On this episode of The Last 10%, Dallas Burnett is joined by guest Maura Nevel Thomas. Thomas, who has written several books, including a recently released one titled "Everyone Wants to Work Here: Attract the Best Talent, Energize Your Team, and Be the Leader in Your Market," shares insights from their experience working with leaders and observing the impact of their behavior on productivity and work experience. Thomas shares her background in the productivity industry, discussing her experience in the market and her belief in the importance of attention management over time management.

We explore the concept of time, and its overwhelming nature, with Thomas suggesting that shifting the focus from time to attention opens up a new perspective. The episode delves into the power of having a system in place to manage tasks and promote intentional actions and prioritization. Check out this episode of The Last 10% to gain valuable insights and practical advice on disconnecting from technology, managing time and attention, creating boundaries, improving communication, and fostering work-life balance!

Purchase Muara's Books! https://maurathomas.com/books/

Contact Muara for Speaking or Training - https://maurathomas.com/contact/

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Hey, everybody.

We're talking to Maura Neville Thomas today.

What an amazing woman.

She's a top leader speaker, but you don't have to take my word for it.

That comes from Inc Magazine.

She's an author, a trainer, and has some incredible stories

related to managing time.

She's a great new friend of mine.

You don't want to miss this incredible conversation.

Welcome, welcome, welcome to the last 10%.

I am Dallas Burnett in Thrive Studios, sitting in my 1905

Koch Brothers Barber chair.

But more importantly, we have an amazing guest today, Maura Neville Thomas.

She's an award-winning international speaker trainer.

She's been on the TEDx stage.

She has been featured in Fast Company Business Insider, the Washington Post.

She contributes to Forbes and Harvard Business Review.

just two small publications a few people have heard about, right?

Welcome to the show, Maura.

I'm so happy to be here.

Thanks.

that is just a such an honor.

I ran across your material and was just intrigued by some of the things

you've got, just some great content around time management and productivity

and such a unique perspective on it.

I just was thinking we have got to get her on the show.

We've got to share this with our audience cuz there's some

really valuable information here.

So tell us about, your background and your story and how does one get to be an

international productivity expert guru?

Oh, it's a long road.

It only took me 20 years to become an overnight success.

Right?

That's what, cause everybody knows it takes forever, but, um, Yeah, I

mean, I spent my whole professional career in the productivity industry.

I worked for a company right outta college, fresh outta college that

sold paper-based planners and training to go with them, and

I had some great mentors there.

I worked there for, almost 10 years.

And during my time there, it, part of my job was to understand the whole market and

what everybody was selling, competitors.

so I read all the books, I went to all the trainings.

I, saw all the planners and then software was.

Starting and smartphones and all this kind of stuff, and it was really

my job to know about all of that.

So when I left and I thought about, I knew that I wanted to, I'm not

an awesome employee, so I knew I really wanted to sort of go.

Into business for myself and have more control.

And I just really thought about what's a skillset that I have

that a lot of people don't?

And productivity was it.

And it just started getting more and more important, right?

It used to be that like, oh yeah, if you have a planner, it's helpful, But

now it's if you don't know how to run your life, you are screwed, right?

You are just drowning.

And so it was always productivity.

And then, In about 2009, people always said to me, oh, so you're a

time management, expert or whatever.

and that just started to bother me because I am a control freak.

I admit it.

And I just started thinking like, who can manage time?

I try to back it up and slow it down every day.

It doesn't work if I can get more hours.

Nobody can manage time, but.

Really how you manage your time only matters to the extent that

you also devote your attention.

Whether you are doing a task, whether you are in a meeting, whether you, whatever

you're doing, if you switch what you're doing, or if you're only half present,

if you switch what you're doing every few minutes, the task isn't gonna get done.

Yes.

And or it'll take forever to get done and it will be full of mistakes.

And if you're not present with a person, then what's the point?

Right?

If I sat here and been like, yeah, Dallas, ask me whatever you want,

I'm just gonna be scrolling my email.

it's not a big deal.

I can totally do both, right?

It would be a really boring interview.

Okay.

And so I just came to this conclusion and started, I wrote my first article on

it in 2000, I don't know, 2009 or 2010.

That time management is dead and we need to stop talking

about it because who cares?

We can't manage time.

But if you start talking and thinking to yourself about how you manage

your attention, everything changes

re it reorients everything.

When you say that, it's, instead of me trying to literally grapple with something

that's this constant in the universe, that's just always moving forward, that I

lose every second of it seems overwhelming cuz you know, I only have so much.

So if I only got so many seconds in a day and hours in a day and hours in my

life, days in my life, then all of a sudden I try to cram everything into

the time but when you turn back and you say, oh, wait a minute, it's not

about the time, it's about my attention.

That just opens up a whole new perspective.

I love that.

I love that.

so now you've written about this, so you started with a, just a blog article

or an article, for Magazine 2009, but you've since written a lot more.

you've written several books and you've got one that's just recently out.

So tell us about the latest book.

Sure.

The latest book is called Everyone Wants to Work Here, attract the

Best Talent, energize Your Team, and Be the Leader in Your Market.

And the reason what this book came out of is that I work with leaders a lot.

leadership groups and leadership teams, and just.

Spend a lot of time with leaders and , I felt like they just really didn't

realize how A, how much influence they have, and B, how much somebody's ability

to have a productive day at work.

Which makes a good day at work, is impacted by the behavior of the

leaders and the culture of the company

Hmm.

and how the company operates.

And so my goal is really to help people, to help busy people have

more days that end with, oh my gosh, that was such a good day.

I got so much done in fewer days.

That end with, oh my gosh, I was busy all day and I'm exhausted and somehow I.

And whether or not those two things happen is really impacted a lot by how

the company operates, how the leaders behave, and the culture of the company.

And when I say the culture of the company, I really just mean like

how do people interact with each other and what kind of language,

what kind of language do people use?

And I think words are so important and we say a word and we think it means a thing.

And it means something totally different to some somebody else.

And I think leaders just don't think about, are we on the

same page when I say this word?

Right.

many Assumptions.

Yeah, I completely agree that there's so many times that

I'm a victim of this myself.

It's just when you're communicating, you're thinking, yeah, I did a great

job of communicating that idea.

But the message sent is not the message received at all unless we have,

like what you're saying this shared language, this common model that we're

approaching things with, and I love that.

That's so good.

Yes, and I know many communication experts who could talk

about language models and all that kinda stuff, and that is super important.

But really the first thing, and the thing that I talk about is words.

When you say, for example, we need to be responsive to customers,

Yes.

what do you mean by that?

When you say that we have an open door policy here, what do you mean by that?

When you say, I'm going on vacation, do you really mean I'm gonna be working

from the beach in Aruba this week?

correct.

What, what do words mean?

And that causes so many, it, it doesn't, yes.

Models and being on the same, you know, sort of having the same kind of systems.

All of that is super important, but let's just talk about

individual words and phrases

I think that's so true, and I think the first place

that you see it start breaking down.

It's when you walk in the door of a company and they've got their

values plastered all over the wall, and then you go into the office of

the person on the left of that sign and you say, Hey, you know this

value right here that says respect.

what does that actually mean?

what does that, how do you have that respect?

And they say an answer.

And then you go to the door on the right of that sign and you

ask the same question and you get totally different answers for the.

Same word, respect, it's unbelievable.

And you sit there and you go, man, and we've had this experience too.

You say, if we don't even know what the words that we post on the,

main header on the wall out here.

Actually we don't even know how that actually, it's like you said these

words, what these words actually mean in the walking around everyday actions.

Man, how do we move?

How do we move forward?

How do we move together?

How do we have alignment if we don't even know?

so I think you're, I think you're spot on with that.

let's talk about, let's talk about, because I think leaders, there's a ton

of leaders that probably feel completely.

Overwhelmed, overworked.

, I remember a quote, I think it was, I think it was Coach Wooden that said,

don't mistake activity for progress.

And it's kind of goes to what you were saying , I've been busy all

day, and I, but what have I done?

have I got anything done?

So how would you, how do you approach leaders when they're feeling

completely overwhelmed and underwater?

Yeah, and leaders have the same problem that teams

have, and from a foundational level.

In fact, right before this call, I was just talking to a client

about, here's what's going on in our company, how can you help us?

And.

The truth is, most busy professionals today, most leaders included,

do not have, a way to get a system for getting work done.

In my world, I talk about it as a workflow management system.

I.

But if you have a software background, when I say workflow management,

you think, software or apps, and that's not at all what I mean.

the collection of habits and behaviors you have, and you could even think of

it as a life flow management system, cuz it's not just about work, it's

the, if you think about how do I manage all of the responsibilities

involved in being a grownup, right?

yeah, yeah.

Adulting, right?

How do I adulting is hard.

How do I adult successfully and the older I get and the more I advance in

my career, the more I advance in life.

I take on more and more responsibilities.

And the way, my sticky notes flagged email system is just not scalable and.

So most people just don't have a system for how they manage their work.

And James Clear in Atomic Habits says we don't rise to the level of our goals,

we fall to the level of our systems.

Mm.

Right.

And so if you don't have a system for how you operate, how you adult at work

and at home, because if your life is chaotic at home, it's gonna be hard for

you to be present at work and be organized and efficient at work and vice versa.

so the first thing is that we need a work.

Everybody needs workflow management skills and most people don't have them.

And then we can start to build company systems.

We need individual systems

Yeah.

If you can't manage yourself, how do you manage others?

it really goes back and it starts with managing yourself.

And I do think that there's not a lot of, there's not a lot of people.

it's that whole, it's what's important, but not urgent.

There's not some flashing light that's gonna, that, shines in your face when

you get up in the morning and it says the world has changed around you.

You've taken on more responsibility, you've got more

things that you're doing now.

You have to change the way you're doing.

You have to.

there's nobody.

All we feel is this tension and pressure and stress that continues to mount and

we're like, what in the world is going on?

I didn't have this before and yet.

Yeah, but you didn't, you weren't doing all these other things.

that's really interesting.

how do you walk with people and help change their mindsets or their open, their

kind of, their thinking around that idea?

Yeah.

Explaining the whole idea that there's this thing, like this has a name like

how We Adults Successfully can be named, I call it workflow management,

but call it whatever you want, but.

But you can systematize the way you operate.

So that realization for a lot of people is a light bulb because you

don't, you mean I don't have to reinvent the wheel every morning?

Most people, a lot of time management advice says, spend the night before

planning for the next day and writing down all the things you

have to do, and then you go to bed.

And like you said, the whole world has changed when you wake up.

So you're listed out the window, And so how I, and so people say isn't that

a good practice to plan every night?

And I was like, if you live your life, if you have a system, your system is dynamic.

Your system changes.

Eisenhower said, I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is

Mm.

Yeah.

So your system is your plan for your days.

Plans change and, but you have a dynamic system that adapts to those changes so

you know what you are responsible for.

You know, everything on your plate so that you can prioritize it.

Your system gives you a place to collect and store and organize and prioritize,

and most importantly, execute on all of that stuff that you have to get done.

Because most people, it just takes so long to figure out.

What's the best thing I should do right now?

Because I don't know, it's, I have things in my head.

I have things on my list from yesterday.

I have things on my sticky notes.

I have flags in my email.

I don't know.

I better just, go get a cup of coffee, I guess,

Well, you know, I think we do have this analysis paralysis.

You just get overwhelmed with data, and then you say, well,

okay, I just need to take a break.

I've done, I haven't done anything yet, but I just need to take a

break, and so I think that's so true.

I love how you.

I love how you capture that and you, the way you said dynamic system, it's

that it's not a system that's so rigid because I think when people hear system,

they think, okay, it's more of a process.

Step one, lay out your sticky note and write everything down

tomorrow step, step two, wake up and execute everything on that list.

and I love how you describe it cuz it's exactly the opposite your way of saying

dynamic because our days are dynamic.

We get up and we have a flat tire before we, even make it to the office.

that.

That obviously changes, the list, and so it, it is gonna change my day's dynamic.

So I love how you talked about that as it relates to responsibilities.

So, I'm gonna get real with, I'm gonna get real with a lister.

So I'm gonna let you coach me a little bit.

I need some coaching in this area.

So this is a very interesting area for me because I am a number seven.

On the Enneagram, so I'm an Enneagram seven, so I'm a creative.

I'm a, I got about 17,000 things juggling because I love mixing things

up and seeing, but the problem with that is, Is that even when I'm,

running a business or whatever is that I'm constantly having these squirrel

moments, like I can be present.

I like being present with people.

I love connecting, but I'm totally the one that will get

lost in a conversation and miss.

The next meeting by like 20 min, have no idea.

You know?

And then, I'm also one that's like talking and then has this idea and it's boom, we

go off on a rabbit, trail for 20 minutes.

And so coach me up.

I need some advice.

So what are some things that you would tell a number seven on the Enneagram?

that's a business owner.

Business leader that's, that needs to do better managing

their activities in the day.

Yeah, so.

You can be a creative person and still have a system, right?

In fact, your system frees your creativity because you don't

have to manage all the minutiae.

And, and again, by system I don't mean software, tools, calendars, and

task managers and all that stuff.

It's important, but it's not about the tool.

It's how you use the tool.

So it's the behaviors that matter.

And We need to be able to take in what's happening to us and make

conscious decisions in the moment.

I love that thing you just said, and I would love to spend the

next 30 minutes talking about it.

Let me just see if that's okay to do that.

Oh yeah, this thing I was gonna do next that can wait.

Okay, let's do it.

Let's go for it.

Right?

Instead of, most people just wake up and do whatever happens to

them every day because, without a good way to manage your life.

You, everybody just goes home at the end of the day and says,

I think everything's done.

I'm not really sure.

And with a system you can be like, no, these are the things

that I haven't done yet.

And you know what?

I'm just gonna make this phone call and then I can leave cuz everything

else can wait until tomorrow.

It's about, ma, it's about putting you in the driver's seat of your life

and your work and making intentional decisions about where your attention goes.

Because here's the thing about, the other thing about attention management.

Your attention determines the experiences you have, right?

if you are like a golfer, You give your attention to golf.

So you golf and you shop for golf clubs, and you look for places to golf

and you talk to people about golf.

You give your attention to golf.

So you have all those experiences.

If I'm not a golfer, I don't have any of those experiences,

That's

right?

That's true.

attention And you ever talk to someone, you talk to people all

the time, what are you interested in?

And you're like, Ooh, attention.

I never thought about that.

Right?

It wasn't on your radar.

Right.

So your attention determines your experiences, but here's the next thing.

Your experiences determine your life.

So if you are not in what, what if too often you don't control

where your attention goes, you just inadvertently allow it to be stolen by

this shiny thing and that shiny thing.

And make no mistake, the world is literally conspiring

to steal your attention

I agree with that.

I agree with that.

So we have two choices.

We can live a life of reaction and distraction, or we can live

a life of intention and choice.

And here's the good news, that decision is 100% and entirely up to us.

Mm.

That's great.

I love that it's in totally in your control.

Totally in your control.

And I love how you do put that in control.

When you set up this dynamic system, you're running off that system.

So that's your boundary really for the day.

Because you're saying, as part of that, you've got your

responsibilities and your priorities.

And then let's say I have this great idea with this person that

comes by the office door and says, Hey, have you thought about this?

And it's like, oh, you know, or they send me a slack message or whatever it is.

You got this great thing, but now you're saying hold up.

You have, you can check that back against and say, Hey, is this fit?

Or do I need to put this in another spot?

I love how you use the system as kind of a boundary for, whether it's a creative

type or just a busy professional.

I think it's really good.

I think it's really good.

So I wanna talk a little bit about companies because we've got some

things everybody hears in the news.

back during post covid it was this, the great resignation and now it's

morphed into, quiet, quitting.

we have a lot of people that talk about and ask us to talk about burnout,

and I think that's a, another one of those three kind of components.

what do you think is causing a lot of this turmoil in companies

and so much employee discontent?

Well, let me start again with the premise and the words.

So I believe that this idea of quiet quitting is primarily business propaganda

Hmm.

because I don't know, I honestly have never, I mean, I guess

there was one guy on TikTok who, who got lazy or something, I don't know.

But then like the business press latched onto this and started talking

about all these lazy employees who were just trying to skate by and

doing as little as possible without telling their boss and getting caught.

I'm like, I dunno, any, I have never met one single person like that.

Never in

It's a new phenomenon.

In just the last, like in the last two or three years, all of a sudden

all these employees all of a sudden just decided, I'm laying out.

I'm just sitting back in coasting.

nobody does that.

I wrote an article for Forbes called Why Leaders Should Want Their

Employees to Quiet Quit, because here's what, here's what quit.

Quitting really is quiet.

Quitting is really just in my view and in my experience, I've worked with probably

40,000 professionals in the last 20 years.

In my experience, quiet quitting is.

Control and boundaries and saying, you know what?

There is more to life than work number one, but number two, I will be better

at work if I don't work too much.

If I have time for sleep, if I have time for exercise, if I have time with my

family, if I have time to give back to my community, I will be a better employee.

And so I'm not working 60 hours a week anymore.

I'm gonna create some boundaries and as a result, I'm gonna be a better employee.

That I think is what.

Quiet,

Oh, wow.

That's interesting.

This is why I wrote, everyone wants to

work here because people.

People are people were working an excessive amount.

I talk in the book about what I call unconscious calculations.

Unconscious.

Unconscious calculations are things that it would seem that we believe,

like our behavior indicates that we believe this, but we've never actually

decided if we believe this or not.

Like we haven't really looked at the underlying assumption that is guided.

And so I believe that people have begun, that people started to work more because

in part, again, more of that sort of the business media hustle culture and

how do you get somewhere if you don't, if you're not hustling all the time.

A and I think that people feel like they need, like my boss is

sending me emails 24 7, so I have to be checking those emails 24 7.

they want, it's so the opposite of quite quitting.

They want to do a good job

hundred percent.

and meanwhile, the boss is like, oh my gosh, I never expected you to

be checking emails at 11 o'clock at night.

I just to be thinking about it.

Right?

It's.

It's not that the employees are bad, and it's not that the bosses are bad.

Everybody is honestly, in my experience, trying to do the best they can.

And just like the employees aren't realizing maybe your job

really doesn't require 60 hours.

And helping the leaders realize, did you know that when you send emails at night,

people feel like they have to check them?

And so, right.

And so I have so many leaders who just tell me like, oh my gosh, I had no idea I

was doing this to my employees, and it's absolutely not what I wanna be doing.

So there's a lot that, that's really what the book is about.

Let me just point out when you do this, here's how this is

perceived by your employees.

Somebody called me the Boss Whisperer, right?

Okay,

I

just tell you the things that the employees don't wanna tell

you and don't wanna say that makes you know that's contributing to

I love that because, it's like you said,

you wouldn't call it shaming.

I think that's true because it's more that would be an intentional,

something done intentionally.

in, in, in what you're describing is, and it's been my experience too.

Most of the time it's just a lack of awareness.

the owner or the leader is, has certain habits or has a certain

personality, and they're running and it's oh gosh, I forgot to say

this I'm gonna go ahead and send it.

Which is in their mind, they're thinking, I'm great because I didn't forget.

And three weeks from now go, oh, I forgot to tell you this, But on

the flip side from the other side, that message sent, message received.

It's very hard for a team member to say, I don't need

to respond to it til tomorrow.

, there's some boundaries there.

And it's not boundaries that are these hard line things as much as it's just

an understanding between the two parties goes back to those words and what they

mean and how they, how we interact and behave with each other based on those.

I think that's really great.

I think that's

Here's something, here's something that bosses don't realize.

So I wrote an article for Harvard Business Review called Your Late Night

Emails Are Hurting Your Team, and it became one of the most popular articles

on HBR that year because again, because I think people didn't recognize,

but here's what this is like, right?

If you are my boss Dallas, and you send me an email at night, It would be

the same as if you said to me at the end of the day, Hey, Maura, go home.

Have a great night.

I hope you enjoy your time with your family.

Looking forward to seeing you on Monday or tomorrow or whatever.

I, by the way, I'm gonna wanna tell you something later.

Don't worry about it.

Don't worry about it, don't about it.

Go home and have a great night with your family.

what?

yeah.

That's just running in the background the whole night.

I can't even be with my family cuz I'm sitting there going, what's he,

What is it?

What is it?

When is it gonna come?

When is it gonna come?

What's it gonna say?

Is it good?

Is it bad?

Right?

I gave a keynote to a group of leaders yesterday and one of them

said to me, oh my gosh, you're, so, I had, I think we don't realize.

She said, I emailed two of my team members and I said, I wanna have lunch tomorrow.

And she said, I found out later that the two of them, she's like, I wanted

to tell them about their race, but the two of them got on the phone

and said, why don't we have lunch?

Are we getting fired?

What's gonna happen?

Why does she wanna right?

And she was like, I had no idea I was doing that to

And I think there's a rule that I heard about human behavior

that I think that speaks to, that's been a truism for me in my experience as well.

And that is, is that we always, typically, most people will fill in the

gaps in information with a negative.

So they don't say when they, when she says, we gotta meet for lunch

tomorrow, they're not saying, Wow.

You know, maybe she's gonna give an us an extra week vacation.

why not?

It's just as, it's just as probable as she's gonna let us go.

but we just, typically, our minds tend to just go to the negative and we're

like, what if she's gonna let us go?

And so I think that goes back to that leader behavior you

were talking about as well.

And the words, it's so important not only what we say, but how we say

it, and that the more clear we can be when we communicate as leaders,

the more information we can give.

So I think that's really good.

And the truth is, honestly, Dallas, whether or not

when we know news is coming, whether it's good or whether it's bad, we

still wanna know what it is, right?

think about like you.

You took a test, one of the grades.

Is it?

I think I did okay, but I'm not sure.

Maybe I did.

maybe I failed.

I dunno.

But when are the results coming out?

Cause I wanna know, right?

Yes.

It's, we just want to know when it's something that matters.

And information that my boss is sharing with me matters.

So I don't if maybe it's good, maybe it's bad, but I just wanna know what it is.

I think that's so good.

So if you're coaching a team right now, if you're leading an organization,

I think that is fantastic advice.

You need to mark it down.

It's already been a, most read article on HBR when you communicate with your team.

you need to make sure you're thorough and you need to make sure you communicate,

in completeness as much as you can so that you're not leaving these gaps in

information that people can fill in.

And also the timing of that.

you want to give all the information when you can and not leave people hanging.

I just think that's fantastic and I think it's great advice and it's also so easy.

it's like back to the basics.

That makes sense.

I think when most people hear you say that, they're

like, Yeah, that makes sense.

That makes sense.

That's the way I feel.

but it's putting that back to the basics in practice that's so difficult.

It's a fundamental.

We've gotta be, go back to the basics, the fundamentals.

If you're a leader, don't overlook it.

It's the little things.

It's the simple things that can trip people up and create some dissonance on

your team and frustration or anxiety.

So now when you talk about, in the book, you talk about, unconscious calculations,

tell us about what that means and and how, leaders and individuals, how that

can reinforce, unproductive habits.

Yeah.

I mean, we have so many of them.

They are they are assumptions.

You know what I tell my clients is just question your assumptions, right?

So one unconscious calculation is that, that I think companies end up.

Creating this whole, their company operations end up with this false metric.

So we have this unconscious calculation that if we don't get back to customers

or potential customers immediately, they will not do business with us.

They will quit us, they will go to somebody else, they

will go to our competitor and.

So I think the world that is a very competitive view of the world.

And I think actually the world, a lot of people think the world is

more competitive than it used to be.

And I think it's less competitive than it used to be in some ways.

Because now it used to be, back in the day, if you needed like a

dentist, you would open the yellow pages and be like a dentist.

Oh, I'll just call that one.

I don't know.

Or.

Maybe you'd go to your neighbor and be like, who's your dentist?

And you'd maybe ask one person, right?

And you didn't know anything about them.

You just picked a dentist.

Now, if you want a dentist, you're like asking a million of your Facebook

friends, who's the best dentist?

You go on their website, you read the reviews, you do, right?

You go on all these sites and you've done some research and you've

decided this is the best dentist.

And so if you are the best dentist, I want you, And so if you don't answer

the phone now, if the phone just rings and rings and goes into the abyss, and I

have no idea, did you go out of business?

What's happening?

Yes, that's a problem.

But if I get a voicemail and it's our staff is busy helping other

people, but your call is so important, what a lot of us say, right?

we, and we will get back to you by, within one business day.

I'm like, sure they're busy.

They're the best dentist.

Of course they're busy, and as long as you keep that commitment

to me, I am going to wait.

But instead we say, oh my gosh, we have to answer the phone.

we have to hurry up.

We have to get back to everybody right away, and they're never

gonna wait for anything.

And that just makes your employees insane.

It creates what I call a culture of urgency because it, because then if every

message might be a message that I have to respond to right now, then every message

becomes automatically the most important thing happening to me in that moment until

I know it's not the most important thing.

I read it and I go, oh no, that can wait.

Oh, but there's another message.

Oh no, that can wait.

Oh no, there's another message.

Okay.

I should answer that one.

So then you just, you create this environment with every employee just

sits at their desk like, because a message comes literally every minute.

Every minute Gloria Marks research shows that we switch her.

Most recent research, uc, Irvine, shows that we, when we are sitting in

our computers, we switch what we're doing every 47 seconds on average.

47 seconds.

How you, if you have like a law firm or a creative agency or any

kind of service provider or any kind of company, the people who

work in the office, on the computer, you literally hired them to think.

That's

And you can't think.

You can't think if you have to read every message as it arrives

to see if it's an emergency.

So I spend a lot of time on communication guidelines with my clients, right?

Like you need a bat signal,

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

right?

You need a bat signal for an emergency, and routine communication

will get answered like within a few hours, and it'll all be

Well, and I think too, to your point, and that is so true, and

I think that is, it's, it goes back to those habits and behaviors that you were

talking about earlier, and that workflow management, because you're communicating.

our habits and our workflow communicates things that maybe our words don't.

And so when you go and like you're saying, we've gotta get back

to that customer's gonna leave.

That's communicating to your employees like the house is on fire all the time.

The hamster wheel's running.

I gotta keep up.

The second thing though, and I've seen this in clients that we've worked with.

As well.

And actually one of 'em said they were really a stickler on

training, training your customer.

And I thought that was a cool way of putting it.

But because he was on getting on to one of the team members because

they were responding to the clients' emails on a project late at night

and they were sending emails out to their project team, led 'em out.

And it gets right back to what you were saying earlier, but the, but what

happened was the client, Got used to being able to send emails at dinner time.

To this project manager and expect a reply by nine o'clock that night.

And then the project manager's having to get online and work

till 11 to get this stuff done.

Then showing up and working a full day the next day.

And he's complaining cuz he's burnt out.

And the, and the lever's like, Hey, you gotta learn how to train.

Your client and then the person's freaking out because they're

like, but what if they leave?

Nah, we're doing a great job for 'em.

They're not gonna leave.

You.

Just gotta be honest with 'em and tell 'em.

So I think it goes both ways.

I think you're exactly right.

There is less competition if you do a really great job in good

service or give a good product.

people enjoy that.

that's a luxury, and so train them and say, Hey, this is normal life.

you want to have dinner with your family, your kids, and so do we.

So you can get this tomorrow.

the software industry has something called SLAs, right?

Service level agreements.

If you're gonna do business with us, this is how we do business, and I

don't see why every company shouldn't have service level agreements, right?

This.

I, we're so excited to have you as a client.

Here's how we do business, and we are here for you in an emergency,

but here's our bat signal, right?

If there's, if you meet us, you send up the bat signal, and we are

there for routine communication.

We'll update you like this, and it'll take this long, and this is how it goes, right?

Set expectations, and then everybody's happy.

think that's, I think that's fantastic.

I love that model.

I love that.

and I think that if you.

Our finding that your team is swamped or you have this tremendous amount

of communications that you're doing.

I think one of the things you're saying that everybody needs to

write down is, what's my bat signal?

So if everything's an emergency, nothing's an emergency.

I think it's fantastic.

We talked a little bit about, burnout.

Let's talk about that a little bit as it relates to business leaders and coaches.

Cause I feel like it's an epidemic right now.

People struggle with burnout.

What's some things that they could do to balance life and prevent that burnout?

I think one thing that a lot of.

Leaders.

I can walk leaders through this, through this exercise and educate

them like, these are all the things that contribute to burnout.

These are all the things that cause burnout in your employees.

Which ones are present here?

And honestly, for many, Industries, right?

There are some exceptions, like direct patient care and healthcare and even hr.

There, there are some jobs that are just very emotionally taxing, but

putting those aside for a minute, for the average, like account manager or

creative director, something who sits in a company, the most common cause of.

Burnout that I see is simply working too much, too many hours.

Right.

And not getting any sort of fresh break disconnection.

Right.

when we cut the cord, whether it's for an evening, for a weekend, for a vacation,

We get to think about other things, right?

We get to do other things and that when we do other things, that is literally

where creativity comes from, right?

We get new ideas and we see new people and we eat new food and we travel to new

places, and we read a new book and we see a TV show, and then that creates these

new neural pathways in our brain that allows us to be like, Hey, you know what?

That thing I saw on TV last night that would work here, right?

But.

But if the way I see most people, the image I have in my head is

the I Love Lucy clip with the chocolates on the assembly line,

Oh,

right?

Where

totally.

there's just no space in your day.

It's just go.

and a lot of.

Leaders just think about, it's their job to manage their work, and if they're

gonna work at 11 o'clock at night, who am I to tell them that they shouldn't?

Right Now if you are working at 11 o'clock at night because you took

the day off to go to like your kids' camp thing or whatever, fine.

That's right.

But if you are putting in a full day, like you said, and then also,

here's the thing, and this comes back to attention management.

Most people, here's another unconscious calculation.

At work, it is loud, it's noisy, it's distracting.

People need me all day long.

I have meetings all day.

It's just go.

The only time I can get my work done is when nobody's bothering me.

when is nobody bothering you?

Nights, weekends, holidays, when you're on vacation.

And so part of what I talk about, and everyone wants to work here, is.

That leaders need to create an environment at the office where, or during the workday

where people can get their jobs done.

At

Sure.

At work, right?

And yes, it is part of your job to be responsible to other people, and it's

part of your job to be collaborative and to work with others, but it's

also part of your job to get done all those things on your to-do list.

And if your strategy for that is to be available for other people 40 hours a week

and do my own job another 20 or 30 or 40 hours a week, that is not sustainable.

And even if you're sitting on the couch with your family watching

TV while also scrolling your work email, that counts as work.

That does,

So yeah, as you can see, I have a

No, I think that's so good.

I love your perspective and I love how you're just bold with it and

you just say it because I think a lot of people just need to be given

permission to turn their phone off, to put it down, to not check email.

It's almost like people, a lot of people are just waiting for

somebody to say, Hey, it's okay.

Stop.

Take a break for a minute, and I think that's cool.

And I love what you said because you really put down some, a cool challenge

to I think leaders, and owners, business owners, anyone that's managing people.

Because we had another guest one time.

It was a.

PGA golf course said that the stress is not the cause of burnout.

It's stress without recovery.

and I was like, oh, that's pretty cool.

That's a good idea.

And that's exactly what you're describing.

You're saying, Hey, go to work if it's stressful day, that's called work.

Get it done.

But when you're done.

And you need to put it down at home or when you go off on vacation

because you need that time to recover.

But I love how you put it because you said if you're leading people.

You're wanting to guard their margin, you know you're saying not only do you

personally guard your own margin, And that's our personal responsibility.

if we're going and having dinner with the family, put the phone down

and don't check work email while we're watching the movie or whatever.

That's, I'm guarding my own margin, my own recovery time.

But as a leader, I think what we lose sometimes is the awareness

of how are we protecting our team.

And one of the ways that we protect our team is we as leaders guard their margin.

So when's the last time that somebody sent you an email while you're on

vacation and you said, I'm not taking any more emails from you on vacation.

If you send another one, you know you're in trouble.

You know what I mean?

you know what I'm saying?

yes.

so here's where, here's where I sort of talk about, right?

Different hats.

So if you are a leader, Yes, you need to recognize people are on vacation.

Don't email them when they're on vacation.

You gotta help, because if the boss is sending me stuff I want,

I'm gonna wanna know what it says.

So as a leader, you have to help.

However, as an employee, if you are checking your work email

from, I mean, what are you doing?

Just checking your email going, probably everybody knows I'm on

vacation, so there's gonna be nothing here, but I'll just check.

That's right.

If you are checking your email when you're on vacation, that is

not work invading your personal life.

That is you inviting

That's true.

That is true.

It's a both and.

Yeah.

It's not just the leader's responsibility, I guess what I mean is as a leader,

we're trying to create an atmosphere where people feel like it's okay.

To take a break and have margin in their life.

And they're not constantly, like you were saying earlier, not constantly

having to respond to late night emails.

And that's one of the ways leaders can guard that.

However, as an employee, if you go and check your email, then your boss is

probably gonna be like, Hey, you're supposed to be taking a vacation, but

I really appreciate the fact that you looked at our accounting numbers and sent

me that report while you're on vacation.

what's he, what's, what are, what is he or she supposed to do?

I mean, hey, If you're sending it and they didn't ask for it, but you're

doing it, then you're okay with that.

And sometimes I get it, like I don't wanna be, I don't wanna be

so generalized that it's like you never can, do this on a vacation.

I had somebody that was talking to, I was doing a burnout talk.

And it was a business owner.

And, she stood up and at the talk she says, I know I'm burn out.

I was like, hey, you know what?

when we admit these things, that's the kinda the first step, recovery.

And then she says, and I know that it's causing me to burn out all my employees.

And then I was just like, mm, you're right.

So if you're in that camp, if you know that you're doing stuff, then then it's

time to make some dramatic changes.

And you need to start thinking you, what you need to do is you need to buy

Maura's books and you need to start, you need to start contacting her and

get her to, to come and help you out.

and so let's, let's do this cuz I, it's just been a fantastic show today.

I love your perspective.

I love how you just bold with everything.

I love how you came out and you're just like, I think quiet

quitting is a, this is ridiculous.

I love that.

I think that's fantastic cuz we need people pushing on ideas and checking that.

And you just do a fantastic job with that.

Is there, and we always ask this to our sh guest on the show.

Is there anybody that you would like to hear on the last 10%?

Oh my gosh.

this is a day that, you are asked, this is maybe the wrong day.

I just came back from the National Speakers Association annual

Wow.

Wow.

With 1200 of the most gifted, caring, smart, dedicated

colleagues you could ever imagine.

And so that would, that's, yes.

That I couldn't even, it's who do I thank?

Right.

I, there's so many people to think I don't miss.

Right.

There are certainly people who come to mind, but, oh my gosh, I couldn't

even begin to know where to start.

Aside from saying start at the National Speakers Association.

there you go.

All right, thank you for your time today.

Let me ask, where can people, if they want to buy your books, and we'll

obviously put the links in the show notes so that people can check that out.

But if people wanna connect with you, if they maybe have more questions or they

wanna hire you, or have you come on as a speaker, where can people find you?

Sure.

The best place to go is my website, Maura thomas.com slash books has information

about all the books which can be purchased in any format anywhere books are sold.

Then slash contact tomorrow, thomas.com/contact is where you

can put in just some information.

What do you wanna talk about?

I'll send you a link to my calendar.

It'll be great.

we'll go from there and I'll figure out how I can help you

or make a referral to, if I can.

That's awesome.

Maura, thank you again for being on the last 10%.

It's been a fantastic show today.

It's been so much fun just hearing all your wisdom and all the value

that you brought to our listeners.

I know they really appreciate it, and they're gonna go out and buy your books

and see all the things that you're into.

And so thank you again for being on the last 10%.

Thanks for having me, Dallas.