Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the one thing podcast. I have Nick, Sonnenberg on with us today. And Nick is an entrepreneur ink columnist, guess lecture at Columbia University and the author of come up for air his new book about how teams can leverage systems and tools to stop drowning in their work, which I think we can all relate to he is the founder and CEO of leverage and leading operational a lead

operational efficiency consultancy that helps companies implement his CPR business efficiency framework, Nick. Thanks so much for being on the podcast today. Thanks for having me, Chris. Oh, man, I can't tell you. Nearly every team organization individual that I've ever worked with it. I've ever been around at some point has said to me, I have too much to do and not enough time. And I'm sure you heard that before. Yeah, I've also heard I'm drowning in work.

That's why I titled my book come up for air. It's just like the most common thing you hear. I was like, how's it going? I'm drowning in work. You know, it doesn't. You know, it's avoidable. And you know, that's why I wrote the book and that's why I titled the book like that. But yeah, it's crazy. It's crazy. How consistent that is so consistent. I think we can all relate to it. And we were talking about this a little bit before we started the podcast, but I found myself relating to this.

And it comes in swells almost at times where you'll feel like things are a little bit more stabilized in balance, so to speak, if that if that is such a thing.

But then you'll have these swells of work like you're launching a new book or you have a project that you're rolling out or just things collided wavelengths line up and there's everything's going at once. And for me, I found that having a system or a model or some really efficient tools that you can use when things swell up, it becomes a necessity to not drown.

And I'm sure you can, you can relate to that too.

I think being efficient is good no matter what, whether you have a swell of work, whether you don't, whether you are in a recession, whether you're in an economic boom, whether you're remote, you're in person.

There's never a situation where it wouldn't be better to be more efficient than less efficient. You know, and when I say efficiency, I mean, just doing things right, removing the friction, the road blocks, not going on a scavenger hunt.

Wasting time, looking for something for an hour that should have been two clicks away, you know, it's all the crap that doesn't give you joy or tap into your unique ability.

You know, that's what I'm all about. How can I free up all the road blocks and obstacles so you can focus on things that you're uniquely best to work on that's going to make a bigger impact for the business.

And usually the stuff where it's like, you know, what did Chris say to me, it was out in a text, an email, a Slack message, oh, I don't, you know, it was out a file somewhere.

Let me go and, you know, no one likes it in any position of any seniority level, no one likes that type of stuff.

And so I think no matter whether you're in a swell or not, you just want to remove all that stuff. Even if you use that time, just to, you know, think more deeply on your strategy.

Or even take a little bit more vacation to reduce burnout. It's better than just wasting time going on a scavenger hunt.

But yes, of course, if you have a swell of work, you absolutely, it's, it's like not a nice tab. It's a need to have.

Yeah, and good call out to you. You need, you need it no matter what. And I think where I've seen even for myself and others is when you aren't in those times of super high demand, you'll fall out of practice with some of these.

Get a little lazy, maybe not maintain a habit you formed with leveraging tools and efficiency.

And then when you have this swell, find yourself behind the curve trying to catch back up to that. And I'm sure you've seen that too.

Yeah, I mean, it's the thing is once people really understand deeply kind of the purpose of things and they see the benefit, it starts to really getting drained as a new habit.

You know, it's like we all learned how to use a laptop like you don't need to be told today use your laptop instead of your typewriter because you know it's, you know, whether you're very busy or not too busy, you know that the laptop is going to outperform and be more productive for you than the typewriter.

So I think once people really understand the why and they see the impact, you know, it just sticks.

And then, you know, but people fall into this quick stand like when you get busy, it's just, it's this quick stand problem where you're busy, you're totally drowning in work.

...