March 1, 2023
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Steve Alexander: That’s another thing that really puts me on edge just having a bunch of these ideas that I need to hold fast in my head because they’re nowhere else. Once they are somewhere else. I can let them go and I can take a breath.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: Hi, I am Bethany Fishbein. I am the CEO of The Power Practice and Host of Power Hour Optometry Podcast. My guest today is Steve Alexander. And if you’re listening you probably know Steve from his work with Anagram. He’s the Head of Marketing and Strategic Partnerships for that company. But we’re not specifically talking about Anagram today. As I’ve gotten to know Steve, one of the things that I noticed about him in our conversations is that, he has all kinds of little productivity hacks in his life that I am kind of envious of so as I told him as we started to set up this podcast as soon as his name gets mentioned somebody will say “You know he doesn’t have any paper on his desk?” usually I’ll chime into the conversation and say “You know he only have one window open on his computer like one tab?” And it just leads into a cascade of conversation about how Steve’s life works here. So I was super curious. And I think it’s a very relevant conversation for those of us who struggle with productivity, time management, figuring out how to get all of the things done that we’re supposed to do. And I’m looking forward to learning from you, Steve, thank you so much for agreeing to share this.
Steve Alexander: Thank you so much for inviting me on. It’s such an interesting thing to be on the receiving end of this request, somebody thinks you don’t have any paper on your desk. And that’s something that we could maybe learn from. For me, I don’t have any paper on my desk because I can’t keep track of paper. So if something is a physical copy, I will lose it so much faster than if it is a digital copy. And it’s a nice little microcosm for all of the productivity things that we’re going to discuss here. I noticed that something is a weakness of mine and I tried to figure out how to why supplement that so that I don’t make an idiot of myself effectively. That is one example of it. The windows and internet hygiene are other examples but don’t have to get into it one bit at a time hopefully your audience will find this useful. The scaffolding that I’ve spent years building into my work day so that I feel like I can stop at some point something that I think I run into and my wife runs into this as well as if I don’t feel that I’ve been productive enough in a given day I keep working until I hit that imaginary never going to actually hit it threshold but if I structure my day with practical To Do list and I can actually check some of those things off it actually gives me In psychological peace to call it a day.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: We go in into a lot of doctor office’s and you said I’m surprised that people would care about this I hope that people would care about this and we’re in a lot lot of offices with doctors that have a lot of papers on their desk and can’t find anything so I think even if they think they don’t care they should care and if they don’t care I care so we’re here for it. Talks about how you started to get into this study of figuring out what you needed to make things work for you. Is there like a pre-study Steve, who realized that he needed this? Like, how did you start to do it?
Steve Alexander: Absolutely. So pre-study, Steve, I suppose was a giant mess, lots of really great ideas. And that’s still hopefully true. I have a relentless fountain of thoughts and ideas coming to me and I think part of it is I’m interested in everything. I want to know as much about the things that I run into as possible. And I think that stems from what was earlier in my life a latent ADHD diagnosis, I actually have been diagnosed with an being treated for and actually that’s been a big game changer for me is understanding the limits of how my brain actually works and then doing the sort of reverse engineering to understand okay well this is my tendency and these are the end results of following along in those tendencies but these over here have the results that I actually want so how do I take what is instinctive for me what I tend to enjoy or what I’m able to control and adjust those things a little bit at a time so that I’m more inclined to achieve those end goals that i’m shooting for. A quick example, probably one of the more effective books that I’ve read for myself. It’s called “Your brain at work”, I forget the name of the author. But the thesis of the book, at least what I took from the book, most importantly was you’ve only got so much executive function in your brain in a given day. And if you structure your day with that understanding, you can become more effective so in the morning I set out to do all of my executive function things early in the day, and then things that are administrative I do later in the day so when I say executive function things I say something that I have to create from nothing. So if I’m ever looking at a blank sheet of paper that is an executive function task, I’ve got to write an outline, if I’ve got to write an article, if I’ve got to decide what a policy is going to be, or how am I going to approach a particular client. if ever staring at a blank page that creation takes a lot of effort. Administration email replies schedule management that doesn’t take quite as much effort. So if you think about the way that I structure my days earlier in the day, I’m writing, creating, and perhaps editing. And at the end of the day, I’m adjusting admin stuff and doing like the little things that are necessary to do, but don’t take a lot of mental effort to do. If I did the reverse, right? If I did all my admin stuff in the morning, that is still taxing on the brain. So I wouldn’t have the executive function in the afternoon to write or create or do the things that I need to do or I need my full capacity available. So that one structural shift even without any tools, we’re not talking about productivity tools or email management or note taking or keeping your tabs to a minimum. None of that stuff is just a function of what I do and when.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: I got a lot of directions here that we could go, go back first for a minute though. Talk about that you called it Layton ADHD so if you don’t mind In talking about it.
Steve Alexander: Not at all
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: You got diagnosed as an adult?
Steve Alexander: Yes, I self-diagnosed at about 28 So that’s about 10 years ago. When I self-diagnosed but because atleast in my mind because of the ADHD I wasn’t quite able to get over the diagnosis hump anytime I ran into a clerical obstacle with scheduling an appointment or making after my insurance was covered or any of those things, it became too big an obstacle to overcome. So I just didn’t and then I dealt with it and I dealt with it and I dealt with it. And then finally I was able to, during the onset of the pandemic, through telehealth, actually was able to get diagnosed was able to get prescribed and gradually sort of dialed in the right prescription strength the right milligram the right dosage that’s the word and in that dialing in in understanding the difference between my brain when it’s able to focus versus an unmedicated version of my brain I was only able to sit down and actually do the things that I was really passionate about or really liked doing so I could speak about what I do at Anagram with passion because I am actually quite passionate about helping practices do less vision plans stuff if it may sense for them and I’m able to have these In some meetings because this cerebral sort of activation works really well for me I like having these conversations I like talking with intelligent folks. Fortunately my position allows me to do that fairly regularly but in the creation aspect in the admin aspect those things will fall away because they are either really really difficult or boring. And the proper diagnosis and treatment of what was a latent ADHD allowed me to then do those things and do those things with the understanding that it’ll make all of the other things that I do better.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: So when you went into it you kind of realized some things about yourself that led you down the path to start looking and like you said you kind of got stopped or stopped yourself along the way but how did you start to be aware that this was maybe because of different workings of your brain compared to just what I hear a lot of people say is I’m lazy I don’t have patience for that. How did you start to think maybe this was something?
Steve Alexander: At a certain point if I can get a little personal here, I was really disappointed in myself really disappointed in the work that I was putting out, and actually perhaps more accurately really disappointed in the work that I didn’t get to that I wasn’t able to complete or to complete to my satisfaction so through some exploration thinking about if I spend all this time working and they spent all this time staring at a screen and then at the other end of it I’m disappointed in what I’ve done was probably something wrong there and then I started exploring possible causes and then running across ADHD and reading the symptoms and how laughably perfect the symptoms describe literally everything that I feel to the point where I was doing that telehealth exam. And the nurse practitioner that diagnose me started laughing like, how have you made it this far with your like, cartoonish level of ADHD, which I thought, really unprofessional lady, but it was good. It was great. She was really warm about it. And it made me feel better as something that we could address. And from the time, when I started doing sort of executive level work, to the time that actually got appropriately treated for ADHD, I still managed to build a lot of scaffolding in place that allowed me to at least be productive, maybe not as productive as I am now. But that scaffolding and the ability to understand what I need to support myself in order to accomplish the work that was really educational for me, and I think quite formative.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: So as you start to talk about that scaffolding, and I so appreciate your self-description of being a relentless fountain of thoughts and ideas. And I wrote it down because I was like, yeah that. What do you do with all of those ideas? When you have them? I’m guessing at any moment of day or night, you’re driving, you’re in the shower, or you’re talking about something else? Where do you store those?
Steve Alexander: I have a couple of places. One is a digital notetaking resource called Notion. The website is notion.so. It’s free. There’s a day mode and a night mode. It’s a really great note-taking app. There are other note-taking apps that are really good Evernote or OneNote or Apple notes for the folks that use Apple products, but a digital note-taking service. What I look for in one of those is that it is searchable. And I can create pages and nesting pages and lists and nesting lists so that I never have to look at too much at a time in order to identify what I want to work on. And I work in categories quite a bit. So my notion board has business ideas, and anagrams specific ideas, personal ideas, household projects that I share with my wife so that is we share a notion board we share a shopping list there so anytime either of us notices something is missing it goes there and we both have access to the list when we go shopping so it kind of works that way and that’s where my primary sort of lists go. A secondary place I go to give ideas and those are the sillier Once I say them out loud to my wife and then she says “we’ll put them on the whiteboard” and then she does nothing with it and somehow I know she does nothing with it but her saying we’ll put it on the whiteboard makes me feel better.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: So there’s not an actual whiteboard?
Steve Alexander: there’s not an actual whiteboard
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: So this is the whiteboard of your imagination
Steve Alexander: Yes
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: Okay I like that.
Steve Alexander: That’s right, but she says it was such a nice tone that I believe some where this idea is going to exist again.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: So those who they’re like “Hey Honey, How about we get a camper van and be digital nomads up in the Canadian Rockies put out on the whiteboard”.
Steve Alexander: Exactly right, yeah. Like what if we started a band that okay kind and but she is really great about it and another first thing that I learned in your Brain at Work that books that I referenced earlier is the amount of strain that you’re brain goes through to hold a thought in it so if you have this idea whatever the idea is let’s say I want to grow big red beard if I keep thinking about it you have to continue You only put effort in to keep that thought are in your head once you write it down though we’re putting in a digital note say it out loud to somebody. Have another place for that idea to be you can let it go. You don’t have to hold it steady in your brain. And that’s another thing that really puts me on edge just having a bunch of these ideas that I need to hold fast in my head, because they’re nowhere else. Once they are somewhere else, I can let them go. And I can take a breath.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: And that frees up some room for other stuff
Steve Alexander: that frees up some room for other stuff
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: The strategy of doing your creative work your executive function work first, I get it. I feel what you’re saying when you’re talking about that, the stress of starting with a blank page and needing to write or create is a lot what happens when you know that’s what you’re supposed to do first, and you really just don’t feel like it.
Steve Alexander: It’s a good question, something that I run into so I’m definitely not perfect. There are days when I set out and I stare at that blank page for a half hour and then I just have to move on to something else because it’s just not coming. And that’s typically what I do is I move on to something else, or I think about how do I break this into smaller chunks. Something that I find really valuable for me is to do something along the lines of setting intentions for the day, I like to shower in the morning when I’m in the shower and I have some music playing and then I just start sinking setting out here’s what I know I have to do here the thing that I’m probably going to work on first and then I start noodling about it not committing anything into paper obviously I’m in the shower but I’m thinking about how I’m going to approach this idea and It kind of gets thoughts flowing and then I typically will take maybe 10 minutes to meditate before I sit down at the desk and meditation is just centering, nothing major, nothing terribly involved. I don’t have to light incense or anything like that I sit down on a couch that I have in my office, close my eyes. I use a meditation technique called noting where it’s literally just as I’m breathing in, I think the words breathing in and as I’m breathing out, I think the words breathing out. And the function of thinking those words in and out isolates those is the only thoughts that I have. And as a 10-minute practice, it centers me before I sit down at the computer and start looking at a blank page. It’s setting myself up to understand what it is that I’m working on. Allowing my brains have time to sort of preheat and think about it, and then doing a little bit of meditation to get alert and understand and then I have coffee, and Adderall, and then I’m off.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: Do you schedule your time and blocks? Like, talk about your scheduling because I know that’s a big deal for you.
Steve Alexander: Yes, I scheduled my morning for executive function so I block off meetings for that and then at the end of my day every day I have three daily recurring meetings and they are gym time, writing time, and reading time. So for gym time is any exercise, whatever you’re feeling I happened I really like weightlifting so I go for a walk I go to my gym I lift weights I come back And then I do read reading time and then writing time. Reading time is any kind of intake of information or literally reading you know if I’m reading a book or watching a movie or whatever but reading time is limited for edifying stuff not typically entertaining stuff and then writing time is for any kind of creation that is not work related so I do some writing as a hobby when the pandemic started I started fiddling with digital graphic design as a little hobby so I do that too but any kind of creation that is not work-related those blocks at the end of the day are our separation from work to not work and because I work from home I find that incredibly valuable.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: What’s the total time for those three banding meetings?
Steve Alexander: It’s four hours, two hours at the gym, one hour reading, and one-hour writing. I don’t stick to those strictly I’m not there for two hours every time I’m not reading for an hour every time or writing for an hour every time but the reminders are really consistent and then I read for whatever time I have the capacity for or I write for whatever time I have to capacity for but having those reminders being really consistent so like with any habit you start to have pulls toward them I start to want to go to the gym I start to want to read I start to want to create and that’s been really helpful for me for that reason
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: What about scheduling your workday? Obviously there’s things that are scheduled like we had this on the calendar today you have a meeting, you have a webinar or you have a client call, how much of your non-scheduled time is scheduled? Does that make sense? What I’m asking?
Steve Alexander: Yes. And I think it’s a good technique for some, I don’t schedule my time that way, because the way my calendar works, I have pretty open scheduling. So I allow people to just put time on my calendar. Because I work in partnerships. It’s easy for my schedule to be a little bit flexible that way. So normally, I set out to do all the executive work in the morning and people don’t tend to schedule on my calendar in the morning. People don’t seem to want to have these kinds of high-level conversations early on in the day. So for that reason, I’m fairly safe. But I do understand wanting to build those things like I think The Four Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss, suggests that you have one period every week to answer emails. If that works for you. Awesome. My emails tend to be fairly urgent and only I can respond to them so I can’t really carve out those kinds of things but when I am sitting and writing a given thing or creating a given thing I have focus mode on in my computer so I’m not receiving notifications I don’t receive notification is on my phone anymore I’ve turned all of them off because they are a huge distraction for me. And then when I hop out off whatever it was I’m working on then I go check the email but actually email. This seems like a perfectly good opportunity to end to use another tool that I’ve only recently started using but I’m absolutely in love with it’s called “Superhuman” It is a premium email tool is like 30 bucks a month so it is not cheap but it is an email tool with the explicit goal of getting you to inbox zero which means they want to get every email out of your inbox one way or another. So the way you do that is either by responding and marking that you’re done with it, or with a keystroke, you hit the letter H, and then you mark, send this to me tomorrow, and then it’s out of your inbox. You don’t have to worry about it. And then it comes back to you at 8am, tomorrow, or whatever time you set, and then you’ve got a fresh chance to look at it, decide whether or not you’re going to work on it today. And if you are great, you leave it in your inbox, you work on it, and you mark it as done. Or if you can’t work on today, you push it off to the next day, it has been a tremendously effective tool for prioritizing the responses to the emails that I have.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: So you’re sitting here, it’s the morning of your focus tools off but when you close your computer at the end of yesterday, you are at inbox zero.
Steve Alexander: That’s right.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: I can’t even tell you how foreign that is. To me, I think I’m at inbox 41,667.
Steve Alexander: So my personal email is like, my personal email is very much like that. Absolutely.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: I mean, I’ve paid virtual assistants from Sri Lanka to get in and just try to clean out some of my emails just to achieve that because I can’t delete them.
Steve Alexander: Right. So having a toolkit specifically devoted to do a thing helps you do that thing. Right now. The way most email platforms are is they’re there to deliver your emails when they’re sent. deliver ads to you whether you want them or not and that’s it but this one Superhuman I don’t work for them I’m not being paid by some or anything but I really enjoyed the email tool that they put together and something that is maybe specific to me maybe there’s a lot of folks in your audience that can relate to this when I’m on keyboard I don’t like reaching for my mouse when I’m on my mouse I don’t like reaching for my keyboard I have to switch and that delay is too much for me. So this email platform is built for keystrokes is built that you don’t have to pick up your mouse to do anything and it is really clever about how it teaches you to use it and I think this is an interesting sort of outlet worry for the rest of the industry Is everyone in every office has a series of tools that are available to them at your disposal right now your EHR is a really good example most practices have some kind of EHR in their office and many of those EHRs have a bug bunch of fairly robust tools that are never used and if they are used. they are used wrong, inventory management for example when you’re talking about your frames. Officemate it’s been 12 years since I’ve used officemate, but 12 years ago when I was using officemate they had integration with frames data they had purchase ordering systems available they had inventory reconciliation available and the number of practices that I’ve talked to who use those kinds of things with any regularity I can count on one hand and one of them is because I used to work there.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: I would absolutely agree with that I see that in practices, and I live it in my practice. You use what you use and you don’t use what you don’t use and then you have it long enough that you forget that what you don’t use even exists so then you’re sitting around thinking you know somebody should come up with a system for inventory management in the meantime it’s sitting they’re right on your computer and you don’t have it.
Steve Alexander: that’s right
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: I think the idea to have a system or have a tool first something that you’ve determined is important to you and lets you function better like a $30 a month is a bargain for that.
Steve Alexander: That’s right, I think that’s the way that it helps me to look at it that way is everything It kind of costs something, and often not doing something costs waw more than the thing that I’m about to pay for but there’s no way to calculate the opportunity costs not really. But for me I know that for as long as I’ve been using Superhuman, I because I’m more productive and I’m a be able to sleep better It is better sleep worth 30 bucks a month, absolutely all day long every single day. But that’s not going to be the case for everybody. But I think thinking about the tools that you have, and the actual costs associated with them is a great way to justify this kind of thing. Because if I’m just concerned with ha it’s 30 bucks a month, can I just make my brain work better? Spoiler alert, no, you can’t.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: I know, we’re not specifically talking about it. But that’s a process or a system, like Anagram too, there’s this thing and you want to do it. And like, you could make these phone calls and print out papers and put them in envelopes. But when there’s a system that makes it easy, you sign up and you use it. And that’s worth the cost to the staff time. And whatever other time would be taken to figure it out. You guys already did it.
Steve Alexander: Absolutely right. Thank you for that. The way that we look at it is if you’re going to see a patient on an out-of-network basis to find out their benefits without Anagram, you have to sit on hold with a vision plan for around 30 minutes. And they may or may not give you the right information depending on the training of the individual on the other end of the phone. So that’s one element of it, then the claim submission for your staff who’s not familiar with filling out a CMS 1500 form, certainly for the patient who’s even less familiar with it to fill it out and get reimbursed appropriately. Not only is that time-consuming and confusing, but at the end of it, they may not end up getting paid at all. So for the comfort in knowing that it’s been digitally submitted and digitally accessed. The eligibility information, reimbursement information, there’s a lot of peace of mind that comes with that. Not to mention that you know, if you capture any one patient with Anagram that you wouldn’t have seen otherwise, it pays for itself every month. But there’s that opportunity cost of it. Something that I spent a fair amount of time talking about is when a patient calls in a practices out of network with their plan. The conversation typically sounds like “Hey, do you accept ABC vision plan?” And then the office says “no”. And then both sides hang up the phone, not recognizing the what the patient was actually saying is, “Hey, I want to give you money”. And then your receptionist says “No thanks”. And then you hung up the phone.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: Right
Steve Alexander: That opportunity cost is really difficult to measure but happens in every practice across the country.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: Absolutely. So I’m still on inbox zero because again, it feels so unrealistic to me almost as unrealistic as having nothing on my desk. So I know you started in the beginning and you said I don’t have papers because I can’t handle that. Where are the things that everybody else would have as papers? Where does that stuff go?
Steve Alexander: I make digital copies of it. Step one when I have any kind of papers like as an example. I’ve had some papers on my desk for this conversation. So I was visiting the Optician Association of America in Asheville last week, and they provided their attendee list for me in the form of paper printout. So I digitally scanned this, put it into a PDF and then through Adobe’s image to text, translated it into a text, put it into a spreadsheet, and now I have it as a CSV form. So this now is just recycling. I have all of the information that this had for me and now I will put it in the shredder I say recycling this goes to get shredded so that my wife can feed her worms.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: Worms like compost?
Steve Alexander: Worm and compost, yeah.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: They love shredded stuff we’ll do a summer episode on composting we’ll get your wife on, I don’t know that that’s Power Hour Optometry content but I would also be interested in that one.
Steve Alexander: Awesome, well I’ll tell you about the countertop compost maker we have also.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: Okay, we’ll put that on the whiteboard.
Steve Alexander: Perfect
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: So you get the mail, right the mail comes there is a pile of mail things
Steve Alexander: For me, most of the mail that I receive is already garbage actually because everything that I’m obligated to I have set up for auto payment and set up digitally so I have calendar dates on the 12th and the 23rd of every month to go through all of the things that I’m obligated to and make sure everything is being taken out appropriately and make sure that I wasn’t overcharged for anything and that none of my credit cards have expired. Me personally if I were to wait for mail to come to me and then respond to something that’s on paper it would never happen so I have it set to auto-pay and paperless statements as much as I can because I’d rather not get mail. So I know basically anything that comes into my mailbox goes straight to the shredder.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: For the things that do come in paper form and you scan them and before they make it to the compost bin
Steve Alexander: That’s right
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: You have a digital filing system or in your computer how will you know where to go back and find In that list when you’re looking for it three or four months from now.
Steve Alexander: it is is about having a good filing system, so whenever I save any document I save it in the same kind of format it is full four-year date dot months dot day. So that anytime I look through any of my files or all of my files they are going to be sorted by the day that I saved them not the day that I modified them because Windows are Apple updates like the last time you open them. But if the name of the file is always able to be scheduled by date then I never run into that issue and I also have very careful folders were I have finances and personal finances and business finances are separate so it takes probably 50% more time to organize what I’m doing that to justs scanner but on the back end of it, I’m never at a loss for where are my stuff is.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: And you’re putting that more time and once
Steve Alexander: that’s right
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: So to do with that first time takes that little bit longer but when you go to find it, I know there’s times where I’m like “what did I call that?” and I’m in my Google Drive or whatever searching meeting and 400,000 things come up in that day I was in a weird mood even called it a discussion or something else and it’s like really what was I thinking so then I change it now it’s called meeting discussion in case I remember it the other way next time.
Steve Alexander: That’s right, one of the traps that I always seem to fall into is putting something to somewhere where I’ll remember as opposed to where it belongs. That small distinction has changed everything for me
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: So talk a little bit more about that It’s supposed to be where it belongs is that the right question?
Steve Alexander: Yeah, so let’s say like my keys right, when I walk in for the last 20 years of my life I’ve had my cell phone in my front left pocket, my key It’s in my front right pocket, my wallet and my back right pocket always say in place what I’ve learned is it’s a functional my condition is, when I stand up, one thing that I always do is I tap each of the pockets. It’s not an OCD thing, it’s not something I need to do so that I’m not obsessive about it. It’s just me checking to make sure everything is in those pockets. When I walk into the house, we have a place for the keys. And if I don’t hang my keys there, and like I come back out, and I see that they’re not there, suddenly, I’m in a panic, like, where are my keys, I need to go find my keys and whatever else I was doing has been derailed, because they’re not where they belong. So it is deciding like where the best place is for a given thing, and putting in the work to make sure it’s there. I don’t know if you do this, but something that I do is I talk about myself in the past and future tenses. So if I’m putting the keys where they belong, it is so future Steve doesn’t go crazy. And if present Steve is going nuts, past Steve failed him. It’s kind of thinking about the things that I’m about to do are going to affect me one way or the other. Do I want to be mad at me in the future? The answer to that is always no. I would rather not be mad at me if I can avoid it.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: And that makes sense. People who I talked to you have heard me say it before, but I actually learned it in a how to organize your Google Drive class. Which I attended the first virtual lesson of and then didn’t finish but the first virtual Lesson, one of the things that she said and the thing that has stuck with me and made the course worth it was be considerate of your future self. And when I think about it like that is when I do those things, and it’s everything right, it’s hanging the keys up. It’s taking that couple of minutes to file something, it’s meal prepping, it’s cutting up the vegetables so that there’ll be right there in the fridge when you go get them.
Steve Alexander: staying hydrated.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: Staying hydrated, putting your gym clothes out the night before, it’s making the next day smoother and easier for future you
Steve Alexander: That’s right
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: I didn’t always do that but it’s something that I absolutely am aware of and doing more it’s a challenge of discipline right sometimes you know it’s the right thing to do and then you do it and sometimes you know it’s the right thing to do and in the moment have that battle all in your head and choose not to do it anyway now That’s the tough part.
Steve Alexander: Absolutely but I think that you’re at least having the battle is already kind of a victory from my perspective as somebody who went through most of them my life never even having that fight I never thought about future Steve, I feel like whatever problems I was causing were problems for future Steve to deal with and you’re absolutely right sometimes you’re going to know the right thing to do know what you should be doing and not do it anyway and that’s certainly not ideal but you’re human you’re not going to be perfect expecting you to be perfect when you’ve decided to do any kind of change in your life is a recipe for disappoint meant and then disappointment leads for yo not continue doing that work. But if your goal is to be slightly better every day which is like a reasonable, attainable goal to be slightly better every day that’s something you can accomplish. If your goal is to be perfect tomorrow you’re going to fail. There are no two ways about it so aim at something that is attainable and celebrate when you hit it don’t forget to say like “Hey good job you did it!”, like you had all the water you’re supposed to have today you got eight hours of sleep, you went to the gym, you had some vegetables, you didn’t stop at the drive-thru on your way home or whatever your goals are but actually celebrate so understand. There’s a book written by a controversial author so I’ll spare the thought but in it there’s one rule that he suggests that I really like actually, is to treat yourself like a person you care about them and it’s often easier for folks to give good advice to people who are not them. Have you tried getting some sleep or have you tried getting enough water or how about some vitamins or whatever your nutrition. It’s easy to give that advice to someone else when you see that they’re struggling but it’s really difficult to see that you yourself are struggling. And it’s even more difficult to give yourself that kind of advice but if you think about yourself like treat yourself like a friend that you care about your behavior toward yourself auto change and I know this doesn’t directly tie into productivity but It absolutely does actually
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: It absolutely does because that feeling that you described in the beginning is kind of why you’ve done all of this work. To be able to shut off at the end of the day to be able to have a transition from work to not work especially when you work at home and to go from constantly feeling unsatisfied at the end of the day to feeling like you accomplished something is is really a priceless gift that you would pay anything to give to anybody you love. And so some of these things to be able to give that to yourself is extraordinary. So Steve, thank you I feel like we could talk more and more and more on this and we’ve kind of run out of time but I just want to say I so appreciate you sharing the personal aspects of your story sharing your diagnosis with the optometric airwaves here and some of the tools and structures and the things that you’ve used to create a scaffolding to take care of yourself and give the things that you need that I think a lot of people listening will recognize the things that they need and hopefully do the same for themselves as well. So thank you so much for doing this this is great!
Steve Alexander: Absolutely, My pleasure. Thanks for having me, Bethany.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: Thank you and Steve if somebody heard the thing about Anagram and wants to learn more about that where do they find you?
Steve Alexander: Our website is anagram.care that’s the straight website. If you have questions for me directly Steve@anagram.care. I’m usually available, but if it’s in the morning, I’m doing executive stuff so your emails gonna have to wait.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: I love it thank you again and for more information on Power Practice you can find us online at powerpractice.com. Thank you so much for listening!
Read the Transcription
Steve Alexander: That’s another thing that really puts me on edge just having a bunch of these ideas that I need to hold fast in my head because they’re nowhere else. Once they are somewhere else. I can let them go and I can take a breath.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: Hi, I am Bethany Fishbein. I am the CEO of The Power Practice and Host of Power Hour Optometry Podcast. My guest today is Steve Alexander. And if you’re listening you probably know Steve from his work with Anagram. He’s the Head of Marketing and Strategic Partnerships for that company. But we’re not specifically talking about Anagram today. As I’ve gotten to know Steve, one of the things that I noticed about him in our conversations is that, he has all kinds of little productivity hacks in his life that I am kind of envious of so as I told him as we started to set up this podcast as soon as his name gets mentioned somebody will say “You know he doesn’t have any paper on his desk?” usually I’ll chime into the conversation and say “You know he only have one window open on his computer like one tab?” And it just leads into a cascade of conversation about how Steve’s life works here. So I was super curious. And I think it’s a very relevant conversation for those of us who struggle with productivity, time management, figuring out how to get all of the things done that we’re supposed to do. And I’m looking forward to learning from you, Steve, thank you so much for agreeing to share this.
Steve Alexander: Thank you so much for inviting me on. It’s such an interesting thing to be on the receiving end of this request, somebody thinks you don’t have any paper on your desk. And that’s something that we could maybe learn from. For me, I don’t have any paper on my desk because I can’t keep track of paper. So if something is a physical copy, I will lose it so much faster than if it is a digital copy. And it’s a nice little microcosm for all of the productivity things that we’re going to discuss here. I noticed that something is a weakness of mine and I tried to figure out how to why supplement that so that I don’t make an idiot of myself effectively. That is one example of it. The windows and internet hygiene are other examples but don’t have to get into it one bit at a time hopefully your audience will find this useful. The scaffolding that I’ve spent years building into my work day so that I feel like I can stop at some point something that I think I run into and my wife runs into this as well as if I don’t feel that I’ve been productive enough in a given day I keep working until I hit that imaginary never going to actually hit it threshold but if I structure my day with practical To Do list and I can actually check some of those things off it actually gives me In psychological peace to call it a day.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: We go in into a lot of doctor office’s and you said I’m surprised that people would care about this I hope that people would care about this and we’re in a lot lot of offices with doctors that have a lot of papers on their desk and can’t find anything so I think even if they think they don’t care they should care and if they don’t care I care so we’re here for it. Talks about how you started to get into this study of figuring out what you needed to make things work for you. Is there like a pre-study Steve, who realized that he needed this? Like, how did you start to do it?
Steve Alexander: Absolutely. So pre-study, Steve, I suppose was a giant mess, lots of really great ideas. And that’s still hopefully true. I have a relentless fountain of thoughts and ideas coming to me and I think part of it is I’m interested in everything. I want to know as much about the things that I run into as possible. And I think that stems from what was earlier in my life a latent ADHD diagnosis, I actually have been diagnosed with an being treated for and actually that’s been a big game changer for me is understanding the limits of how my brain actually works and then doing the sort of reverse engineering to understand okay well this is my tendency and these are the end results of following along in those tendencies but these over here have the results that I actually want so how do I take what is instinctive for me what I tend to enjoy or what I’m able to control and adjust those things a little bit at a time so that I’m more inclined to achieve those end goals that i’m shooting for. A quick example, probably one of the more effective books that I’ve read for myself. It’s called “Your brain at work”, I forget the name of the author. But the thesis of the book, at least what I took from the book, most importantly was you’ve only got so much executive function in your brain in a given day. And if you structure your day with that understanding, you can become more effective so in the morning I set out to do all of my executive function things early in the day, and then things that are administrative I do later in the day so when I say executive function things I say something that I have to create from nothing. So if I’m ever looking at a blank sheet of paper that is an executive function task, I’ve got to write an outline, if I’ve got to write an article, if I’ve got to decide what a policy is going to be, or how am I going to approach a particular client. if ever staring at a blank page that creation takes a lot of effort. Administration email replies schedule management that doesn’t take quite as much effort. So if you think about the way that I structure my days earlier in the day, I’m writing, creating, and perhaps editing. And at the end of the day, I’m adjusting admin stuff and doing like the little things that are necessary to do, but don’t take a lot of mental effort to do. If I did the reverse, right? If I did all my admin stuff in the morning, that is still taxing on the brain. So I wouldn’t have the executive function in the afternoon to write or create or do the things that I need to do or I need my full capacity available. So that one structural shift even without any tools, we’re not talking about productivity tools or email management or note taking or keeping your tabs to a minimum. None of that stuff is just a function of what I do and when.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: I got a lot of directions here that we could go, go back first for a minute though. Talk about that you called it Layton ADHD so if you don’t mind In talking about it.
Steve Alexander: Not at all
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: You got diagnosed as an adult?
Steve Alexander: Yes, I self-diagnosed at about 28 So that’s about 10 years ago. When I self-diagnosed but because atleast in my mind because of the ADHD I wasn’t quite able to get over the diagnosis hump anytime I ran into a clerical obstacle with scheduling an appointment or making after my insurance was covered or any of those things, it became too big an obstacle to overcome. So I just didn’t and then I dealt with it and I dealt with it and I dealt with it. And then finally I was able to, during the onset of the pandemic, through telehealth, actually was able to get diagnosed was able to get prescribed and gradually sort of dialed in the right prescription strength the right milligram the right dosage that’s the word and in that dialing in in understanding the difference between my brain when it’s able to focus versus an unmedicated version of my brain I was only able to sit down and actually do the things that I was really passionate about or really liked doing so I could speak about what I do at Anagram with passion because I am actually quite passionate about helping practices do less vision plans stuff if it may sense for them and I’m able to have these In some meetings because this cerebral sort of activation works really well for me I like having these conversations I like talking with intelligent folks. Fortunately my position allows me to do that fairly regularly but in the creation aspect in the admin aspect those things will fall away because they are either really really difficult or boring. And the proper diagnosis and treatment of what was a latent ADHD allowed me to then do those things and do those things with the understanding that it’ll make all of the other things that I do better.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: So when you went into it you kind of realized some things about yourself that led you down the path to start looking and like you said you kind of got stopped or stopped yourself along the way but how did you start to be aware that this was maybe because of different workings of your brain compared to just what I hear a lot of people say is I’m lazy I don’t have patience for that. How did you start to think maybe this was something?
Steve Alexander: At a certain point if I can get a little personal here, I was really disappointed in myself really disappointed in the work that I was putting out, and actually perhaps more accurately really disappointed in the work that I didn’t get to that I wasn’t able to complete or to complete to my satisfaction so through some exploration thinking about if I spend all this time working and they spent all this time staring at a screen and then at the other end of it I’m disappointed in what I’ve done was probably something wrong there and then I started exploring possible causes and then running across ADHD and reading the symptoms and how laughably perfect the symptoms describe literally everything that I feel to the point where I was doing that telehealth exam. And the nurse practitioner that diagnose me started laughing like, how have you made it this far with your like, cartoonish level of ADHD, which I thought, really unprofessional lady, but it was good. It was great. She was really warm about it. And it made me feel better as something that we could address. And from the time, when I started doing sort of executive level work, to the time that actually got appropriately treated for ADHD, I still managed to build a lot of scaffolding in place that allowed me to at least be productive, maybe not as productive as I am now. But that scaffolding and the ability to understand what I need to support myself in order to accomplish the work that was really educational for me, and I think quite formative.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: So as you start to talk about that scaffolding, and I so appreciate your self-description of being a relentless fountain of thoughts and ideas. And I wrote it down because I was like, yeah that. What do you do with all of those ideas? When you have them? I’m guessing at any moment of day or night, you’re driving, you’re in the shower, or you’re talking about something else? Where do you store those?
Steve Alexander: I have a couple of places. One is a digital notetaking resource called Notion. The website is notion.so. It’s free. There’s a day mode and a night mode. It’s a really great note-taking app. There are other note-taking apps that are really good Evernote or OneNote or Apple notes for the folks that use Apple products, but a digital note-taking service. What I look for in one of those is that it is searchable. And I can create pages and nesting pages and lists and nesting lists so that I never have to look at too much at a time in order to identify what I want to work on. And I work in categories quite a bit. So my notion board has business ideas, and anagrams specific ideas, personal ideas, household projects that I share with my wife so that is we share a notion board we share a shopping list there so anytime either of us notices something is missing it goes there and we both have access to the list when we go shopping so it kind of works that way and that’s where my primary sort of lists go. A secondary place I go to give ideas and those are the sillier Once I say them out loud to my wife and then she says “we’ll put them on the whiteboard” and then she does nothing with it and somehow I know she does nothing with it but her saying we’ll put it on the whiteboard makes me feel better.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: So there’s not an actual whiteboard?
Steve Alexander: there’s not an actual whiteboard
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: So this is the whiteboard of your imagination
Steve Alexander: Yes
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: Okay I like that.
Steve Alexander: That’s right, but she says it was such a nice tone that I believe some where this idea is going to exist again.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: So those who they’re like “Hey Honey, How about we get a camper van and be digital nomads up in the Canadian Rockies put out on the whiteboard”.
Steve Alexander: Exactly right, yeah. Like what if we started a band that okay kind and but she is really great about it and another first thing that I learned in your Brain at Work that books that I referenced earlier is the amount of strain that you’re brain goes through to hold a thought in it so if you have this idea whatever the idea is let’s say I want to grow big red beard if I keep thinking about it you have to continue You only put effort in to keep that thought are in your head once you write it down though we’re putting in a digital note say it out loud to somebody. Have another place for that idea to be you can let it go. You don’t have to hold it steady in your brain. And that’s another thing that really puts me on edge just having a bunch of these ideas that I need to hold fast in my head, because they’re nowhere else. Once they are somewhere else, I can let them go. And I can take a breath.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: And that frees up some room for other stuff
Steve Alexander: that frees up some room for other stuff
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: The strategy of doing your creative work your executive function work first, I get it. I feel what you’re saying when you’re talking about that, the stress of starting with a blank page and needing to write or create is a lot what happens when you know that’s what you’re supposed to do first, and you really just don’t feel like it.
Steve Alexander: It’s a good question, something that I run into so I’m definitely not perfect. There are days when I set out and I stare at that blank page for a half hour and then I just have to move on to something else because it’s just not coming. And that’s typically what I do is I move on to something else, or I think about how do I break this into smaller chunks. Something that I find really valuable for me is to do something along the lines of setting intentions for the day, I like to shower in the morning when I’m in the shower and I have some music playing and then I just start sinking setting out here’s what I know I have to do here the thing that I’m probably going to work on first and then I start noodling about it not committing anything into paper obviously I’m in the shower but I’m thinking about how I’m going to approach this idea and It kind of gets thoughts flowing and then I typically will take maybe 10 minutes to meditate before I sit down at the desk and meditation is just centering, nothing major, nothing terribly involved. I don’t have to light incense or anything like that I sit down on a couch that I have in my office, close my eyes. I use a meditation technique called noting where it’s literally just as I’m breathing in, I think the words breathing in and as I’m breathing out, I think the words breathing out. And the function of thinking those words in and out isolates those is the only thoughts that I have. And as a 10-minute practice, it centers me before I sit down at the computer and start looking at a blank page. It’s setting myself up to understand what it is that I’m working on. Allowing my brains have time to sort of preheat and think about it, and then doing a little bit of meditation to get alert and understand and then I have coffee, and Adderall, and then I’m off.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: Do you schedule your time and blocks? Like, talk about your scheduling because I know that’s a big deal for you.
Steve Alexander: Yes, I scheduled my morning for executive function so I block off meetings for that and then at the end of my day every day I have three daily recurring meetings and they are gym time, writing time, and reading time. So for gym time is any exercise, whatever you’re feeling I happened I really like weightlifting so I go for a walk I go to my gym I lift weights I come back And then I do read reading time and then writing time. Reading time is any kind of intake of information or literally reading you know if I’m reading a book or watching a movie or whatever but reading time is limited for edifying stuff not typically entertaining stuff and then writing time is for any kind of creation that is not work related so I do some writing as a hobby when the pandemic started I started fiddling with digital graphic design as a little hobby so I do that too but any kind of creation that is not work-related those blocks at the end of the day are our separation from work to not work and because I work from home I find that incredibly valuable.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: What’s the total time for those three banding meetings?
Steve Alexander: It’s four hours, two hours at the gym, one hour reading, and one-hour writing. I don’t stick to those strictly I’m not there for two hours every time I’m not reading for an hour every time or writing for an hour every time but the reminders are really consistent and then I read for whatever time I have the capacity for or I write for whatever time I have to capacity for but having those reminders being really consistent so like with any habit you start to have pulls toward them I start to want to go to the gym I start to want to read I start to want to create and that’s been really helpful for me for that reason
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: What about scheduling your workday? Obviously there’s things that are scheduled like we had this on the calendar today you have a meeting, you have a webinar or you have a client call, how much of your non-scheduled time is scheduled? Does that make sense? What I’m asking?
Steve Alexander: Yes. And I think it’s a good technique for some, I don’t schedule my time that way, because the way my calendar works, I have pretty open scheduling. So I allow people to just put time on my calendar. Because I work in partnerships. It’s easy for my schedule to be a little bit flexible that way. So normally, I set out to do all the executive work in the morning and people don’t tend to schedule on my calendar in the morning. People don’t seem to want to have these kinds of high-level conversations early on in the day. So for that reason, I’m fairly safe. But I do understand wanting to build those things like I think The Four Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss, suggests that you have one period every week to answer emails. If that works for you. Awesome. My emails tend to be fairly urgent and only I can respond to them so I can’t really carve out those kinds of things but when I am sitting and writing a given thing or creating a given thing I have focus mode on in my computer so I’m not receiving notifications I don’t receive notification is on my phone anymore I’ve turned all of them off because they are a huge distraction for me. And then when I hop out off whatever it was I’m working on then I go check the email but actually email. This seems like a perfectly good opportunity to end to use another tool that I’ve only recently started using but I’m absolutely in love with it’s called “Superhuman” It is a premium email tool is like 30 bucks a month so it is not cheap but it is an email tool with the explicit goal of getting you to inbox zero which means they want to get every email out of your inbox one way or another. So the way you do that is either by responding and marking that you’re done with it, or with a keystroke, you hit the letter H, and then you mark, send this to me tomorrow, and then it’s out of your inbox. You don’t have to worry about it. And then it comes back to you at 8am, tomorrow, or whatever time you set, and then you’ve got a fresh chance to look at it, decide whether or not you’re going to work on it today. And if you are great, you leave it in your inbox, you work on it, and you mark it as done. Or if you can’t work on today, you push it off to the next day, it has been a tremendously effective tool for prioritizing the responses to the emails that I have.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: So you’re sitting here, it’s the morning of your focus tools off but when you close your computer at the end of yesterday, you are at inbox zero.
Steve Alexander: That’s right.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: I can’t even tell you how foreign that is. To me, I think I’m at inbox 41,667.
Steve Alexander: So my personal email is like, my personal email is very much like that. Absolutely.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: I mean, I’ve paid virtual assistants from Sri Lanka to get in and just try to clean out some of my emails just to achieve that because I can’t delete them.
Steve Alexander: Right. So having a toolkit specifically devoted to do a thing helps you do that thing. Right now. The way most email platforms are is they’re there to deliver your emails when they’re sent. deliver ads to you whether you want them or not and that’s it but this one Superhuman I don’t work for them I’m not being paid by some or anything but I really enjoyed the email tool that they put together and something that is maybe specific to me maybe there’s a lot of folks in your audience that can relate to this when I’m on keyboard I don’t like reaching for my mouse when I’m on my mouse I don’t like reaching for my keyboard I have to switch and that delay is too much for me. So this email platform is built for keystrokes is built that you don’t have to pick up your mouse to do anything and it is really clever about how it teaches you to use it and I think this is an interesting sort of outlet worry for the rest of the industry Is everyone in every office has a series of tools that are available to them at your disposal right now your EHR is a really good example most practices have some kind of EHR in their office and many of those EHRs have a bug bunch of fairly robust tools that are never used and if they are used. they are used wrong, inventory management for example when you’re talking about your frames. Officemate it’s been 12 years since I’ve used officemate, but 12 years ago when I was using officemate they had integration with frames data they had purchase ordering systems available they had inventory reconciliation available and the number of practices that I’ve talked to who use those kinds of things with any regularity I can count on one hand and one of them is because I used to work there.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: I would absolutely agree with that I see that in practices, and I live it in my practice. You use what you use and you don’t use what you don’t use and then you have it long enough that you forget that what you don’t use even exists so then you’re sitting around thinking you know somebody should come up with a system for inventory management in the meantime it’s sitting they’re right on your computer and you don’t have it.
Steve Alexander: that’s right
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: I think the idea to have a system or have a tool first something that you’ve determined is important to you and lets you function better like a $30 a month is a bargain for that.
Steve Alexander: That’s right, I think that’s the way that it helps me to look at it that way is everything It kind of costs something, and often not doing something costs waw more than the thing that I’m about to pay for but there’s no way to calculate the opportunity costs not really. But for me I know that for as long as I’ve been using Superhuman, I because I’m more productive and I’m a be able to sleep better It is better sleep worth 30 bucks a month, absolutely all day long every single day. But that’s not going to be the case for everybody. But I think thinking about the tools that you have, and the actual costs associated with them is a great way to justify this kind of thing. Because if I’m just concerned with ha it’s 30 bucks a month, can I just make my brain work better? Spoiler alert, no, you can’t.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: I know, we’re not specifically talking about it. But that’s a process or a system, like Anagram too, there’s this thing and you want to do it. And like, you could make these phone calls and print out papers and put them in envelopes. But when there’s a system that makes it easy, you sign up and you use it. And that’s worth the cost to the staff time. And whatever other time would be taken to figure it out. You guys already did it.
Steve Alexander: Absolutely right. Thank you for that. The way that we look at it is if you’re going to see a patient on an out-of-network basis to find out their benefits without Anagram, you have to sit on hold with a vision plan for around 30 minutes. And they may or may not give you the right information depending on the training of the individual on the other end of the phone. So that’s one element of it, then the claim submission for your staff who’s not familiar with filling out a CMS 1500 form, certainly for the patient who’s even less familiar with it to fill it out and get reimbursed appropriately. Not only is that time-consuming and confusing, but at the end of it, they may not end up getting paid at all. So for the comfort in knowing that it’s been digitally submitted and digitally accessed. The eligibility information, reimbursement information, there’s a lot of peace of mind that comes with that. Not to mention that you know, if you capture any one patient with Anagram that you wouldn’t have seen otherwise, it pays for itself every month. But there’s that opportunity cost of it. Something that I spent a fair amount of time talking about is when a patient calls in a practices out of network with their plan. The conversation typically sounds like “Hey, do you accept ABC vision plan?” And then the office says “no”. And then both sides hang up the phone, not recognizing the what the patient was actually saying is, “Hey, I want to give you money”. And then your receptionist says “No thanks”. And then you hung up the phone.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: Right
Steve Alexander: That opportunity cost is really difficult to measure but happens in every practice across the country.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: Absolutely. So I’m still on inbox zero because again, it feels so unrealistic to me almost as unrealistic as having nothing on my desk. So I know you started in the beginning and you said I don’t have papers because I can’t handle that. Where are the things that everybody else would have as papers? Where does that stuff go?
Steve Alexander: I make digital copies of it. Step one when I have any kind of papers like as an example. I’ve had some papers on my desk for this conversation. So I was visiting the Optician Association of America in Asheville last week, and they provided their attendee list for me in the form of paper printout. So I digitally scanned this, put it into a PDF and then through Adobe’s image to text, translated it into a text, put it into a spreadsheet, and now I have it as a CSV form. So this now is just recycling. I have all of the information that this had for me and now I will put it in the shredder I say recycling this goes to get shredded so that my wife can feed her worms.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: Worms like compost?
Steve Alexander: Worm and compost, yeah.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: They love shredded stuff we’ll do a summer episode on composting we’ll get your wife on, I don’t know that that’s Power Hour Optometry content but I would also be interested in that one.
Steve Alexander: Awesome, well I’ll tell you about the countertop compost maker we have also.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: Okay, we’ll put that on the whiteboard.
Steve Alexander: Perfect
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: So you get the mail, right the mail comes there is a pile of mail things
Steve Alexander: For me, most of the mail that I receive is already garbage actually because everything that I’m obligated to I have set up for auto payment and set up digitally so I have calendar dates on the 12th and the 23rd of every month to go through all of the things that I’m obligated to and make sure everything is being taken out appropriately and make sure that I wasn’t overcharged for anything and that none of my credit cards have expired. Me personally if I were to wait for mail to come to me and then respond to something that’s on paper it would never happen so I have it set to auto-pay and paperless statements as much as I can because I’d rather not get mail. So I know basically anything that comes into my mailbox goes straight to the shredder.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: For the things that do come in paper form and you scan them and before they make it to the compost bin
Steve Alexander: That’s right
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: You have a digital filing system or in your computer how will you know where to go back and find In that list when you’re looking for it three or four months from now.
Steve Alexander: it is is about having a good filing system, so whenever I save any document I save it in the same kind of format it is full four-year date dot months dot day. So that anytime I look through any of my files or all of my files they are going to be sorted by the day that I saved them not the day that I modified them because Windows are Apple updates like the last time you open them. But if the name of the file is always able to be scheduled by date then I never run into that issue and I also have very careful folders were I have finances and personal finances and business finances are separate so it takes probably 50% more time to organize what I’m doing that to justs scanner but on the back end of it, I’m never at a loss for where are my stuff is.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: And you’re putting that more time and once
Steve Alexander: that’s right
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: So to do with that first time takes that little bit longer but when you go to find it, I know there’s times where I’m like “what did I call that?” and I’m in my Google Drive or whatever searching meeting and 400,000 things come up in that day I was in a weird mood even called it a discussion or something else and it’s like really what was I thinking so then I change it now it’s called meeting discussion in case I remember it the other way next time.
Steve Alexander: That’s right, one of the traps that I always seem to fall into is putting something to somewhere where I’ll remember as opposed to where it belongs. That small distinction has changed everything for me
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: So talk a little bit more about that It’s supposed to be where it belongs is that the right question?
Steve Alexander: Yeah, so let’s say like my keys right, when I walk in for the last 20 years of my life I’ve had my cell phone in my front left pocket, my key It’s in my front right pocket, my wallet and my back right pocket always say in place what I’ve learned is it’s a functional my condition is, when I stand up, one thing that I always do is I tap each of the pockets. It’s not an OCD thing, it’s not something I need to do so that I’m not obsessive about it. It’s just me checking to make sure everything is in those pockets. When I walk into the house, we have a place for the keys. And if I don’t hang my keys there, and like I come back out, and I see that they’re not there, suddenly, I’m in a panic, like, where are my keys, I need to go find my keys and whatever else I was doing has been derailed, because they’re not where they belong. So it is deciding like where the best place is for a given thing, and putting in the work to make sure it’s there. I don’t know if you do this, but something that I do is I talk about myself in the past and future tenses. So if I’m putting the keys where they belong, it is so future Steve doesn’t go crazy. And if present Steve is going nuts, past Steve failed him. It’s kind of thinking about the things that I’m about to do are going to affect me one way or the other. Do I want to be mad at me in the future? The answer to that is always no. I would rather not be mad at me if I can avoid it.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: And that makes sense. People who I talked to you have heard me say it before, but I actually learned it in a how to organize your Google Drive class. Which I attended the first virtual lesson of and then didn’t finish but the first virtual Lesson, one of the things that she said and the thing that has stuck with me and made the course worth it was be considerate of your future self. And when I think about it like that is when I do those things, and it’s everything right, it’s hanging the keys up. It’s taking that couple of minutes to file something, it’s meal prepping, it’s cutting up the vegetables so that there’ll be right there in the fridge when you go get them.
Steve Alexander: staying hydrated.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: Staying hydrated, putting your gym clothes out the night before, it’s making the next day smoother and easier for future you
Steve Alexander: That’s right
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: I didn’t always do that but it’s something that I absolutely am aware of and doing more it’s a challenge of discipline right sometimes you know it’s the right thing to do and then you do it and sometimes you know it’s the right thing to do and in the moment have that battle all in your head and choose not to do it anyway now That’s the tough part.
Steve Alexander: Absolutely but I think that you’re at least having the battle is already kind of a victory from my perspective as somebody who went through most of them my life never even having that fight I never thought about future Steve, I feel like whatever problems I was causing were problems for future Steve to deal with and you’re absolutely right sometimes you’re going to know the right thing to do know what you should be doing and not do it anyway and that’s certainly not ideal but you’re human you’re not going to be perfect expecting you to be perfect when you’ve decided to do any kind of change in your life is a recipe for disappoint meant and then disappointment leads for yo not continue doing that work. But if your goal is to be slightly better every day which is like a reasonable, attainable goal to be slightly better every day that’s something you can accomplish. If your goal is to be perfect tomorrow you’re going to fail. There are no two ways about it so aim at something that is attainable and celebrate when you hit it don’t forget to say like “Hey good job you did it!”, like you had all the water you’re supposed to have today you got eight hours of sleep, you went to the gym, you had some vegetables, you didn’t stop at the drive-thru on your way home or whatever your goals are but actually celebrate so understand. There’s a book written by a controversial author so I’ll spare the thought but in it there’s one rule that he suggests that I really like actually, is to treat yourself like a person you care about them and it’s often easier for folks to give good advice to people who are not them. Have you tried getting some sleep or have you tried getting enough water or how about some vitamins or whatever your nutrition. It’s easy to give that advice to someone else when you see that they’re struggling but it’s really difficult to see that you yourself are struggling. And it’s even more difficult to give yourself that kind of advice but if you think about yourself like treat yourself like a friend that you care about your behavior toward yourself auto change and I know this doesn’t directly tie into productivity but It absolutely does actually
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: It absolutely does because that feeling that you described in the beginning is kind of why you’ve done all of this work. To be able to shut off at the end of the day to be able to have a transition from work to not work especially when you work at home and to go from constantly feeling unsatisfied at the end of the day to feeling like you accomplished something is is really a priceless gift that you would pay anything to give to anybody you love. And so some of these things to be able to give that to yourself is extraordinary. So Steve, thank you I feel like we could talk more and more and more on this and we’ve kind of run out of time but I just want to say I so appreciate you sharing the personal aspects of your story sharing your diagnosis with the optometric airwaves here and some of the tools and structures and the things that you’ve used to create a scaffolding to take care of yourself and give the things that you need that I think a lot of people listening will recognize the things that they need and hopefully do the same for themselves as well. So thank you so much for doing this this is great!
Steve Alexander: Absolutely, My pleasure. Thanks for having me, Bethany.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: Thank you and Steve if somebody heard the thing about Anagram and wants to learn more about that where do they find you?
Steve Alexander: Our website is anagram.care that’s the straight website. If you have questions for me directly Steve@anagram.care. I’m usually available, but if it’s in the morning, I’m doing executive stuff so your emails gonna have to wait.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: I love it thank you again and for more information on Power Practice you can find us online at powerpractice.com. Thank you so much for listening!