The Key to Feeling Productive (Without Adding More to Your Plate) with Guest Expert Penny Zenker

Penny Zenker 0:02
You get to the end of the day and you’re like, “Oh, I feel so, you know, unproductive. I feel like death by 1,000 paper cuts. I got nothing done today.” But it’s not that you got nothing done. It’s you don’t feel good, and you don’t feel productive because you didn’t get the most important things done. You didn’t get the things done that drive progress and that make you feel like you’re making progress. And so I actually say that productivity is a feeling. It’s like happiness. I mean, we’re human, you know—it’s not, we’re not machines. You can prove if a machine is productive, but how do you prove that we’re productive? It’s usually how we feel and making, making progress.

Blake Schofield 0:50
Real leadership, real life, real impact. No more choosing between your career and your life. Here you’ll find honest conversations, science-backed strategies, and inspiring stories to help you thrive at work and truly enjoy your life outside of it.

Blake Schofield 1:13
I’m your host, Blake, and I’m honored to help you create more impact with ease. You foreign on today’s episode of Impact with these, I’m excited to introduce you to Penny zinker. Penny zinker is known as the focus ologist. She is a former tech entrepreneur, turnaround strategist and C-suite executive, and two-Time Best Selling Author and top podcaster. Penny has been in the trenches for more than 20 years. She built and sold businesses, as well as turned around companies on the brink. Her methodology and strategy provides very simple ways to shift how you’re looking at where you place your focus, so that you truly can become a leader who is focusing on the things that are moving you forward. I love how she speaks about the three gatekeepers that you need and how you can move them forward, the mindset that’s needed for the future to really step into the next level of what’s happening in your career and the next level of what’s really happening in our industries and our workforce, and provide some really simple and tangible ways that you can improve your focus and your productivity on a daily basis. I’m looking forward to sharing this interview with you, and I hope that you leave inspired, and you leave and take action to truly help you focus your time and intention on the things that move your life and your career forward. Well, Penny, welcome to Impact with ease. I’m so excited to spend a little time with you today.

Penny Zenker 2:50
I’m excited to be here. Thanks for having me, Blake,

Blake Schofield 2:53
absolutely. So I’m excited to dive into your topic today. You know, as a former corporate leader of 18 years and an entrepreneur of the last eight, I know the importance of what focus and productivity mean in terms of actually accomplishing what you want in your career and being able to enjoy your life. But before we dive into all of the goodness, I’d love to learn a little bit more about you and let our audience learn a little bit more about who they’re going to be hanging out with for the next little bit.

Penny Zenker 3:22
I think I’ve always been somebody who, like I said earlier, we I’m multitude. So on one side of me, I have my father’s, you know, stick to the certain path. You know, he was an accountant, and so I majored in accounting and finance, thinking that I would go that path, because you’re sure to find a job as an accountant, because there’s always going to be taxes and there’s always going to be all of that. But in school, my passion was a little bit more about it, and so I was really into the technology classes, and that’s kind of where things took a swing for me. Even though I was kind of in accounting role, I took a swing into technology, and all the technology that supports the accounting and just, yeah, just, just loved the, the aspect of technology. So I never ended up getting my CPA or doing anything with that. And the funny thing is, if I compare to the, the different ways that I went about—so even though it was in accounting and I didn’t have an IT background, I ended up starting my own IT company, and I built it up from just me to a multi-million-dollar business, and I sold it to a public company. And so I had this belief where I was like, “Oh, I couldn’t start my own company, because I don’t have a background in this.” You know, we all get in that I’m too old, I’m too young, I’m too dumb, I’m too, you know, whatever, I don’t have the skills.

Penny Zenker 4:47
And so it was just by luck, where there was somebody sitting across from me, and he was an IT consultant, and I was training him on what to do. And I thought I could be doing that. I—like, I should do my own thing. I should go out and start this business. And that’s what the impetus was—if he could do it, I could do it. And so, yeah, I started this business, I sold it, and then, you know, funny to go into, again, a totally different twist, right? Somebody who’s in accounting and then in technology ends up as a keynote speaker, you know, and turnaround specialist—like, that’s weird. But it, for me, was the natural path. Because—well, actually, not the natural path. I never would have seen myself as a public speaker, because I used to get, like, these terrible panic attacks if I had to raise my hand in a group of people and actually stand out and ask a question. But I realized that I did it anyway. So, you know, and I—it’s one of those things where you think everybody hears it coming out of your chest, right?

Penny Zenker 5:49
It was like, I know they’re looking at me because they know that I’m scared to death ask this question. But I realized that when your passion for curiosity—right, my passion for curiosity and asking and answer, getting answers to those questions—was greater than my fear, greater than myself. And so then I was like, it—just pushed through it. And I think that’s been sort of the nature, is “feel the fear and do it anyway.” So there I am, ending up speaking in public. I don’t like to be the center of attention, even though I’m an A personality and I like to interact with people, it’s just—I think when your passion and your purpose is there, that you can push through any fear, you can find your own voice and pursue that path with focus and clarity and courage.

Blake Schofield 6:40
Kenny, you’re known for being the focus ologist You talk about, you know, how you sort of ended up on an unconventional path, following the things you were passionate about. You built this business, sold it. At some point after selling that business must have come this understanding, or this idea around how you were successful and where you were seeing the gaps, and ultimately, this idea of leaders really needing help understanding where to put their focus and energy. Can you share a little bit about that? Like, what was that “Aha,” and how did that come to be?

Penny Zenker 7:12
Well, you know, it’s like—was it Twain who said, “You know, I would have written it shorter if I had more time”?—is, to get to that simplicity for me, to get to understanding that, for me, the common thread was focused, probably took about 30 years. It was, it was probably about 2018 when I started to look at, you know, okay, what am I going to speak about for my keynote, how will I share the core of not only what’s made me successful, but what’s made the countless number of CEOs and people that I’ve coached—for them to double their businesses or do the amazing things that they set out to do? And I realized that focus is, is the thread, but not like many people might think.

Penny Zenker 8:00
Because many people, when they think of focus, they think, “Oh yeah, I’m going to block out those distractions so I can focus on one thing.” And actually, for me, focus was more about the strategic level, not the attention—which is at the task level—but at the strategic level that says, “Are you aligned? Are your actions that you—and your behaviors—are they aligned with what it is you want to accomplish?” And then that’s where focus comes together, is it’s really attention, and where you put your attention has to do with intention and your goals and the context of the situation that you’re in. And when those three work together, to me, that’s Focus. Focus is alignment around those three areas. And so that’s what I came to realize, is that when those three elements were present, then we can really create that strategic focus on the things that matter most

Blake Schofield 9:00
wonderful. I don’t know a leader who would not like to be more productive, better focused, and more aligned. What are the main things you see that leaders use to maintain focus amid distraction, so that they can be more successful and more productive?

Penny Zenker 9:17
Well, you know, there’s a couple different things. I mean, distraction, first of all, has—you know, is—focus is the exception, not the rule, today. And distraction has come to a point—like, I believe that we’re not just addicted to our phones or the technology. I believe we’re addicted to distraction. And that’s the challenge, is that the more we distract ourselves, it’s kind of like sugar—the more we want to distract ourselves. So we’ve, we’ve come out of practice to focus. So we need to learn to recommit and, and relearn to focus. And so one of them is, is there are so many distractions, so it’s having structures to be able to put in place— is to avoid those distractions. I call them gatekeepers. There’s, there’s three areas of gatekeepers, and I can, I can go into that in a little bit, but that’s one thing, is to be aware of what those distractors are, because a lot of times we’re not even aware.

Penny Zenker 10:14
So first is to claim the awareness. So we need to own not only our actions, but also our distractions. So really, really be able to own that. And also it’s lesser goals—we get so caught up in the minutia and the smaller things and putting our energy into the smaller things that we’re not giving our focus on those things that matter most at the end of the day. How many times do you get to the end of the day and you’re like, “Oh, I feel so, you know, unproductive. I feel like death by 1,000 paper cuts. I got nothing done today.” But it’s not that you got nothing done. It’s you don’t feel good, and you don’t feel productive because you didn’t get the most important things done. You didn’t get the things done that drive progress and that make you feel like you’re making progress. And so I actually say that productivity is a feeling. It’s like happiness—you know, how you gonna—I mean, we’re human, you know, it’s not, we’re not machines. You can prove if a machine is productive, but how do you prove that we’re productive? It’s usually how we feel and making, making progress. So we want to make sure that we’re clear on what are the drivers—the things that really move the needle towards the things that matter most to us.

Blake Schofield 11:29
You bring up such an excellent point. You know, it goes back to so many—well, tried and true principles are tried and true principles for a reason, right? There’s a reason why Pareto Principle—of 20% of the things you do drive 80% of the results—is proven to be true over and over again, and yet

Penny Zenker 11:46
we—so we focus on the 80%, right?

Blake Schofield 11:49
Yes, we end up focusing on the 80%, and I think a huge part of that is as leaders, it’s very easy to get overwhelmed with a lot of urgent tasks that maybe aren’t important tasks. How would you guide or direct a leader who could say to themselves, after listening to what we’re talking about, “Oh, that’s what happens to me. I end up doing all of these things because my to-do list is so big, but I don’t feel energized. I don’t feel productive at the end of the day. I don’t feel like I got to work on what I wanted to.”

Penny Zenker 12:19
Well, there’s two things—I would say two, two exercises to do. One is sort of a way to look at things on a daily basis. But I want to start with something that I call the The Four Hour Work Week exercise. Have you ever read Tim Ferris’ Four Hour Work Week?

Blake Schofield 12:33
I might be one of the few people that has not, but please continue. I’m sure most people have, and it doesn’t matter whether you have or you haven’t.

Penny Zenker 12:38
The premise of it is that he designed his life around a lifestyle business that he’d only have to work four hours a week. And at the time I was working around the clock, I was burning myself out. And I thought this was BS—keep it clean here, right? And—but later I thought about it, and I thought it was brilliant, because if we want to change the way that we work, and we want to focus on the things, you know, the bigger-picture things, sometimes we need to change the way we look at things and change it drastically. So he couldn’t—if he did the same business the way he had always done it, or even tried to tweak it a little bit, he’d make a little bit of improvement, but he’d still be overwhelmed and overworking. But by creating a constraint like that, it forces you to no longer work the way that you used to work. It forces you to look at it differently and to accomplish it differently.

Penny Zenker 13:37
So the four hour—I call the four hour work day exercise, because it might be a little too extreme to say four hours a week. You can’t start there, or you could, but let’s, let’s start with four hours a day. Imagine that you still needed to accomplish the same things today, or this week. I like to look at it from a week’s perspective, because anything can happen in a day. So take one week and say, “What is it that I would accomplish in this week?” And then say, “And I only now have four hours a day to accomplish that.” And then, if you put it on a piece of paper and you split it into a column—here’s the things that I would typically do in a week—and write them all down, and then identify what you—you know, circle the things that you will now be able to do and must do in order to achieve those results, and then make a list of the things that you either need to automate, delegate, or eliminate—right, all those other things that are not drivers of your success. And that kind of just gets us in a different way of thinking. It’s a quick exercise—you can do it in like 10 to 15 minutes—but your 20% that makes 80% of the difference will pop out, and that will help you. And then, then I also have this 135, rule, or what we can use for the daily planner to kind of balance urgency and importance, which is what you were talking about.

Penny Zenker 15:00
So, you know, one of the things is where those distractions are, as we’re distracted by a lot of false urgencies—it’s kind of our nature as, as at least for a lot of Americans. There’s a book that was written many years ago called The Stuff Americans Are Made Of, and it talks about urgency as sort of one of our success factors. But, you know, anything that can tip the scale—when it, when it’s too much, right, when it’s no longer serving us, and it becomes, you know, a detriment, a hindrance. And, and so the way to avoid that is to say, “Okay, there are some things that are urgent, but we have to challenge those things to make sure—is it really urgent, and does it really need to be done today?” So the 135, rule is, we look and do one thing every day that brings us towards a long-term, critical goal—like a long-term goal. So one step—maybe it’s a phone call, it’s an outline, it’s some research, whatever it is. And that could be a 15-minute thing, or it could be an hour, or, you know, depending on what the objective is that you set for that. But one thing that keeps you progressing on that big-term, long-term goal, because you can imagine—you get to the end of the day and you’re like, “Yeah, I did something towards that big goal,” and I didn’t allow all those urgencies to crowd out what’s important so that I never get to it, because that’s what happens.

Penny Zenker 16:25
Maybe you want to write a book, but you never get to write the book, because there’s this, there’s that, right, and there’s all these things. But in this case, you break it down into those little pieces, and every day you’re going to do something that’s going to move you forward. Then the three are three things that are towards midterm milestones. So it’s not that long-term goal, but they’re midterm milestones that you need to meet. So let’s say you have a client that you’re working on—something that’s to be delivered next month, right? Maybe I have a keynote that I’m working on, so I want to make sure that I have to send the slides in. So that’s something that’s going to be a midterm milestone that I’m working towards, is to get the visuals that I need for that, or the handout, or whatever. And I could do something today that’s going to move that forward. And then five things that absolutely must be done by you today. That’s where we challenge those urgencies. Do you need to do it? Or could someone else do it? Could you write a—an AI agent today that could do it—like, what, you know? Could you do a workflow of some sort? Could you delegate it? Could you hire a virtual assistant or something of that nature, or an intern?

Penny Zenker 17:35
But there are urgencies, right? “Oh, the one thing—if you just focus on the one thing, and you just have a strong enough why, everything will work out.” No, it won’t, because it’s unrealistic. We wear many different hats, right? I’m a mom, I’m a daughter, and my mother’s aging, and so she needs, you know, sometimes some, some different care, and my kids need different types of care, and those things can be urgent. They might be things that could take up half of my day if it’s urgent. And so we need to also be flexible with that, but we need to understand and give ourselves space to understand that there are things that are urgent, that need to be done. If you need to pick up your kids from school, that’s pretty urgent—you need to do that. So this is how we balance. It is that we have a day that makes us feel productive because we got those urgent things done that were really, truly urgent, and we also got those things that are moving us forward and creating that feeling of progress.

Blake Schofield 18:35
Yeah, I know what you are saying to be so true, as this was really work when I became an entrepreneur that—well, you see it, there’s no hiding. You’re either your own worst enemy or your best cheerleader. It all relies on you and how you’re thinking about where you’re putting your time, energy, and focus. And as someone who works both with entrepreneurial leaders as well as corporate leaders, what I know to be true is often the thing that’s not talked about. It’s the elephant in the room, right? We want to make these things all tactical and strategic, and if it were that easy, everyone would just do it, right? I love what you’re suggesting, and what I would layer on to those listening who want to apply this, 135, methodology is—where do you notice the emotional discomfort in doing that, right?

Blake Schofield 19:28
Because we can look and go, “Well, no, it doesn’t have to be done by me. And is it really that urgent?” But what I see over and over again with leaders are—there are patterns, behavioral patterns, belief system patterns, or conditional patterns that actually are what’s driving a significant amount of distraction, a significant amount of emotional distress, a significant amount of getting stuck in fight or flight or feeling emotionally triggered or frustrated or overwhelmed by these types of circumstances. And, you know, this is not something I knew about myself as a corporate leader, but it’s something I have spent a lot of time investing in as an entrepreneur and really understanding that I think so few people talk about, but this is a huge hidden component underneath all of that. And so if you can start to build the awareness of, “Okay, I’ve got this great strategy and execution. Where do I struggle to execute it? Where do I feel that emotional resistance?” and start to look at that—there is huge, huge power in terms of what that will do for you and your ability to personally grow and execute these things with a higher level of productivity and efficiency.

Penny Zenker 20:38
Absolutely, I agree with that. And actually, on the worksheet that I’m happy to give people link to—to have a free download—that daily worksheet includes kind of the bookends, so there’s some emotional aspects that you review at the end of the day. So at the beginning of the day, you write down your 135, and you—or the night before—and you get working on those. But then you have things like, what did you notice? Like you were talking about—what was distracting? You know, was it something physical, or was it your mental or emotional issues? Or are you procrastinating on something, right? What are you grateful for? You know, at the end of the day, it’s also good to reconnect to what you’re grateful for. And sometimes that just has you realize that maybe all of this overwhelm—it’s just over nothing. I had a recent, recent situation where I’ve been going to breath school, so doing some breath work, and using it to just regulate throughout the day. And what would come up in some of these sessions is—none of this matters. You know, I’m getting myself worked up over things that really, in the grand scheme of it—it doesn’t matter. If I make a mistake, so what? Like, it’s not the end of the world. I don’t want to make a mistake, but it’s not the end of the world. So this—these bookends at the end of the day—to enable you to connect with, with gratitude and put things into perspective, and, you know, and have some of those emotional reflections,

Blake Schofield 22:14
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Penny Zenker 23:04
Well, it’s—yeah, you can create some daily habits, and it can be some overarching—just also ways that you—overarching belief systems and how you work through things. So the three categories are—number one is rules. Now sometimes you might think, “Whoa, we don’t want to add more rules. There’s enough rules,” and rules can be limiting, but rules can also be freeing. So think about the reason why we have standards—that we set a standard so that we work towards that standard, so that everybody knows what that standard is. And so that’s one of those rules, is to have standards for your organization, but also for you personally, so that you know what’s good enough and what’s not yet good enough—things like setting boundaries, right, that can be a rule, because when we have a rule, it helps us to protect our time and energy. So let’s say—let’s say my rule is I don’t eat after seven o’clock, or six o’clock—or earlier, for somebody who might be doing intermittent fasting. So that rule—having a rule, and knowing that it’s sort of a general rule for me—helps me to stay aligned with my goals. Saying, “Okay, well, that would add more weight. I wouldn’t sleep as well,” and the impact that it would have to eat after. So having that rule makes it—makes me more present and conscious to it.

Penny Zenker 24:27
So those little rules can really support us—things like time limits, you know, maybe setting that you check your email for only 10 minutes at the top of every hour, and that you have a rule where your meetings are 45 minutes, for instance, giving you five minutes to also go and stretch and go to the bathroom. Setting up some rules like that also—again, they can help to protect your, your time and energy. And then you can also set up some, some “if/then” type of rules—“If this happens, then I’m going to do that. And if that happens…” And these things just act as a support system for you to stay on. Track for making these—for pre-deciding what’s important is super helpful. And then the second one is filters. And filters are like—where, you know, where I came up with this whole gatekeeper idea was, you know, sales people, they are looking to get appointments, and who do they need to get past? That assistant that they call the gatekeeper, right? So that, that person is a filter—that position is a filter to help you to avoid distractions—things that, that don’t belong on your calendar. And I thought, we all need to have gatekeepers, right? Why should it just be like the CEO or the top, you know, sales guy, or whatever? So, so that’s where this whole thing came about. And, and so what are some other filters? For instance, is your priorities are filters.

Penny Zenker 25:53
When you—really clear on what your priorities are, it makes it super easy to focus on those critical goals and let those lesser goals be handled elsewhere. Delegate those things. Filters might be questions. Questions help us to direct our attention and our energy, but also other people’s, right, if we want to help people to filter things in a certain way. So that’s the idea around filters. And then the last pillar is our environment. Our environment is really paramount, and it really determines our compliance for different things. So imagine that you’ve got—and this is me, so I’m working on this constantly. I have, like, a million windows open. And not only does it drain the memory from my computer, but it’s—you know, you have too many things open. It’s like all these open loops. So looking at our space around us—if it’s messy, if things are open, if you’ve got half-written notes or 5,000 sticky notes up—that’s, that’s not helpful. One or two might be helpful, but I’ve seen people’s desks, right, where they’re overloaded with sticky notes, and all that does is create more of a distraction.

Penny Zenker 27:08
So really looking—in our environment—creating the right types of reminders that support us. For instance, I have a new wearable—it’s charging right now—but it doesn’t just, like, the watch will buzz, but this one actually has a vibration with a certain frequency for different times of the day—to, let’s say, when I get up in the morning. So there’s a focus frequency; as I wind down at the end of the day, there’s a relaxation frequency. And what it does is it’s just a gentle reminder to me also to breathe and change my breath as soon as I feel it. It’s not just a reminder that is stirring or interrupting—it’s supporting, and it’s helping me again, to—in my environment—to be conscious to the things that are most important, and being able to use my, my breath to calm down, to be creative, to be energized—those types of things are really important for me, to get the best out of my—myself for the day.

Blake Schofield 28:13
There’s so much that you say that are things that, you know, I think we often aren’t taught until we get to a certain point in leadership where the ways that we used to do things no longer work. And there’s that beautiful push-pull with what you said earlier, of having to recognize that what we’re doing isn’t sustainable, that we have to start looking at it in a different way. And if you look at what’s happening in our society, our culture, in our workplaces—as a society, we are—have shorter attention spans than ever. We have technology moving faster than I think we’ve ever seen, and we have a tremendous amount of uncertainty. What does that mean for our jobs, for our children and what they will do, for what to expect as things come? And as somebody who can relate—you know, I was known as sort of the “transformation Queen” when I was in corporate. For me, I—I’m always looking at what’s next, and how do we shift into the future, and sort of future-proof our success. I’m interested in your perspective. You’ve been doing this work for a while. How do you think the current environment is changing the challenges that leaders are having today, and what do you think is maybe even more important in the forefront as they look to future-proof their career?

Penny Zenker 29:40
That’s a big question. So I want to go back to the point that you said earlier, and something that I say a lot is “things work until they don’t.” And so just because it worked in the past doesn’t mean it’s going to work in the future. The number one skill that leaders need to not only master for themselves, but to be able to—to teach others and guide others—is adaptability. I just recently—last September, about—so a year, a year ago—I launched my book The Reset Mindset. And so in it, there is a whole page that shows the difference between the growth mindset, the fixed mindset, the growth mindset and the reset mindset. I call it the next generation of the growth mindset. It’s the mindset that we need for an environment of uncertainty, for the pace of change that we’re experiencing.

Penny Zenker 30:33
And the difference is, is that it’s about real-time adaptation. It’s about recognizing—again, it comes back to—for me, it’s all tied into focus, right? And those—that definition I gave in the beginning is about understanding the context, you know, and—like you said—what’s next. Not just looking at today, but what’s the context of our customer and how our customer is changing, and how their needs and desires and purchase behaviors are changing, and how our workplace is changing. We have multi-generation—a more challenging environment than ever as leaders. So it’s adaptability, and in an age where technology is in some ways making things less human, we need to be able to be more human. So the—aside from adaptability is the secondary—or together—is stewardship, is, is one of those.

Penny Zenker 31:32
So if we, if we looked at three circles that overlap, I would say, you know, technology—to understand where it’s going and how it’s affecting your business and your, your customer and your people—and then stewardship. How are you caring for the people that you have so that you’re developing them and really taking time to be more personal and adapt things to them? And the interesting thing is—and I’m doing a report on this right now, the research is just being, coming into the report—is that when we use AI as leaders, we can actually use it to be more personal with people, to be faster in understanding different ways that I might approach you based on your generation, your personal preferences. If we collaborate together and you share some of that with me, I can quickly—at my fingertips—know, you know, with—with five-minute investigation is, what are some of the best ways to approach you? What are some of the best types of projects or ways that I can give you the type of work that is going to be most interesting for you, right? So it’s really being hyper-personalized. When we are interacting human to human, that we’re really being very personalized—not “this is the way this role,” I don’t want to treat you like a role. I want to treat you like a person. And that’s where I think, you know, there’s, there’s a lot more to this, but that’s where that reset mindset is—developing that as leaders and into your culture will help people to be more emotionally intelligent, as they can deal with uncertainty much more effectively, and then also, you know, increase the collaborative aspect of, of moving forward.

Blake Schofield 33:11
I couldn’t agree more that emotional intelligence, personal regulation, authenticity, and vulnerability are so key as leaders. It is a paradigm shift from what it certainly was like when I started incorporating what it was like for the previous generations, where we were rewarded for having the big plan perfectly built out before everything was done, and feeling like we had to know all of the answers. And, you know, I certainly operated that way eight years ago, when I left my corporate retail career and learned how to navigate an entirely different way of life—one that is really focused on maximizing the opportunities in front of you and not being beholden to a plan that was based without data. And it’s incredibly powerful what you can accomplish with that level of flexibility—and not just level of flexibility—the willingness and the ability to embrace uncertainty.

Blake Schofield 34:16
One of my favorite quotes is Virginia Satir. She says, “Most people prefer the certainty of misery to the misery of uncertainty.” And I think that we as a society often stay in and do things over and over again because we know what to expect. We believe that the unknown is the risk, and what I have seen over and over again is that the unknown is the possibility and the opportunity. So when I hear you talk about that, I could not agree more. I think it’s so important to be able to share that message with more leaders who haven’t maybe had the access or the opportunity to really embody those principles yet, because as those leaders embody the principles, what I see over and over—again, is they empower their teams, and then you create an environment of true innovation. You create an environment where companies and leaders truly have a competitive advantage, and in a world—as we are going as fast as we are going today—to me, that’s the only way to be.

Penny Zenker 35:17
Absolutely. And that, to me—right, in my words—the core of that is the reset mindset. And it kind of goes back to what I said earlier about the four hour workday exercise, is that our constraints can be catalysts to growth and opportunity, right? And it forces us to think outside the box. And we can create those constraints ourselves—“What if,” and then we come up with a constraint that says, you know, we don’t have to wait for COVID to hit to actually see that we could do telemedicine—like, okay. You know, we could, we could look at different areas of, you know, challenges and look at, “Well, if we looked at this differently, what’s possible?” And, and that’s, that’s the mindset that says—and there’s three steps in this framework that apply to anything—whether it’s time management and, and productivity, or whether it’s communication and empathy and understanding, or whether It’s innovation and creativity, or whether it’s resilience—it’s step back, right?

Penny Zenker 36:24
Get some perspective—that’s the second one. So step back away from the emotion so that we can see things with greater clarity. Get that perspective—the big—reconnect with the big picture and what it is that you’re really looking to accomplish. And then three, realign. And when we do it over and over again, as often as needed—whenever and wherever it’s needed—it gives us the space to think, to recharge, to reconnect, to rethink things. And that, in itself, is what’s going to help us to adapt and adjust much, much faster. And that’s—and that’s real time, right? We need to be able to do that in real time, and not over long periods of time for decisions to be made. And like you said, the plan—you know, plans change or become irrelevant, and so that’s why we need to step back and re-evaluate it, right, get some perspective and then realign around the new plan?

Blake Schofield 37:21
Yeah, and it’s interesting, you know, if you look at—things that I’ve worked in, mostly Fortune 500 companies in my corporate career, but there’s a skill set that you must develop to move up, and often that skill set doesn’t get shared necessarily all the way down. And you look at what’s happening with organizations, with technology, with everything—up to be reinvented in some way, shape, or form, whether it’s now or in the next, I say, 10 years—being able, as a leader, to have this methodology that you apply, and then openly communicate that to your team—that this is how I’m looking at making decisions, and I want—You to be looking and challenging and making decisions. That’s how we empower teams to create innovation. And often, I find that the team members sometimes have even better ideas than the leaders do, because they’re in it, but they, they have to have an environment of which they believe that they are empowered to create those changes. They are empowered to see things creatively in the way that you’ve said, and they have enough space to do. So if you’re in fight or flight and you’re just surviving, there’s no space to be creative, to do those types of things. It sounds lovely, but it’s very difficult to execute.

Penny Zenker 38:32
Absolutely. It has to become a part of, part of the culture—absolutely. And, you know, one of the reasons—and like we said, I think we said earlier, you know, to keep it simple—is that it, for me, that’s the answer to staying focused on the right things. It’s just constantly stepping back, getting perspective, and realign. It’s super easy. And it—what inspired me was “Stop, drop, and roll,” right? It’s three simple, quick things, right? If you want to get out of a fire and you’re, you’re caught, what are you going to remember in the moment? And, okay, there’s probably a cute little jingle that goes with it—“Stop, drop, and roll”—but, you know, step back, get perspective, realign. It’s three simple things that—you know, you, you can, you can easily—and they’re intuitive, because they actually are intuitive. When you say the word “reset,” it’s a magical word because it intuitively triggers the three steps. And so when you have a cue—right, a word that will help you to trigger and say, “Hey, you know, let’s call for a reset here. We need to get some perspective on this. Let’s reset and take a few minutes to leave the meeting”—like, these are things that I hear people saying that they do. They brought it into a meeting because it was getting heated and they couldn’t find a solution. And they simply brought that word and said, “Okay, let’s reconvene in—you know, just take a quick five-minute break.” And they said when they came back, all—of a sudden, people’s minds were clear because they gave themselves space. We have to stop pushing through. Recognize the signals that we’re burning ourselves out or we’re pushing through, and that it’s affecting us mentally, it’s affecting us physically, and when we recognize that, that we then create the space—Penny.

Blake Schofield 40:19
Thank you so much. This has been such a fun conversation, and I think you’ve left our listeners with several really simple ways to be able to take this forward into action and create more focus. So I will just leave it at this—is there anything I didn’t ask you that I should have, or anything you’d just like to end the podcast with?

Penny Zenker 40:39
I think it would just like to say, make more reset moments. That’s how we create the space that we need throughout the day. And what if it was like a football game—you get three timeouts in the first half and three timeouts in the second half. So make more reset moments. Give yourself six timeouts a day.

Blake Schofield 40:58
Fantastic. And if our listeners would like to follow you and learn more about what you do, how can they do that?

Penny Zenker 41:04
My website is pennyskeynote.com, and of course, I’m available on LinkedIn, and would love people to connect with me and follow me on LinkedIn and Instagram and all those fun places. I’m, I’m all over. Great.

Blake Schofield 41:20
We’ll have it in the show notes as well. Thank you so much, penny. I really appreciate you.

Penny Zenker 41:24
Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Blake Schofield 41:30
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