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041: Ellen Jackson on how mindset and personality impact your life admin
565 Plays4 years ago
In this episode, we interview psychologist and host of the Potential Psychology podcast, Ellen Jackson.
About Ellen Jackson
Ellen Jackson is a psychologist, host of the Potential Psychology Podcast, internationally published writer, speaker, coach and consultant to organisations Australia-wide.
Ellen has a personal passion for self-care and individual wellbeing to beat stress and help you to live your best life. Her work includes one-on-one coaching, and everything she teaches is supported by scientific research so we know it works.
Ellen's 6 Word Purpose Statement is: Help others live, learn and flourish.
What we talk about
During the interview, we chat with Ellen about:
- how the arrival of children intensifies the life admin load
- managing your mindset to let go of control and allow others to contribute and solve problems
- letting go of unnecessary standards or preferences when sharing the load
- training your children to be grown-ups
- how feeling calm and having peace of mind is important to her
- the big five personality traits and the impact this has on how you might approach life admin
- how being aware of your personality traits can help you understand how best to approach life admin
- playing to your strengths
- understanding that your standards and rules are usually self-imposed and you can let them go
- valuing your time to help make decisions around outsourcing
- motivation and how rewards and punishment don’t work in the long run (for our kids or for ourselves)
- the three key elements to motivation (autonomy, relatedness, competence)
Please head to the Life Admin Life Hacks Facebook page to connect with listeners and share your thoughts, questions or suggestions.
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Transcript
Introduction to Life Admin Tips
00:00:00
Speaker
This is Life Admin Life Hacks, a podcast that gives you techniques, tips, and tools to tackle your life admin more efficiently, to save your time, your money, and improve your household harmony. I'm Dinah Roberts, an operations manager, is a naturally organized person, but I've still got a lot to learn. I'm Mia Northrop, a researcher and writer, and I'm currently in a stage of peak life admin.
Season 5 Overview and Optimism
00:00:26
Speaker
This episode, we interview Ellen Jackson,
00:00:29
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Life and Win Life Hacks. Welcome to Season 5. We're thrilled to have said goodbye to 2020 and are feeling very optimistic about 2021 and we hope you are
Interviews and Life Admin Makeover Book
00:00:41
Speaker
too. If you're new to the show, hello, thanks for listening. Get ready to make 2021 your most organised year yet. If you've been patiently waiting for us to return from hiatus, thanks for staying loyal.
00:00:53
Speaker
We've got great interviews and topics lined up for the next 10 episodes. Diane and I have been working on our Life Admin Makeover book, which is due to be published at the start of 2022. This will give you a one-stop shop to get your Life Admin under control.
Newsletter and Social Media Engagement
00:01:08
Speaker
And we're also working on a monthly newsletter that's going to kick off next couple of weeks. This will include links to our episodes, worksheets, checklists, templates,
00:01:18
Speaker
so if you can download and use and we'll curate content from around the web, that'll help you lift your life admin game. If you want to subscribe, head to our website, lifeadmitlifehacks. You can also connect with us via Facebook and Instagram and LinkedIn, depending on your social media preferences.
00:01:36
Speaker
This episode, as we kick off the season, is going to be one of our How They Do It episodes.
Mindset's Role in Life Admin by Ellen Jackson
00:01:41
Speaker
We've decided to interview other people from business, media, creative industries to see how they tackle life admin and to give us advice. In this episode, we talked to Ellen Jackson, host of the Potential Psychology podcast, who revealed how mindset is as important as process when it comes to life admin. How you need to adjust your expectations and let go of control if you really want to share the load.
00:02:06
Speaker
and how the five dimensions of personality impact how you might approach life admin. If you've ever wondered why some people are more organised and motivated than others, this app is for you. Ellen Jackson is a psychologist, host of the Potential Psychology Podcast, internationally published writer, speaker, coach, and consultant to organisations Australia-wide. Ellen has a personal passion for self-care and individual wellbeing to beat stress and help you to live your best life.
00:02:34
Speaker
Her work includes one-on-one coaching, primarily online, and everything she teaches is supported by scientific research, so we know it works. Ellen's six-word purpose statement, which I love, I think I'm going to find one of these for myself next year, help others live, learn and flourish.
00:02:50
Speaker
Ellen, thanks so much for coming on the show today. Well, thank you both for having me. It's very exciting to be here. Well, Mary and I were so excited when you said you'd come on the show because we're both avid listeners to your podcast. In particular, we love some of your work around motivation, which we think is so relevant when it comes to
Ellen's Life Admin Journey
00:03:09
Speaker
the tricky tasks of life admin, things like taxes and things like that. So love to hear when you first became sort of life admin aware and realized that it was a thing that you are going to have to deal with. Oh, that is such a good question. When did I become life admin aware?
00:03:27
Speaker
Well, I suppose it comes in phases, doesn't it? So, you know, we're all aware when we start a first job or leave home and then perhaps by our first time I bought a house was on my own. You know, I guess they come in stages of suddenly having to deal with things like even goodness tax.
00:03:46
Speaker
So it's a gradual progression, but I guess probably like for many people it intensified upon the arrival of children when suddenly you are responsible for more than just yourself, you are responsible for
00:04:02
Speaker
other people. And then I remember even, goodness me, having just had my first baby, which was a pretty intense experience in itself, adjusting to that. And then having to complete the birth registration paperwork. Yeah, yeah.
00:04:18
Speaker
forever, because sitting down and actually focusing on something like paperwork was just not in my repertoire at that moment. So yeah, look, it's probably gradually intensified over the years. It for me maybe peaked when my children were toddlers and I was still adjusting to who does what in our household and how to manage that.
00:04:37
Speaker
Yeah, it's an interesting moment when you have less time to do paperwork, but it's also exploded. So I think when I had my baby and those first forms come, they are the beginning of a lot of form filling out for your children. It's bonkers. It is bonkers. Somebody hasn't thought that through. They say, oh, here's somebody who's just had a baby. Let's give them a couple of hours with the paperwork today. Hopefully the systems have improved a bit in the last 10. It's been almost 10 years since I did it.
Home Admin Management and Mindset Adjustments
00:05:06
Speaker
And so as it did progress, as it did mount over time, did your approach to it become more sophisticated or was it sort of an ad hoc thing that you did here and there? Has it got more organized as you've gone along? Look, I'm not a naturally, I wouldn't say I'm disorganized, but I'm not a naturally administrative person, put it that way. It doesn't, I'm a bigger picture, creative ideas kind of person, perhaps.
00:05:34
Speaker
I'm not sure I've ever really come up with something that I would call a system or a series of systems. A lot for me around managing admin and life admin has been around mindset and how I manage my mindset. Tell us more about that.
00:05:49
Speaker
Well, I suppose again, a gradual progression and perhaps on the back of that peak of I'd returned to work, my husband was studying at the time and he was responsible then for our, he was then one year old, our elder son. And I found myself trying to do all of the home admin.
00:06:13
Speaker
All of my own work, I run a business plus at the time I returned to a pretty intense contract role three days a week. I was trying to, I suppose, manage everything to do with the toddler and his life and making sure the food was prepped and packing the baby bag and doing those sorts of things and suddenly realized that
00:06:36
Speaker
This was insane. It was realising that I didn't need to do it, that I wasn't actually doing anyone, including myself, a favour by taking on all of that additional responsibility and backing off and saying, you know, my husband's a grown up and he's well capable of working out what this kid needs to eat and what he's going to need if they go out for the day. And if he didn't do it the way I did it, and I think this is the big thing because we still have this conversation.
00:07:05
Speaker
If he didn't do it the way I would have done it, if the meals were different or he didn't have everything organized to the hilt with everything you could possibly ever need for some kind of minor crisis with the toddler, then no one was going to die. He would manage, he would cope, they would both cope. And as soon as I got to that realization, it allowed me to step away from a huge amount of work that I was really just making for my health.
00:07:32
Speaker
I think that's very relatable to listeners who might carry the mental or have in the past carried that mental load plus working on all the logistics of their household life.
Balancing Admin with a Partner
00:07:42
Speaker
It is too much for one person to carry. So how did you have that conversation with your partner at the time? How did you balance things out?
00:07:50
Speaker
Well, I can't remember at the time, because we're talking 12 years ago, but we actually just had the same conversation only a week or so ago. Yeah, yeah. Something that has to be negotiated. Yeah, well, it is a ongoing conversation. And I can't remember exactly. I think we were talking about, you know, managing screen time or, you know, getting a younger one to get tasks done more promptly. And he sort of had a view on how he should do it or we should do it. And I should do it.
00:08:18
Speaker
And of course, I had a different view. And it was just a conversation that got, I won't say heated, but it was, you know, it was firm. Enthusiastic. Yeah, it was enthusiastic. Yes. And I said, look, at the end of the day, you parent your way, I will parent my way. You know, we do need to have some consistency. But, you know, our fundamental values and fundamental approaches are the same. That's not an issue.
00:08:42
Speaker
there's obviously clearer or bigger things to deal with if you've got a fundamentally different approach to parenting in terms of your value set. But for us, you know, when it comes to just these, how you discipline or how you have a conversation, I just, you know, it did become, you do it your way, I will do it my way. We both know we have the best interests of the children and our family harmony at heart. But I'm not going to adopt your style. And I don't expect you to adopt mine if we both believe that our own approaches will work.
00:09:10
Speaker
Yeah, it's really interesting. Have you seen that cartoon from that French illustrator, Emma, about the concept of the mental load? Was that one that came out a little while ago? Yeah, a couple of years ago. I think so, yes. But it is interesting that it's that idea that when the first child is born that things really shift and unless you have some deliberate conversations, it doesn't change and that traditionally the mother takes more of the load simply because they usually do that first stint of parenting.
00:09:39
Speaker
How heavy do you think your mental load is now in terms of your household compared to, say, your work life? And do you think it's different? I was thinking about that last night, actually, and my work situation. So I work three days a week running a community leadership program here in Ballarat, which is a joyful job, but quite an intense job. And then I run my own business
00:10:04
Speaker
I often say, in theory, the other two days a week, but in practice, it's the other four days a week. And we have two kids who are 12 and nine, both boys who are busy and have sports and all of that kind of stuff. And I host a podcast and there's a lot. And in my mind, they're not delineated one from the other, it's just
00:10:24
Speaker
especially because of the way I involve myself in my work and especially the stuff that I do for myself, that is just life. It's all just life. So the mental load is high. I have increasingly, again, reminded myself in the same way that I had that conversation, or my husband and I had that conversation early
Teaching Life Admin for Children's Independence
00:10:44
Speaker
on,
00:10:44
Speaker
I'm now having those conversations with my 12 year old. He has literally just finished year six. And so he is now big enough, old enough and capable enough to take on some of the admin himself. But I have to catch myself, you know, I have to catch myself from saying and just jumping in and solving problems or fixing things or finding things. You know, I have to remind myself consciously because that's a thinking habit. You know, I've got a habit of looking after him and solving his problems.
00:11:12
Speaker
Yeah. Finding things for him over many years in the same way that I have in the past and, you know, I still have a tendency to sometimes jump in and solve things for my husband because he has a habit of expecting me to. So now it's the conversation with my, you know, 12-year-old. If he says, oh, mum, I need this or I need to organise that, I say, well, you get it all, you find what you need, you get it all organised, and then you come to me with it and we will
00:11:38
Speaker
do whatever's required to, you know, do the final bit, whether it's purchasing something or getting something signed or, you know, fixing something. The other day he needed, no, he wanted his shirt iron for graduation. That was it. So I said, OK. And at the time I was busy doing 100 things as you do. And I had to catch myself and I said, right, OK, no worries. I can help you with that. I will show you how to do it. You go and get the ironing board, set it up, get the iron, fill it with water.
00:12:05
Speaker
And so it's sort of just reminding yourself to do those little pieces and to think about it in terms of developing their life skills. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And what other life had been tasks you think are important to teach your children so that they do develop that independence. There's sort of, you know, household stuff around looking after themselves. Where do you think you'll start in terms of extending that responsibility?
00:12:29
Speaker
Yeah, that's that is a really good question. And it's something I've not, I've not really thought about it in terms of some of life admin, although I do, you know, and remote schooling was an interesting time this year, you know, being in Victoria and having two of them at home for such a long period, starting to have conversations about, you know, even if it's finding things on your laptop and organizing things. And quite often I do find myself saying, this is training you to be a grown up.
00:12:56
Speaker
This is training you to be an adult. And yes, it's boring. And yes, it's frustrating, but this is part of what it is. And you don't get the fun stuff. You don't get the independence. Again, with my 12-year-old now, we're allowing him a lot of independence. He has a lot of overnight stays with friends. He's out and about with his mates. And you don't get that unless you also learn the more irritating process.
00:13:17
Speaker
There's two sides of that growing up coin. It is, it is, absolutely. So I haven't given it a huge amount of thought, but I know for me, I'm particularly conscious with two sons that they will know how to sew a button back on their shirt, that they will know how to clean a bathroom, that they will know how to clean a toilet and the fact that toilets need to be cleaned. They will. We're still working on toilets being flushed in this household. Come on, everyone.
00:13:47
Speaker
So, you know, cook a meal, all of those sorts of things, which, you know, are still just contributing factors to the mental load, I suppose, even for my husband recently, you know, talking about, I think he was cooking dinner or he was on scheduled for dinner duty, and he still phones me up and says, I'm thinking of having this or, you know, I think, do we have that such and such? I'm like,
00:14:10
Speaker
I'm at work. I don't know. This is the point of you doing the dinner. It's not because I can't cook or won't cook. It's because I don't want to have to think about what we're going to have, whether it's the ingredients, getting the timing right, et cetera. That's a lot of it. Pet peeve, that one. So when it comes to life admin for you, what do you think is most important? Is it peace of mind, saving money, saving time or household harmony?
00:14:39
Speaker
For me, it's probably peace of mind. I learned quite probably in my twenties, so relatively early in my adulthood, that I don't cope well with feeling like I've got too much to do. You know, some people thrive on that chaos and busyness. I don't. I do like things to feel calm and in control. So when it comes to managing all of the life admin, as soon as that starts to escalate,
00:15:07
Speaker
and I'm feeling like I'm losing touch with all the pieces. There's a worry, and it's probably my conscientiousness too. I don't want to not deliver on something. So as soon as I feel like I'm just starting to lose touch, and I have to say I'm doing that a little bit with high school prep,
Personality Traits and Life Admin Impact
00:15:22
Speaker
and that starts to make me feel a bit agitated. So that's probably the primary thing, and then maybe saving time would be the secondary. I'm a big fan of outsourcing.
00:15:32
Speaker
Yeah, look, that's coming up a lot with the interviews we've been doing lately. But I'm interested more in about what science tells us about personality and how that might impact your approach to life admin. Sort of you mentioned, you know, it's the sort of conscientiousness that you have. Yeah. And in some of your episodes, we've talked about different personality traits. How might that impact your approach to life admin?
00:15:55
Speaker
Look, I think that has a huge impact. I'm a big believer in self-awareness for managing every aspect of your life, understanding who you are and what drives and motivates you and how you like to operate in the world. Because when you have that information and that knowledge, it can help you to
00:16:14
Speaker
manage around those sorts of things, I suppose. So for me, yes, knowing that I'm a conscientious person, knowing that I don't like to feel overwhelmed and overloaded means that as soon as I start to get to that point, I can sort of recognize it and understand it and say, yes, this is what I need to do. I need to have a day where I can sit down and just make sure I'm getting on top of those emails, for example, because otherwise I will start to feel agitated and stressed.
00:16:42
Speaker
different people have very different styles. Some people are far less fussed about those sorts of things. Some people are far less conscientious in the sense that if things do, and I've had to trade myself a little bit like this to remind myself that, you know, no one will die if I don't hit every deadline every time. Did it tick everything off? Yeah, exactly. Sometimes there's a bit of wiggle room.
00:17:06
Speaker
If you're highly conscientious, that will cause anxiety if things aren't going to meet deadline. Some people are far more relaxed and casual in life generally, which is a lovely way to be. Yeah, I'm jealous of those people.
00:17:24
Speaker
So with the personality traits, there are sort of the big five personality traits. Can we go through them and talk about how that might play out? Because is conscientiousness one of them? Yes, yes, it is. The best way to think about the best way to remember the big five personality factors is they make up the acronym OCEAN. So openness to experience. And this is going to test me now.
00:17:47
Speaker
Openness to experience is basically an openness to try new things, to experience different things in the world, to be, I guess, a bit curious and a bit exploratory. And that is a dimension. I mean, the thing to think about with personality and one of the
00:18:03
Speaker
Traps, I think we often fall into when we've been used to PEPs tools like the Myers-Briggs or MBTI or the DISS or some of these profiling tools is that they tend to put you into boxes that say, you know, you are an INTJ and therefore this is what you will do. And that certainly from a scientific perspective is not how personality works. All of these dimensions sit on a spectrum and we can be anywhere along that spectrum. So with openness to experience, for example, you can be exceedingly open and
00:18:33
Speaker
you're a risk taker and you'll have a go at anything and that's just where you are. Others will be right at the other end of the spectrum where the possibility of any change or anything new might feel incredibly disconcerting. And so with that impact where you might decide to try new technology or try a new app on your phone or establish new habits. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.
00:19:01
Speaker
further up the, I'm sort of pointing with my head here, which of course no one can say, further towards the, you know, one extreme of openness, then yeah, you know, you will try new things, you'll experiment with things and have a go and be prepared to fail.
00:19:16
Speaker
Add it readily now those are those are still trainable skills to some extent so personality is what behavior is metal malleable so while you have fundamental personality might not change you can absolutely develop new skills and move yourself a little way further along.
00:19:33
Speaker
And that's part of the growth mindset when it comes to openness, you know, that willingness to try new things, to accept failure as part of learning. Get out of the comfort zone. Yeah, get out of the comfort zone. But yeah, as a natural tendency, some will be just that way more inclined than others. Okay, so I've got openness and see, conscientiousness. Conscientiousness, which we've spoken about. So yes, that wanting to
00:19:56
Speaker
fulfill your responsibilities and meet deadlines and, you know, do everything that's asked of you. Again, it can be a shackle. It's actually quite predictive. People high in conscientiousness, I understand it's quite a good predictor of success in life because you will get things done. But, you know, in terms of stress and anxiety, it's not always such a good thing. It can burn out.
00:20:20
Speaker
The next one is, it's called the extraversion scale.
Extraversion's Influence on Admin Approaches
00:20:25
Speaker
So it's degrees of extraversion. Now most of us understand extraversion as being kind of, you know, one ended introversion being the other, but it's known as the extraversion scale in that particular personality framework, I guess. And so that is just the degree to which you get energy from being around other people, how much you might like to think things through by talking them out versus thinking things through by thinking them in your head before you speak. That's interesting.
00:20:50
Speaker
Yeah, that's an element of that, the energy that you get from people. So I am naturally quite introverted. I can, you know, get up and speak in front of large groups. I spend my life, you know, interacting with other people. It's not a matter of not being able to do it. It's a matter of how much energy it sucks from you, basically. So for an introverted person, you might extrovert, you know, all day or for a couple of days, but you'll probably then want some time on your own.
00:21:17
Speaker
in your own space and in your own head to re-energize. And it's the opposite for extrovert or people who are further at the end of the extroversion scale. They can struggle to spend time on their own and alone without it being draining.
00:21:34
Speaker
That's an interesting thing. If I'm thinking about that, how it applies to life admin, you know, you're talking about whether you like to think things through in your head or talk things out. You know, if you have a partner and you're trying to work out a better approach to doing something or having those decide, oh, you know, we need to compare our home. We need to switch home loans and talking through the process and the options, how you'd like to process that information. It's good to be aware of what your preferences are and your partners, perhaps. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
00:22:02
Speaker
It's definitely a different style and a different approach, and that will play a part in how you do everything, basically. Okay, so with OCEA, A is Agreeableness, which is essentially how nice you are. Can that change? That's something that you can work on as well. There is always an environmental context for all of these things and how they play out, but Agreeableness is how much you are keen to get along with
00:22:32
Speaker
other people. So people who are very high up the agreeableness dimension would probably be very uncomfortable with conflict. They want to get along well with everyone and they just have an agreeable personality, I suppose. At the other end, you're far less concerned with how others perceive you. Conflict doesn't phase you. We're all sitting somewhere. Again, the majority of us sit somewhere in the middle, but you get people at either end.
00:22:59
Speaker
You know, the thing to remember with personality, and sometimes we have these layperson terms, you know, we think, oh, you know, nobody wants to be at the not nice end. But there's pros and cons to everything. You know, if you're always at the very agreeable end, it's, you know, you don't want to doormat yourself to other people. You don't want to. People put pleaser mode.
00:23:18
Speaker
Yeah, you don't want to end up with blurry boundary issues. So I think that's where the awareness, if we have an awareness of how we are, then we can start to put structures and habits and behaviours in place that keep us in a good, positive frame of mind wherever we sit on the spectrum. And then in, is that new rutacism? It is new rutacism.
00:23:41
Speaker
to your podcast. So yes, N is neuroticism, which is, it's really a, I suppose a kind of an anxiety type scale to some extent, you know, it's about how
00:23:56
Speaker
Well, if you think about that again, that layperson term about being neurotic, it's people who get very antsy about things or get very stressed about things or get very upset about things that others find far less stressful. So again, a dimension like all of them.
00:24:13
Speaker
Oh, it's fascinating. And I think, you know, a lot of the time Diana and I are talking about self-awareness being key to deciding, you know, if you need to establish a new habit related to life admin, or if you need to change the tools you're using, say, you know, if you're doing budgeting and
00:24:29
Speaker
you've been using something clunky and we've got suggestions around new apps. There can be a lot of resistance to that kind of change or having to have discussions with your partner about the way you're going to approach something. Having this self-awareness about how your personality is made up just helps you come up with approaches
Personality Differences in Admin Duties
00:24:45
Speaker
that are going to be more successful for yourself.
00:24:47
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. That's why I say I think self-awareness in every aspect of life and understanding how you operate and how you function and also how others will be different. I think that's one of the key things. We go back, we mentioned before about that Myers-Briggs, which again, from a scientific point of view is not a reliable personality indicator.
00:25:06
Speaker
But at a just basic introduction to the concept of individual difference, which is what we kind of term this field of psychology, understanding how people differ, that is enormously helpful just to be able to say, oh, this is why I take this approach. This is why I get really stressed if we haven't filled in the forms in time or we haven't managed to get on top of this volume of tasks.
00:25:33
Speaker
It's because I am high in conscientiousness and say my partner is not. You know, he, in our case, loves to delve into the phone contracts and negotiate better deals on the mortgage and do all of that sort of stuff that kills me. I have no interest in doing that. But, you know, it's about accepting and appreciating and hopefully realizing that often we complement each other.
00:25:57
Speaker
And we can kind of say, okay, well, that's, you know, you love to do that. You're good at that. You go ahead and do it. And, you know, I will answer questions or help where I can, but don't expect me to get as passionate or as interested in it as you are. Someone in the household needs to, you know, be happy to look at that. Yeah, it's certainly not me.
00:26:20
Speaker
I think that's quite interesting because you do talk a lot in your work about helping families thrive and how you share or how you decide what you're gonna divide what you're gonna share is really important so are there any other aspects i guess of your life admin in your family.
00:26:36
Speaker
you or systems or how you've shared it that help improve your family life. I do believe, and it sort of parallels this, that we should all play to our strengths. Psychologically, if we can play to our strengths, understand who we are and divide things up accordingly so that we're doing things that give us more energy and fewer of the things that really drain us. Now, obviously, life admin
00:27:01
Speaker
Well, I suppose we've had some examples there. Some people really do get into doing that. And so doing those and recognizing that I'm doing this, and I think this is where your own expectations of self come in as well. I know that there are tasks that I do, like ironing. I'm one of the few remaining people of my generation who iron. But I do it because I get a really intrinsic sense of satisfaction from
00:27:27
Speaker
the process and the outcome. Now, that may seem weird to some people. I fully appreciate that that seems weird to some people. And sometimes when I get really frustrated, because I look at the ironing pile and I just go, oh my God, that's out of control. And then I can have a conversation with myself and say, well, you can let this go because this is your rule. You know, you made this standard for yourself and you can let it go if you want to. I find this fascinating. I've never had an ironing pile because I just don't iron. You should see the jokes I'm hearing now.
00:27:56
Speaker
There'd be other things that I would be totally hung up on. Everyone's got that thing that's important to them for whatever reason. It doesn't always
Advocating Task Outsourcing
00:28:03
Speaker
have to be rational. And I guess the outsourcing comes in as well. It's like if there's no motivation for my part or a partner's part, let's just get someone else to do it entirely.
00:28:14
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I'm a fan of outsourcing. I've done it less so in our home life recently, although I'm looking forward to getting somebody to clean the house again. I've done that in the past, but certainly in my business life, I outsource a lot of my business admin because it's just not
00:28:33
Speaker
away. Even I do remember my sister giving me a really good tip, and I've incorporated this into my business life, but it's absolutely worthwhile in personal life as well. And that is just about valuing your time. If you put a price on your time and said, Well, you know, I, my time is worth 50 bucks an hour, or 100 bucks an hour, or 300 bucks an hour, or whatever it is, is there somebody that I can pay to do some of these tasks who will charge me less than that. And, you know, that is a really useful way to think about it, I think.
00:29:04
Speaker
Yeah. And I, one of Diana and my favorite episodes of yours was titled, everything you know about motivation is wrong. And we know that, you know, people find it hard to get on top of their life admin and set up new systems or set up habits or, you know, get motivated about ironing or get a bit of cleaning, whatever it might be. Tell us about the latest science on motivation.
00:29:25
Speaker
Yeah. So the reason I called it that, aside from it to speak a bit of a cheeky title, was that we still do largely have a very old fashioned concept of motivation and how motivation works at a human level. We still think of it very much in terms of punishment and reward or positive and negative reinforcement. And we do that with our kids. You know, we'll say, right, unless you tidy your room, you don't get screen time. Often these things work, but they work very short.
00:29:55
Speaker
term and they have a risk of doing damage to relationships. So, you know, kids start to resent you over time if it's always this battle over, you do this or I'll do that kind of approach. And that happens internally with our own self-motivation as well. We tend to punish ourselves if we don't do things. And usually that punishment is a form of kind of
00:30:21
Speaker
personal beration, that dialogue that we have, a monologue that we have in our own heads where we say, oh, you know, why can't you just do this? You're hopeless. You know, you just need to get motivated. You just, you don't have any willpower. And we have that conversation with ourselves about our perceived failures at staying motivated to either change a habit, start a new task, get things done on time, whatever it might be.
00:30:44
Speaker
And the long-term implication of that is a poor relationship with yourself effectively. If you are constantly berating yourself for not getting things done or not having enough willpower or for failing, that knocks your self-esteem around. It knocks your general wellbeing around. It's just not a good conversation to be having with yourself.
Intrinsic Motivation in Life Admin
00:31:06
Speaker
And what we've discovered, and I say we very loosely, what my amazing psychological colleagues and scientists and researchers have discovered over, it's really something that's been around for about 30 years, but has probably had far less, there's been far less discussion of it, less awareness of it in the general population, is that that's not how motivation works, that there are actually these fundamental elements to it. It's called self-determination theory. I won't go into it now because it takes a lot.
00:31:38
Speaker
It's excellent idea. But basically it says that there are three things that we need to have to really be intrinsically motivated. So to have that kind of motivation that just, it's almost like you can't stop yourself from doing something. And motivation like personality also sits on a spectrum. You know, we have
00:31:58
Speaker
I have a colleague who likes to say that we are a bundle of motivations, which I think is just a lovely way of putting it because we are, we will do things for a number of different reasons. But for that key intrinsic motivation that I can't stop myself from doing this, it gives me energy to do it, we need to have a sense of autonomy. So we have a sense of control over our ability to do something.
00:32:22
Speaker
We need to have what's called relatedness. So connection to other people is really important in terms of context. It's about our relationship, doing things with other people. So human beings are very social animals, even the most introverted of us.
00:32:39
Speaker
And so when we can tie other people into what we're doing, even if that's just a conversation, it doesn't mean we're doing it for someone else, but they're having the support, having the care, having the kindness, having just some element of human connection in what we're doing. So it comes back to that relationship piece. You know, if you're talking about how you help a child to find the motivation to do a task,
00:33:05
Speaker
you know, showing that you care, showing that you're having this conversation with them because they're important to you, because you want to help them and assist them. They then get that sense of relatedness that is going to be intrinsic to that motivation. Interesting. So it's not necessarily that they're going to keep you sort of accountable. It's a little broader than that.
00:33:25
Speaker
No, yeah, I mean, it could be that they're going to keep you accountable, but it doesn't have to be. So, you know, this is not straightforward transactional stuff. You know, this is transformational stuff. So it's complex. There's lots of pieces to it. But it is quite a different way of thinking about motivation and moving away from that straight punishment reward, whether that's, you know, in our interactions with someone else or interactions with ourselves.
00:33:49
Speaker
And then the third element is competence. So having a sense of competence about the task that we're doing. Yeah, the mastery piece. So if we don't feel, if we're asking ourselves to do something like establish a new habit, you know, say you're going to, you've never run in your life and you've decided that you're going to set yourself a goal to run a marathon. This is not a goal I've ever set for myself.
00:34:16
Speaker
That's your goal. And what happens is in order to have the intrinsic motivation to get out there and train, we have to feel that this is something that's actually achievable for us. We have to feel that we are confident.
00:34:30
Speaker
And often what we do, and, you know, timely to be thinking about this when we think about New Year's resolutions, well, often what we do is we set ourselves these big ambitious goals and we don't think through all the kind of steps and the, you know, granularity in getting to that. And that's where things fall over because, you know, we've had this intention to run a marathon, but we've never run before. And we set a big goal that just wasn't intrinsically motivating enough because
00:34:57
Speaker
At some level, we're telling ourselves, who do you think you're kidding? You never get a front of marathon. So having to find the competence, which often means breaking that goal down into something much smaller and much more realistic and much more attainable in the short term and then building on that as you go. Yeah, I think that third element of motivation is so relevant to life admin. When you think about things like taxes,
00:35:21
Speaker
and people just feel so overwhelmed by the thought of it and not knowing where to start becomes such a big barrier to being motivated to get going on sorting something out. Absolutely. We know from writers like BJ Fogg and James Clear who write about habits or tiny steps, taking tiny steps, chunk it down to the tiniest increments so you can steadily work your way there rather than going from zero to 100 and
00:35:47
Speaker
thinking yeah I'm gonna run a marathon next year without thinking let's start with a we'll start with a 30 minute walk around the block.
Enhancing Motivation for Tasks
00:35:53
Speaker
Yeah absolutely and the goals that you set for yourself have to be meaningful so doing your tax for example you know that that's not an intrinsically motivating task I don't think for anybody.
00:36:09
Speaker
Well, but there are ways of framing it up in your mind to find those access points to motivation. For a lot of people, that's about the refund that they might receive. There's the motivation in there. I've just got to get through this. If that's not the position you're in, you've got to find another way to frame it up. That's also an area where you've got really high competence. Yeah, exactly.
00:36:31
Speaker
It takes you about an hour. For most of us, it's kind of like, I don't even know where to start finding what I need. And so the competence is very low. There's not a lot of relatedness in doing your tax return, trying to find an access point for relatedness. You know, why am I doing this? How am I doing this? How does this involve other people in some way? Now there could be an accountability element in there.
00:36:55
Speaker
you know, in terms of being accountable to. I know for me, I've outsourced a lot of my stuff and now I have bookkeepers who do a lot of the prep and, you know, an accountant who helps me with the final pieces. And if I don't get around, as I haven't, and I'm sitting thinking about it now, to signing the, you know, reviewing and signing the forms, I start to feel again, my conscientiousness accountable to those people. Yeah, it's interesting because I noticed the tax officer now showing when they give you your like statement
00:37:22
Speaker
They show where your tax dollars were spent. And I don't know whether that's kind of, you know, a subtle kind of shift to like, why are we doing this? It's to help people use welfare payments to help fund the health system, et cetera, to try and give a little bit of motivation about why you want to pay
Finding Motivation for Mundane Tasks
00:37:38
Speaker
tax.
00:37:38
Speaker
That would make it more meaningful. Context is really important so that absolutely, not for everyone again, we're all different, we're all wired up differently and our motivations are going to be very different. But for us as individuals, it's about tapping into or trying to uncover, explore where the motivation is for us in order to get past that barrier of getting started, for example.
00:38:00
Speaker
Brilliant. I'm wondering whether there's been a life admin hack or task that you feel like years ago was in a messy place, but now you've got it somewhere where it's humming along or you wish someone had told you earlier about a life admin hack.
Benefits of Outsourcing and Delegating
00:38:17
Speaker
one of them has been outsourcing so you know i think again this is slightly less around my personal admin but around my business admin even and letting go of tasks to allow somebody else to do it so i have to virtual assistants who help me with my business in my business admin and i have to constantly remind myself and similarly i now have,
00:38:39
Speaker
a small team that I can use in my role, in my leadership role. And getting my head around the fact that I don't have to do it, that I can delegate it to other people has been a work in progress, but it's been quite a revelation. And I think that probably goes to the point I made earlier about getting your kids to do things or getting your partner to do things as well. It's that mindset shift around, I don't have to have total control over this.
00:39:09
Speaker
It's to my benefit if I let some of this go, if I hand this over, and it's to their benefit as well. Because, you know, when you think about your kids, you want to prepare them for a successful adulthood. So if you never let them do anything themselves, they're never going to get on top of those really important skills that they need to develop. So.
00:39:28
Speaker
Similarly with a team, you know, how will they ever develop their own skills, progress, learn new things if we hold tight to them ourselves and don't let them go. And I think many of us are guilty of that in different domains of life, fulfilling like, I'm the only one who knows how to do this well. Or it's just easier for me to do it myself when in actual fact, longer term, it's not. This is about a bit of short term, paying for long term gain.
00:39:53
Speaker
Yeah, Ellen, that's a really thought provoking place to finish. So, Ellen, thanks so much. I loved hearing about your thoughts about motivation, about outsourcing and delegations. Such a pleasure. So we've already talked a little bit about one or two of your episodes on your podcast, but where else can our listeners find you if they want to hear more?
00:40:13
Speaker
Yes,
Connecting with Ellen Jackson Online
00:40:14
Speaker
so the Potential Psychology podcast is the podcast and it's available on all the podcast platforms. I am at potential.com.au and that links to, I guess, most of what I do in the many ways, shapes and forms, and has my contact details, and then on the socials, Potential Psychology as well.
00:40:38
Speaker
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