The Paradox of Slowing Down to Speed Up - Pomodoro on Steroids

Julie South:
Sometimes do you feel like you're stretched so thin that even one ever so tiny, incy wincy, dinky, teeny tiny pull in your snap, never to be put back together again in the right order? Yep, I can relate. Sometimes that's true for me as well. And if that's you, or maybe you think it might be true for someone special to you, then stay tuned, because today is all about resisting the pressure to do more with less. Hi, I'm Julie south and you're listening to episode 199 of the Vet Staff podcast. The Vet staff podcast is powered by Vet Staff Limited, the only New Zealand recruitment agency dedicated to helping veterinary professionals find jobs they're excited about going to on Monday mornings in New Zealand vet clinics. Let's face it, in today's fast paced world, where ever and primary school kids are saying how fast each year goes, and especially when skilled workers, veterinary professionals like you, are in demand and in short supply like never before. And then we have some employers that are an embarrassment to them. Industry, there is always pressure to do more with less.

Julie South:
Yep, as I said at the beginning, I can relate, absolutely. But here's the curveball for you. Sometimes slowing down can actually speed things up. More haste, less speed. I know it sounds crazy, but stay with me and I'll show you how this counterintuitive approach can work wonders. Have you ever heard of the Pomodoro technique? It's this amazingly simple. Too simple and nifty time management hack where you work in focused bursts and then you take a short break. It's like interval training, but for your brain.

Julie South:
I used it when I was studying, except back then, I didn't realize that Francesco Carrillo had already invented it and or identified it or named it and how this strategy was about to become famous. It's chunking with a difference. And here's how you make it happen. You set a timer for 25 minutes and you go flat out. You go hard, and then you take a five minute breather, you rinse and repeat four times, and then you treat yourself to a longer break. Francesco preferred to work in half hour blocks. My preference is to work in our chunks. So I use 45 minutes, sometimes 50, and then I spend ten or 15 minutes giving my brain a break.

Julie South:
I'll put links to five of the top Pomodoro type apps for you to use in the show notes if you want to check some out. For example, apps like Forest, which is also available as a chrome extension, can help keep you on track. Francesco's 25 five isn't set in concrete. So if 25 minutes feels a bit off for you, tweak it. Maybe 15 minutes of work and a ten hour. Ten hour. A ten minute break is your sweet spot. So test it out and find what works best for you.

Julie South:
And if you're wondering why it's called Pomodoro, that's because Francesca used her time intervals. She used to measure her time intervals using a kitchen clock that looks like a tomato. I'm sure you've seen them. You twist the top half, it's red, it's circular, it looks like. It deliberately looks like a tomato. And you twist the top half of the time around this numerated tape measure, bottom half, looking clock, looking tomato, and it goes off when it's ready, it looks like a tomato. And Pomodoro is tomato in Italian. So check out some of these apps.

Julie South:
I'll put them in the show notes for you. The trick is knowing what works or discovering what works for you. For example, the social networking company Draugem group found that their top performers somehow, no idea how, naturally, fell into a rhythm of 52 minutes of work followed by a 17 minutes break. When they rolled this out, company wide productivity shot up. The other thing that you can do is take a bit of a riff on Google's 20% time. Google is famous, as I'm sure you know, for letting its employees spend a fifth of their time on pet projects. Yes, I know. 20% equates to one day a week, and I can probably guess what you're thinking.

Julie South:
Something along the lines of, we can't afford to do that. Absolutely. Fair enough. 20% is a huge amount. Few companies could afford that level of investment, especially in a small, overworked, understaffed, overcooked team. But what if you scaled it down? You could start small, maybe five or 10%, a couple of hours, half a day each week of work for a project relevant to work, or maybe upskilling. So set a simple system for pitching and tracking the projects, encourage ideas to gap fill or boost efficiency, and then show and share and celebrate the cool stuff that comes out of this time. If you do something like this, this is all part of your clinic's unique culture, something to celebrate.

Julie South:
And you could celebrate it by sharing it with vetclinicjobs.com, for example, changing tack a bit here. For example, Atlassian, which is the Aussie software company, they do what they call ship it days. They're 24 hours sprints where their team get to work on whatever they want, which has led to tons of product improvements and great crazy new, fantastic features for their software. In 2007, Atlassian started by giving people 24 hours to deliver their ideas. These innovation hackathons are run quarterly. The organization team announces the day three months before it plans to release an offside around a ship it day. So the team are open to working on whatever they want. That could be developing a dream feature, building an internal tool to make the team more efficient, or for example, upgrading the racks in the bike room.

Julie South:
Teams are formed around an idea. Before the innovation day, the clock starts ticking and the teams have 24 hours to deliver the idea and present the results to the rest of the organization in different voting rounds. The whole company is electing or gets to elect the best idea. They also experimented with Google's 20% hackathon. Sorry, the 20% time off time play playtime that I just talked about before. The one day a week which is where employees get 20% of their working time to improve a product or work environment. However, at Alassian, it didn't work that well for the engineering teams that already had sprint goals. Instead, those teams collectively took 20% every five weeks for a whole sprint to work together on product improvements.

Julie South:
It reduced paper cuts it featured or worked on. They worked on low priority bugs, code quality, new and innovative features, and they continue to work on ship it ideas and better ways of working. So it's about finding what works for you and your team. These innovation weeks helped the team at alassian work collectively. Great. It may not work for you, but there will be something that will work if you have your eyes and ears open for considering something different now. Hey, a super quick change of tack here. I just mentioned vet clinic jobs.

Julie South:
Have you heard of vet clinic jobs? It's the job board that's more than a job board. Unlike ordinary job boards, vetclinicjobs.com empowers veterinary employers to shine online by showcasing their unique employer brand and to recruit and retain their dream teams. Vetclinicjobs.com has been designed especially for veterinary employers that want to diy their own recruitment in today's global market. It's new, it's innovative, and it actually costs less than traditional jobs job boards, because not only is it about the job, it's also about how great the clinic is. The employer is as well. So please check it out. Vetclinicjobs.com. i'm sure you've also noticed that when it comes to work, it will expand to fill whatever time you give it.

Julie South:
That's Parkinson's law in action. The trick is to use it to your advantage. So instead, what you can do is just letting it take however long it takes, which it will, unless you control it. Instead, set clear, prioritised goals for each day or each week. Know on Monday or whatever day your work week starts. What you need to achieve that day or that week. Put strict time limits on meetings and routine tasks. If necessary, use time tracking tools to spot and squash time wasters, of course, of turning off all outside distractions like silencing notifications and closing down only the tab on your computer that you need to work on at that time will make a huge difference to the results that you'll get.

Julie South:
Basecamp, the project management software, is known for its use of six week cycles as a framework for organizing work. They work in six week cycles with clear deadlines and very limited scopes. It keeps them shipping new staff consistently, even with small teams. This structure helps teams focus on specific goals and deliverables within a defined timeframe. By breaking down the projects into management chunks. Basecamps teams are productive and efficient. So that's using the Parkinson's law in a positive, controlled way. You know the feeling you get that when you're so focused, time just disappears and flies.

Julie South:
That's known as a flow state and it's productivity gold. But getting there takes a bit of setup and preparation. So here's the game plan. You block out specific times for deepen work and you protect and you guard them fiercely. You create a distraction free zone, which means silencing your phone, closing down all tabs, closing email, the works. You close everything. You eliminate everything except that that you're working on. If necessary, use noise cancelling headphones, close the door, or some background tunes that help you focus.

Julie South:
You start small and you gradually increase your deep work sessions in time and duration. Microsoft Japan tried a four day workweek and saw that its productivity jumped by 40%. Now, while a four day workweek is probably a bit of a stretch for most of us, the principle of creating focused work time is solid gold. Who knows, a four day work week might work at your clinic. A few years back, I worked with one clinic during the pandemic that was struggling to make their rosters work. We were still in lockdown at the time and there was no end in sight. Here's what I suggested the clinic do. I suggested that it clean up its whiteboard, create a blank slate, and then list everyone.

Julie South:
Ask and list everyone's preferred dream working week. What did that look like for each person? The deal was that you only got paid for the days or the hours that you worked. It wasn't five days pay for four days work, but if someone wanted to work a ten hour day, four days of the week, so that they were effectively working full time for 40 hours, that was their choice. And it was okay by management. It was okay by this clinic's management. If that's what they wanted to do, that's what they could do. Because over the time, over years, the rosters had been kind of made up. Hickory Pickledy, I'm sure you can relate because people had left and new people started.

Julie South:
It was kind of. The roster was a bit of an unwieldy mess. Teamwork and compromise were involved in this project. In this exercise, roster swaps took place and were allowed and the team worked it out amongst themselves. The end result. And it did take a bit of working out, really did work out great. Everyone pretty much got what they wanted. Maybe you could do something like that at your clinic.

Julie South:
Set aside a few hours over a working lunch and find out what everyone wants. Set some ground rules, especially if after hours is necessary at your clinic. Maybe that everyone must participate. However, that looks so that it's not only a few picking up for everyone else. Unless that's okay by the team. It might not be. And then again, it might be. And you can see what comes out at the end.

Julie South:
I'm sure you will be pleasantly surprised if you give it a go. Now, I'm not going to lie or kid you, putting these strategies that we've just talked about into place isn't always smooth sailing. You might face some resistance and you might feel the pressure of looming deadlines. In fact, you probably will feel the pressure of a looming deadline. You might find that you end up with the speed wobbles. The key here is to start small and show some early wins. Get some early wins on the board and then shine the light on the fact that these approaches really do lead to faster, better work, less pressure. In the long run, you need to stay focused on the big picture.

Julie South:
It's more than just about getting things done. These strategies can lead to some serious perks. You will have happier employees who stick around longer. In recruitment, that's known as retention, staff retention, and that's what you want to do. You'll end up with more creativity and innovation. You'll have less burnout and stress and a workforce, a team that's more skilled, more adaptable, and because of that, they will be more resilient as well. In a world where skilled workers are as rare as hen's teeth, they're golden unicorns. Making the most of your existing team is crucial.

Julie South:
These strategies show that sometimes you have to slow down to speed up. It's about working smarter, not harder. So start by picking one or two of these ideas that resonate, that hum with your team and give them a whirl. Remember, the goal isn't to do more stuff, but to achieve more by working more effectively. So what we talked about today was the Pomodoro. That's hard out and then a complete break for at least five minutes every half hour or hour. Whatever works for you. You have the Google's 20% or Atlassian's 24 hours ship.

Julie South:
It's to do something different. Time blocks. Then you've got working smarter, not harder. That's where I talked about the roster changes, creating the white the white whiteboard, clearing off your whiteboard and finding out. Just throwing everything up in the air and see how you can make it land it different and then getting in the flow. I know that it's hard and it is counterintuitive. It doesn't make sense that by embracing the slow down to speed up paradox that you'll actually achieve more. But you do.

Julie South:
And that's the thing. And for me, when I especially feel that stretch to the Max, going to snap feeling. The scary part is that when I think that everything is going to come crashing down on me when I let go, somehow, automatically, when I do let go, when I back off, when I slow down, it doesn't. I actually get to achieve more. So if I can do it, you can too. I promise. It means that you can navigate those challenges of being in the tight labor market that we are right now while still driving your business and or your career forward. The key is, though, you need to stay flexible, you need to keep your ears open for feedback, you need to look for opportunities, and you need to dial back the pace by taking breaks away from the regular stuff.

Julie South:
You'll be amazed at what you and your team can achieve, even when and even if resources are tight. So, are you ready to give it a shot yet? Trust me, your future self will thank you. I hope you found this helpful, even if you might be a little bit skeptical about whether this will work for you. Trust me, it will if you trust the process. Now, can I ask you to do me a favour, please? If you enjoyed this episode, can you please let three of your colleagues or friends know about the show? All you have to do is share the link of where you're listening to this episode right now. Easy peasy thank you so much for doing that. This is Julie south signing off. Thank you for spending the last 20 minutes or so of your life with me.

Julie South:
I really do appreciate it. Here's to wishing you a fantabulous week until next week when I've got something really exciting to share with you. Take care. The Vet staff podcast is proudly powered by vetclinicjobs.com, the new and innovative global job board reimagining veterinary recruitment. Connect in veterinary professionals with clinics that shine online. Vetclinicjobs.com is your go to resource for finding the perfect career opportunities and helping vet clinics power up their employer branding game. Visit vetclinicjobs.com today to find vet clinics that shine online so veterinary professionals can find them. Vetclinicjobs.com.