Evoke Greatness Podcast
Do you have an insatiable hunger for growth and knowledge?
Are you interested in hearing the stories of how successful people have navigated their journey towards greatness…all while stumbling through valuable lessons along the way?
My name is Sonnie and I am the host of Evoke Greatness, the weekly podcast driven by my curious nature and fascination with the champion mindset. I am a HUGE book nerd and a wee bit of a "control enthusiast" with an obsession for motivational coffee cups.
On this podcast, we share the ups and the downs, the highs and lows and all the lessons learned in between. It's my most sincere hope you hear something in one or maybe many of these episodes that resonates with you and reminds you that you’re not in this alone.
I believe that a rising tide raises all ships and I invite you along in this journey to Evoke Greatness!
Evoke Greatness Podcast
Time Poverty: Achieve More by Doing Less with Peggy Sullivan (Part 2)
🎧 Ep. 162 Time Poverty: Achieve More by Doing Less with Peggy Sullivan (Part 2)
In this continuation, TEDx speaker Peggy Sullivan reveals the remaining two steps of her Busy Busting Process and shares how workplace transformations occur when we shift from busyness to intentionality.
We explore:
- The four core values that drive fulfillment: Energy Management, Human Connection, Growth, and Authenticity
- Why "less is more" creates higher performance and deeper satisfaction
- How micro-changes in email and meeting habits can reclaim 8+ hours weekly
- The unexpected connection between happiness rituals and workplace metrics
🔑 Key takeaways:
- The ripple effect of busyness extends beyond you to everyone in your orbit
- Distinguish between micro-stresses (temporary) and macro-stresses (significant)
- The human brain cannot stay deeply engaged for more than 90 minutes without breaks
- Workplace happiness rituals can improve metrics by over 30% in weeks
- True leadership requires moving beyond transactional relationships
💡 Quotes to remember: "It's got this ripple effect... you've just really got to start to think about how you can be more effective and what is most important." - Peggy Sullivan
Connect with Peggy:
Website: https://www.peggysullivanspeaker.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/peggyasullivan/
TEDx: "Eliminating Time Poverty by Doing Less" (2024)
Book: "Beyond Busyness: How to Achieve More by Doing Less" https://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Busyness-Achieve-Doing-Less%EF%BB%BF/dp/B0DGMPZTBG
A rising tide raises all ships, and I invite you along on this journey to Evoke Greatness!
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Welcome to Evoke Greatness. We are officially entering year three of this podcast and I am filled with so much gratitude for each and every one of you who've joined me on this incredible journey of growth and self-discovery. I'm Sunny, your host and fellow traveler on this path of personal evolution. This podcast is a sanctuary for the curious, the ambitious and the introspective. It's for those of you who, like me, are captivated by the champion mindset and driven by an insatiable hunger for growth and knowledge. Whether you're just beginning your journey or you're well along your path, you're going to find stories here that resonate with your experiences and aspirations.
Speaker 1:Over the last two years, we've shared countless stories of triumph and challenge, of resilience and transformation. We've laughed. We've shared countless stories of triumph and challenge, of resilience and transformation. We've laughed, we've reflected and we've grown together, and as we've evolved, so too has this podcast. Remember, no matter what chapter you're on in your own story, you belong here. This community we've built together is a place of support, inspiration and shared growth. Where intention goes, energy flows, and the energy you bring to this space elevates us all.
Speaker 1:So, whether you're listening while commuting, working out or enjoying your morning coffee, perhaps from one of those motivational mugs. I'm so fond of know that you're a part of something special. Thank you for being here. Thank you for your curiosity, your openness and your commitment to personal growth. As we embark on year three, I invite you to lean in, to listen deeply and to let these stories resonate with your soul. I believe that a rising tide raises all ships, and I invite you along in this journey to evoke greatness. All right, welcome back to part two of Time Poverty Achieve More by Doing Less. With my guest, peggy Sullivan. If you haven't yet, make sure to go back and listen to last week's episode, which was part one, where we explore the shocking truth about time poverty and why 94% of professionals feel trapped by busyness, how the average person wastes one third of their day on low value activities, the three-step busy busting process that's transforming workplaces worldwide. And why micro steps create sustainable change when massive overhauls fail. Okay, let's hop into part two.
Speaker 2:One of them is what I call energy management, which is really mastering the inner voice inside you, making sure you're stepping into self-care sleep. You know managing your energy, basically spiritual, mentally, socially. And then the second one is human connection, and it's so easy I mean, especially after COVID to you know, not connect with people, but to do all on email or social media and stuff, and so you know, connecting with a human. There's nothing better than that.
Speaker 2:The third one is growing and growth, and my dad always used to say what's a day without learning something new is a lost opportunity. And I got to thinking that growth is how we learn how to pivot and be resilient and do hard things. And when we're constantly flexing our brain muscle, our resiliency muscle, we get confidence that we can do hard things, and so that's why that one is really important. And then the fourth value is authenticity, but actually in a different way than you would think. It's not about being true to yourself and standing up for yourself yes, that is so important, but it's remembering you have two ears and one mouth for a reason and that listening and being open-minded to different beliefs, different ways, different suggestions. We're just so much better together, and you know. I just encourage people to, instead of being in a me way, be in a we way, because we're better together.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely, and it's interesting you have a lot of. I, too, am a research and kind of statistic and data nerd, and so I love it. Your research shows that 95% of people don't have a schedule that allows them to complete their work, which just seems like we're putting our own obstacle directly in our way. That is going to negatively impact our outcomes, right? What systemic factors do you think have created this type of crisis in our workplaces?
Speaker 2:You know, let's be really frank and really authentic and say life is hard right now. There's a lot going on, there's a lot of inflation, a lot of challenges, and so life is hard and I think we don't draw enough boundaries. I was coaching somebody who was a dean of a university and she was telling me how she loved listening to NPR and it was really great. And she told me about six months ago that NPR really depressed her, now that she heard all this bad stuff and it just depressed her. I said so turn off the TV, stop looking at the TV. How much time do you spend on the TV? I always watch it for an hour and a half at night. So stop doing that and it really gets back to you.
Speaker 2:Know who controls your schedule? Ultimately you do, and it's okay to go to somebody and say I'd love to go to your meeting, but my primary responsibility is X, y, z and I need to focus on that for the next couple of months and I need to find some time in my schedule to do it. So send me a recap or, you know, maybe I'll go to every other meeting and usually people are very kind and they care about the greater good and they're like OK, that's fine.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, it's interesting. We recently on my team did a bit of an exercise or an experiment with our calendars. I meet once a week with our executive assistant and kind of review the next week and take a look, and we had one really important executive meeting that we were looking to reschedule and she happened to have her screen showing to say I just can't find time in everybody's schedule that is open to be able to put this somewhere. And I said, okay, wait a second. Is that what I'm looking at? That rainbow of colors, that's everybody's schedule. And she said, yeah, now you can see like I don't have a slot where I can put this in. I said, okay, number one, it's that important that we need to make a slot. So that's the first thing I said. Second thing is I want you to take a screenshot and I want you to send that to me. And then I would like you to go through each of our calendars and just send me an email that says Sunny has this many meetings this week. You know, so-and-so has this many. And through the whole team I said I'm going to get on a call on our executive call and I want to be really intentional about how we're looking at our schedules because right now this is crazy. No wonder we're going back to back to back, to back to back and we can't find space.
Speaker 1:And so, in trying to send this message out with a lot of real intentionality and in an illustrative way, I started looking for some videos to show them, to really give them the impact of how each of us show up. And what I found was a Formula One pit stop in slow motion, and it was shown from the overhead view. And what it was is you had, like these 15 people that inside of three seconds, have to be positioned exactly where they are. No hands can overlap, no feet can overlap, and they know exactly where they're supposed to be.
Speaker 1:If they were, if they had hands overlapping, like our schedules are overlapping, if they were, if they had hands overlapping, like our schedules are overlapping, that driver wouldn't leave the pit stop safe. And so I wanted to give them this visual of why it's so important that we're intentional in even our calendars, because that overlap can cause. You know, we think we're communicating with everyone, but things still get dropped. And so how can we pare back our schedules to improve our community and our communication and our interactions? And so it's funny to see everyone go. Oh my gosh, that's what all of our schedules look like Great, great story.
Speaker 2:I couldn't agree with you more. And then I think the other thing is, most people don't realize that the human brain cannot go straight deeply engrossed for more than 90 minutes. It needs a couple of seconds to be able to just breeze along. Even if it's three or four minutes, it makes a difference. And so, you know, people think they don't have time in their day.
Speaker 2:Or, you know, I'm a writer and I write a lot of blogs and I make all these commitments to myself. Like I'm going to write six blogs. You know a week and I get to the end of the week and I've written three and I'm like, ok, well, so I'm not going to be my own worst enemy and torture myself. I wrote three blogs, I don't need to write six, right? You know, I think sometimes we need to be the ones that give ourselves permission. And you know there's I hesitate to say this, but I'm going to say it anyways it was a funny thing that somebody once said to me when I was in the height of my busyness, and that was is the screwing you're getting worth the screwing you're getting? Yeah.
Speaker 1:Makes you sit back and think about that.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah, yeah, and I apologize to anyone who may have found that a little offensive, but you know, it's just. I think sometimes that we just can't see the big picture because we're hamsters on wheels and we just keep on doing and we don't take a pause and say this is not working, I'm tired, I'm exhausted. You know, I don't have time for my partner, I don't have time to go to my kids' games, and there's always a solution. One of my favorite people that I coached was a vice president of an international bank and he had, oh my God, I think like 6,700 people reporting to him and he had a really big job and he had this beautiful family.
Speaker 2:She had two daughters, a loving wife, and from the outside he was like he's got the storybook life going on, but on the inside he was exhausted, overwhelmed, stressed, in a deep state of time poverty. And he came to me and he said you know my daughter Lily. She asked me if I could coach her soccer team and I told her I'd let her know. And I've been thinking about it and I'm like how in the world can I leave work at 3.30, three days a week for three months? How am I going to do that. And then I'm like, well, it's a bonding moment with your daughter, Like you've got to figure this out, You've got to find a way. And what we realized with this guy was that he was caught in the email rabbit hole and he spent way too much time on email and that when interruptions came and people were knocking on his door, he said yes instead of can we schedule something later. Those two changes two changes gave him eight hours back in his work week, Micro steps.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, and I know I've certainly been guilty of this and I know you've worked with people who have been guilty of this, but wearing that busyness like a badge of honor, right Like this, is just part of what I do when you work with people that have that perspective. What is your approach to shifting this mindset without triggering either resistance or kind of like an identity crisis or kind of?
Speaker 2:like an identity crisis. Yeah, I mean, I love to show them how busyness, how it affects quality relationships. Look at the data. But I also like to remind people that when you're busy, it has this tidal wave effect on everyone around you. So you're super busy and then you don't have time for your family, you don't have time for your friends, you don't have time to advise your colleagues properly, you don't have time to do strategic work. You know it's got this ripple effect. So you know you've just really got to start to think about you know how you can be more effective and what is most important and that's why a lot of it is about getting to this way of thinking that you know less is more and I can achieve more by doing less. And try it. If you don't believe me, try it.
Speaker 2:Subtract a couple of low value things and see how you feel. Chances are you're going to feel great, great, and you know there are some times where life is hard and you just need to. You know, pour it on. I've got a very, very sick sister. I'm in the midst of writing a new book, I'm speaking a lot, so you know I've got a lot on and so you know I realized that this is going to pass and it's not forever. And, you know, I just kind of let myself go through it a little bit and then I'm like, okay, I've had enough. You know this is, I don't want to continue.
Speaker 2:You know, I got through the heartache of what's going on with my sister and the sadness and all those emotions that were draining me and I just said, okay, well, you know, what can I do to find good in this situation? And I realized you know what I'm talking to my sister every day. We were never close. All of a sudden we're besties. Like this is the something good? And so so many times, I think you know, we look at stress and we don't differentiate is it a micro stress or a macro stress? And micro stresses you get over, they're done, they're gone, they don't matter the next day. So when you think about what's stressing you out and you feel yourself getting stressed, to just think about that is really important. But then the other thing is like, well, what good is there in this situation? Many times you think there is no good, but there's always some good, always some good to be found.
Speaker 1:Yeah completely agree. You know, as we look at the future of work and organizations looking to maybe redesign their culture or give it a bit of a facelift, get rid of the old and kind of bring in some new, how can number one, what role does leadership play in that transformation and how can we encourage organizations to shift that culture away from busyness and more into intentionality and impact?
Speaker 2:Well, I get back to the facts and the data. And the problem is that most organizations don't know how. They have lofty goals, lofty things. They want to get done. So they're looking for tools, actionable, easy-to-use tools. And so I can't tell you how many organizations I've walked in where I've met with the leadership team and we've gone through the subtraction, mojo making and value vibing. They get it down, they trickle it down to their employees and all of a sudden it just gets good. And you know, one of the things that is going on is loss of engagement and burnout and our younger employees feeling like what they're doing isn't meaningful. So you know, getting back to values in the work, I mean it lights people up. So there's just, we just have to be a little bit different and try things a little differently. But the reality is and I'll tell you one last little story, I'm such a storyteller I had a friend of mine.
Speaker 2:He worked and he headed up Blue Cross Blue Shield Marketing Department very large statewide Blue Cross Blue Shield organization and he had a big proposal coming in and he thought he could get to it and he didn't. And one night he's just like okay, I need help. So he asked for help. He brought everybody into the conference room and they started working at like 4.45 and at like six o'clock they hear this knock, knock, knock at the door and it's the security guard basically saying there's a whiteout travel ban. Nobody's going anywhere. I know there are no windows, but that's the way it is.
Speaker 2:And so, you know, my friend Randy is like, yes, this is great, we'll get this project done Right. And so he looks around the room and he sees how exhausted his team is. But he also realizes that his relationships have become so transactional. They doesn't know what motivates them. He doesn't know what's important to them, what's meaningful, what they love, what they don't like, you know, inside of work, outside of work.
Speaker 2:So they spent six hours just talking and it was really crazy because he said it was one of the best times he's ever had at work and his employees all commented on what an amazing use of time it was. So four and a half, five months later, the employee engagement study comes along and Randy's department was always like in the bottom rung. And all of a sudden Randy's department was in the top rung and the only thing he did differently was was human connection, you know, getting his team to become a well-oiled machine, because they openly talked about what was working, what's not working, what do you value, and they wanted to support each other and set each other up for success. So you know, busy it's just not better.
Speaker 1:Yeah, if there's one thing that I have learned over the course of my career, it is that people want to be a part of something bigger than themselves, something purpose-filled, something meaningful, and when they can come in and it doesn't matter what you do, you can find purpose and meaning in just about anything. If you're willing to see through that lens, that's when you have high engagement rates, that's when you have job satisfaction and that's where you have great connection amongst the team as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean happiness rituals. You know people think that they're just for individuals, but I introduced workplace happiness rituals when I worked at United Healthcare and I managed a couple thousand customer service team the hardest job in the world working in health care and working in customer service. I was like, what am I going to do to improve their metrics? We're really doing a horrible job in resolving first call resolution. And so I thought, you know, let's try these happiness rituals at work.
Speaker 2:What if we, 10 minutes a day, we collectively got on a Zoom and we did these happiness rituals for three or four minutes, you know, and the team decided dance parties in the morning were what end of the day? We'd celebrate you know a lot of birthdays, or sometimes we'd tell jokes, look at Seinfeld tapes, whatever it was, you know. It was really amazing. And people came to me and they were like, oh my God, I'm leaving work not exhausted, exhausted. And their first call resolution metric, which is impossible to improve, went up 33% in six weeks. So if you're a leader and you want to improve engagement and performance, they're not the intuitive things you think you need to be doing.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. Well, peggy, as we wrap up, my last question often takes people by surprise. So if it were your last day on earth and of all you've learned and all you've researched and all you've written about, you could only impart one piece of advice or guidance on the world, what would that be? Add value?
Speaker 2:Always add value, always add value and never get involved in anything where you don't get value or add value. And that's the way I lead my life. If I don't add value or get value, then I don't belong there.
Speaker 1:I love that, and there's a lot of self-awareness in that too. Well, I will have all of this in the show notes, but I would love for you to share. Peggy, where can people find you? Find your book? Learn more about your methods.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean I encourage people just to reach out to me via email or Peggy Sullivan's speaker on LinkedIn. I have a website, peggysullivanspeakercom, that's got a reach out to Peggy section and you can get my book just by going on Amazon and searching Peggy Sullivan. Beyond Busyness and I love to hear from people. I love changing that paradigm. For most of us that busy is not better, I say anybody who needs help to figure out the how, give me a buzz because it seems to be working.
Speaker 1:Well, this is a topic that I think needs some serious tackling and I think can deeply resonate, and so people are paying attention, I am sure, to this conversation. So thank you, peggy, for bringing your knowledge and your wisdom and all that you've learned and researched around this to my audience.
Speaker 2:Well, you are quite welcome and thank you for everything you do in teaching the world how to evoke greatness. It's important.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for listening and for being here on this journey with me. I hope you'll stick around If you liked this episode. It would mean the world for me if you would rate and review the podcast or share it with someone you know may need to hear this message. I love to hear from you all and want you to know that you can leave me a voicemail directly. If you go to my website, evokegreatnesscom, and go to the contact me tab, you'll just hit the big old orange button and record your message. I love the feedback and comments that I've been getting, so please keep them coming. I'll leave you with the wise words of author Robin Sharma Greatness comes by doing a few small and smart things each and every day. It comes from taking little steps consistently. It comes from making a few small chips against everything in your professional and personal life that is ordinary. No-transcript.
