Episode 638: Achieve More with Less Stress and Reclaim Your Time – How to Master Productivity with Leslie Shreve

EBT638 – Leslie Shreve

Intro 00:00

Food bloggers. Hi, how are you today? Thank you so much for tuning in to the Eat Blog Talk podcast. This is the place for food bloggers to get information and inspiration to accelerate your blog’s growth, and ultimately help you to achieve your freedom. Whether that’s financial, personal, or professional. I’m Megan Porta. I have been a food blogger for 13 years, so I understand how isolating food blogging can be. I’m on a mission to motivate, inspire, and most importantly, let each and every food blogger, including you, know that you are heard and supported. 

Supercut  00:37

You are going to want to download our bonus supercut that gives you all the information you need to grow your Instagram account. Go to eatblogtalk.com/Instagrowth to download today. 

Megan Porta  00:52

Do you consider yourself to be a productive entrepreneur? Okay, even if you’re gonna say yes to that question, you absolutely must tune into this episode. Oh my gosh. It is packed with productivity, value, efficiency, streamlining, all the things we need in our lives, because, as you know, we have so much going on. Leslie Shreve from Productive Day, joins me in this episode to talk about productivity. She is a productivity guru. She’s been focusing on this topic for many, many years. So she knows so many things that are going to help your business feel so much easier, including inbox tips. She had so many great tips for organizing your email inbox so that it doesn’t feel like it’s gonna strangle you every single day. And it’s not limited to that. There’s so much more about gaining time back in your workday every single day, how to get more accomplished and be less stressed and not have a to do list that overwhelms you. This is a great episode. I’m gonna come back to this one often. It is episode number 638. I hope you love it. 

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Megan Porta  03:08

Leslie Shreve is a workload management and productivity expert, and the Founder and CEO of Productive Day®, which was established in 2003. Leslie is also the creator of Taskology® The Science of Getting Things Done, a unique, proprietary, and all-encompassing system for workload management and productivity that includes the management of tasks, time, email, information, and more. 

Leslie works with corporate executives and professionals to show them how to increase efficiency and productivity by up to 300% in as little as 4 weeks, gain 1-2 hours back in their workday—EVERY day, spend up to 50% LESS time in their email Inbox, and reduce stress by up to 90%. Clients who were previously frustrated or overwhelmed with too much to do too many emails and too little time now claim to have a secret a strategy they can use To get things done faster and easier and make more meaningful progress on the products and initiatives that matter the most to them and to the future of their business. 

Megan Porta  04:08

Leslie, such a pleasure to have you on elog talk. How’s it going today?

Leslie Shreve  04:12

It’s going great today. Megan, thanks, and I hope your day is going well too and productively.

Megan Porta  04:17

Yes, yes, yes. Productive is one of my favorite words. I’ve been obsessed with this word since I started working when I was in my 20s. So we are on the same page with this topic today, Leslie. yes, we’re gonna have an awesome conversation about being productive, just to help you get control of your life and your business and all of the good things. But before we get to that good stuff. What is a fun fact about yourself?

Leslie Shreve  04:43

A fun fact about me? Well, one thing I can share is that the Shreve family, as my last name is Shreve, is connected to so much history in America, and it’s fun, especially on the East Coast. I’m here in Baltimore, Maryland, so we have ties to Tillman island in Maryland, and we are connected with Shreveport of Louisiana, which is great. Actually. Henry Shreve was my third cousin, six times removed, because he’s from back in the 1800s he was actually responsible for dredging the whole Mississippi and coming up with a few patents different kinds of boats. Yep, patented the steamboat, even though Robert Fulton got credit for the one on the Hudson because that was a deep draft where own a Mississippi narrow, I mean, a shallow draft boat. But the real fun fact is that I am a great, great granddaughter Edward and Louise Barney, who actually used to own Jamestown Island, which was 1500 acres. And I’m thinking, wow, it’d be cool if that was still in the family, but they have a plaque in the ground by the Jamestown church thanking Edward and Louise Barney for having donated the 22 and a half acres out of the 1500 for that piece of land that has Jamestown Church and the old church tower on that property. So a little bit of great American history that I love about the family, but those were my great, great grandparents, just good to know that. 

Megan Porta  06:02

That is really cool. What history there and yeah, great to be tied to that. Awesome love learning that about you and your business is called Productive Day, correct? 

Leslie Shreve  06:15

That is right. 

Megan Porta  06:16

Would you mind telling us a little bit about Productive Day? 

Leslie Shreve  06:19

Not at all Productive Day. Is a company that I started 21 years ago. And I love what I do helping executives and leaders and business owners help them have a much more efficient and effective and productive work day so that they can make more meaningful progress on the projects and the initiatives that matter the most to them and to the future of their company, of their business. And I started this after a 13 year career in corporate, something completely different, by the way, so not even related. But back then, I knew that I could use my my talents and my characteristics, and, you know, everything that I had brought into corporate, I could take that with me and go help people with this. So I help my clients gain one to two hours back in their work day every day, help them spend up to 50% less time in their email inbox every day, and get to zero, by the way, and not only gather, but plan, prioritize and accomplish their tasks faster and easier and with a lot less stress and without having to give up all their personal time to make the progress they really want to make. I love my business. I love helping people, because my mission is to help you with your mission. Too many people out there these days are being prevented from actually doing what they do best and spending their time on the things that makes their heart sing, you know, that allows them to serve others, and they’re not able to get to it because the way that they’re working in their work day is actually holding them back. So my whole mission is to help people break through all those obstacles and roadblocks in the how of how they’re getting their work done. And I can expand on that today, because there’s, you know, there’s a lot to know about that, but I really want to help them get this out of their way so they can get back to doing what they do best. 

Megan Porta  08:03

Well, let me tell you, Leslie, you were talking to the right people, because food bloggers, I don’t know know how much you know about our businesses, but we have so much on our plates, and it is very hard, I will tell you, from first hand experience to work efficiently in this business, because there are so many things, and not just what’s on our plates now, but platforms, tools, people come at us all the time that are new, and we don’t know what to do with new stuff, and juggling everything is just it’s just a lot. So we need you. So thank you for being here. All the stuff that you just kind of teased. Oh, I can’t wait to talk about it, so let’s dig into it. This is juicy. I guess we’ll start with I know you have some components that you feel are missing from a typical workday for any business individual. I’m assuming that applies to entrepreneurs as well. What is missing? What do we miss, and why does it make or break our productivity?

Leslie Shreve  09:04

Okay, so the missing piece, you know, when you think about the workday that you’re just describing now, feeling a little frustrated at times, maybe a little chaotic or reactive at times, too many things coming at you, too too much going on, interruptions, distractions, emails, phone calls, texts. You know, all this, all this activity going on. And a lot of folks, I mean, gosh, they’re in the same boat no matter what industry they’re in, because there’s always so much going on. And a lot of people are always feeling behind. And as they try to focus on their work, they have to juggle so many other things going on around them, all this activity that I’m talking about. You know, tasks are coming at them from more than 10 different sources in the workday, and you’ve got email and phone calls and texts, etc. So what ends up happening is feeling reactive and actually trying to get through these rushed, reactive days can cause bad things to happen, right? Because you could miss a task, you could forget a follow up, you could be totally thrown off track by an issue that pops up and you don’t feel like you have a grip on your work as it is, but then this issue pops up and it just throws you even farther off track and and certainly when you’re trying to prepare for for meetings and phone calls with with colleagues or co workers, or, you know, anyone you’re working with, and you’re not prepared, that can be bad too. So there’s so many things going on in the day. You know, stress goes up, personal time drops. Because, you know, if you can’t get it done during the day, you find yourself working nights or weekends. So the list goes on of all these different signs that the workday isn’t really working the way that you want it to. 

Leslie Shreve  10:45

So with all of these signs and symptoms, they’re actually just symptoms of something of sort of a much bigger problem, if you will. And that bigger problem is that there’s this missing piece in the workday strategy, and that missing piece is having a system for workload management. And what I mean by that is that too many people are trying to kind of cobble together all these different tools and tactics and and apps in their day to try to stay on top of things. I mean, really A plus for effort, because people reaching for stuff these days, they’re trying to find the solution they want a To Do app or an email app or a tactic for handling time and their calendar more effectively, and they’ve got planners and big pads, little pads, spiral pads, notepads, post it notes, whiteboards, Excel spreadsheets, word documents, like they’re trying their best to keep up with everything, right? So the problem with that is that when you’re using that many different tools, and not even all of those, but I swear to God, clients do bring me a whole castle of all those things all at once, and they’re like, Yep, I’m trying all this stuff, you know, because they have to, and because no one has ever handed them a system that actually ties it all together and makes it easy and seamless, so that everything is easy and actionable, and you know where your time is going, and you know your inbox is empty, and you know how to keep up with everything. You know if no one’s ever handed you that it’s not your fault, yeah, like you’ve never had the solution. So people are really trying to cobble things together. And when that happens, that’s when things start slipping through the cracks, because there’s too much going on, too many tools in motion, and they’re not communicating, they’re not streamlined, and yes, things will slip through, and that really is that missing piece, and it will make or break your productivity. Because when you have that missing piece and you’ve got that system for workload management, things are much more streamlined and effective so that you’re not losing time and you’re actually making the progress you really want to make.

Megan Porta  12:40

So this is very relatable. I think a lot of us can probably relate to this, because we have everything you mentioned. We’ve got an inbox or maybe two or three, we’ve got the project management software. We’ve got the tools and the calendar and et cetera on and on. How do we start managing that? Then if we feel like it’s too much, if we’re on overload and we realize that, what do we do? Where do we start?

Leslie Shreve  13:04

So where you start is by centralizing your task. So what does that mean? Okay, so centralize? Well, people do try to do that, except that they’re not quite clear on exactly what is possible. And if no one has ever modeled it for you or shown you what’s possible, it is very hard to wrap your brain around sometimes. What I mean by centralizing your tasks is not just grab the nearest legal pad and then do a brain dump. I mean, gosh, that’s a start. So that’s awesome, but that’s not the whole picture. What everybody is not realizing is that it’s actually impossible to efficiently and effectively plan, prioritize and accomplish tasks by trying to manage them from their sources exclusively. It can’t be done efficiently without missing, losing or forgetting something. And what I mean by source is that if you’re trying to remember that most important flagged email as well as what’s written on your legal pad, and then that voicemail that you got and that text, you know, you’re trying to remember the most important thing in all those different places, and then trying to prioritize that. That’s when things start to go south. So when you centralize your tasks, you’re pulling tasks away from their source, so you’re getting those tasks and follow ups from email out of the email inbox, because nothing is best managed while it’s still sitting in the inbox. So you got to get those out of there. So we’ve talked about email later, because there’s more to it than that, because you also have a lot of reference information in there. You know, email management is really task management in disguise, and it’s information management in disguise too. So, you know, don’t be fooled. Email management, they call it that, but it’s no different than the telephone bringing you you know tasks and follow ups and information. But we don’t call it phone management. You’ve got to know how to handle the information that comes from these sources. So when you pull your tasks away from the source, you’re taking those voicemail messages. And if there’s an action step, well, we got to get that on a central digital task list, if there’s tasks and follow. The ops coming from email. We need to pull those out if there’s something in your head or from a meeting or a hallway conversation or anywhere else texting, social media, whatever you know, and there’s papers and files probably on your desk, on a lot of desks where people have more paper in their particular job, career or industry, and certainly, if you guys are not that paper intensive, a lot of what you’re getting is digital. So you still have to get those tasks centralized and understand the clarity of well, this is what I have on my plate, and not just for today. So when I say centralized, I mean like anytime you want to do something, whether it’s today, tomorrow, next week, next month, or a follow up in six months. You know, maybe there’s another podcaster out there that you want to reach out to, but you know, for the next three months they’re in Europe, and you know they’re on a vacation, but you want to talk to them in three months when they’re back. Well, that goes on a task list, and it needs to come off your mind and out of whatever communication source that came from and get that plan in place. You know, wrap a plan around everything that’s really on your plate, identify what it is, and once you start seeing them all in one bucket, then it’s really easy to prioritize, because now you have complete vision of everything that’s going on, not to overwhelm you, but to quickly say, Oh, well, that I need to do today, and that’s going to have to wait until next week or next month or tomorrow or whatever. And it’s with that clarity that you get the power to prioritize and do it accurately. Right now, everything is all scattered. It’s very difficult when things are not in your vision, because then you’re missing something and you might be forgetting something. But when we build this central, digital task list, and by the way, in whatever software you have. So this is a methodology for the technology. My system is not software. It’s a methodology. And once you build that, then you’ve got everything in one place. So my clients have anywhere from 30 to 150 tasks on their task list, but they’re not all for today, but having them in their vision gives them that, that clarity, that awareness, so that they know exactly where they are with everything, with everything.

Megan Porta  16:58

So do you have recommendations for easy places to centralize everything. So I’m assuming you can start with a simple Google Sheet or just a handwritten page in your journal. Where do people mostly start with this?

Leslie Shreve  17:12

Well, that’s where we want to really be careful with getting away from paper actually, because paper is a tool, not a system. So paper is actually holding people back. And I know that a lot of folks love to write on their in their planners or special journals or in any kind of beautiful format, and that’s great for creativity and for maybe journaling, but it’s not great for task management. So using paper to try to keep track of things to do and plan and prioritize is the first way to sabotage your productivity. It’s actually holding people back. And I know a lot of people love crossing things off, you know, and they love writing because it actually does have a nice, strong connection with our brain. But I got to tell you, if you want to be efficient and effective and productive and you really want to rock it, you’ve got to get away from paper and go digital. Now you mentioned Google. Google would not be the first place to go unless you try something like Google GQs. That’s one place I’ve checked out. I’ve not used it yet, but you can’t just use a digital like you don’t want to turn it into a digital legal pad. So no, we don’t want one, one long list of just a, you know, a type written list. We don’t want that, because when you get it in a system like I’m sure, because I’ve used Todoist, but for 20 years, I’ve been building this in Microsoft Outlook. Unfortunately, a lot of entrepreneurs are not wild about Microsoft, so they’re using Google, but Google doesn’t have a suitable task list. It’s not great. That’s why I looked at GQs, because that is a Google product, but to do list would work well too. You have to have a place where you can actually group your tasks by day, so that, because there is a limit to how many you can do in a day. And this is another place that people get a little twisted up and turned around, because if they use an actual legal pad, they’re like getting everything down there on paper. And I’ve had clients tell me before, oh yeah, when I used to use my legal pad, anything I wrote on that top page, I was trying to get that all done today. Well, that’s not gonna happen. Yeah, that’s too much. That’s way too much. And so that’s the misalignment, really, of tasks and time, where people have this big bucket of things to do and this tiny little symbol of time, and they never match up. And so you gotta get away from that, because you really want to not only see all your tasks in your vision, but make that decision of, yes, this must be done today or tomorrow or the next day, and then limit yourself and make it a very, very small selection of tasks for one day at a time. And you’re planning it out. You’re wrapping a plan around it with what you know right now. Because is it going to change? Absolutely. Priorities change like sand in the wind, you have to be able to pivot and turn on a dime very quickly, but without missing, losing or forgetting anything. And when it’s all in a digital system, you can not only see it, but you can reprioritize instantly. That’s why I love Microsoft Outlook, because you can get so many tasks on the screen in one. One screen view, even though you’re compressing all future days, except for today, which really helps, by the way, with the overwhelm and a lot of other systems like Todoist, you can’t really see a lot of tasks on one screen, and it is a little bit harder to prioritize, but at least they’ve got the right format. You know, I’m looking forward to using a lot of other pieces of software in the future, because this methodology can be applied anywhere, but you really have to have some functionality. And I think that’s where the new Microsoft Outlook, by the way, the one that they’re trying to get everybody to use. It’s called Microsoft To Do’s or something like it’s it’s even different than the old Microsoft to do list, but it’s just worse, because they’ve stripped out all the functionality, and it makes it kind of useless. So I’m always on the lookout for systems like, I think it was Notion or Monday, one of those is another good one that allows you to kind of group things like that. So get away from paper. That’s my mantra. 

Megan Porta  20:49

And I know you said that a Google Sheet isn’t wouldn’t suffice, but that’s what I use. And I do the same thing you’re talking about. It’s probably a little bit more laborious than if I had a to do list software, like you’re referring to, but yeah, I do this. I list out all of my tasks, and then I break down my weeks by day, so I Sunday through Saturday, and then I kind of lump tasks together on each day, and then I try to make them manageable, and I cross them off as I go, and if I don’t get them done, I move them to another day or move them to the greater list. Does that kind of sound like something you’re talking about? 

Leslie Shreve  21:28

Yeah, it does. And one of the things that sounds good to me is the ability for you to select different days for different tasks, because that’s really key. So if I should be looking at Google Sheets. I’ll take, I’ll take a peek at it, because I do want it to be simple. You know, none of this is complicated, and in the method I mean, and that’s what I like about some of the software out there, but some of the other stuff is way, way, way too complicated. And this is one of the things that I think pushes people away and they get frustrated, or they they might try Asana or Trello or to do list or Notion or Monday or whatever’s out there, and there’s so many bells and whistles and colors and categories and oh my gosh. And they’re like, Wow, how do I make this work for me, you know, for my stuff? And I’m got to tell you, it’s way too much like you don’t need all that. The only two things that you guys need to know to start out with right out of the gate is what you need to do and when. And in our system, the task is a very, very, very small action step. So it’s either the first action step to get something started or the next action step to keep something moving forward. I was just looking at someone else’s to do list that I was training in a team training setting, and she had put too many projects there, and I needed to help her with that, because you can’t just take a list in a digital format and then start throwing projects in there, or multi step tasks, because that’s not going to serve anybody. They have to be small, actionable, achievable tasks. And I mean small, and this is one of the things that others are not defining for people out there, you know, the other productivity consultants and gurus, and there are plenty of them out there, yeah, and nothing against what they try to do. But if they’re not defining a task, it is leaving people spinning their wheels.

Megan Porta  23:12

Yeah, that makes sense. I like this concept of moving everything to one spot, even if it’s an email that you need to, I don’t know, attend to a project detail or whatever, like something in the email needs to go on to your centralized location, so everything should refer back to this central spot. 

Leslie Shreve  23:32

Mission Control, yes, so yeah, and it’s not just replying to an email. Obviously, you’re going to want to do that quickly, and you could leave that in the inbox for a hot minute. But if there is an action step required before you can answer that email, that’s the task for the task list, you know, you know, call Mary so I could get an answer to this question before getting back to Bob, yeah, you know, or, Oh, I have to look into something before I can get back to John. You know, those are tasks for the task list, because they have to be prioritized with everything else that you’ve got going on. And at this point now, once it’s on Mission Control, once it’s on that taskology, task list, because that’s the name of our system, is Taskology, once it’s there, then you know, it doesn’t matter where it came from, like it’s a task I don’t care whether it came through a text or an email or whatever, but it’s something I have to do, and now it has to be compared to everything else. So that you know that, for this moment, right now today, that you’re spending your time in the wisest of ways, because you don’t want to be going for just the easiest thing or the thing that’s most fun, you know, you really want to make sure you’re going after those either revenue generating tasks or business builders, money makers, money savers, you know, making customers, clients happy, all that kind of stuff. That’s the best use of your time.

Megan Porta  24:42

All right. I like that. And then I know you have a tip for gaining a couple hours back in your workday. Does this relate to the centralized Mission Control? Okay, talk more about that. 

Leslie Shreve  24:53

It does. So when you’re looking for more time in your day, a lot of people think it’s all on the time and the calendar bit. I. That’s true. Part of it is that when you’re trying to get more time back, you do have to become a master at protecting time. So we here at Productive Day are not about finding time, keeping time, looking for time, or making time. No, you already have time, but what people need is permission to protect it. Some people already take that and they do it themselves, and they’re like, Yep, I’m gonna block this time, and it’s my own. Lot of people are looking for permission because they feel guilty, especially if they have a team or co workers, and they want to stay available to others. But I gotta tell you, got to have some quiet time during the day that’s just for you. That might be closed door time. It might be just quiet time. It might be an uninterrupted time, whatever you want to call it, but you’re going to have to have at least an hour to an hour and a half in the morning and the same in the afternoon. And it’s different for people in corporate versus entrepreneurs, you know. So there’s two different approaches here. I don’t mean to blanket over it, because certainly in corporate they need to address it differently, because they don’t have the same freedoms that entrepreneurs do who are working from from home, you know. But in both cases, you still need to protect time to do the two most important processes of your work day, and that is task management and email management now to get more time. And by the way, the time blocking bit is not just like, oh yeah, I know all about time blocking. I’m going to throw a time block on here and there when I feel like it. No, you’ve got to get into more of a method and a strategy, because ours goes a lot deeper than that, so that my clients know how many days a week to do it, how many times a day, how long the time block should be, and what to do when things go wrong. So we’ve got them covered from now through eternity, and you’re never going to want to get into that situation where you’ve, you know, maybe blocked a bit of time on a recurring basis, and it’s up, you know, December 31 that’s bad. That’s going to leave you without time in January. So you never want to run into that situation. But you also have to have more time than, I think, what people are blocking right now, definitely more. Because even though a lot of people are like, well, but I don’t want to, you know, I don’t want to be out of reach for that long, or I don’t want to give people the wrong impression, you know, I’m here to tell you, you’ve got to have that time. Unless you’re okay working nights and weekends all the time, you need this time during the day to get that stuff done.

Leslie Shreve  27:15

So that’s the first way that we’re getting some time back a Productive Day. The second way is by managing everything else in your workday, because that’s what’s really going to give you another big hit of time. And when I say everything else, it comes from three places. It comes from streamlining your processes for task management, email management and information management, because this is where time is going. So for instance, we’ve already talked about task management, because people lose a lot of time writing and rewriting to do lists. I hear it all the time. That’s one way that time is lost. But there’s also a lot of time is lost in the planning and prioritizing process, because it’s so cumbersome, if you’re looking in like, 10 different places to see what you’re going to do today, right? The other way is email. You know, everybody hates email, but of course, it’s scrolling off the screen, and we’re chasing emails all the time and trying to figure out if we’ve forgotten something or something scrolled away that we needed. Very difficult sometimes for people to find stuff in the inbox or in a folder on the left side of the screen. It’s also they’re losing time, because if they’re if they’re flagging emails or putting a star next to it, or they want to come back to it at some point in time. The issue becomes time lost, rereading emails you’ve already seen but couldn’t do anything with because they’re still sitting in the inbox. So what we want to do is get those out of there, because you’ve got reference information stuck in there, contact information, something that should be printed and filed, something that should be saved in the hard drive, and then tasks and follow ups and again, nothing is best managed while it’s still sitting in the inbox. So you really need to get those things out. And so in the process of people trying to manage things in the inbox, they’re losing loads of time, loads and loads. And then the third area is information management. Too many people are looking for things they know they have but just can’t find that could be contact information, papers, files to do lists on the desk or elsewhere in the office, or they’re looking for something in the hard drive or in the cloud or somewhere else. I don’t know. There’s a lot of different places for reference in our workday. So anytime you’re not reaching that bit of information that you need fast enough, well now you’re being held back from finishing that task, or maybe you can’t finish that email and send it off. Maybe you can’t find that attachment so you could reply to so and so, you know, so anytime you’re losing time like that, any bit of that time is so valuable and you can’t get it back. And so what people don’t realize is that by streamlining those three processes in your day, you’re going to get tons and tons of time back, because you’re never going to have to read emails twice, sitting in the inbox to know what to do with it. You read it the first time and get it out of there, and then you’ve got it moving on to the best location where it’s really meant to be managed. I mean, contact information is a great example of that. We have contacts. We’ve got a CRM. We got a place for contact information. Let’s get it out of the email and get it where it’s best managed. We have systems for all this stuff. And if you don’t have one, we want to create one, so it’s going to save you a lot of time.

Sponsor  30:05

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Megan Porta  30:48

And the process of creating those systems can be work, but it’s upfront work that once set they should be flowing, right? So you don’t they’re kind of in motion. You shouldn’t have to worry about them? 

Leslie Shreve  31:01

Yes, because as you continue to use them as they’re intended, they should have zero maintenance, and that’s true for the task list too. I think that’s where people get stuck with other types of lists, you know, and they don’t have a methodology for the technology, you know. They see the demos, and boy, their marketing is slick, and the demo makes everything look so fun and easy, but then you try to build it with your stuff, and you’re like, I’m not quite sure how to do this, or I don’t know if I’m doing it right, or I don’t know how much of this I need to do, or, you know, and then they’re not really, they don’t have a guide, you know, they don’t have someone at their side. It’s like, Well, okay, let’s use a food example. It’s like, first of all, not having the right recipe or the right ingredients. So that would be the technology. But it goes beyond that I like to give my clients, you know, the Master Chef standing right there next to you, going, Okay, here’s how you do it. Here are the nuances. You know, this is exactly how you do what you need to do. So more than just having the recipe, you really have to have somebody who knows how to how to work it, you know?

Megan Porta  32:02

I mean, there’s so much for us to manage. I was just thinking through, like, photography, there’s videos we have to manage, contacts, emails, projects. I mean, I could go on and on. So I think it’s just a matter of starting somewhere and just kind of cleaning up the mess little by little. Would that be your suggestion?

Leslie Shreve  32:24

Well, sure, here’s, here’s my, my strategy for you guys. So when you’re looking at the stuff on your desk, or the stuff, you know, related to, you know, writing posts, or doing the photography and social media posts and all the other things you need to do anytime you’re looking at something like, Okay, this is a project, or this is a something I have to accomplish. Just sit there for a minute and think, Okay, what do I need to do next? Now, if you haven’t started it, then it’s, what do I need to do first? And think of it as if you were going to do the thing right now, like, what would I literally do first? And we could make something up, or pick one of your current projects or tasks right now and talk through it, to give everyone an example. But you really want to think small. When you identify those next action steps, it’s surprisingly small, and that is your task.

Megan Porta  33:12

I like that. And again, it can be a bit of an ordeal getting to the point where you’re cleaned up. I’ve been through this process before, but it feels so good to do this, to go through this, and just organize and streamline your life so that you know where to go for things. It’s an incredible, freeing feeling. 

Leslie Shreve  33:31

It is, and it’s not a one and done. So everyone who’s thinking of this like, oh, yeah, I just need to get organized. That’s not even the point. You know, that’s not even the first step, and it sounds like it is, but it really isn’t. What you’re really wanting to do is get a system in place that is going to constantly keep you on track so that you never ever have to feel like you’ve got to get organized again, because that’s not what it’s about. Your goal is to be more efficient and productive, and the only way to do that is to have a variety of little like individual systems, one for your process for managing email, your process for managing tasks, the process for managing time, and the one for information as well. And it’s almost like having a couple of mini systems within the larger, you know, workload management system that I’m referring to, because everything that has a streamlined process, if it’s followed, it makes things so easy from day to day. It’s like the Pay As You Go program. You know you never want to have a to be filed pile as an example, because that’s just going to cause you more work later. Your systems should, should be so fun and easy to use that you just continually use them, and they kind of maintain themselves.

Megan Porta  34:41

Can you talk more about email? You touched on this a little bit. Don’t keep things in your inbox for too long. It’s really pointless to keep looking at the same email over and over. I’ve been there. I’ve done that way too many times. Do you have any other tips for us, because email is an issue for a lot of us.

Leslie Shreve  34:56

And you know, for Google users, I feel for you guys, because. I’m you know, coming from a Microsoft Outlook world where you can actually move hundreds of emails at the same time, move or delete. So if anybody out there has the secret of moving more than 100 at a time, or more than a screen view, like and in the systems that I’ve been in, for some folks, it’s like you can’t move more than just a certain amount of email at once, like if you want to file them in bulk or delete them involved. Never seen anybody do more than like 100 and if that’s true, that is a huge limitation for everybody. And it’s like, I can’t even help anybody yet, if they’ve got like, 50,000 100,000 emails. I mean, I worked with somebody who had 400,000 emails coming from 10 different email addresses. And when you get up that high, I can’t help you yet, because there are two there’s too much, like everybody let it fill up, and so we can’t even get a system in place until all that backlog is gone, because that’s like years and years of emails that’s just clogging up the system. And if you can’t just move them out in bulk, well then we’re kind of stuck. So my advice to everybody out there right now who has a Google account for email? My advice to you is never, ever, ever let that get out of control. Get it in folders somewhere and not don’t leave it in the inbox. And of course, I think in Google it’s like in both places, which makes it impossible to ever get to zero. That’s why I like Microsoft Outlook and other systems, because you can literally move things out of the inbox, and you can see that it’s at zero. And you know, you’ve seen everything, you’ve made a decision on everything, and you’ve moved it all to better locations of either reference or action, or it’s gone archived or deleted. Anytime you’ve got stuff in both places, it’s like you’re not really sure what you’ve seen or not seen. You know what I mean? So I don’t know what the secret is in Google, but if anybody knows how to get it, get things moved out permanently, and get to that empty inbox. I would love to know, because it’s going to be hard until you get that stuff out of there. So my tip for people is a don’t let it spin out of control. If you’re thinking, oh yeah, I’ll just do the search for the rest of my life, you’re going to be in trouble when you start maxing out, and then you hit like limits, and it’ll you’ll probably lose your mind, because you’re not sure what you’ve seen or not seen, and you’re just sort of accumulating all this stuff that’s really not serving you anymore. It’s just clogging up the system. Second advice is, once you can move things out, you know, set up a folder on the left for those old emails. Just call it like, you know, 2020, to 2024, emails or something, and get those suckers out of there, because that’s old stuff. You want to be able to see new emails coming in, and, know, those are the ones that you need to see right now, and make decisions on and then from here forward, you’re going to make decisions immediately and say, Okay, I can delete that, or, Oh, I can file that. Or, you know, I’ve taken care of that, and I can delete it or file it, or get rid of it, you know, save something in the hard drive. You know, just make decisions on what you’re receiving, decide whether it’s for reference or action, and then if it’s not something you need, don’t just keep opening and closing things and just skipping over them in the inbox, because now you’re just it’s piling up basically, and it’s going to become more of a burden than you might think. I think once people get the empty inbox, and when they learn taskology, and they kind of go through this system and learn it, they say to me, I never realized what a burden it was until it was gone.

Megan Porta  38:04

Yeah, oh my gosh, that is so true. My email has been a burden to me for so many years. I finally feel like I have it under control, and I can’t even tell you how much mental clutter has been lifted from my soul.

Leslie Shreve  38:22

Because yeah, because, doesn’t it feel like Megan, when it builds up, when anything builds up like that, you’re like, God, my work is never done. 

Megan Porta  38:29

Yes, always. I found that I was thinking about my email in the middle of the night, right away, in the morning. I mean, all times the day, vacation, yes, weekends, I was worrying about it, worrying that it worrying that it was building up, that I was going to open it and just be so overwhelmed. And I don’t do that anymore, and I’m so happy. I it has, it has literally changed my business. I feel so much lighter.

Leslie Shreve  38:53

See, I love that, and I love that. When I help my clients get to that point, you know, they get addicted to the white space, yeah, and they have a process then to know how to get it back to zero every single day. And it’s easy peasy, because now they have the systems to do it, they have the processes to do it. They have the it’s really about thinking, decision making and execution, and they’ve got it. That’s why it’s a methodology for the technology. It’s not the software. You know, the magic is in the method. Don’t think that the bells and the whistles, or even that the AI is going to do it for you, because, guess what? It’s not you still need this skill. 

Megan Porta  39:25

That’s really funny. I talk to so many people who are kind of like that. They assume that a new tool, a new whatever feature, is going to just solve all of their problems for them and make them productive and efficient and organized. But it’s you. You have to do this, and you have to keep up with it. I’m sorry to

Leslie Shreve  39:43

break it to you folks, but you know, there’s no tip, tool, tactic, shortcut, app or hack out there that’s going to save you from email. You have to become a decision making ninja. And even if you said to me, well, Leslie, I know exactly what this is, and I know I want to keep it, the question is, now, what do I do? With it. So if you don’t have a place for everything, that’s the system that’s missing. You know, it might be a system for your E documents in the hard drive or in the cloud. You know, you might be using Dropbox or Google Drive. You know that needs to be systematized. You have to make that easy to use. You definitely have to have a place for contacts, you know, maybe a CRM, but you have to have places to contain this reference information, because if that isn’t ship shape, you are going to lose loads of time not only trying to figure out where to put things, but then figure out how to find them again.

Megan Porta  40:30

Yes, and you talked earlier about Google Mail, Gmail, which I think most food bloggers probably use. I don’t know many who use Microsoft, but one thing I do in Gmail is I use the crap out of labels. So I’ll just create a label, and then kind of store, either temporarily or permanently, things there to get them out of my inbox like you’re talking and it works wonders. You can color them, you can highlight you can whatever, do, whatever you want, organize so that things take priority. So that’s one thing, and then also just, here’s something I learned the hard way, just archiving absolutely everything. There’s this little button at the top that has a down arrow. Don’t just trash emails. I used to do this, and then I needed an email desperately, and it was gone, and it it was trouble. It was not good. So now I archive absolutely everything, and just my last tip on Gmail is actually, this has nothing to do with Gmail, just email it in general, is getting someone to help you. So I have somebody who combs through my email daily and just gets rid of the garbage, and that has eliminated so much mental clutter. For me, I don’t know if that’s a tip you use Leslie, or I

Leslie Shreve  41:43

have, because I’m working with a lot of C level executives and directors, or people who don’t have the luxury of, you know, getting someone to do that. And I say luxury, you know, some people don’t want to hand that out because they are the CEO and, you know, they might not have the desire to do that because they want to see everything, and other CEOs might want to, you know, so just like business owners and entrepreneurs, some have a comfort level with that, and some don’t, I would say that’s awesome if you train the person right? And I know you have, because they know now what to look for for you, and they know what is junk or trash or, you know, something that should be filed or something you absolutely have to see, right? So setting expectations and training are key, and I totally support that. So I think that’s awesome if they’re your first level of defense, if we will, you know, from email, awesome, because then they’re going to leave you the stuff that you really should see. And I think too many times people are trying to offload email to somebody entirely, and I’m like, Dude, you still have a job, like you’re still the COO or the CEO, or, you know, you can’t hand off everything. There are some things that only you can do or that only you can see, because you are the leader in the company, and you do need to see this stuff so you can’t offload everything. But yes, there are some people who can help with a lot of the easy stuff, and then they can kind of hand you that small selection of things that is really important for Megan to see, right? Yeah, and I totally support that.

Megan Porta  43:07

And it’s a process. It wasn’t an overnight situation where we just tackled it overnight. It took weeks. I mean, it was like stage one, let’s take care of this, okay? And then she kind of got to know my inbox and what what I wanted to see and what I didn’t. And we made a few minor adjustments. And I would say, after probably three weeks, we had a system down, and I know it’s been, I wish I would have done this years ago.

Leslie Shreve  43:30

Yeah, right. No, I think it’s awesome. I, you know, being who I am, I’m always at zero. But if I were in the shoes of, you know, someone like you, and it just was too much for what I’m trying to accomplish. I would totally want to go get some help. Yeah, and I think, I think, before doing that, though, what I’m trying to help people understand is that when you do have a process in place, and you are, you know, you have all the systems that you need, and you know exactly how to make decisions, and you’re a quick decision maker. I’m making it so easy for people to just do it on their own, very, very quickly and be done with it. And then they don’t even need the person. Yeah, you know. And I’m not saying that you don’t need yours. I’m saying a lot of other people might not need a person. They just need a process so they can just like, get in, get out. Nobody gets hurt. They move on, and they’re like, Yep, got it under control. So now they’re addicted to the white space, and they know exactly what to do. And so I love helping be helping people be able to do that. And if they are getting, like, hundreds and hundreds and they need that help too, well, that’s awesome. Like, let’s do both.

Megan Porta  44:37

I love this. I think inbox management is so undervalued. I think if you can get your inbox, not necessarily at zero, some people can’t get there or don’t want to get there, but if you can have it manageable, you can clear so much clutter from your mind, even if you don’t think that’s true, just try it and see.

Leslie Shreve  44:57

Well, you know. And let me add on to that really quick, because I know I. That That is great advice. And I want to push it a little bit further to say, Hey folks, I know you might want to run up to me and go, Hey, Leslie. I’m so excited, because my inbox is down to just, you know, I keep it around 20 all the time. Okay, well, that’s good. That’s great. But those 20 are all tasks, and that’s why you left them there, because they’re all things that you have to do. And so I know you’re proud and I’m proud of you, but what you’re doing is you’re fragmenting your task management so you might still have a planner or a legal pen or a whiteboard or Word document or a Google Doc, you know, with stuff on it, and then you’ve got these emails left in the inbox. Be very, very careful of that, because you’re holding yourself back. What you’ve done is, remember, I said that nothing is best managed while it’s still sitting in the inbox. One of the things you can’t do with those emails is plan and prioritize them. What you’re doing is you’re looking at them over and over and over again to go, Okay, why did I keep this? And if it was a flagged email amidst, you know, 1000 emails, you’re going back to the flagged emails and asking the same question, what? What you’ve done, though, if you’ve only got 20 left in the inbox, is that those are basically like flagged emails and you’re going back to go, Okay, why did I save this? What do I need to do? Let me read it again. Oh, that’s right. I can’t do that today because Joe’s not here. Okay, let me move on to the next one. Okay. What was this about? Okay, so you’re still rereading emails that you’ve already seen, but you didn’t do anything with because you don’t have systems in place to handle your task management or, you know, tasks and follow ups, basically, but also probably some reference information too, so you are still losing loads of time because you’re not putting them into a process or a system. So cautionary note on that good start, though.

Megan Porta  46:39

No, I like it, yeah. I mean, you got to start somewhere. If you have an inbox of 1000 emails, you have to start with something and make some sort of improvement.

Leslie Shreve  46:49

Absolutely. Just know that there’s more that you can do, and the potential for it to be even better and more powerful, so that you’re empowered, and then you can even quickly get back to what you want to do instead of looking at those emails, because I’m pretty sure nobody here wants to spend one more minute in their email inbox. 

Megan Porta  47:05

No, no, no. I know sometimes I have to just force myself to sit and respond like, Okay, you have three emails. It will take you five minutes to respond. Do not open this again. Just reply. And when I do that, I feel so good, but it’s it’s so easy to not want to open email or to open it, and then mark is unread.

Leslie Shreve  47:26

And move on right. And then let me see the next one. 

Megan Porta  47:29

Yes, exactly. And then you do it, how many times? And all of that time you’re wasting? Oh, I know. 

Leslie Shreve  47:35

Don’t do it. It’s a trap. 

Megan Porta  47:36

Well, thank you for that. I think, yeah, like I said, it’s a big pain point, so that will hopefully help a lot of people. So outside of email, what other ways do you have to just accomplish more, faster, planning, prioritizing, anything you have for people like us who have a lot on our plates?

Leslie Shreve  47:54

Well, I would say that if we go back to the idea of centralizing tasks, that’s going to make your life easier, because planning and prioritizing becomes a breeze. It really does. Because now, when you’re looking at things in one place, you’re just going to save time knowing right away, this is what I need to do. And as you continue to add new tasks as they come up, you’re continuing to compare them to what you had already, you know, had on your list for the day and for the rest of the week, and you’re making decisions all the time. Okay, this is more important than that, and you kind of keep tweaking your plan a little bit, but without going over a certain number of tasks per day, because, again, you’ve got to have that task time connection. So one of the things I think, if you’re not doing, you want to start looking at your calendar to understand, okay, this is a great task day, but this is a terrible one, you know, so outside of protecting more time each day to get your tasks done and get through email and stay on top of those things, that’s what that protected time is for. You know, you are going to have more meetings on one day than another. You know, maybe you’re going to do all podcasts one day or something else, and you’re going to block it out. I caution people on doing that, because you really don’t want to let a whole day go by and you’re not looking at email at all. This is why I tell everyone, no matter whether you’re in corporate or you’re an entrepreneur, protect time in the morning and in the afternoon to stay in touch with what’s coming in, because it will bury you. You know, it’s great to say, Yeah, I could take the whole day and do this once a day. I mean, once a week, I have a whole day just for something, you know, but that’s when things can spin out of control and really wreck the next day. Yeah. Whereas, if you can at least protect an hour or so in the morning and an hour in the afternoon at some point and really get, you know, a task knocked out, or just get that email back to zero, you’re going to have so much more clarity, but also peace of mind. Because when you have all those systems in place that I was talking about, you know the right places for information, mission control, for your tasks, and you you can get those things immediately out of email. I’m not saying you’re doing all the tasks. I’m saying you’re getting them out of the inbox and getting them in the place where they’re best managed so you never have to see them again unless it’s a task. Ask, and you know you’re going to do it tomorrow, let’s say or Friday, or next Monday, whatever. So you’ll see it again from that standpoint, but not from square one, you know. So you have a grip at that point on all your information, and you know where it is when you need it. Trash is deleted, stuff is archived. Things are saved in email folders that require no action, and then you’ve got action on the task list. So, you know, getting that process in place means you can get back to what you want to do that day with peace of mind. You know, I would just say, pay attention to the systems that you’re using. Is your hard drive, you know, in good shape, or whether you’re using Dropbox or OneDrive or anything else in the cloud, Google Drive, you know, is it? Is it shipshape? Can you find what you need in there? If you can’t find it quickly, give it a little love. It needs some attention. Yeah, make it easy. Categorize, categorize the heck out of it. But don’t over organize, because there is such a thing as over organizing, and that’s true for email too. So when it comes to e-documents and email, be very careful. You want really big categories and then subcategories or sub folders, so try not to do so let’s say, for instance, you have a bunch of actually, give me an example, a really good example for your industry, of a folder you might have with sub folders, either for e documents or email, either one is fine. 

Megan Porta  51:18

Okay, how about photos with different categories on our blog. 

Leslie Shreve  51:21

There you go, right? So photos is the perfect major category folder, and then you’ve got sub folders, you know, a lot of times, if like, if you’ve got financial stuff too. You know, certainly in the corporate world, probably something similar. You might have finance as the major category folder, and then taxes, and then payroll, and then accounting or expenses. You know, that’s another example of if you’ve got all those folders listed as major categories and not under the finance umbrella, almost like all the different photos that you might take of different kinds of foods, you wouldn’t want those to be considered major category folders. No, they’re sub folders under the photos folder, because your other major categories might be podcasting or, you know, clients or prospects, or networking or speaking, or, you know, some other thing that’s going on in your world. So what I see is a lot of people making categories for everything, but they’re all like major category folders, and then the list is endless. What you want to do is group things that belong together, put like with like, so if it shares a theme, get a major category folder going and get them all under there as sub folders, because then it’s going to shorten your list of email folders, if we’re talking about email or e-document folders in your hard drive or in the cloud. So that’s going to shorten your list, and you really want to keep that list into neatly into a screen view. You don’t want that thing scrolling off the screen, because that’s what causes people a lot of scrolling and searching through really long lists of stuff. You don’t want to do that. You want to have it right there in one screen view. I know people have really big monitors, so your list may be a little longer, but, you know, keep it to a screen view and then keep it compressed until you’re, you know, looking for stuff, and you’re filing things out of email, what have you, and then you can expand it and look for what you need, but otherwise, keep it nice and concise, because then you’re going to zero in on what you want to find really fast.

Megan Porta  53:11

So one thing I’m thinking of that always gets out of control for me is my desktop. So I’ll take screenshots of things to email or whatever, and then I just don’t notice. A few weeks go by and I’ll look at my desktop and I’m like, Oh my gosh, I have all of these things here. So for something like that, would you start setting aside time each week, like maybe five to 10 minutes on Friday to clean off your desktop? Or how would you manage little things like that? 

Leslie Shreve  53:38

I would not recommend that. Here’s my solution for that. You don’t want to get into that trap at all. So here’s what’s happening. Here’s what’s behind that. I think you and others may be using your desktop because you’re like, Oh, this is the easy place to put it. Now, my question to you first, before I even answer this and give the solution, is, are those things that you’re putting on the desktop something you want to keep permanently and for the long term or for the short term.

Megan Porta  54:03

And I’m not putting them on the desktop intentionally. It’s just when I take screenshots of things, they go to the desktop, so they get saved automatically, and then I can send from there, if that makes sense, so it will save to the desktop for me to do whatever I’m intending. So they’re very temporary, and I don’t need them permanently. They’re just like, so,

Leslie Shreve  54:21

Yeah, only those things, just the screenshots. Okay, all right, so see, that’s why I asked the question, because I didn’t want to go down a path here that was the wrong path. Because a lot of people do save documents and other things on their desktop because they think it’s the easy spot, you know, oh, it’s easy to find things again, and then it fills up and they’re like crap. I can’t find anything now. So for you and I totally get it, because I have a similar screenshot kind of thing going on, but mine land in a particular folder. So for both of us, yes, you want to set a time, I would even, not even let it go to a week. I’d say, Do it daily. Okay? I would say, Do it daily. You know, do the Pay As You Go program, the more you keep up with it immediately, like even after you do. A screenshot, I would say, make it part of your process. Go to the desktop, file it where it needs to go, and move on and never accumulate anything there. So if you can actually build it into the process, that’s where I’m going to go back to saying, just don’t, don’t let it happen at all, because what’s missing is just that final step in the process of Yep. I took the screenshot, yep, it lands there, yep. Now I got to file it, take it to the nth degree, just finish it up, and then nothing ever accumulates there. That is like the to be filed pile I was mentioning before. Yeah, right. You won’t even let it accumulate, just make that part of your process. So for instance, if we are talking about paper file drawers, just as an example, if someone were to print something off of their printer, well that’s the equivalent of just leaving it there on the printer and then going to file stuff once a week. No, no. Grab that thing off the printer. Your file system should be so awesome that you just open a drawer and drop it right in. You know exactly where it goes. You see the difference? 

Megan Porta  54:39

No, I like that, and I’m good at doing that. Once I can just put it my mind like, Okay, you did this now go delete it immediately. And once I’m in the groove. It’s so easy. 

Leslie Shreve  56:02

It becomes a habit. See, routines will save us all, yeah, yeah, routines that are good will save us all. So yeah, make it part of your process, and then you’ll never have to deal with that again.

Megan Porta  56:12

Okay, great. Well, you just solved one of my my problems. So thank you, Leslie, is there anything else that you want to highlight before we start saying goodbye? 

Leslie Shreve  56:22

Well, I just want to let everybody know if you’re struggling with this again, not your fault. If no one’s ever handed you the method, the system you know to take take care of your whole work day. You know this is something that you just you didn’t know, that you didn’t know, but just understand that there is a way to get all these things wrapped up in one neat and tidy system takes care of everything going on in your day so you don’t have to worry about, you know, making it kind of a hobby to go look for time management tips or, you know, any kind of treasure hunt for special apps and hacks and all of that like that. Those days could be over for you because there is a system out there that you can just tie everything together. In the meantime, when you’re getting started with with wanting to streamline all these processes, do what you can. You know, don’t do nothing because you feel like you can only do a little. It’s okay. Do what you can to get started today and work backwards with some of the older emails or older papers and files or E documents or what have you. And you know, let that be one, one pursuit, if you will, that you can do little by little, I would say the first thing though, get those tasks together. You know, get away from paper and centralize your tasks. You can do it. My clients do it every day. It is possible, even though people think it’s impossible. It absolutely is possible that you can get away from all those tools and really just get them all in one place and make them all teeny, tiny tasks. Yeah, it is possible, and I know you can do it. I’m cheerleading over here for you guys. 

Megan Porta  57:47

Yes, same. It is a huge, huge it makes such a huge difference in your business. When you can get some of this under control, it is a game changer.

Leslie Shreve  57:57

Yeah, then you get back to what you love, right?

Megan Porta  57:59

That’s that, over time when things get out of control and messy and cluttered and yeah.

Leslie Shreve  58:05

And what you do is important, and I want you guys to get back to it and not worry about all this other stuff. 

Megan Porta  58:10

Oh, I love your message. Thank you for all of this. Leslie, this was amazing. So enjoyed having you here to talk about one of my favorite topics. So appreciate you. 

Leslie Shreve  58:17

Oh, thank you. 

Megan Porta  58:18

I know you just left with amazing inspiration, inspiring words. But do you have an additional quote or words of inspiration to leave us with?

Leslie Shreve  58:25

Oh, boy, not a quote, really, but just, you know, just do one thing at a time. Your first things first, and one step at a time. I think multitasking is a myth. Don’t try to do too many things at once. Really give your focus to what needs your attention right now and don’t, you know, don’t let other things steal your time and distract you. You stay on. Stay on course. You just do First things first and one thing at a time, and that will get you there. You know, keep moving forward in the direction of your dreams, one step at a time. Don’t give up. Yes, just keep going. 

Megan Porta  58:57

Yep. So manageable when you can do one little thing at a time. Love that we’re going to put a show notes page together for you. Leslie, if you want to go look at those head to eatblogtalk.com/productiveday. Can you tell everyone where they can find you? And if you have any freebies to offer, anything that would help food bloggers, feel free to mention that. 

Leslie Shreve  59:17

I do have stuff. This is great. So productiveday.com. Really easy, really straightforward. We have three free resources for you on the website, and you, of course, we’ve got the book a call option. So if you ever want to talk to me and just talk, talk, talk about your work day and tell me what’s going on, totally can have 45 minutes with me and let’s just talk. Let’s just figure out what’s going on, you know, and see if I can help you three free resources, though. The first one I want to mention is the quiz. We have a Productive Day quiz on the site. It’s called What’s your number one productivity blind spot? And the quiz is really fun, really short, just eight questions. And on the other end of this quiz, you’re going to find out if you’re a giver, a marker, a jumper or a detective. And when you get that unique results report just for you, you’ll also get, a few days later, a deeper dive report, a special Insights report from me that I’ve written specifically about that particular blind spot, so you can find out more about what’s really going on and how to fix it. So go take the quiz. It’s really fun. You can also do the Productive Day smart steps, which is a 52 week series of audios that I recorded with strategies straight from our system called Taskology, the science of getting things done. And that these are just two to four minute little audios, and you’ll get one a week in your email inbox. So go grab the Productive Day smart steps, because they’re chock full of really great strategies. And then the third one is our special report called The Seven Surprising Secrets to saving time. And we talked about some of those today, but if you want to get the whole list of seven, go grab that special report. All of these are on the home page, and they’re also in the navigation bar, where it says, you know how to get started. Plus we have a new webinar that’s up there. So free training. It’s 45 minutes, maybe an hour, I can’t remember now, but there’s a webinar there, and you can go watch that and learn more about what this is all about. And you know more more tips and strategies for your work day. But all of that is on our home page, and you’re welcome to all of it if you’d like. And we could certainly have a call as well. So productiveday.com Oh, plus, we have like, 100 client stories and testimonials on the client results page. So if you ever want to find out what’s possible for me, go check it out. 

Megan Porta  1:01:25

So much good stuff there. Oh my gosh, I want to go sign up for all of that. Thank you for talking through that. It sounds so valuable. Well, thank you again, Leslie for being an awesome guest, and thank you for listening food bloggers. I will see you next time. 

Outro  1:01:42

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Eat Blog Talk. Don’t forget to rate and review Eat Bro Talk on your favorite podcast player. Thank you and I will see you next time you.