This week's topics: Making extra time and having a research mindset

Are you not scheduling time to review and do tasks after meetings? 

Sometimes meetings require you to block out additional time after the meeting to review the slide deck or task for that meeting. 

Are you going about your work with a research mindset?

Doing so will eliminate the possibility of letting your assumptions guide how your work. Instead, when going about your work, confirm or research your assumptions. Sometimes you will find that what you believe to be true is not the case. 

Hello and welcome to the not so travelling introvert. Today, I want to talk about making extra time. So I was in a meeting the other day and it was the usual PowerPoint presentation with lots of hyperlinks embedded within the presentation and the presentation hadn't been hadn't been shared in advance. You didn't know what was going on and then the person is like, so doesn't have any questions. And I said, Well, you know me.

I'll look at the presentation later and then I'll get back to you. Only then did I realise that I've said this multiple times and not actually done that thing. I always mean to go back and look at whatever was presented, but I don't actually schedule time to do it because other things. Ok. The reason isn't because other things getting the way.

But I just go about my day and continue doing other things. I very rarely go back and do and look over the things that I said I was going to do. This leads me to realise that not only do I have to schedule in time for these meetings, but depending on the type of meeting, if I can't convince them to share their screen or the slide deck earlier is to set aside time. What I'm in that meeting to review said slide deck, and I can't believe I've been working all this time and haven't done this.

It's amazing when you think of random things.

That is one way to make sure that I go ahead and move you the information and get what I need from it and come back. So decide time only for the meeting, but we view the meeting afterwards. Another thing that I've realised is some people go about their work with a research mindset and I think this comes across with this, you know, going ahead and reviewing that information, everything that they do or see or try is a data point to be put aside and come back to later or built upon having a research mindset like the growth mindset thing but sort of approaching projects, tasks, assumptions with.

Okay, I'm going to try this to see if it works or what I need to tweak or what I need to reiterate or iterate having that research and curious mindset stop you from making assumptions and moving forward with those assumptions, speaking to a client the other day about pay rates for their staff and they're very much like all they get paid this and then I get paid that and then as far as I know, they get this and I'm sure they get the paid X, Y and Z after this point and we have the conversation where was like, well, actually, I've spoken to your staff and they get paid this and then this which isn't the number that you gave me.

And that doesn't happen at the time.

You told me she's like, Wait, what? But I assumed it seeshe's like, oh, well, I'm going to have to research into this. So after making the assumption, she's now going back and researching what she thought was true in her assumptions, which could have been avoided. If, instead of making this options, you go from a research mindset. Hey, I want to double cheque that this is true.

I want to make sure I got this right. Just because this book sets, though, doesn't make it right. I highly recommend thinking about your work and your assumptions and projects, and that sort of thing with a research mindset. Just think about it from a curiosity standpoint. Oh, what happens if this what happens?

If that I think this happens? Does that actually happen? Let me cheque. Let me ask someone. Let me test.

You will be amazed at what you will find if you come to something with that time of a mindset. And if you feel you struggle with that crowd source, I had a problem recently. Not a problem. I had a thing come recently that I really had no clue about. I asked three or four different people who all gave me three or four different pieces of advice, but all together made this wonderful thing hopefully happened.

And it all came from different angles. Different viewpoints, different expectations, different things that they had seen and heard. But that helped me learn so much. And so when I was creating this thing that I needed to help with, that nothing about. I came at it from a research point of view.

I'm getting data points to help with that. So just my thoughts today. Talk about research. Thank you for listening.

Have a great rest of your day.