In this highly efficient episode, Alexis Haselberger shares how she learned to keep her impact up and her hours worked down during her 15 years in the startup world.
You’ll discover
– Why meetings are up 200% post pandemic
– The problem with doing all the things
– What true prioritization looks like
Episode Transcript
Scott Ritzheimer
Hello, hello and welcome. Welcome once again to the secrets of the high demand coach and I am here with yet another high demand coach. And that is Alexis Haselberger. She’s a time management and productivity coach who helps people do more and stress less through coaching workshops and online courses. Her pragmatic yet fun approach helps people to easily integrate practical, realistic strategies into their lives so that they can do more of what they want and less of what they don’t. Alexis has taught 1000s of individuals to take control of their time and her clients tell me if you’ve heard of any of these include Google Lyft, workday, capital, one up work, and so many more. Well, Alexis, I’m so excited to have you on the show. Welcome, welcome, welcome. And I was wondering if before we kind of get into the work that you do, which I’m so excited to hear about, I’d love to just take a step back and see what’s the story behind all this? What were you doing before you jumped into coaching and consulting? And why did you ultimately make the leap?
Alexis Haselberger
Yeah, well, thanks so much for having me on Scott excited to be here and have this conversation. So before I opened my practice, to become a coach and a consultant, I spend about 15 years in early stage startups. So I have the Bay Area, there are startups all around, startups are a really like fast paced, you know, hard working culture, there’s always like, way more to do than people to do it. And I thrived in that culture. But I also knew I never wanted to work more than 40 hours a week, right? Like, I was just, you know, I really like having a lot of free time, I like having a lot of time for myself. And so I was, I was just in a lot of positions where I kept being asked, why, you know, like, how are you getting all of this work done in this short amount of time? Like, why aren’t you staying late, or people would ask me to put processes and systems and templates and things into place, because I was, you know, that was the kind of thing that that I was good at, had a couple of kids along the way, people were still coming to me for that sort of advice. And so when the last startup that I worked for went out of business, as you know, most startups do, it’s either they’re getting acquired going out of business or going, you know, going public, whatever. When the last one became no more, I realized that the thing that people kept coming to me for was time management, productivity, life balance, that kind of stuff. And that it didn’t seem like something that people were, you know, like, they didn’t have a lot of skills or help in that area. Right. It was either kind of sink or swim, you don’t learn this stuff in college, they don’t teach it to you in high school. And so some people figure it out. And other people really struggle for a number of reasons.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah. Fascinating. So you make the leap. Now, you’re, you hear it long enough, loud enough. It’s like, hey, I can actually help some folks here. So what would you say kind of fast forwarding today is some of the most important work that you do for your clients.
Alexis Haselberger
I think that I mean, this is gonna sound kind of counterproductive. But I think one of the most important things that, that we do are not counterproductive, but maybe counter to what we think is that the goal is not to do at all. And they will come in with this goal of like, I’m just we’re gonna figure out we’re gonna Tetris it all together, and we’re gonna figure out how to do all the things, and a big mind block for people is that we’re not actually going to do all the things. And that isn’t even the point, like you meet everybody else, we are all going to die with a big long list of things we did not do. And that is not only okay, but preferable because like, what would the alternative be that we just like, get everything done every day, we’re never striving for anything, nothing is interesting or slightly out of reach. And so I think that the biggest piece of work is helping people understand that it isn’t about doing all the things, it’s about making choices with your time, and about being able to prioritize in such a way that you know, every day, the things you did were more important than the things you didn’t do. And that you know that the things you didn’t do, it’s not because they fell through the cracks, you ran out of time you forgot, it’s because you actively chose something that was more important than that.
Scott Ritzheimer
What a fascinating statement, I love that and you just kind of slipped it in on us, I want to pull it out. But you know, at the end of the day, that the things you did are more important than the things you didn’t do was just a fantastic statement for folks who are just who are dealing with it. And, and I found that especially post pandemic for leaders, this is a really, really big issue. Because there are just more things to do than before there’s, it’s harder to hire than before, it’s harder to get the supplies you need than before. It’s harder to manage remote employees than it was people in the office, etc, etc. So, how do you I mean, what are some steps that you take in that direction? Because it’s like, Yeah, I hear you. That sounds great for somebody else. But like, for me, I don’t even have a clue where to start. What would you say to someone in that place?
Alexis Haselberger
Yeah. So I mean, I actually have a an arc that I walk everybody through when I’m working with folks, right? And so we start from a position of knowing yourself better exactly as you are. Because I just don’t feel like we are able to, you know, we want to be able to build sustainable habits. Anyone can make themselves Let’s do something for a short period of time. But we want to be able to build sustainable habits around us that actually work with who we are. So that we don’t just, you know, force ourselves to do something and then snap back to who we are. And so we start there. We also start with time tracking, we start with trying to figure out like, where’s our time actually going so that we can look at that data? And then we start saying, Okay, what are all the things right? Like, all these things that you want to do? What are all the things like, first, let’s catalog that right? Let’s start putting things all in one place, then let’s start prioritizing. Let’s start saying, what are we not going to do? Like? What are the easy the easy, low hanging fruit of like, you know what somebody else could do this. Doesn’t have to be me, maybe this thing doesn’t need to be done at all right? Like, what can we just get off of our plate? Maybe we need to keep doing it for some amount of time. But after that, we can release ourselves from the obligation or whatever it is. And then we focus on prioritization. So the win of things, and I think this is a very different way of thinking about prioritization than a lot of us think about like P one, P two, p three, or like, high, medium and low. And when I am working with folks, we’re always thinking about prioritization as the win. Because it’s like, when are you going to do the thing? That’s the important part, right? It’s not important, whether it’s high, medium and low, high, medium, and like, it’s high, if you’re doing it today, right? It’s, it’s low if you’re not doing it today, and so we kind of strip away a lot of the, a lot of the, I don’t know, overhead that comes with things. And that’s, I mean, I could, I could keep going, but I’m gonna stop there. That’s kind of where we get started with these things, what we do and what we don’t.
Scott Ritzheimer
That’s fantastic. Oh, so one of the things you mentioned, there’s, you know, one of the things we’re trying to do is just stop doing stuff, it’s just been the common thread through everything that you’ve said so far. But, you know, I’ve worked with enough type A leaders to know the last thing they think they’re doing is things that they don’t need to be doing, right. I mean, most people are doing what they’re doing, because it needs to get done. Right. So how do you? First I’d like to ask this, how often do you find do folks that you’re working with find that there are things that they just don’t need to be doing it all?
Alexis Haselberger
Every single person, every single person, right? And it’s not. So it’s not always that it’s things that we’re just not going to do ever, right? Sometimes it’s like, Hey, this is this is just not a priority for right now. So we’re gonna put it, you know, three months from now or whatever, sometimes it’s, you know, what this does need to be done, but not by me, like, I’m the leader of a company, I don’t need to be doing this, this work, I could delegate that to someone or I could outsource that thing. Or I could train my kids to do it, or like, whatever. I mean, there’s a lot of ways that we can get things off of our plate. And then there’s also a lot of stuff that we actually just don’t need to be doing like that we that nobody needs to be doing that we think is moving the needle, but is it. And so I think that’s another key thing, right is like sometimes we’re doing things a lot via habit, right? It’s like, we’re just used to doing it that way. That’s the thing we’ve always done. And we haven’t always taken the moment to raise our heads above and say like, is this thing that we’re doing actually doing what we want it to do? Right? Yeah. And should we keep doing it? Should we iterate on it? Or should we stop?
Scott Ritzheimer
And how do you do that? Because I mean, a lot of times there is no, there is no playbook, right? Especially the higher you go on an org chart, the earlier you are in the history of the organization, and we spent a lot of time working in startups, a lot of them don’t work, right. Like we fundamentally don’t know what works and what doesn’t. So how do you help people when it comes to like, are we gonna stop doing this? Or keep doing it? How do you help them understand? Is this actually moving the needle?
Alexis Haselberger
Well, we tried to we track things, right. And so I’m a huge believer in experimentation, because we don’t like that’s how we get to the things that work. And so, first step would be like, is there anything in here that you can measure? Right? Or let’s say we let’s try an experiment, and let’s not do this for two weeks? Let’s see what happens. Right? Like, there’s anything worse, you know, whatever time period is not like super, super risky, right. But I find that a lot of times, we people are stuck in a mode of doing something because they think that thing has brought them success in the past, instead of realizing that they might have had success, despite that thing that they’ve been doing.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it’s so true. And I see it all the time. And I can only imagine some of the stories that you have with that. I’d like to shift gears just a little bit, because we’ve kind of talked about this. You’re somewhat in the context of a person. What does this look like organizationally? Because I know you do work with teams as well, how does how does this like this see of, you know, things that we can be doing or should be doing show up in a team environment?
Alexis Haselberger
Yeah, so I think there are a lot of you know, that when you’re working with teams, we’re working on slightly different things, right? We’re working on things that like we can, we can assess together. So one of the things that we’ll do is talk about having a shared cost management system or project management system, because when we can when we are all using the same thing, and we’re updating the same things that actually eliminates a lot of churn in organizations, right, because we have to have many fewer status update meetings. If everyone can check our asana and See what’s actually going on? Right? Um, I do a lot of work around meetings and meeting audits with companies as well, because I think, you know, as you know, I’m sure meetings are up like 200%, from pre pandemic, and there were still too many meetings before that. And so we’re really working on like, are we? Are we spending our synchronous time in the right place? How could we move things more asynchronously and still get the same things done? Why are we meeting and when we are meeting? Are we using agendas? Are we sticking to the time we have set aside? Are we knowing what we’re meeting about? I mean, this is a huge one, it sounds so basic, right? But so many meetings that people have on their calendars. They don’t know why they’re there, or what they’re supposed to be accomplishing.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, it is so so very true. And and, you know, to be fair, there’s a number of models out there that kind of teach this ad hoc style of meeting protocol, right? You, you show up, you talk about a few things, you kind of stick your finger in the air, pick the one that’s most important. How do like, is that right? You know, how do you balance showing up to the meeting with a preset agenda? And everything’s already defined? Versus having an adaptable, dynamic meeting structure? How do you fit those two together? Or do you?
Alexis Haselberger
Well, I really would say, what is the purpose of your meeting? If there is not? If there’s not a goal, right? Like, why are we meeting now the goal doesn’t always have to be, you know, we’re making a decision on X, Y, or Z. But I think that understanding what the goal of the meeting is, is valuable no matter what so it might be. And I think that there’s a bifurcation of is this a discussion meeting or a decision meeting? And knowing and when those things are mismatched in people’s minds, everybody gets frustrated, right? Because some people are like, No, we’re trying to make a decision here. And other people are like pontificating about things, right? And people are just annoyed. And so I think that one of the things is that we should not have a meeting, if it’s just a throw our finger in the air and like, let’s talk about something right. If the goal is just let’s talk, then I don’t actually think that’s worthy of people’s time. Now, if the goal is, hey, there’s a specific issue, and we’re not really sure how to move forward with it. So the goal of this meeting is to talk about ideas, brainstorm ideas, evaluate ideas, and we’re not planning to have a decision at the end, that’s fine. But everyone needs to know that going in. Yes, I’m not a big fan of meetings that are just like, hey, we just have this weekly meeting on the calendar. And we’ll figure out what we’re going to talk about when we get there. Because we can talk about anything for an hour, it doesn’t mean it’s actually going to move things forward.
Scott Ritzheimer
There’s a client that we’ve worked with, and the CEO, much to the chagrin of everyone else, but in a great degree of wisdom cancels every single meeting every single January. So if you want to have especially standing meetings, you have to get back together and say, Hey, this is why we’re going to have this meeting this year. Because they do they just add and they add, and they add and you know, it’s it’s actually the same thing you talked about, and like, should we do this? Right? You thought at one point in time it was helpful, it may or may not have even been helpful back then. And it may or may not be helpful now.
Alexis Haselberger
Yeah, I love that. It’s like a forced meeting at it. I’m sure people get annoyed, but I love it.
Scott Ritzheimer
It’s fascinating. All right. So here’s a question that I like to ask every one of my guests and and that is what is the biggest secret that you wish wasn’t a secret at all? What’s that one thing that you wish everybody out there listening today knew?
Alexis Haselberger
I wish that everyone knew that they’re not doing it wrong. There is no like one right way to do things. And that it’s really much more about personalization, iteration etc. Like, I feel like I meet with so many people who are like, I’ve read getting things done, and I just couldn’t implement it. And I feel like a failure, or I’ve read atomic habits, or I’ve read bla, bla, bla, and all of those things have great nuggets in them. Right. But that doesn’t mean that you’re going to be able to implement it exactly as it worked for the person who wrote it, right. And we feel a lot of shame and a lot of failure when we can’t implement this thing that somebody wrote as like a best practice. And it’s just because we’re all different, right? We all have different brains, like some things are going to work for me that are not going to work for you and vice versa. And as soon as we can start admitting that and accepting that, then we can move on to the real work of figuring out what works for us. I mean, I just had someone in one of my group coaching courses, and she said, I’m just so I’m just feeling so free, knowing that I don’t have to try to make myself be a morning person anymore. Yes. Yeah, exactly. Like, waking up has been the hardest part of my day since I’ve been five years old. Like I have not a morning person at all. And of course, I’ve had periods of time where I can get up early. I have children, right, but that as soon as summer comes around, and they’re not in school, like I’m sleeping later, like my snap back to who I am. And so it’s really that like just accepting who you are and working around that instead of trying to shove yourself in somebody else’s box.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah. And yes, that’s so so good because I mean, who hasn’t gone out and and try it all of those things, right? It’s every leader out there has at some point come out with they’re like, this is how I organize my day. And we’re like, this is all I want to do. And for those of you who’ve done that, and felt bad about not doing it, seeing behind the curtain for a lot of those leaders, they don’t use it either. Right? Like it is a it’s a friend and mentor of mine, les McKeown talks a lot about his ideal day, right? This is what my ideal day looks like. And he’ll and if you ask him to say, Yeah, I never have an ideal day, but I know what my ideal day is. And I can build toward that.
Alexis Haselberger
Yeah, I love that. That’s I mean, I do an ideal schedule exercise with a lot of my clients as well. And I say the same thing, it’s like, we’re not going to reach your, your ideal schedule, that’s okay. But you don’t want to cut yourself off at the knees, like imagining that it’s impossible, you want to keep making small, iterative changes towards that.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yes. so fast that I mean, there’s so much freedom in so many of these points. And I think folks that are listening, you’re just gonna want to go right back to the beginning right now and listen to it again, because I guarantee that you’ve missed about half of what’s in there for you. So I mean, there’s so much in here that we could unpack. But I’d actually like to shift gears one more time and talk a little bit more kind of where we started with you. And so I’m going to have you take off your coach, consultant, advisor, hat, productivity, extraordinaire, and have you put on your CEO hat, jump into the ring with the rest of us and talk to us a little bit about what the next phase of growth looks like for you, your organization and your leadership. And what challenges do you think you’ll have to overcome to get there?
Alexis Haselberger
Yeah, thanks for asking about that. So for me, the next horizon is that I’m really trying to shift the balance in my business, more from one on one into more group based methods. And the reason for this is I mean, I have both of these things going on right now. It’s just that the balance is more skewed towards one on one and a little less skewed towards group, but I want to switch those. And the reason that I’m doing that is because when I started my group program, I was being I was booked out for one on one for several months at a time. And that did not feel good to me, I really felt bad to have somebody come to me be in need know that I could help them, but be like, well, I can can we get started in six months? I know you’re in pain right now. But like, can we get started in six months. And so I’m really trying to shift towards this model so that I can serve more people to be able to help more people. And so that’s what I’m facing. And then in terms of challenges, it’s like, well, you know what, now I have to become a marketer. Because when you want to be able to serve more people, and to grow that side of things, you also have to learn different marketing skills that you know, are, are more advanced, let’s say then, I don’t know, word of mouth, and just letting people come to you.
Scott Ritzheimer
I love that. I love that. Thank you so much for sharing. Now, again, I know some folks are listening to this and just saying like, yes, you know, finally someone who gets me right. And they just they there’s a sense of hope with their own productivity they haven’t felt in a long time. So that person is sitting there wants to know more about what it’s like to work with you and the work that you do. How can they find out more?
Alexis Haselberger
Yeah. They can reach me at my website, which is alexishaselberger.com, which hopefully you put in the show notes, nobody will be able to spell it. And you can also find me on Instagram at do.more.stress.less and on Facebook at domorestressless and on TikTok at domorestressless.
Scott Ritzheimer
Fantastic. I love that. And one of the things that I did note that I think would be really helpful for for a good chunk of our audience. I had happened to be on your website and saw that you have a distraction action plan on there. Do you mind just given us your 60 seconds? What’s in that action plan?
Alexis Haselberger
Yeah, of course. So I’m not sure if you’re aware of this study, but when I first heard it, it blew my mind. And it is that when we get distracted or interrupted from something, it takes us on average 23 minutes to refocus on what we were doing. 23 minutes, not seconds, right. And so this, this just shows us that like everything, everything every you know interruption from our own mind, just imagine 23 minutes of your day gone, right? This results in most people spending about a third of their workday, simply recovering from distractions. Wow. So you’re like, it’s just it’s mind blowing. And yet I bet at the same time, you’re like, No, that makes sense, right? Like, I feel that right? When I get interrupted by something, and I, you know, I pick up my phone to do something. And then you know, 45 minutes later, I put down my phone. And I realize it didn’t do the thing that I picked up my phone to do, right. And so in this distraction action plan, it’s just as it’s really taking you through what are your biggest distractions, and then providing a number of concrete doable, you can implement them today, techniques to reduce those distractions so that you can gain back your time. And so yeah, anyone is able to go to my website, it’s right there on the homepage. You can download that for free. And that’ll you know, hopefully you’ll be able to claw back a couple of hours of your day just with that.
Scott Ritzheimer
I love that fantastic. So head over to alexishaselberger.com. Well, Alexis, thank you so much for being on the show is just absolutely A joy and pleasure to have you on today thank you so much and for those who are listening your time and attention mean the world to us I hope you got as much out of this conversation as I know I did and I cannot wait to see you next time take care.
Contact Alexis Haselberger
Alexis Haselberger is a time management and productivity coach who helps people do more and stress less through coaching, workshops and online courses. Her pragmatic, yet fun, approach helps people easily integrate practical, realistic strategies into their lives so that they can do more of what they want and less of what they don’t. Alexis has taught thousands of individuals to take control of their time and her clients include Google, Lyft, Workday, Capital One, Upwork and more.
Want to learn more about Alexis’ work at Alexis Haselberger Coaching and Consulting, Inc? Check out her website at https://www.alexishaselberger.com
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