Ep. 169: Michael Teape - Win Back One Day of Your Time with Productive Work!

Contact Michael Teape:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/teapetraining/


Teape Training International (TTI):
https://www.teapetraininginternational.com


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FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT: 
Adam: (00:04)
 Welcome back to Count Me In, IMA's podcast about all things
affecting the accounting and finance world. This is your host,
Adam Larson, and you're now listening to episode 169 of our
series. Today's featured guest is Michael Teape. Michael is the
owner and lead training consultant for Teape Training
International. He is a thought leader in people development who
brings over 25 years of corporate learning and development
experience across multiple industries. He enjoys running the
trainer events for facilitators globally, and works with senior
leadership teams to improve their working relationships and
outward facing impact in the organization. In this episode,
Michael focuses on time management and building a culture around
working smarter and focusing on productive work. To kick things
off Michael addresses, how you can win back one whole day of your
time per week. So keep listening to hear more as we head over to
the conversation now.
 
 Mitch: (01:07)
 So one of the things that, I know you really talk about is
how to win back one day of your team's time every single week.
And when I read that at first, I thought that was pretty
ambitious. If you break it down, we have accounting listeners,
20% of the week is free.
 
 Michael: (01:25)
 You know, I knew you'd be talking about figures, Mitchell
since we got started.
 
 Mitch: (01:27)
 That's right. So, you know, I just want to know your
perspective on this. How do you go about achieving such kind of
time management?
 
 Michael: (01:36)
 Well, there's multiple streams of how you do that. And
yeah, people are like 20%. They always raise their eyebrows when
I say that, but truly there's a couple of things you can do. And
you know, we work on, first of all, are you actually efficiently
working the time you're in the office or the time you're working
at home, you know, working on a strategy or, you know, a piece of
technical work. In an hour, you know, how effective are you? So I
ask everybody, including your listeners. The one question is, how
effective are you in that hour? Are you really being productive?
And I've got it down to under, I can do in 20 minutes to 30
minutes what you could do in an hour. You can get that down to
half that time. If you focus, you know exactly what you're
working on and you're in the zone, you're just thinking about
this research.
 
 Michael: (02:34)
 You're just looking up the strategy. You're just crafting
it. If you're not interrupted by the noise of the world, emails,
iPhones, Androids, there's just so much going on. People
interrupting you all the time. If you create a bubble, it's
amazing what you can write in 30 to 45 minutes. So that's one of
the biggest parts of it is can I get more out of an hour? And I
guarantee you can. So focus, good planning, prioritizing, knowing
what you are doing for that 20 minutes. And then the other part
of it is brain chemistry. So is understanding how you work.
You've heard the thing you've probably heard before. What's your
best time of the day, or people often say, oh, I'm best mid
morning, evening. They'll offer that quite freely. So they know
they're thinking about it. And it's using those times to do your
more difficult work.
 
 Michael: (03:35)
 Your more heavy thinking, research work. And then using the
times, you know, you're not sufficient actually doing something
that activates your body, something either physical or the
boring, easy work, replying to emails. We'll talk, I'm sure we'll
talk about emails. Everyone's always got a question about, that's
a whole subject on, how do you look at emails? How do you deal
with them? You've got a think of it as a strategy. So there's so
much you can do even. So if you're working with others as well.
So that was individual. If you're working with a team, is how
effective are your meetings? Most of the startups that I work
with, they never hold a meeting more than 30 minutes. Yeah. So
you can imagine, even with their clients, they've got their
clients in tune. We get into the conversation. We're 10, 15
minutes in people start getting really serious, real quick.
 
 Michael: (04:27)
 They get to the point. And if we need to book some more
time, what's it about we're going to do that. So rather than
letting a meeting roll on and on and on, I don't recommend that
if your first meeting a client, you know, from this strategic
point of view, but once you've got to know a client, they will
appreciate the fact. You can get things done in half an hour
instead of an hour. So you you're shaving time by getting more
done in the time. And where does your team spend the time
together? You don't need to attend an update meeting. It's just a
waste of time An update meeting is just somebody else reading out
what you could have read on a document and in an email. It's what
are we going to do with it? Let's cut that. Did you all get the
update?
 
 Michael: (05:10)
 Yes. Great. What are your thoughts on it? Boom. I've just
shaved 15 minutes of time off your meeting, right? So there are
so many different aspects to it. And I, you know, the overarching
piece, I would say there's three things to consider. One is your
mindset. So knowing what's going on here, how you approach work,
you've heard growth mindset and fixed mindset. So that working on
that piece. So you're connected as quickly as possible to your
work. Secondly, is choosing goals, productivity tools,
organization, tools that work for you for your work. And you
personally, there is no point using tools that you is hard work
for you, or you don't get, feel excited to be using. I know I
used, excited and organizational tools in the same sentence, but
without that, you've got to pick tools that gonna work for the
work you do and suit you personally.
 
 Michael: (06:09)
 And, and lastly, get good about your time and your rituals
is rituals and routines are fantastic. If you can set them up to
you rather than let them happen. So if you finish a piece of work
today, all of your listeners, next piece of work, you finish,
focus on what you're doing afterwards. What are you doing? Do you
just sit back? Do you look at the phone or are you actually okay.
I'm physically taking a couple of minutes, then I'm going to get
into my next piece. I am going to get up, walk around the desk,
grab a coffee, change my mood, get some energy going and boom,
straight back into it. Cause I guarantee once you finish one
piece of work, oh, yeah. You're like, oh good. That's over. And
then you waste a good amount of time, relaxing, pat yourself on
the back, subconsciously looking at your emails before you get
into to the next piece. And before you know it, you've lost time
as well. So do you see from that, just that alone, you're able to
save 20% of your time and your team's time. Yeah. Just in those
areas there.
 
 Mitch: (07:12)
 That's, it's very interesting. And you mentioned a lot of
things that I did want to bring up, through this conversation,
but it kind of all ...