How 15 Minutes Make or Break Your Day

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Jonathan Fields (00:00:33) - So what if just 15 minutes could make or break your entire day? We all have habits and routines that seem to last only minutes, yet end up influencing how our entire day unfolds. Those small, seemingly innocuous things we unwittingly do either primas for productivity, happiness, and success or leave us uncensored, unproductive and adrift. Things like mindless scrolling or other unfulfilling habits. First thing in the morning. What if deleting those 15 minutes of distraction allowed you to show up more present and positive for the entire rest of the day? On the flip side, what if intentionally choosing how you spend your 15 minutes gave you the mental reset you needed to tackle work at your best for hours after? Well, that's what we're diving into in today's hot tech episode of smart, we explore the outsized impact of keystone habits those 15 to 20 minute rituals, for better or worse, that set the tone for everything that follows.

Jonathan Fields (00:01:37) - And joining me to tease out these ideas is Braintrust regular Charlie Gilkey. Charlie is a strategic advisor, executive coach, founder of the Productive Flourishing Consultancy, and author of the critically acclaimed Start Finishing and his latest book, Team Habits, is now available. So if you want to transform your mindset, boost your energy and show up as your best self every day, don't miss this episode! I'm Jonathan Fields and this is SPARKED. Hey, before we dive into today's show, you know, we've learned that a lot of our listeners are sort of at this moment where they're really exploring the notion of work in their lives and their next moves in their careers. And if you are in that place, we talk about the spark and the sparketypes a lot on this show. This body of work that we've developed to help you really identify what makes you come alive and how to apply that to the world of work. We've heard from a lot of folks that they would also love some help along that journey. If you're curious, you can also find on our website a directory of Certified Sparketype Advisors who know this body of work and can really help coach and guide you through it.

Jonathan Fields (00:02:48) - So we'll drop a link to the show notes in that right now. And if it feels interesting to you and you just like somebody to help guide you through this next part of your career or work journey, take a look and see if somebody resonates. It might be the perfect fit to help you along this next leg of your journey. Again, that link is in the show notes now.

Jonathan Fields (00:03:48) - Charlie Gilkey. It is always awesome to be hanging out trading ideas with you. Esteemed member of the Brain Trust and writer of amazing books. Team habits out in the marketplace doing amazing things.

Jonathan Fields (00:03:59) - I cannot wait for the world to get their hands on this book. Today's conversation is one of our SPARKED Hot takes one of one of the topics that we are going to dive into, and I think this is a great follow up to the last conversation, Charlie, that you and I had where we did a little bit of debunking, okay, maybe a lot of debunking around the myth of morning routines, what they are, what they are, and even the very phrasing of morning routine and how that can sometimes be a misnomer in itself. And today is a bit of a follow up on this, or maybe a complement to it. We're taking on a hot take, which means for new listeners especially, we're just focusing on a single issue, generally focused on work or that affects our work, our ability to be here, to be productive, to do meaningful things, and to get the things that we actually really care about done. And this is around the notion of how we spend our time, but we're focusing on one very particular type of thing.

Jonathan Fields (00:04:53) - So, Charlie, take me into this.

Charlie Gilkey (00:04:56) - Well, you know, when we think about startup routines, I think first off, once we get away from the morning routine thing, I think a lot of people think all the things you might do in that sort of thing to set it up. But it turns out typically it's the one thing that takes 15 to 20 minutes and it's very individualized. But if you do that thing, things start to work out. Let's call it a keystone habit or a keystone practice. And so many people I've learned in my coaching practice and just observing people spend most of their day chasing that lost 15 minutes. You know, whether it's missed appointments, whether it's, you know, they said something when they weren't their best version of themselves, whether it's they forgot to eat, there's just something right that goes. And so I didn't know I was going to talk about this Jonathan, but I could probably make it brief. You know, how sometimes that could be a challenge for me.

Charlie Gilkey (00:05:42) - But about two, maybe three weeks ago, I had an epiphany. And for the five, 5 to 8 weeks prior to that, I was just off, wasn't centered. I wasn't keeping up with friends as much. I wasn't writing, which is always a signal that something's off for me. You know, I wasn't as in touch with what's going on with my clients. The book. There's so many different things that are just across every sector. And also, I was picking up a little weight and I was like, what is going on? I haven't changed that much, but I changed one thing. I had swapped walking to the coffee shop with riding my e-bike to the coffee shop. That's the thing I changed and I was like, no, I really, I can't make that big of a difference. But I started unpacking it. Actually, that walk is about 20 minutes, which brain science will tell us. That's about as long as it takes for your brain to recycle and refresh and sort of let go of the last thing that it was on and sort of like reboot.

Charlie Gilkey (00:06:34) - I wasn't walking outside in this wonderful Pacific Northwest weather, which you all hear me talk about all the time in the summer, because we complain about it all winter. I wasn't texting Jonathan the song of the day or the random meme. I wasn't doing all that. That was packed into that one activity, walking 15 to 20 minutes. That was the thing for me that had been lost over the last 5 to 8 weeks. And wouldn't you know it, I substituted that one thing. I started walking again. So to burning those calories, started doing all those things. And would you believe it started being more grounded, started feeling better, started all this sort of things. And so, you know, in retrospect, it makes sense because I spent the last decade in change with that. That is a keystone practice and just blindly threw it away or substituted it and didn't realize until two months later what I had done.

Jonathan Fields (00:07:27) - Yeah. I mean, it's amazing to me also because you are I look at you and you're somebody who.

Jonathan Fields (00:07:33) - Is so systematic and also so conscious and intentional about the way you spend your time. You are, in fact the person who has written the book on exactly how we spend our time, like how we decide what is important to us and how we actually not just start that thing, but finish it right. Like, this is literally the way that you live your life. This is the thing that you focus on a lot and work. And this is this is something that comes up a lot in your coaching work and your consulting work with clients. And yet as another Gilkey as often like like says like it's hard to read the label when you're inside the jar. Some version of that phrase, right. You yourself like knowing all the things that, you know, had this one change that led to a whole bunch of negative effects, both in your work and your personal life and your health and your mindset that it took you time to figure out it wasn't readily apparent to you. So this is not about not being smart enough or accomplished enough, or paying attention.

Jonathan Fields (00:08:30) - Like all of us. You know, no matter who you are, there are things that we do or things that we don't do, ways that we spend our day that can have a profound ripple effect, both positive and negative. And what I love, the invitation that you're saying here, is that so many of us focus on like, what are all like, what's the full day, all the systems, all the process, all the units of time that we're looking at to really maximize our productivity and our output and all the audio. Right. And the idea that the seed that you're planning here is that for most of us, there is a single 15 ish minute thing that wins or loses the day and that many of us probably aren't even thinking about what that thing is, because we don't realize it matters that much.

Charlie Gilkey (00:09:12) - Precisely. And yeah, so I had one of those moments as a coach where I just laughed at myself because sometimes there's just that's what you do. You're like, of course, that's what made the difference, right? Of course, all the things you said, I do this work, how did I miss it? And it's a seasonal shift.

Charlie Gilkey (00:09:28) - It's a launch shift. There's all sorts of things. And so this happens so often because that's really when we talk about keystone practices or habits, they become invisible. Now we typically talk about keystone habits in a positive way right of the things that stitch you up. But we also have keystone habits that are not supportive. So that 15 minute Instagram scroll first thing in the morning, that's a keystone habit. It's just maybe not serving you right. And so that's the flip side of this coin, is that there can also be this sort of habit or practice that isn't serving you, that that's invisible to you, that just removing that makes a big difference. So as a counterpoint, like I was working with a client earlier this year, and it was unfathomable to her that she could take her email apps off her phone. Right. And I said, just try it for a week. Just try it for a week. Like, what's the worst that can happen? Because she didn't have an urgency based business.

Charlie Gilkey (00:10:22) - She wasn't a doctor. Like there was nothing that required her to have her email on her phone. So she's like, okay, Charlie, I'll do it. That was back in March. She still doesn't have email back on her phone. And what she reported, she's like, I didn't realize how much that was distracting me, how much that wasn't making me feel good, how much that was making me anxious, just needing it, being there because she realized that she would wake up and spend about 15 minutes before she did a lot of other things checking email, making sure things were okay and so and so forth. So we remove that. We used a little bit of choice architecture so that it made it harder for her to do that thing on the device. It was nearer and it started unlocking all these sort of things. She's like, I'm happier. I'm more focused on my work, I do less distracting things. And so 15 minutes, right. It can be a positive, you know, 15 minutes where you have a daily walk or it can be a counterproductive or non constructive habit that also has you lose the day.

Charlie Gilkey (00:11:19) - And why I want to talk about this real quick is I know, especially with people who listen to SPARKED and familiar with Jonathan and my work, you might think that we're going to center meditation as the thing that has to be that 15-minute thing, and because that's a popular trope in the sort of thing that we're talking about, and it might not be that for you, it could be 15 minutes of actually just drinking coffee first thing, just actually making coffee, enjoying it, and dreaming idly out the window. That might be the thing for you. It could be stretching. It could be rubbing a cat. It could be a conversation with your partner. Right? I'm not. I don't know what it is. Right? I have to discover that with clients. But there's something there. And the challenge here or the invitation, I'm gonna say both and it's going to frustrate some people, is that it's 15 minutes. You can actually find time unless you're dealing with special needs family members or that sort of situation where you really might not be able to do that.

Charlie Gilkey (00:12:19) - And I one big love to folks who are actually in that position. So this is not 100% universal, but most of us in the band of human experience can find 15 minutes. It's not a big ask, but what it will radically do. What it will do is to actually have you honor one, that what you need matters. And two, it's probably something simple. We humans, I think, love to believe that there's some secret pill or there's some sort of magical transformative unlock, or there's something that's difficult about this. And sometimes it's the morning walk, right? So I'm curious. And I think you're talking to me like as we're talking. What would be your 15 minute thing? Yeah, I.

Jonathan Fields (00:13:05) - Was thinking about that. What I was pondering also because you kind of posed, you slipped in two different things, you know, like because the notion that the 15 minutes can be 15 minutes of addition adding something or it can be 15 minutes of deletion, like and that was the, you know, the example you gave your client deleting the email app from her devices.

Jonathan Fields (00:13:25) - Or, you know, you mentioned briefly, what if you actually didn't scroll Instagram or whatever your favorite social app is for 15 minutes? And for me, it's the news app on my phone. So it's a deletion thing. And but the thing is, and I think it makes sense to talk to to this point, it's not just the 15 minutes. It's how the 15 minutes affects you. Right, right. So so for me, interestingly enough, like I put the news app back on my device and I'm literally about to remove it. It's funny that we're having this conversation about this time, because that is the one thing where I find myself losing so much time. But it's not just the 15 minutes of lost time for me. It's as I'm scrolling the news app, and I know that, like, because the business of news is the business of eyeballs and all the science of like how the algorithms work, like, like how do you actually keep people actually scrolling for as long as humanly possible? The algorithms for doom and gloom and fear and rage like that is the science of algorithms that keep your attention.

Jonathan Fields (00:14:33) - So when you look at a news app, you're not actually looking at anything objective or balanced or any way or something that's going to feed your soul, you're looking effectively at like a feed of doom, gloom, rage and fear with maybe a little bit of like nice stuff peppered in, depending on how you actually set it up. So for me, what I realize it's not so much the 15 minutes of when I'm just sort of like madly scrolling that app. It's the way that it changes my psychology for the entire rest of the day is the way that it changes my intentions, is the way that it shifts my focus on what I care about and what I'm building, and how I feel about different things, how I step into my relationships from that. Like for the rest of the day, that 15 minutes isn't just about the 15 minutes, it's about what it does to me for for like sometimes hours or the rest of the day after it. So for me, I'm about to go into like another deletion window, like literally if I'm about to delete that app from my devices again, just because I know I have no self control, self regulation, like relying on self regulation or self control is one of the worst ways to actually like do stuff like this.

Jonathan Fields (00:15:39) - Like literally change the circumstance to make it so that it just you don't even have the temptation, which is really easy. I can delete it from my phone, which I'm about to do. That will not just give me back the 15 minutes of scrolling. It will change the nature of the rest of my day. So, you know, like for me, my example is a deletion example. And granted, on the other side of that, it's going to give me 15 minutes to do something else, and I hope I'll use that time positively. But even so, it's it's a shift in my psychology for the rest of the day.

Charlie Gilkey (00:16:07) - I'm so glad you went there because that's it's priming. And we talked about this in the episode where we talked about startup routine. It's about priming, right? So when I talked about my walking example, the thing we don't talk about enough is that 20 to 30 minute transition period that our brains and hearts need to go through. So if you're reading news and it's doom and gloom and it's tailored specifically to what presses your buttons and specifically to the right amount of positive to negative, to neutral, to weird, the more you interact with it, what it will do is prime you and put you in a certain emotional state that then you have to hope that the next thing you do gives you a reset.

Charlie Gilkey (00:16:51) - But it probably won't, right? Because what we will often do, because emotional contagion is real, we will often take the emotional set that we have from the previous experience and inject that into the next conversations, which means we get a feedback loop that we get more of the very thing we didn't want throughout the day. Right? Unless you happen to have a friend or someone who loves you, it's like, hey Jonathan, you seem a little off your baselines off today. What's going on? Are you okay? I'm like, oh, I don't know what's going on. Well, it all happened because you lost that 15 minute battle, right? And I have to be careful with my military background not to use too many battle and fighting metaphors, but in that case, you know, what I tell a lot of people is you have to imagine if we're talking about the technology side of things. If you pick up a device like an iPhone or tablet or any modern device, you are in contest with an army of engineers whose sole job is to keep you stuck on that app.

Charlie Gilkey (00:17:51) - Mathematicians, engineers, you know, social science. That is their job to keep you hooked to that app. The odds are not in your favor in that scenario. Do you really think you can beat a handful of Stanford MBAs and MIT? You know, sort of folks on that sort of thing? You're probably going to lose. The only way you win that is to not fight, which means delete. You know, from that. I'm also really glad that you pointed out subtraction. If you haven't read Lady Klotz book subtract, please go read that. Because one of the fundamental things that I love about the book is that it clearly shows that we neglect subtraction as a vector for problem solving. We almost always go to additions, but rarely does additions actually solve the problem. Subtraction is that so? At this point in time, I had already been doing it, but it just made it starkly clear. My first vector for problem solving is always subtraction. What can we delete? What can we get rid of? What can we remove? So even while we've been talking about this on the personal side of things, if we're talking about team habits and things like that, I will also say, all right, so what's the friction that's keeping the team from doing some of the things that the team wants to do? And how do we remove the friction? Notice it's not how do we add people.

Charlie Gilkey (00:19:11) - Not how do we add a thing. It's how do we remove the thing that is keeping people from being their best selves and doing what humans naturally want to do, right? Do we need to remove people from this project to make it go faster? And that's counterintuitive for a lot of people because they're like, well, obviously more bodies equals faster. No. Turns out right usually means slower. And so if you're thinking about your 15 minutes to Jonathan's point, it might be one what needs to be subtracted. And two, it's not just the 15 minutes. That's the sneaky bit, right? It's how that cast a shadow or bright spot over the rest of your day. So I'll go back to mine in the walk. Part of the reason I felt socially disconnected is because I wasn't texting people back and forth, and I wasn't doing that, which I do on the way back from the coffee shop. I know not to do it, going to the coffee shop, because then I want to actually do some of the things I need to do at the coffee shop.

Charlie Gilkey (00:20:05) - But I'm not texting the jonathans and the Pimms and the Susans and just the different people and saying, hey, how are you doing, big love? I saw this thing and things like that, and experiencing that support from my from my pack before I did anything else besides what I'd already done to the coffee shop. That piece was a major priming and halo piece. And so it's like why I'm at the end today, and I'm frustrated and I feel like I'm alone and like nothing's working. It's like, oh, I didn't touch it with my crew today because of that walk. So it's not it's not just addition. Look at subtraction. It's not just that 15 minutes, but also it can be something non-obvious and small and as simple as, again, drinking coffee or not drinking coffee or actually making yourself breakfast. That's not out of a box, right? Not that not that there's anything wrong with the box, but, you know, you. Right. Or maybe just trying a week of none of your quote unquote favorite social media apps on the phone.

Charlie Gilkey (00:21:10) - Josh, I don't know if we talked about this, but there was a study that showed it sort of cataloged the amount of time people spent per app and their happiness while using that app. And what it found was an inverse correlation, meaning the the apps that made people the happiest were the least use. And those apps were like phone calls, like phones, like the actual calling people and talking to people face to face. It was one of those, and we didn't spend a lot of time on. But when people reported their happiness, it's actually from those phone calls where they reported a lot of dissatisfaction and unhappiness was on the social media apps. So we spend an inordinate amount of time on things that don't matter, that don't make us happy. The invitation for today is, what if you just took 15 minutes and substituted something that may push you a little bit further? Last invitation here doesn't have to be the most ideal thing. Like, yes, you might like to be meditating on a beach in Bali.

Charlie Gilkey (00:22:11) - We can get that. But maybe it's just something a little bit better than what you're currently doing, and you do that for a while, and then maybe you'll find something that's a little bit better than that. Next thing you get, you put in there and you swap it out, and eventually you might find that you never needed the beach in Bali. You just needed to go on the morning walk.

Jonathan Fields (00:22:31) - I love that and I want to add in here also because it popped into my head as you were sharing this, that given the profound shift in remote work versus in-office work, so many people are now no longer in an office, or they're there in a couple of days, a week or one day a week, or part time. One of the things that's been lost is the commute. Precisely. Now, a lot of people complain about commutes, and a lot of people have really long commutes. But a lot of people also like morning drive time on radio is typically 20 to 25 minutes. And that's where the programming is, because that's the typical commute.

Jonathan Fields (00:23:05) - That's a little bit longer than the 15 minute window that we're talking about. But, you know, it's close enough in my mind. And I guess what I'm curious about is you're sharing this like you described it effectively. That's what you're describing when you're the difference between you're still commuting, but you did it. You change the way it went from e-bike where you couldn't be interactive or you couldn't do the thing. You weren't moving your by the same way to walking. But so many people were either driving or taking public transportation, and now they're not doing that anymore. And what have you replaced that commute time with? And then what was as much as we often complain about commuting, in fact, I remember Jonathan Hite way back when he wrote The Happiness Hypothesis. He said, one of the things that one of the few things in life that people tend not to habituate to, one of the few negative things is, is an exceptionally long commute. It will always bother them, yeah, no matter how long it is.

Jonathan Fields (00:23:59) - But if we take the typical commute, what was the benefit of that to you, especially the commute back or the community? Like what were you doing? Were you listening to music? Were you tuning out? Were you talking to a couple of friends on a train or public transportation? Were you like in your car just kind of like zoning out or preparing your mind? Like with with the removal of that for literally millions or tens of millions of people? How are we? Like, what was the benefit of that to you? How did that actually create the ripple effect that may have set up your day or allowed you to process it at the end of the day? And what have you replaced that with, and what have you lost? And if you've lost something in there, how might you reorient and take another 15 20 minute break to bring whatever the benefit of that was back into your day, even if you're not commuting? I think that's a huge issue for a lot of people right now.

Charlie Gilkey (00:24:52) - Yeah.

Charlie Gilkey (00:24:53) - I mean, the listener can't see me like scratching off a topic I was going to write about because you've you've hit the nail. No, I think one of the things that I've always asked my clients to do, but I did it even more so during the pandemic when commutes went away, is it's a very stupid human trip. So if you're not commuting, find a walking route again. We're back to walking. And I realize when I acknowledge the ableism in there, some people in wheelchairs and it's a different sort of scenario. But for those of us who can stupid human trip find a route that's about 15 20 minutes, about the length of that commute, walk it like counterclockwise or walk it clockwise in the morning before you go to work into your office. So don't just like, eat breakfast and go to your offense. Get to work. Eat breakfast if that's what you do, and then take that 15 20 minute walk in one direction. And then at the end of the day, when you're out processing, when you're trying to get out, like get up, don't just go do whatever you're going to do in your house, walk that same direction the other way.

Charlie Gilkey (00:25:49) - Or maybe you vary it a little bit. You alter a block or two. It actually simulates this liminal period that you used to spend in a car, and actually starts to train your brain that it is time to do the work, and then it trains it on the other side, that it is time to not do the work. And we're just using environmental priming and cueing. It's crazy how well it works, and it's just one of those simple things to do. Yes, it adds it adds 40 minutes to your day. But does it though? Or does it just delete the doomscrolling that you do at the end of the day and delete sort of the doomscrolling you do at the beginning? So we substitute. So it's not a pure subtraction and it's not a pure addition, it's a substitution. It works remarkably well. And I'll have to say this is while as much as that ambivalent that I am, so many of my clients and students who are introverts reported that their suffering increased without the commute because the commute was the only time where they were alone and they had solitude.

Charlie Gilkey (00:26:54) - Right. And just being with their partners and kids and pets and, you know, all the beings that the introverts love was too much. They needed that commute as much as they hated it. Right? To have that space for themselves, to sort and ground and figure it out or just not be on and, you know, peopling and socializing. And so if you identify as an introvert or you skew that way, you might find that just that slow walk is important. And if you. This is you. I encourage you to have the courage to politely let others know that you would like to walk alone. It does not need to be a social family walk. It does not need to be a walking the dog. It does not need to be a bunch of stuff on that. It could just be you being you without any attachments, without any responsibilities, without any what's going on with other people for 15 or 20 minutes. And you might find that that is what helps you win the day.

Charlie Gilkey (00:27:57) - If it's a part of your startup routine, but also acknowledge and celebrate the day if it's a part of your ending routine. As far as work and sort of major activity for the day goes.

Jonathan Fields (00:28:09) - Love that and put your phone and do not disturb mode and don't carry it in your pocket. Talk it deep into whatever pack or bag or whatever it is that you have. So it's a bit of a pain to get out when you're doing that, and it'll just help along the way. Charlie, as always, good exploring these ideas. The whole notion of what are the 15 20 minutes of your day that you may not realize are actually profoundly important in influencing how the entire rest of your day unfolds? What can you potentially add to or take away in that short window, or substitute that would actually lead you to be not just more productive, but happier, more fulfilled, and more connected both to yourself and to the world around you. Explore thatrillionun those experiments and see how it feels to you. I think that's a good place for us to wrap up.

Jonathan Fields (00:29:01) - Thanks everybody for tuning in. Always our pleasure. We'll see you here next time. Take care. Thanks, y'all. Hey, so I hope you enjoyed that conversation. Learned a little something about your own quest to come alive and work in life, and maybe feel a little bit less alone along this journey to find and do what sparks you. And if you'd love to share your own moment and question with us, we would love to hear from you. Just go ahead and click on the submissions link in the show notes to get the details on how to do that. And remember, if you're at a moment of exploration, looking to find and do or even create work that makes you come more fully live, that brings more meaning and purpose and joy into your life, take the time to discover your own personal sparketype for free. At Sparkeype.com it'll open your eyes to a deeper understanding of yourself and open the door to possibility like never before. And hey, if you're finding value in these conversations, please just take an extra second right now to follow and rate SPARKED in your favorite podcast app.

Jonathan Fields (00:30:05) - This is so helpful in helping others find the show and growing our community so that we can all come alive and work in life together. Until next time. I'm Jonathan Fields and this is SPARKED.