Touch It Once... But Not Like That

Brad Herda (: 00:01

Hey everyone. Welcome back to this episode of blue collar BS. I am your cohost Brad along with the great Michigan, Michigan ender.

Steve Doyle (: 00:10

Steve! did remember my name. It's great to be back, Brad.

Brad Herda (: 00:12

There you go. there you go. You remembered your name. It's good to have you back, Mr. Doyle. I know you've been out and you've got college tour things and you'll hear about those in episodes later when you're not around and all those fun things and welcome to that part of parenthood. It can be fun, but yet stressful.

Steve Doyle (: 00:28

yeah.

Steve Doyle (: 00:33

Yup. yeah, I don't really stress about it. It's more fun watching my wife and daughter stress about it. That's just me.

Brad Herda (: 00:43

there's that empathy coming out.

Steve Doyle (: 00:44

Yeah, the strong empathy card coming.

Brad Herda (: 00:46

strong empathy characteristics from a leadership perspective that is a strength of yours Mr. Doyle for sure.

Steve Doyle (: 00:50

Complete. Yeah. If you need empathy, look somewhere else. Well, I'll say if you need.

Brad Herda (: 00:58

So look here, check behind the closet door. There might be some hanging out there.

Steve Doyle (: 01:03

Well, if you need sympathy and compassion, you're going to need to go somewhere else. If you want me to understand a situation, but not give a shit, then let's have a conversation. Exactly. I'm going to go do something stupid now. So.

Brad Herda (: 01:13

Hold my beer.

Brad Herda (: 01:21

So Mr. Doyle, what are we talking about today? Which kind of comes down, this interrelates a little bit, I think, from our pre-show conversation, but what are we talking about today, sir?

Steve Doyle (: 01:28

It does a little bit. Yeah. So let's talk about task management and avoidance of things.

Brad Herda (: 01:40

What if I don't want to do it?

Steve Doyle (: 01:42

Exactly the point. That is exactly the point.

Brad Herda (: 01:47

What if I don't want to get up at five o'clock and get on the treadmill and go walk for

Steve Doyle (: 01:51

Well, I mean, you're by your by all means, you know, sleep in and then go look in the mirror at the middle of the day or the end of the day and go, why do I still have that spare tire? I mean. I mean, you know, we all have those could have what a should have scenarios like, yeah, I wish I could. I want to do. I need to do OK, that's that's great.

Brad Herda (: 02:04

It's a fucking semi. I don't know what you're talking about.

Steve Doyle (: 02:22

We all have lists like that. But this has been actually coming up a lot in the conversations I've been having with my various clients around, I've got this, we're so busy. We have this list of things to do, but I just can't seem to get out from underneath all of these things to do. And we all have them. When we look in the mirror, we all have these lists.

And you could say, yeah, I'm on top of it. I'm on top of everything I'm doing. Bullshit. None of us are. There's just days that we're better at it than others. But from a consistency standpoint, we're extremely inconsistent. But that's also our human nature. we are. Don't give me that.

Brad Herda (: 03:08

Well, depending on what you want to define so is inconsistency a version of consistency Right, I mean right Right. It's like the only kind the only constant thing is change. How can the only constant thing be change if it's always changing So very similar scenario. I'm just being a dick. So sorry about

Steve Doyle (: 03:19

you got it. I am consistently inconsistent. I in.

Steve Doyle (: 03:29

Correct.

Steve Doyle (: 03:33

You are being yes, but that's OK and that's good. That's what we need. So let's walk through. Let's walk through any scenario you want. can. You can even you know daydream if you want about hey, here is my task list of X, Y and Z, but let's get let's get a little specific here so. Let's say we're a project manager for. Any company you want, let's let's call it a manufacturing company in your project manager, alright?

You're at ABC Gear Works and you've got 10 machining lines. You have eight of those machining lines. They run consistently. The same type of gear runs on these four axis machines. have half of them are five axis machines and they're always running the same part consistently. And so you know,

in front of: 81012

Okay, great. Now your sales team brings you, hey, we just won this huge award. It needs to run on machine ABC. And that is one of the machines that infrequently runs. And you have...

Brad Herda (: 05:11

Great, and we filled up capacity that we needed to fill. Perfect, God bless the sales team.

Steve Doyle (: 05:15

We perfect. Yeah, we've done all that stuff. Now you turn it over to the project management team to go, Hey, we have this. We have this thing, but we need only bill can run this machine or only Susan can run this machine.

Brad Herda (: 05:26

fuck. the only, the only, the only,

Steve Doyle (: 05:31

Only scenario. and Bill's out this week. You know, and Bill's out this week and Susan doesn't really, she's over here working on, she's over on the high volume machines, working with everybody else to get these things running smoothly.

Brad Herda (: 05:33

Yeah, only... Yeah.

Steve Doyle (: 05:50

So now it comes down to, I either have to A, break the bad news or, this other seems, well, I don't have anybody to run it. Well, I do, but they're out. And now I gotta go talk to them. I gotta go have a conversation with somebody to tell them I'm not gonna be able to hit that timeline. know what? Instead of that, I'm just gonna let that sit over here because yeah, I know I gotta go do that, but you know what?

Brad Herda (: 05:56

Drake, what bad news? What's the bad news?

Of course you do.

No.

Steve Doyle (: 06:17

That's going to require a little energy, a little effort. I just don't want to have that conversation. And all I want, you know, I just got another sales order in to go on the high volume machine. And you know what? I know that and I'm just going to go take care of that first. guess what? We all do things like that in our lives where it's like, is going to require a little bit more work, a little bit more. And I just, I just don't want to do this right now. So I'm just going to, I'm just going to put this over here. I know I got to do it. I'll get to it, but

I'm going go do this over here. OK, now I've got now I've now I've got this other sales order that I can just OK, I can take 10 minutes. I'm going to plug this in and I get that done. I'm going to go take a break. I'm going to go over here and I'm going to go see how everything is running and then I'm going to go walk by that machine that I got to get set up and I'm really going to think about OK, what am I going to say? How are we going to get this going? Oh, but wait, you know that the plant manager just walked by and asked me about something. So now I've got.

Now we're talking about some other stuff and I've already forgot about, you know, that one machine that needs to run in that sales order here because now I got tasked with something else that, yeah, I can go do that. I can do that. All I'm doing is I'm adding to the procrastination or the habit of, crap, I actually have to stop, think, and work on something that I'm uncomfortable with.

Brad Herda (: 07:30

Chaos.

Brad Herda (: 07:41

Welcome to hashtag adult.

Steve Doyle (: 07:43

Exactly. that is the scenario that is scenarios that come up all the time, but it's what what actually happens is they compound.

Brad Herda (: 07:56

They do. and yes, that, that is a, that is not an uncommon situation in many organizations. I've got an organization or personal life. but thanks for pointing that out.

Steve Doyle (: 08:06

or in personal life.

Steve Doyle (: 08:12

Yep, that's what I do. Yeah, that's it. Yeah, Harveys!

Brad Herda (: 08:14

Appreciate you, Steve. Appreciate you.

Brad Herda (: 08:21

the, yeah. And there's you, I am a big fan of one way to help avoid that is touch it once the touch it once philosophy.

Steve Doyle (: 08:34

Touch it once. Tell me more. Touch it once.

Brad Herda (: 08:36

Let's not go there. Just stop stop. Stop just stop. Right? I got well never was. We are explicit right? The you got the email deal with the email till you're done with it. Right? I. The email came in great. The purchase orders here. I'm going to process it to the end. The sales order came in. I'm going to process it till it's done.

Steve Doyle (: 08:44

Not safe for work anymore.

Steve Doyle (: 08:50

You

Steve Doyle (: 08:54

Mmm

Brad Herda (: 09:04

I'm going to process as far as I can go, put it away, send out my information and then get it off my desk and wait for and have the response or set the followup ticker or task list or whatever that is in my system or post it note or you know, I'm going to use M and M's every time I get a response back, I get to eat an M and M whatever, whatever you're going to do for your motivation to go do something, just deal with it till it gets to the point where you can't do anything more with it and then move on.

Steve Doyle (: 09:08

Mm-hmm.

Steve Doyle (: 09:24

Yep.

Steve Doyle (: 09:32

Hmm

Brad Herda (: 09:33

Right. We.

Steve Doyle (: 09:35

That's a good put your head down tactic. Put your head down and grind it out.

Brad Herda (: 09:40

It is GSD, baby. GSD.

Steve Doyle (: 09:41

That's absolutely LFG. However, most of us, I will say, know, shiny object scenario kind of, hey, I'm just waiting for a new email to come in before I can do that. Again, these are what we are talking about. But what we're talking about is habits. These are habits. We are now looking as a habit, we are now looking for.

Brad Herda (: 10:03

turn your email off. Look at it only.

Steve Doyle (: 10:11

anything else to do other than the thing.

As as human nature, it's tough. It's difficult. We have built in that mechanism to say if I don't like it. I just won't have to do it and I can move on to something else that that is easier. We have created that.

Brad Herda (: 10:32

Yeah, but so yes, you are you are true, but go back in from a cultural dynamic as well that comes into play. There's lots of other influences along the way, right? So that project. So the project manager that wasted an entire day of not dealing with that sales order to get back to the salesman to let him know that holy shit, we got a problem. OK, if that was day one, cool, right? Fantastic. If it's day four and I hadn't they haven't done it yet.

Steve Doyle (: 10:38

Is it?

Yes, there are.

Steve Doyle (: 10:55

Mm-hmm.

Brad Herda (: 11:01

Then we got a fucking problem. Because now we're not doing our job. Right? So.

Steve Doyle (: 11:03

Mm-hmm. Yep. Yep. But aren't we? Because we got everything else done.

Brad Herda (: 11:10

No, I haven't processed that other sales order yet, so it's not done yet. I haven't done

Steve Doyle (: 11:14

That one's not done, but everything else is. 99 % of everything else is done.

Brad Herda (: 11:19

Yeah, 99 % is not good enough.

Steve Doyle (: 11:21

perfectionist? Yep.

Brad Herda (: 11:24

Perfection is a choice sometimes, but completion of the task is right. I got to complete all the orders. If that PM is responsible to get a 100 % of their orders through their desk, then yes, 100 % of the orders through their desk. 100 % of the orders through the desk does not mean perfection. It just means 100 % of the orders have passed through the desk.

Steve Doyle (: 11:40

Mm-hmm.

Steve Doyle (: 11:48

Mm hmm. I understand this. I understand this. So the reason for raising this up is one, yes, we all recognize that these tasks, the task avoidance is real.

Brad Herda (: 11:51

All

Steve Doyle (: 12:06

The one thing that we can all put our heads down and GSD it out for a period of time.

Brad Herda (: 12:15

Correct. And I'm a huge fan of no more than 45 minutes. I'm a huge fan. 45 minutes max on any, right? I'm going to spend 45 minutes on this, taking care of my emails. I'm going to spend 45 minutes of following up on sales calls. I'm going to take 45 minutes and put it in production orders. I'm going to, and then I'm going to, after I did my 45 minutes, I'm going to reward myself by getting up and going out to the floor to see what's going on.

Steve Doyle (: 12:19

Mm-hmm. Or less.

Steve Doyle (: 12:43

Mm-hmm.

Brad Herda (: 12:44

Follow up on the thing that I needed to follow up on or walk the shop floor or whatever those things are But anybody can do most things for 45 minutes with solid concentration

Steve Doyle (: 12:55

Yep. So it's what are the things that you recommend to people? And I know you mentioned it a little bit. One of the items was if you're waiting around for something like, hey, I got an email. I need to go work on this. Right. Turning your email off. What are some other things that you suggest to people to do to help with task avoidance?

Brad Herda (: 13:21

So one of the things that we did, so I was a freak when it came to some process things, hard to believe, right? I see Kool-Aid, man. yeah. we had, back when I had my purchasing team, we had just got done remodeling our offices and doing a bunch of lean transformation work and implementing Toyota systems, all the fun things. And our COO at the time was really

Steve Doyle (: 13:30

Yeah! yeah!

Brad Herda (: 13:51

adamant about what was going out in the shop and he was really adamant that the millions of dollars we just invested in the new office buildings, we're not going to have it look like a shit show. So being in the purchasing group and and being in a first floor and lower level area, we get a lot of traffic, a lot of things. So we decided to five us our office areas.

Steve Doyle (: 14:02

Mm-hmm.

Brad Herda (: 14:17

to the point of where I basically had a rebellion on my hands because I was like, what do you mean we're talking about how many pictures we can have in our office area? where Post-It notes should be? Or where phone should be? Or how many file racks I can have in my back cardenza? Or all?

Steve Doyle (: 14:22

yeah! yeah!

Steve Doyle (: 14:27

yeah. huh.

Steve Doyle (: 14:38

how many pieces of flair you have.

Brad Herda (: 14:41

Right. Yes. Right. And that was some of those conversations and everybody was. So I'd started leading those conversations and I'm like, everybody's pissed at me. Like, guys, I don't care what you decide, but this is the parent. This is the box we need to live in. Figure it out. So we went through all that. We did all our five, five S auditing. We got through the three weeks of bullshit and all the things. And at the end of the day, we increased productivity by over 35 % and reduced our paper consumption by 20%.

Steve Doyle (: 14:46

Yes.

Brad Herda (: 15:12

Because all that was out on our desk was the things we were working on. Everything else was put away in the file cabinet or back in the credenza out of the way so it didn't have the shiny object syndrome of, let me just look at that and let me find that. And if somebody came by to ask a question, OK, I could go find it. And when customers or suppliers came in, they're like, wow, this is really cool. This is really good. How do you guys do this? So we open up the file cabinet drawers and say, oh, here's our audience. Here's what we do. This is what it is.

Steve Doyle (: 15:23

Mm-hmm.

Brad Herda (: 15:39

This is what this is what success looks like. And and to this day I still get former colleagues when I when I talk to them. They're like that was the stupidest thing you've ever done, but the most effective thing that's ever worked.

Steve Doyle (: 15:40

Yep.

Steve Doyle (: 15:53

Yeah

Yeah, we've been through we we when I was in in corporate automotive Or commercial automotive that was we moved also into a new space and Everything was 5s. This is your layout. This is where everything went One one interesting thing to note when we did that I opted for nothing on my desk and that brought it's a whole new level of What are you doing?

Because there was no personalization. There was nothing. was you immediate, you only thing on my desk was a pad of paper and my pen and that was it. The phone was there, the computer was there, that's it. Everything else was put away. There was nothing on the walls, nothing. It was stark. And that brought out a whole different level of kind

Brad Herda (: 16:47

That's a whole different level of like Severance. Have you watched Severance on Apple TV? That's kinda like that. It's just this room of nothingness. like, okay.

Steve Doyle (: 16:57

Yep, pretty much. Pretty much. So, I mean, so getting back to this, right, there are things that you can do. know, we all, you know, on social media, you all see those videos or those memes with somebody taped something to somebody's back. Hey, please don't talk to me. I'm working on something. You know, honestly, while joking around, we all, some of us have that issue where it's like somebody will interrupt us and we're gone for 45 minutes talking about stuff.

Brad Herda (: 17:27

I had another client I was working with. had red and green flaps on his, on his wall divider for his cubicle. And if the red was out, don't bother me if it was green, come on, right? Kind of a click cause there was no doors, but they could look down the aisle way. Cause he was back in the corner. It was red. Just send an email or talk to him later. If it was green, yeah, walk on by no big deal. Just to give the trigger of, of I'm ready for it. You know, right.

Steve Doyle (: 17:34

Mmm.

Steve Doyle (: 17:55

Do not disturb or-

Brad Herda (: 17:57

the other thing, if you're a leader, right, you can't always close your door. You can't always be unavailable. You, you have to be able to say, thank you, Sally. I appreciate the question. Is it okay if I get back to you and in 20 minutes, I need to finish this task. It's okay to use to finish, create the habit of finishing your work to support your, your team elsewhere. If it's truly important than Sally should say, no, no, sir. This, this can't wait. need to, this is

And you needed to find what those urgency priorities are in your decision matrix for. OK, what what becomes a I drop everything to go take care of this because just because it's important to Sally doesn't us. I mean, it's important to you, but you can't treat it that way either. You have to be a leader and say OK, cool. I appreciate it. Thank you for coming by. Can I get back to you in 15 minutes? Been then you need to be there in 15 minutes, not four hours later.

Steve Doyle (: 18:53

Right. Yep. any other advice you have for people.

Brad Herda (: 19:00

get the book Atomic Habits.

Steve Doyle (: 19:02

that's a good one. That is a good one.

Brad Herda (: 19:04

Um, that's come up my circle as of late too, a little bit. I'm going to start re-listening to that here, uh, this week, um, as I'm out and about tomorrow driving around and it's like, okay, I'll, I'll go back and re-listen to it and write 84,000 was at 84,400. that the, is that the amount of time we get every day per seconds? 60 times, 60 times 24, 86,400. Right? So we all get the same level of.

Steve Doyle (: 19:11

Hmm.

Steve Doyle (: 19:24

Um, don't, it's somewhere in there. 84, 86, something like that. Oh, no.

Brad Herda (: 19:33

Of opportunity is what we do with it that makes the difference. And it's about choices. You can either make the choice to spend four hours in the gym every day or spend time with your family. You get to make that choice. You get to make the choice of do I drive through the drive through today? Get McDonald's for everybody or do I go to the grocery store and make dinner? Well, you get that choice and there and there are points in time in life where. Right, you're going to take the easy path.

Steve Doyle (: 19:55

Mm-hmm.

Steve Doyle (: 20:02

Yes.

Brad Herda (: 20:02

Yep, we are we are going to hockey practice. We're going to soccer practice. We're going to wherever and we got the kids in the car and you know what? Fuck it. I don't want to do that tonight. I'm going to decide to go and get dinner on the way home. Great. You can't just take that as the easy path by default, cause a or go broke today, cause it used to be you could take a family for four to McDonald's for $20. Now you can't walk out of it for less than 60. You know.

Steve Doyle (: 20:14

Mm-hmm.

Steve Doyle (: 20:22

Good.

Steve Doyle (: 20:27

Right.

Brad Herda (: 20:31

So it's just different. when you start thinking about that, okay, for that 60 bucks, could I, could I get a frozen pizza? Could I do mac and cheese at home? Could I do something? Can I pre-plan my meat? Can I create the habits to do something different to allow me to have the funds to go on vacation, to do the thing? I write and it's, it's a domino effect of sequence of events. And it starts with whatever that most important thing is to you along the way.

Steve Doyle (: 20:41

Yep.

Steve Doyle (: 20:58

Mm-hmm, absolutely.

Brad Herda (: 21:00

And it impacts each generation the same. I think it might impact the younger generation differently because there's a lot more, think, mental health awareness and stress over perfection, stress over all those things. We've talked about that before where there's, you know, leaders allowing younger talent to fail is less and less acceptable today because of the pressures of everybody's business.

Steve Doyle (: 21:12

Correct. There is,

Steve Doyle (: 21:28

Mm-hmm. Yep.

Brad Herda (: 21:30

And that is an unfair expectation placed on younger individuals to not let them fail.

Steve Doyle (: 21:40

Well, thank you for indulging me to walk down this path today.

Brad Herda (: 21:46

Not a problem sir. So what's the one habit you are expecting? What's the one thing that you want to go on record for here in middle of May that you are going to commit to a change?

Steve Doyle (: 21:53

thing.

Steve Doyle (: 22:03

feel like my ears are red. He called me out. They are red. The one thing that I am committed to changing.

Brad Herda (: 22:06

I did.

Steve Doyle (: 22:18

There's a lot of things to change.

Brad Herda (: 22:21

There are, I'm just looking for one though. yeah, shiny object, here we go. This is exactly, right, where's my fidget stick? Where the hell is?

Steve Doyle (: 22:23

Yeah, I know you're looking for one and I'm stalling giving you an answer. Shiny object, where's the shiny object? Where is my hand? It's my hand, it's the ink pen right here. Spinning it back and forth. The one thing I truly am working on is trying to be more consistent, being more present in the situation that I'm

Brad Herda (: 22:47

Trying or doing?

Steve Doyle (: 22:49

Right now I'm trying, I'm going to be doing here right after this is. I gotta be a dick bread. No. The thing that I'm doing is working on being more consistent, more present in the current situation I'm in. So like when I'm with my family, be with my family, not thinking about work, not thinking about clients, not thinking about other things other than.

Brad Herda (: 22:56

you

Steve Doyle (: 23:18

being with my family when I'm at work, be fully committed to work, not thinking about, what are we gonna do for dinner? What are we gonna do on a vacation? What are we gonna do for this? Be present in doing the things we need to be doing. And ultimately, it's holding myself accountable to those tasks as it relates to that time that I'm spending wherever it is. If I'm working out, it's 100 % dedicated to working out, not, I'm gonna work out, but I'm just gonna get on the treadmill. I'm gonna walk and...

I'm going to catch up on news. I'm going to catch up on. Stuff I'm going to start brainstorming. I'm going to think about things and I'm going to take notes while I'm walking. Well, yeah, multitasking, but I'm not being fully present in my health of yeah, while I'm walking. No, but you know it's it's giving me a good feel for. You know my feels are good because you know I got a couple things knocked out at the same time.

Brad Herda (: 24:00

in anything. You're not being present on any of it at that point.

Steve Doyle (: 24:13

But at the end of the day, I wasn't being fully present to...

Brad Herda (: 24:16

You get to artificially check three boxes off at one time.

Steve Doyle (: 24:18

Yep. So.

Brad Herda (: 24:21

with a grade of a C minus on all three.

Steve Doyle (: 24:24

Absolutely. So Brad, let's flip it. What's your one thing?

Brad Herda (: 24:29

I knew you were gonna do this and I've been thinking about this as you have been going through your stall tactic. There are actually two things. There's actually three things. Three things that are in my hopper here. One is to drink 100 ounces of water a day.

Steve Doyle (: 24:31

Yeah.

Steve Doyle (: 24:43

Wow, trying to one-up everybody.

Steve Doyle (: 24:55

Okay.

Brad Herda (: 24:57

So that's one thing. am a, I, this is my, this is my vice, right? Diet, the, the soda, the diet soda, that Pepsi, right? That is my, is what I do. I don't do drugs. I don't do, I don't drink a ton. I don't smoke. don't do any of those other things. It's that's really about it. So replacing, trying to figure out a way to replace one or two sodas a day with water consumption instead.

Steve Doyle (: 24:58

Mm-hmm.

Steve Doyle (: 25:02

Yeah, I'll have Pepsi. Yep.

Steve Doyle (: 25:15

Mm-hmm.

Brad Herda (: 25:25

along the way. replace might have to replace two to one ratio, probably water to soda, essentially. so that's one thing. Second thing is to get my, 30 minutes of activity on my watch every day, something done, right? Just 30 minutes of, of exercise or activity of, of structured. This is what I'm going to do outside walk inside walk, go to the gym, whatever. Third thing is to,

Steve Doyle (: 25:31

Yep. Okay.

Steve Doyle (: 25:41

Mm-hmm.

Brad Herda (: 25:54

limit the negative of thoughts, a negative self-talk on the golf course every week, to eliminate that to produce a better mental game. No, so that's the result, right? So I can't get angry at the results. I have to look and analyze why that all happened along the way and not say, hey, you're a dumbass. Hey, you suck or what? Right?

Steve Doyle (: 26:01

Steve Doyle (26:07.734)

Just don't shank it and you won't have those negative thoughts.

I know!

Steve Doyle (: 26:23

Yep.

Brad Herda (: 26:24

putting all that negative energy out into the universe doesn't help it get any better. and the less I do that, the easier it is to recover from, from dumb fuckery. So, that part of it is a objective for the year is to track the negative thought meter on the, on the golf course and work to eliminate that as well. So those are the three things that I got going.

Steve Doyle (: 26:33

Yeah.

Steve Doyle (: 26:45

Mm-hmm.

Steve Doyle (: 26:52

Excellent. Excellent. Excellent. Well, thank you for sharing that.

Brad Herda (: 26:57

So, so that means that I got, let's see one, two, I got like two weeks to figure this out, to get rid of the shit. So I can say by the time this one goes live and that everybody starts texting me, Hey, how's it going? Right. It is, it is going to be a lot of, great. You know, with our tens of listeners following up and saying, Hey, how's that water consumption going? Hey, how's the activity going? Hey, how's being present happening? Right. So, it's there, it's out there. So.

Steve Doyle (: 27:07

I am on track. I am on track for that.

Steve Doyle (: 27:18

Hey, that's Mm-hmm. Yep.

Brad Herda (: 27:27

LFG the accountability. Let's go.

Steve Doyle (: 27:30

Let's go. Let's go, baby. So all right. All right, you do the same later,

Brad Herda (: 27:33

Alright Mr. Doyle, a wonderful rest of your day and we'll talk soon. Thanks.