dealing with real estate, that sort of thing. How long can you wait until you respond and check an email, even if it’s once per hour, which is a lot, right? Once per hour on the hour, we’re still drastically reducing the number of switches that are taking place in your day. You put that on a calendar. So you are responsive within an hour and you just gained back hours of time.
You know what, if I can add to that one thing that I tell people when I consult them is they’re going to, if they do everything that I say, they’re going to gain back essentially 40 hours, every single month of free disposable time. And I’ve worked with a guy who’s in the real estate industry. And I told him that he thought I was full of it. And then a couple of months later after he’d been through the training and the following and he called me up one day and he goes, Dave, it’s three o’clock. I don’t know what to do with myself. So it’s very much possible to implement these changes.
40 hours a month is the equivalent of one workweek. That’s exactly a lot of time. So the cost is very high.
Yeah. Basics research out of New York did a study of knowledge workers. And this is back in the day, but they found that the average knowledge worker, which has everyone listening to this podcast loses 28% of their day due to interruptions and the recovery time associated with those interruptions. That is a workweek every month. And honestly, since that first came out, I believe that number has become much higher. I think it’s closer to 35 to 40% now.
So the real cost is very tangible. It’s quantifiable. You know, I actually said to my daughter in the car last night after I picked her up from her dance class, I said, you know, the one thing in life that you can spend and never get back is time. You know, it’s such a precious, valuable resource that we really need to protect it because once it’s spent, it’s gone and you can’t get it back. So everything we can do to learn, to become more productive, which means avoid, you know, switch tasking is just more valuable time that we can use for ourselves, for family and whatever else it may be. So this is very important information, regardless of whether you’re a professional or a parent or whatever. So let me, uh!
Yeah. And one thing that I like to say when I start teaching people is I ask them, what would you do if you’re listening to this, ask yourself, what would you do if you had an extra 40 hours per month, how would you spend that time and, you know, make a commitment to it? Is it more on your business? Is it having a hobby? Is it spending time with loved ones? Is it sleep? Whatever it is, think about that. And then that way I’m framing it, not as a conversation about time management, but as a conversation about getting whatever it is that you want.
Right. Right. Okay. So let’s take that a step further here. Let’s say you’re a busy professional, which a large part of our audience are made up of professionals and entrepreneurs and whatnot, but whether you’re a busy professional or an employee or a parent or whatever, you know, I think many of us have lost control of our schedule and probably not on purpose. It’s just, we all say that, you know, we get busy life takes over and we were busy. This is the more tactical question that I have for you. And what steps can people take, regardless of whether they’re a parent or a professional to reduce interruptions and minimize that switching, whether it’s passive or active.
Yeah. Well, and I think you can look at both sides of it. And each of the different types of switches has a different solution for it. I like to think of them as switch busters. I’m a fan of the old children’s busters, right? So, so we can’t get rid of switches, but we can reduce them with a few of these things. So I mentioned the email one, another way to reduce passive switches is turning off any other kind of notification. You don’t need to know when you have more lives available on a candy bar. Not necessarily turn that off, any kind of notification when you get it on your phone and you see that pop-up you want to ask yourself, do I really need this? And is the cost that I’m paying for this interruption worth it. And most things do not fit into that category. In my opinion, probably the only notification that you might need is text message.Everything else can probably be turned off. You can also let’s switch over to the, the switch, the switch over to the active side, as entrepreneurs, as people who are listening to this who have great ideas, they’re looking for opportunities that is a wonderful skill to have. And like you said, Marco, you want to cultivate it, but you also want to make sure that it doesn’t run all over your day. So what you do is you have a place designated, I like to use Evernote as an app, but any note taking app, even writing on a piece of paper will work. So you get a great idea in your head, write it down and put it in a place where, you know, you will see it and deal with it. And then on a regular schedule, you review those and you ask yourself, is this an idea I need to do something about right now and if, or even want to do something about right now. And if the answer is no, or maybe you put it into a perhaps list. So I have a file, a running list of all these awesome ideas that I’ve come up with through the years that I’ve said, Hmm, perhaps I’ll do this someday, but I don’t really need to. So what that does is it respects the new idea and it communicates to your brain that I am dealing with it at the same time, that allows you to put it to the side while you’re focusing on things that are more valuable.
That’s brilliant. I love that I use Evernote and I do have kind of a general folder where I dump ideas into, but I find that I never go to it. So maybe that’s just saying that those ideas aren’t worth following up on.
Well also though illustrates a principle. What I would recommend though, which is you want to have a schedule for that, because if you don’t have a schedule, then your brain is going to go wait a minute, nice try. But I still need to remind you of that, right? Because it left an open-loop and our brains are fantastic at closing open loops. So I want to do is have an appointment in your schedule maybe once per month. And I have it like on a Sunday for 30 minutes once per month. And it’s just simply to review the perhaps list and I just go through it and I go, Oh, I want to pick it up now, do I want to pick it up now? And most of it’s Oh no, no, no, no. And sometimes only I’ve already done it, but now the brain can relaxed because it says, Oh, okay, I get it. You are going to look at this so I can let go. And that’s such a beautiful feeling when you reach the point where there are no unresolved tasks in your mind, another side effect, a wonderful side effect of my coaching that I’ve heard people report is they sleep better now, simply because they’ve relieved their minds of that burden of having to remember all.
Interesting. So let’s talk about schedules for a minute because you’re making me think about how I manage my schedule and how it’s changed over the years. I’ve gone from, you know, just putting everything in my calendar to putting very little on my calendar, throwing everything on a to-do list. And then I, you know, kind of adopted this new concept over the last year or two of time-blocking where I create general categories. I’ve been experimenting with different models. And I don’t know if this is related, but I know in the book you talk about time budgeting. I don’t know how that relates to scheduling, but do you have any advice for how to essentially manage your time to avoid these types of switches and be productive?
Yeah, so the time budget concept is simply there 168 hours in the week, and you’re going to make conscious choices about how many hours you want to devote to all of these. And the book also walks through an initial process where you’re kind of doing an audit of your time, not measuring every single minute, but just kind of estimating how much time am I spending in all this stuff. And usually people’s estimates are wildly off they’ll, you know, like the example in the book, someone saying they spend 190 hours of activity in a week, which means they’re overestimating what’s happening. So in fact, and that example, which come from a real instance, by the way, it was from a woman that I work with successful business owner, entrepreneur, and she realized how her count was off because she thought she was spending time with her family in the evening. But what she was really doing was spending time doing stock research in the presence of the family in the evening. So time budget says, all right, now that we know what it is, let’s create the real schedule the ideal week. And you start to estimate how much time do I need for sleep? How much time do I need for work? How much time do I need for family? You come up with those numbers and it’s got to equal 168 hours. And then you go to the calendar like you’re talking about, and then do the time blocking, because now you’re not just throwing raw numbers at the week. You’re throwing numbers that were strategic and careful choices that you already made
Interesting. So there’s nothing wrong with time blocking. In fact, it’s probably based on what you’re saying, it’s actually a good thing because you’re managing your time prudently, so, okay. Yeah. All right.
Could I add one more thing to that too? I’m talking more about like the broad thing, how much time for work, how much time for family, that kind of stuff. But within the work hours, I also highly recommend looking at your most valuable activities. This is one thing that I don’t hear talked about so much in time-blocking, which is of all the different things that you could be doing with your time. What are the top one or two things in terms of value per hour, most executives, especially those who are entrepreneurial types. They’re spending less than 25% of their total time in these most valuable activities, which means they’re spending the majority of time doing things that are worth less, not worthless, but are worth less than what it could be. So you kind of want to, you want to flip that you want to say let’s spend as much time as I possibly can in those most valuable things and then delegate everything to someone else. I know that you offer great services in that category, right? Where people don’t have to do all the work related to their real estate. That is something that I advocate because it means that you have more time available to devote to the things that are really worth the most per hour.
Yeah. I don’t talk about that a lot, but you’re right, because you can, if you just do a quick analysis, you can tie a dollar amount to your time, you know, measured in hours or days, whatever it may be. So, you know, why spend your time doing something that you can outsource for 10, 20, $30 per hour when your time is worth a hundred, 200, $500,000 an hour? You know, it’s just a very simple decision, but most people don’t stop to think about it in quantifiable terms like that. And when you do, you realize, man, I should be outsourcing 80% of what I do. And focusing on the 20%, that’s making me 10 times the money or the expense of outsourcing the rest of the stuff. And I’m guilty of that myself. I’m, I’m terrible at that. You know? So I need my assistant to kick me in the button once in a while to tell me, Hey, let me take care of that. So anyway.
Yeah, when I hire someone to my team, I tell them that their job is to make sure that I’m doing my most valuable work. If I am doing something less than for me, my most valuable activities are creating content and delivering content, teaching it 100% during it, I’m doing anything other than those two things, something is wrong with the business. Something is wrong with the model and we need to have a discussion of how I can do a better job of delegating to them, training them, how they can help me get out of the way of my own self so that the business grows. That’s what makes the business grow is me spending my time in those things, not doing minutia, doing all these other random tasks.
Yup. A hundred percent, a hundred percent. So as we wrap things up here, Dave, there’s this one simple exercise that you have in the book that I really, really love because it’s so revealing. And for those people listening to us today and they’re thinking, well, I get it. It makes sense. But I don’t believe that it’s really costing me as much time as you are essentially convincing most people of tell us about this exercise. Just explain it because it’s very simple to do, but the fact that you can do this and it shows how much time is wasted in the whole concept of multitasking or switch tasking is incredibly revealing. You know, which exercises I’m talking about, right?
Absolutely. Yeah. It’s the most popular thing that I do. So here’s basically what it is. You recopy a phrase in this case, in the book, it’s multitasking is worse than a lie and you write that phrase in one row. And then in the second row you write the numbers one through 27. Why 27? That’s how many letters there are in the phrase. Multitasking is worse than a lie. And you time that, how fast did you do that? Then you do the exercise again. You’re going to try to do the exact thing. Same thing. Recopy, multitasking is worse than a lie, right? One through 27. But this time for every letter that you write, you write a number. So you write M and then one, and then you, and then two and then L and three. And you do that all the way. And when you time that result and that illustrates immediately to people, the three costs things take longer.
Usually when you try to switch tasks, you’re increasing the amount of time. By 50 to a hundred percent longer, you make more mistakes. People start scratching out numbers and letters and they write up and down or they end up on a number of them in 27. And then the third one is their stress levels increase, which I think is so fascinating because this is a simple, silly little exercise. And yet the moment they start to switch task, they start to feel that knot in their stomach. And it illustrates in just a few minutes faster than me talk lathering people up with all the studies and the statistics and all that kind of stuff, because they feel it and they see it firsthand. It’s a great exercise to do with your family or people on your team or just friends because it’s right there in front of you and you feel it.
Yeah. I encourage everybody listening to this to actually try it. It’s a very simple exercise. It doesn’t take long, but it so illustrates the concept of time lost from switch tasking. So it’s just a fun little exercise, but it works so well, Dave, this has been fascinating. I think people get the point, uh, you know, they understand what you’re talking about. You certainly get into more detail in the book and it’s not a long read either. It’s actually a great read. It’s the perfect length for a book. Anything you’d like to share with our audience that we haven’t talked about today, things that are your frequently asked or whatever I missed.
Yeah. Well, so I talked about the first three effects takes longer mix more mistakes, increased stress levels, but there is a fourth effect. That’s so important, which is when you switch tasks on a human being and you’re communicating to them that they are not important. And that’s the fourth effect. And sometimes people will hear this and they’ll say, well, Dave, whatever, I can still do this. I can still be productive and I’m going to keep doing it. And it doesn’t matter. But when you do this with a human being, that is a fourth fact that is unavoidable. If I look at my phone and I’m having a conversation with you, Marco, and I’m like, uh huh. Yeah, that’s interesting. And I’m swiping on my phone. I’m telling you that you’re not important. And imagine people doing business with you and you say to them, Hey, how you doing? You’re unimportant. How can I help? Right. We wouldn’t say that, but that’s pretty much what we’re saying when we do that. That’s a good point. So a powerful opportunity is to focus on people, to set the phone aside and give them 100% of your attention. Because when you do that, you communicate to them that they are important and they feel validated. And that’s a powerful statement that sets you apart in a world where everyone else is addicted to the myth of multitasking.
Yeah, no kidding. Great point. Well, I am going to encourage everybody listening here to pick up your book and read it or the audio book or whatever it may be. So let’s kind of wrap it up there. Dave, hang tight too. I just had an idea of how I can put you in front of another group of people that are perfect for you. So stay tuned. So tell our listeners how they can find you and get more information about what you offer, what you do and where they can find the book.
Yeah. So the book, you can find that at multitaskbook.com, that’ll take you right to Amazon where you can get it there. And if you want to follow me, I’m always giving out free resources, tips, all that kind of stuff at davecrenshaw.com. Crenshaw is C R E N S H A W.
Cool. Dave, thank you for coming on today. It’s been great and valuable. So I appreciate it.
Thanks, Marco.
Thanks.
Well, it looks like it’s time to close the book on multitasking. This is a flawed notion of being able to do everything at once, and it has been a drain on the workplace and personal productivity for far too long. The fact of the matter is, is that dividing our attention among more than one task at a time is simply impossible. And what we are really doing is switching back and forth between activities and tasks and as a result of doing that, we’re spending more time getting less done. So I think the time has come to start implementing the anti switch. Tasking changes in a focused and deliberate manner. And with that, we are going to wrap it up for today. I appreciate you taking the time to listen to the show, remember to subscribe.
I want to make sure that you are notified when we release each and every new episode. If you are interested in real estate investing of course, schedule your free strategy session with my team here of investment counselors. So we can help you map out a game plan to basically create financial freedom for yourself. We want to make sure that you have a game plan to create wealth and create passive income for you and your family and your future generations. That is it for today. Help us spread the word, visit us on iTunes or wherever you’re listening to this show. Leave us a rating and review. Thank you for listening. And I will see you on our next episode.
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