Effective Ways to Manage Time, Technology, and Energy w/Marcey Rader -24

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Marcey Rader 0:00

To get a second, to give us the dopamine response. So I tell people a lot of times is that it's not your fault. Not your fault that you, you know, go to your phone out of boredom and you, you know, scroll through Instagram. Our brain has gotten so used to that response.

Shawna Rodrigues 0:20

Welcome to The Grit Show. Growth on purpose. I'm your host, Shawna Rodrigues, and I'm happy to be here with you as your guide for all of us growing together as seekers and thrivers. Sought after by Fortune 100 companies and others, Marcey Rader has spoken for tens of thousands of people worldwide. From North Dakota to Dubai to Tokyo. As an award winning speaker, she trains her audiences to maximize their energy, conquer the calendar, master tasks, and extinguish their email to change your career, team, organization, one habit at a time. Marcey Rader believes that health powers productivity, she's a multi certified health and productivity expert, that's the reason I'm author and the founder of RaderCo. Marcey helps executives, team and individual banish burnout, keep good people and move forward their practical-tailored tools, healthy sustainable habits and coaching accountability. We are very excited to have her here today to help us learn about these things. Welcome, Marcey.

Marcey Rader 1:26

Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Shawna Rodrigues 1:28

So I would love to hear more about your journey to becoming an expert about the efficiency and productivity pieces.

Marcey Rader 1:36

Sure, I used to work in clinical research. And I've worked in that field for 14 years. And the last six to eight, I was a corporate trainer. And during that time, well, for about a decade, I traveled up to 48 weeks a year, and also did over 100 Ultra and endurance events. So Iron Man's and longer, and managed to shut down, inbox zero, every night with all the travel and the training and things and people would ask me, you know, how do you do that? Teach me.

Shawna Rodrigues 2:11

Yeah,

Marcey Rader 2:12

and I would do this training for clinical leaves that was two weeks long. And went for new CRAs that was three weeks long. And the last day was always like, Marcey's special training on email and time management and, and how to travel and be healthy and all those things. And the feedback that I got was always, you know, this was the best part of the whole two weeks or the whole three weeks. It's practical, it's actionable.

Shawna Rodrigues 2:38

Yeah.

Marcey Rader 2:39

oved again, we now live in an: 1100

Shawna Rodrigues 3:53

That's so intriguing. I love it. I want to hear more about this. This is great. And so you kind of integrated the minimalism aspects to be able to work with productivity is kind of how those two things came together.

Marcey Rader 4:04

Yes. And that word minimalism scares people a little bit because some people think that it means that you have one bowl ,one spoon, you know, you would have the same color of shirt and the same, you know, style every day. And, and it really is just, you know, only having around you what you love and what is functional. I say, you know, getting rid of the mess. Like, just the step is like, you know, like not, not having that clutter up your space, your inbox, you know, not having a lot of things come in that don't add value to you. Social media, you know, being very intentional about it, not going to it out of boredom. And so, you can think of minimalism in a different way. You know, it could even be the number of connections that you have, you know, the number of groups that you belong to, and so it's not the I mean, I don't really use that term anymore. But it's, it's what got me started on that. Yeah,

Shawna Rodrigues 5:10

yes. To find your way to be able to, to make things fit a little better. It sounds like even.

Marcey Rader 5:15

Yes, yes,

Shawna Rodrigues 5:16

yes. So tell us more about this, like, what is the, the piece that you feel is the most useful for your clients that you've found for trying to make things work better for them?

Marcey Rader 5:26

% in: 2020

Shawna Rodrigues 6:23

And is that where you find the most important thing is making like conscious decisions about what you're going to prioritize and focus on the planning piece of that? Or,

Marcey Rader 6:30

yes. And so with technology, you know, technology is designed with a hook to get a second, to give us the dopamine response. So I tell people a lot of times is that it's not your fault. Not your fault that you, you know, go to your phone out of boredom. And you, you know, scroll through Instagram. Our brain has gotten so used to that response. And sometimes it seems counterintuitive, but just to save yourself from yourself, you sometimes need technology to save yourself from the technology. And that's, you know, I am a big fan of an app called Freedom. And it's something you can install on your computer, and it will block you from certain websites at certain times of the day. Or if you decide, like I want to focus on this thing that, you know, you turn on a freedom session for however many minutes and you can't open up any other websites or, or any that you blacklisted. And so, you know, it's, it's okay to have to use those things.

Shawna Rodrigues 7:33

Yeah.

Marcey Rader 7:34

Because it's not a good idea to waste your willpower on it. And that's what it comes down to is, you know, when we are fighting, not looking at our phones, not looking at our email, that's, that's taking up precious willpower that we could maybe be using at night when we're deciding what to have for dinner, or whether or not to go to the just salad restaurant or go through the Wendy's drive thru. You know, technology affects our willpower and discipline, and setting up these tech guardrails ahead of time, can, can help with that.

Shawna Rodrigues 8:13

Oh, I like that. I like that acknowledgement. Because we only have so much bandwidth for all these decisions that we're having to make. And to be able to have something to help with some of those ways that we are being so distracted so that we can save our decision making for the things that are important at the end of the day when we're exhausted by it. That can make a difference. Yeah. So how can you support focus with teams then? Is it the same type of tech guardrails that you use for that? Or is it different for teams?

Marcey Rader 8:38

No, it is not different for teams. 40%, so the Digital Wellness Institute recently did a study and 40% of respondents said that the digital communication at their company was one of the main reasons why they were leaving. The digital culture. Because,

Shawna Rodrigues 9:00

really?

Marcey Rader 9:01

Yes, because of all of the, I mean, it's just, it's like, the wild, wild, west. People pinging, ringing, buzzing, you know, at all hours and not having any kind of etiquette, you know, you emailing somebody at seven o'clock at night, but you would never call them, you know. So, when I work with teams, it's, you know, maybe coming up with a communication charter to ask everyone you know, what are your guardrails? You know, do you have your phone on silent most of the day? What are your work hours? Know, what is the best way to reach you? If something's urgent? If it's just something that's FYI, you know, because we had people emailing, slacking, you know, teams chats, texting, you know, calling, some people do so called, you know, there are so many different avenues to get messages, that they're rarely clear guidelines on how to communicate with each other. And one thing I tell people is, Well, let me back up. There's two schools of thought. And one is that, hey, if I want to work during my off hours, and they answer, that's something then. And I say, yes. Because if you are in a position of hierarchy, it just doesn't matter how many times you say, Bye, we're not going to work on weekend, don't worry about replying back to me, people will feel compelled, because you are their superior. And if they know that you work, many people will feel compelled just to check. Because you don't want to be the one to not answer that email, especially if there are multiple people on the thread. And so, you know, really working with the leadership for them to set the expectations and model the behavior that they tell people, you know, that and I'm like, air quotes, that they're encouraging people to adopt, but they're not adopting themselves. And it can, it can be so simple by just scheduling the email, schedule the team's message, you don't have to send it, you know, right then. And even you can schedule slack messages, you can schedule texts with the right app. And, you know, the difference too, is that because we also work with business owners, and you know, me, as the business owner, I have a more flexible schedule, I actually really enjoy working on Saturday mornings. But you know, a lot of times on Fridays, I don't work that much. Or it might be that, you know, half a day on a Thursday, I know, you know, doing things that other people do on the weekend. So my schedule is much more flexible, but my, my coaching clients that are working like regular nine to fives, which that I don't know if that's existing or eight to six, or whatever, eight to seven, seven to six, they're already working those hours, and they don't have that flexibility. So the goal is for them not to be working at night when their kids are with them or not to be working on the weekends, that's when they need to recharge.

Shawna Rodrigues: 12:13

Yes, and so if we keep letting it sprawl into all those hours, we're just burning people out. It's not what we want to do.

Marcey Rader: 12:19

Yeah, and remote, the remote hybrid environment is made it worse and I'm not against remote. I've actually worked remote since 2001. But our screen time has gone up three hours in the last two years, from an average of eight hours a day to 11.

Shawna Rodrigues: 12:40

Wow.

Marcey Rader: 12:41

For remote workers. Yeah, yes. And in a lot of that is video.

Shawna Rodrigues: 12:46

Yeah, a lot of video meetings that definitely add to it as well. Do you put that into the charters, the communication charters about how much you're having meetings?

Marcey Rader: 12:54

Oh, yes, absolutely. It's even, even before COVID, meetings, in most surveys were the number one least productive thing at a company. And whenever I work with the company, we send out a productivity scorecard and asks them, asks everybody questions about their email, task management, time, meetings, and so on. And I'm telling you, every, I have not worked with a single company that didn't complain about ineffective meetings. Not one.

Shawna Rodrigues: 13:29

Yeah, it's a challenge.

Marcey Rader: 13:30

Yes, too many. Yeah, yeah.

Shawna Rodrigues: 13:32

Too many and I guess they have a purpose and the right people are there instead of just having everyone arbitrarily having to attend even though it's taking away from them actually getting things done and being productive.

Marcey Rader: 13:42

Yeah. And, and when they do that, there's a rule of seven for every number of people in a meeting over seven decision making decreases by about 10%. So, you know, I offered that, but then also, the more people on the meeting, the more people are multitasking, because, in because they don't, they're like, Well, nobody's gonna ask me or you take care of it. So then there's that. And, you know, there's this meeting calculator online, where you can take people's estimated hourly rates, and see how much this meeting actually costs. And, you know, if, if I, so everybody that works for me, they're hourly. And so I'm very considerate when I'm inviting people to meetings, because this is like, I know exactly how much this is gonna cost me. And it's, if you had a room of executives, and all of their direct reports, and they were, you know, they were able to see how much it was costing them like, oh, this was a $7,000 meeting. Or this is a you know, $16,000 meeting, and we didn't even make a decision.

Shawna Rodrigues: 14:58

Yep. Exactly.

Marcey Rader: 15:01

So there's been a couple of times where it actually calculated like, Okay, how much, how much is this costing you? And they were just astounded, you know, they couldn't believe it.

Shawna Rodrigues: 15:09

Yeah, no, that's a good tool to have. A very good tool to have. Yes. And so when looking at focus, like what are some of the tools and tricks you have to help people focus?

Marcey Rader: 15:19

I am not a fan of notifications on found your watch email for certain. And that is one of the first things that we take off, when we're working with personal coaching clients. Notifications on as the default are not there to help you be more productive, they're there to get you to use the tool more. And we've just gotten used to them being on but it just means that we've been, you know, we, we've just gotten used to the state of distraction. And this constant switch tasking every time we get a notification, it leads to that feeling, you know, I worked all day. I don't know what I did.

Shawna Rodrigues: 16:00

Yes, I definitely felt that. Yes, yes.

Marcey Rader: 16:03

And, and whenever I say that people were like, oh, yeah, that's me. And in the event of the switch tasking back and forth, and we're, you know, we're switching from one, one context to another. And I liken it to, you know, if you were driving four in the morning, from one city to the next, there's nobody on the road, you're getting great gas mileage, you're in the zone, you get from point A to point B, don't even think about it. Compare that to rush hour, wherever time you're stopped, you're not back up to 70, immediately, you have to speed back up, stop, speed, stop, speed, stop, you may only get to 30 or 40 miles per hour, during rush hour, that is your brain on notifications, where you're never really getting focus. So I say turn off everything that you feel comfortable with, like, the only notifications I get are, when I travel, I get like the airline notifications, there's pop up, and my phone, because if somebody calls me, then that's usually a little bit more urgent, because hardly anybody calls. Phone is, is one that's on for me, but I don't even have like texts on. I just check, you know, once an hour or so. So that would be one thing. You know, establishing phone free time to recharge our brains and let ourselves just thinkitate because we don't just think enough. And I was guilty of this too, where I always had input coming in, I was listening to a podcast, I was listening to an audio book, I was you know, there's always something going in to my brain. And you know, so giving ourselves that time, because if we don't give ourselves quality time, then we're not able to think or solve problems, I should say. And, and that's why you know, you usually solve a problem when you're exercising or taking a shower. So that would be another thing is establishing something that you do that's device free, where you don't have input coming in. And then from a team's perspective, establishing some kind of communication charter to, and get input from your team and find out how people want to communicate best and, and kind of get on the same page with them.

Shawna Rodrigues: 18:32

Wow, that's very useful. It's interesting. And notice that when I'm really stressed out that I don't listen to the radio in the car. I don't have any music on, no podcast, no nothing, it's just quiet in my car. So that must be because I need to think so now I feel better about that. I used to think Oh, I must be overwhelmed. Because I don't have any music on but I just need to think that's a good reminder. That's important thing to do. It's not just for the shower.

Marcey Rader: 18:54

Yes, yeah, we need to and you know, we become more creative when our, when we're a little bit bored. I was so guilty of this. And I took, I took an input fast. All right, I had an input fast. Last year, I had a podcast episode about it. I didn't listen to any podcasts for a month, I just listened to music. And because I, I'm number one learner in strengths finders if you're familiar with that. So I am always like taking a course and I'm doing this, and I'm doing that and listen to an audio book. And I thought okay, I'm just gonna listen to music for a month. And it was a really good experiment for me. For one thing, just, you know, there are lots of hits from the 80s and 90s that I had forgotten about and brought back some fond memories.

Shawna Rodrigues: 19:47

Yes, do you notice an increase in your creative abilities and your, your thoughts that came in that were different because you were able to have more space for that?

Marcey Rader: 19:56

I don't know necessarily, but I felt like, I was more creative. But I did make the decision to have more fun free times.

Shawna Rodrigues: 20:04

Yeah.

Marcey Rader: 20:05

And then free activities, because I did feel like that there was some kind of shift, and that I was just able to think more and solve problems.

Shawna Rodrigues: 20:16

Yeah, yeah, that's interesting. No, when I travel, I have noticed when I am, when I was writing that traveling was always made it more writing. And I think that's because I had more quiet time when I was traveling. And that's the big difference. So that's good to think about that you do need that space sometimes and to go on walks or do exercise, do things that you can do without extra things coming in. Because if we're just like taking things in all the time, we don't have time for it to process.

Marcey Rader: 20:40

Yeah. And you know, because you mentioned writing, so I've written three books and two of them, most of the books were written at Umstead State Park, which is near where I live in Raleigh. And I would take my laptop there, I'd get about two hours of juice on it. And, and it has no, terrible cell service. So I couldn't even, I couldn't get a hotspot if I wanted to. I couldn't get a text. And there was nowhere to plug in. So even though I would drive there with my laptop, or run my back with my laptop, and I only would write for two hours before my computer went dead, I would get more done in that two hours than I would if I stayed at home in my home office. And you know, had it open for three.

Shawna Rodrigues: 21:25

Yes, getting rid of the distractions makes such a difference and be able to focus sometimes. So definitely doing that. I've definitely noticed that, I did that where when I started my, my podcast that I actually got an office space, a desk in an office and not having my office at home that all the things and tons of products to get done, all these distractions for me that I get pulled into that just going to a space where like, there was a desk that there was nothing pretty much there. All I could do with the work that was in front of me, made us so much more progress that was so much more done than when I was at home with all the distractions even though I had a home office.

Marcey Rader: 22:00

Yeah, well, and, and back to your question about like, improving your focus, one thing that I've recommended to people and again, like I said, I've worked from home since 2001, I am a big fan of remote work, I am definitely more productive. I'm an ambivert. I'm an extrovert, but I need a lot of privacy. So I am much better at home because if I was in an office with a bunch of people that I knew,

Shawna Rodrigues: 22:26

yes,

Marcey Rader: 22:27

way too easy for me to strike up conversations. But I joined a co working space last year called Raleigh founded and I will go there and they have little phone booths, they have huddle rooms that I meet my concierge in and will co work in there. And sometimes I'll just go and but it's, there are some co working spaces that are, that are a little bit more social, ours is not. We have social functions, but for the most part, people are just in there, you know, working and I will go in there like once a week. And I find that I get a lot done there because I don't have the distractions at, at home, especially if my husband is here. You know, like, if my husband is like, has a cold and doesn't go into work, I am out of here. Because like all here, I'm like opening up cabinets. And I know that all I need to do is say like, it's in the cabinet, to the left, you know, because I don't know that he's looking for something. But you know, it's, I think that's one thing that, you know, co working spaces are kind of missing the opportunity to advertise to people that do have a great home office. I mean, I have an amazing home office. But I still like to get out once a week or so. And for people who don't have a co working space near them, even a hotel lobby. I love me a fancy hotel. I love it there. You know, I'll work off my hotspot, sometimes I'll just buy a coffee at their cafe and I'll say, you know, can I hop on your wi-fi? And then I feel fancy because I'm in this gorgeous lobby. And so that's an option too, because coffee shops can be good for some people but sometimes it's a little loud and you can't always get a place to sit but a nice hotel lobby, yep.

Shawna Rodrigues: 24:19

Yes, I've done that. Especially when traveling. I've discovered how nice they can be, but I, so VIDA Coworking in Portland, Oregon, VIDA is amazing. And I think that's actually one of the secrets because when I've had jobs that I work out full time, when I go into the office, I feel like I need to check in with this person and this person and I appreciate this person where they contribute so I need to go talk to them so I can maintain that connection, and that gratitude for what they do. So I spent a lot of time doing that like, you know, deposits into all those banks of all those things and connecting and when I come here, I do have people I enjoy talking to but I don't feel the need to I don't have to and I can go be focused on my work, and I don't feel bad about it at all if I don't talk to anybody. So it's kind of nice to co working. That's a good point about the co working is I don't feel the need to be social even if, if I need to get my work done, which is nice.

Marcey Rader: 25:09

Yeah. Yeah.

Shawna Rodrigues: 25:10

Yes, very good. That, yeah, very good tool. So even if you have a home office, it's not such a bad idea to have this co working space, they have an option here for four days a month, or you can have the desk space like I had, when I started here, which was really nice, you have some options like that.

Marcey Rader: 25:24

Yeah, we have it, our option is, I don't have a suite or an office, but I can use any of the space, which there's plenty in space. And then I have, you know, unlimited access to meeting rooms, if I want to, and it's $200 a month, just the meeting rooms alone, like to be able to meet clients or meet other people there for a few hours, you know, a few times a month is, is well worth it. And the community, you know, it's one thing that I have heard from some people, you know, when they went remote is that they feel a little isolated. It's nice, like, they have community days and things like that. And so, it is nice to have a community to feel part of. But it's like the best of both worlds because it's, you all that I have to for my career or business. Just talk to that person next to me. Yeah.

Shawna Rodrigues: 26:19

Yeah, it's, it's nice bonus. Yeah, they have happy hours here. And they have lunches here. And they have great activities. It's great to participate in. But if I missed one, I don't feel like I'm missing out or disappointed anyone, whereas with other jobs, I felt like you had to. So, co working spaces. They're awesome, though. That's a good, good way to help with focus. That's a good extra point. I like that. So you also have a tool that you are coming out with that is brand new, hot off the presses for, for planning is your, your playbook. Do you want to talk more about your playbook? And how that can support these things, too?

Marcey Rader: 26:52

Yes, because it just launched today.

Shawna Rodrigues: 26:56

That's amazing.

Marcey Rader: 26:55

It's actually in pre launch mode, but it's called the Powered Path Playbook. And it is a digital meets analog tool. So it's not just a planner, it's an online course explaining the prompts throughout the playbook and how to use it. And I have used a lot of different planners over the last decade. And what I found is that they focus too much on the doing, and not enough on the reflection. And it's, it's, we need to ask ourselves the questions, you know, every month like, what worked well? What didn't work well? You know, what do I need to change? What were my biggest brags? You know, what are, what are the wins for today? You know, when we take the time to reflect, we're better able to plan our future.

Shawna Rodrigues: 26:57

Yeah.

Marcey Rader: 26:57

So this in the playbook goes along with my method of, of annual, quarterly, monthly, weekly and daily reflections and planning. So there are prompts for each of those. And for business owners, they tend not to have a group that they're discussing these things in, they're not doing annual reviews, or one to ones, so these are good prompts for business owners to do for themselves. For employees, you know, the, the benefit for employees is, they can't remember what they did six months ago, when they have their annual review. They, they don't feel comfortable bringing up their you know, top brags for the month when they have their one to one. So this, these prompts are there for them to be able to like okay, this is what I did this month, this is what I did. This is the lesson that I earned. And for leaders, it, when leaders buy it for their teams, it's a consistent, they are consistent questions that they can ask their team member, you know, like, what were your brags? What, you know, what lessons did you earn this month? And so it creates this framework that the whole team or the individual can really chart their year and be able to go back and look and reflect and I've done this, this is, I've been doing this for like the last nine years. And, and really, you know, perfect, I guess perfected the prompts for, for what I feel works the best for my clients and for the people that I've done this with.

Shawna Rodrigues: 29:21

That's amazing. So what's the course piece of it? Like, how big is that commitment? How is that and integrate with it?

Marcey Rader: 29:27

It's not a big commitment because we're not you know, they probably scheduled it is about an hour.

Shawna Rodrigues: 29:33

Oh nice.

Marcey Rader: 29:34

Yes, it is about an hour and every, there's a video for each prompt. And the shortest video is about 30 seconds. The longest I think is task matching and in that's a little under five minutes.

Shawna Rodrigues: 29:50

Nice. And you will focus on focusing on three things a day, which I love because I talked about that in one of our episodes. So I love it that you have is that because we want to be, yes, focused on now things.

Marcey Rader: 30:00

Yes, your top three priorities. And those are for your day, your week, your month, your quarter and your year.

Shawna Rodrigues: 30:07

Yeah, that's awesome. I love it. And that's going to all go up on December, you said December 5, is that right?

Marcey Rader: 30:13

No. So it's launched today, it's in relaunch mid. If, if people order before December 5th, I can guarantee it in time for the holidays.

Shawna Rodrigues: 30:23

Oh, nice.

Marcey Rader: 30:24

And the entire thing is 199. The course and the playbook. The playbook is, it's analog, you know, we'll mail that to you. And I know the price will go up. Because my printing costs have gone up, because we're adding some things into it. Oh, I have to tell you the part that I'm really excited about. So, one thing too is that I felt bad throwing away planners and journals. Now I'd get these like beautiful linen bound. And I was like, I'm just throwing them away. So I decided to create a binder style. And so that way, you can move like when you're done with the quarter, you can move it to the back, when you're done with the week, you could move it to the back. So you're always, you're, you know, the current time is in the front, if you want it to be. And also I put in like 50 extra lined pages so that say you're going to a workshop that day, and you want to take notes, you can take out a lined page and put it right next to the day that, that it is that day. And also you know, you can use your own binder that you want, in the color that you want, and not be, you know, restricted to like the black or the linen or whatever it is. But for companies, if they wanted to, they could, we could co brand it and they could have it coil bound if they want. But, but that option, I was really excited about creating because it's more sustainable. And you know, after the first year, you can just order a refill of the analog, and it's A5 size, it's not giant, you know, eight, 8x10 or 8x11. So, I'm just, I'm, I'm really, really excited about this for my clients, but also just to introduce people to this reflection piece. Because to me, it's it's been a really integral part of getting me to where I am. And I even offer a bonus reflections template for couples and partners.

Shawna Rodrigues: 32:24

That's so nice.

Marcey Rader: 32:25

Yeah, my husband and I have done reflections. We do it every year on New Year's Day. And then every, every anniversary, on July. And you know, it encourages you, I don't know if it was a force but encourages you to ask questions and talk about things that you might not otherwise talk about, like what's working well?

Shawna Rodrigues: 32:45

Yeah,

Marcey Rader: 32:45

what's working not well, and even asking him, you know, like, in the individual playbook, it's, you know, your top brags. But do you think about your top brags as a couple? You know, and that's, that's a, that's a cool thing to think about. I mean, you know, if you're partners in crime, or you know, you're doing stuff together every day, or it's, it's important to kind of see how you're working as a team.

Shawna Rodrigues: 33:15

Absolutely. That's brilliant. I think it's great to include that because that is something that other people are doing and having that reflection, so it's nice to search into a planner. I don't think I've heard of that before. That's such a nice bonus.

Marcey Rader: 33:25

Yeah, thank you.

Shawna Rodrigues: 33:26

Yes. Because that's awesome. Wonderful. So as we're getting closer to time to wind things down and wind things up, did you have anything you want to make sure we covered or we kind of done a good job of getting things in and we can move into our self care stuff?

Marcey Rader: 33:39

I feel like we've packed this. So I'm ready to move into self care.

Shawna Rodrigues: 33:44

Awesome. So for our,

Marcey Rader: 33:45

I'm excited about this one.

Shawna Rodrigues: 33:46

Good. Our self care spotlight, tell us what you do for self care.

Marcey Rader: 33:51

I'm excited because it's so easy. I have an infrared sauna. Oh, it is the best health investment I have ever made. We got it in, during COVID. The first year of COVID. And I have marshmallows disease and pretty severe rhinitis disease. So it's, it significantly helps with that. But it's on my screening porch, and it is a device free zone. I take no devices in there. I will either meditate or do self hypnosis track. Or I read, or I do crossword puzzles. And I typically will do that at the end of the day as my transition like, it's, it's quarter to three right now, about four o'clock, I'll start heating it up. And between five and 5:30. I'll get in there for 20 to 40 minutes. If I have stuff that I'm doing in the evenings then I'll get in it in the morning, but it is the best health investment I've ever made.

Shawna Rodrigues: 35:00

That's incredible. That's so great that you did that and that you're so good at using it on a regular basis to be able to enjoy those benefits.

Marcey Rader: 35:07

I use it every single day that I am home. It would be, I would say there might be one to two days max a month that if I am not traveling, I am not in there for 20 minutes, at least.

Shawna Rodrigues: 35:23

That's incredible. That's incredible. But it takes a while to heat up you said so you had to be,

Marcey Rader: 35:27

well, it takes about a, well, in the summer, it only takes about 30 minutes. In the winter, it takes about an hour to an hour and a half. But again, we have it on our screening porch. Whereas if you had it like, my brother just bought one, and he have it in his basement and it will take no time to heat up. But mine's a little older model. And that you can get them where they heat up much faster.

Shawna Rodrigues: 35:52

Oh, that's so excited. I love that. That's not one I've heard about before. I love hearing about new ways of doing self care and things that were perfect. That's amazing. That's great. So what would you have for our grit wit? If we take one thing that people can implement immediately and take away, what would be the one thing you would recommend that people can just take away and start tonight or tomorrow to start doing to help increase their focus, their productivity or what would you say?

Marcey Rader: 36:18

I'm going to offer a mindset shift that usually I'd given just an action, like, do this action, but I want to do a mindset shift instead. Especially because we're doing, we're leading into the holidays. Instead of using the word barrier or boundary, consider it a guardrail. So you have a technology guardrail, or a time guardrail, because guardrails keep us safe. When we are driving around the mountains, at least for me, I want guardrails there. They protect me. And so when you set guardrails, around your technology, or your time, they're keeping you and your energy and your focus safe.

Shawna Rodrigues: 37:05

Nice. So shifting the way you look at that. And the way you think about that and label that to being guardrails. To be able to not be boundaries is something that you're choosing to have there to keep yourself safe and keep yourself on track.

Marcey Rader: 37:16

Yeah, yeah.

Shawna Rodrigues: 37:18

I love it. That is perfect. Thank you so much, and what is the best way for people to find you and follow you and learn more about you?

Marcey Rader: 37:25

Helloraderco.com. And the playbook is helloraderco.com/playbook.

Shawna Rodrigues: 37:33

Excellent.

Marcey Rader: 37:34

And I am LinkedIn only. And I am fairly active on LinkedIn. So I'd love for people to connect with me there too.

Shawna Rodrigues: 37:42

Awesome. Well, we will definitely make sure we have your LinkedIn in the show notes as well. So people can connect with you. And to check out that, the playbook on your website as well. Congratulations on that. That sounds like such a fun thing to have out and to have available for folks.

Marcey Rader: 37:57

Thank you, you know, just launching today and already seeing sales and my inbox, I am, I feel a lot of gratitude and for my team and just the people that have been involved and everybody that I've done reflections with over the last nine years and it just, it, it just is really amazing feeling.

Shawna Rodrigues: 38:19

That's great. I love it. I love it. And we're coming right off of, you know, Thanksgiving so gratitude's good stuff. We love gratitude. Yes, yeah, it's good stuff. Well, good. Well, thank you so much for taking time to meet with us today, Marcey. This was very valuable. And I'm excited for people to hear all of it and to get all of the tips and tricks as well as having access to the what you're offering. Thank you.

Marcey Rader: 38:39

Thank you, Shawna.

Shawna Rodrigues: 38:41

Thank you for being here as part of our audience today. If you're interested in checking out our coloring books, after all, it is the holidays. All you need to do is Google the Color of Grit, and they should pop up. You can definitely find them on Amazon. You can also get sample pages off of our website, thegritshow.com. Don't forget, you are the only one of you that this world has got, and that means something. We'll be here again next Tuesday. I hope you are too.