‘O nce you know that you can’t do it all, it becomes a little bit easier.’
Why do so many of us feel like we’re drowning in endless demands and to-do lists, at work and at home? Why, when we have so many smart productivity tools, is it so damn hard to get the important things done?
If you relate, I’d like to introduce you to Chris Lovett. Because HE can introduce you to the genius idea of ‘strategic laziness’, and also explain how an author with no time can write a book perfectly designed to be read by people with no time.
If you’re looking for the antidote to hustle culture, if you’re ready to face the fact that you will NEVER get to the bottom of your to-do list and if you fancy embracing tiny acts of rebellion to stem the relentlessness, this is for you.
Chris on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@chris_lovett
Chris on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-lovett-29176933/
Alison on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/the-alison-jones/
The 10-day Business Book Proposal Challenge: www.proposalchallenge.com
Link for submitting your clip for Episode 500: https://bit.ly/45RfpdY
Alison Jones: I am here today with Chris Lovett, who is an author, speaker, and sought-after voice in the simplicity movement. He supports organizations and teams to evolve leadership skills, create high performing sustainable cultures, and retain the energy to do what matters. And his new book is called Relentless: The power of less in a workplace that demands more.
Which is a great title. Chris, by the way, so first of all, welcome.
Chris Lovett: Well, thank you very much. Alison, can you do all my intros because that was just brilliant.
Alison Jones: Sure, yes. No, we’ll work that out. We’ll talk after. Great.
Chris Lovett: Yes.
Alison Jones: That title, that sort of relentless and always needing more. I mean, you’ve nailed it, haven’t you? That’s exactly how most of us feel most of the time. So yes, just tell us where did that come from?
Chris Lovett: Just listening to people, I think, when I started writing Relentless back in 2022, which feels ages ago now, I just had these three words kept being said to me all the time, it’s just relentless. And ironically, those are the first three words in the book. And soon as I heard that word, I was like, that’s the one because it connected with the theme of less, which I’d already kind of leaned on as my kind of personal brand. And I was like, that’s it. I’ve got a, so I almost had the title first before all of the content that went into the book afterwards.
But yes, you know when you just know.
Alison Jones: Yes.
Chris Lovett: Sometimes your gut says you just…
Alison Jones: …and now I have to write this book because it’s such a great title.
Chris Lovett: Now got to live up to the content of the title being so brilliant.
Alison Jones: Has it always been like that though? Is it more relentless than it used to be? I mean, have things changed or are we just getting flakier?
Chris Lovett: Oh, great question, yes. Yes, I think it’s probably got more relentless because there’s a downsizing of organizations but not a downsizing of things to do. So…
Alison Jones: That’s a great way of putting it…
Chris Lovett: …not only in the workplace, but in life as well. Like we’re bombarded with options and opportunities and things that we feel like we must attend to and must consume.
And then you go into the workplace and there’s a million messages to respond to. And oh, by the way, you’ve been added to another teams channel. Oh, and by the way, this project has your name written all over it, but make sure you don’t burn out though, because obviously we need you. But also Sarah’s left accounting so if you could just pick up some of Sarah’s role while we fill it as well.
And then that two years goes by and that role doesn’t get filled, and all of a sudden you’ve got an ampersand job which is almost like the Spice Girls song Two Become One. And then, like years later you’re like, how did this happen? You’re managing 45 people. You’ve got six dogs and yes, it just becomes more and more and more and more and you’re like, well, this has become normal pretty quickly.
Alison Jones: And it’s interesting, isn’t it? Because so many of the tools that are supposed to help us manage that, so the productivity tools, the systems, the tech that’s supposed to help us do it, actually often becomes part of the problem too because it’s just one more damn thing to manage.
Chris Lovett: Yes, yes, that’s it. And I don’t know if you remember this, Alison, but I think maybe back in 2006, 2007, like we were given this thing called inbox zero. I don’t know if you remember that.
Alison Jones: I do. You know, even when they told me about that, I think I laughed in their faces. I, you know, yes.
Chris Lovett: It was like a computer game, so you almost had to, if you got your… yes. yes…. if you’ve got your inbox down to zero messages, you got a little message from Google that said, well done, well done. You are up to date. And that was…
Alison Jones: …just deleted all my messages.
Chris Lovett: Yes, that’s it. Right? Well done.
And so that was when we had one inbox to manage and now we’ve got dozens.
And so those kind of, not old school, you know, productivity hacks, they were right for that season, for that era. You know, things like, even simple things like we’ve been told, turn your notifications off and things like that, that is so much more easier said than done now. Because you’ve got so many plates to spin and so many really important priorities. If you miss one it could be disastrous, but also to your own anxiety as well, because we are like, well, I can’t miss out because there’s a threat.
So yes. So we’ve got so many productivity hacks that have worked in the past that now may not work in this new kind of post pandemic, AI, do more with less, era.
So now it’s more about a mindset, and that’s kind of where the book is. Here’s a bunch of things to try, but ultimately the bottom line comes down to you don’t have to do it all.
Alison Jones: Well…
Chris Lovett: …you are not going to be able to do it all. So pick your most important thing.
Alison Jones: Yes, stop trying to pretend that you can do all, yes. Well, I think that’s the important thing now. So, we’ve sort of established that it’s relentless and everybody’s, oh, you know, nodding along with that and going, oh my goodness, you know, are you in my head? So, let’s fix it, not fix it, let’s, we’re going to fix this for you people, don’t worry.
What can we do about it?
Chris Lovett: Yes, yes. What can we do?
I think the first bit is just be okay with not being able to fix it all. So whatever is on your to-do list, be okay with I’m not going to be able to do them all. As soon as you know that, life becomes a lot more easier.
You are not going to be able to respond to every message. You’re not going to be able to help every single person with every single problem that comes to you. So I think that’s always the first, the first bit is once you know that you can’t do it all, it becomes a little bit easier.
Alison Jones: That’s the mindset shift.
Chris Lovett: That’s the bit, I think just ultimately trying to understand what is the most important thing I need to do today. If you do that, brilliant. Well done you, pat the back. If you do anything other than, you know, in addition to that, great, they’re a bonus.
But the most important things that we need to do, generally what we’re, from a workplace perspective, is what we’re rated on, that’s what we are supposed to do from a performance perspective.
I’m not sure, and you might correct me on this, I have not known anybody that has turned up to a job interview and says, I’d like you to answer 100 emails a day, or I’d like you to attend back to back meetings for the next week, please. I’d don’t think that’s a metric that we are rated against or given a performance grade against, so…
Alison Jones: …and yet here we are…
Chris Lovett: …and yet here we are in back-to-back meetings, which we know are bad for us, but we do it anyway. We are responding to the latest fire or the latest, urgent thing, deep down that we know it’s not that urgent. But because we are caught in this cycle of busyness and everyone else around us is just continuing to be busy, we feel like we have to play as well.
And so even like the tiniest, the tiniest of what I call like an internal rebellion. Where we say to ourselves, you know what, I’m going to leave this meeting five minutes early because I’ve got another one. So I just need five minutes to either go to the toilet to just take stock of what I’ve just heard and do a little bit of prep for the next one.
Taking a lunch break, these tiny little minor bits of rebellion to our internal dialogue or kind of those entrenched narratives. Once you do it once and nobody notices, it gives you the proof that it’s safe to do it again, and then you just kind of build from there.
Before you know it, you’re starting on time, you are finishing on time, you are taking a lunch break, and performance has elevated because you are not burnt out. You’re not being fixated on the latest fire to be put out. You’re very controlled, you are calm, and everyone starts looking and going, Alison’s really organized. How do you do that? And we kind of go, well, I just don’t do stuff that doesn’t matter.
Alison Jones: And you’ve got this lovely phrase, strategic laziness, which I just really like. Tell us what, how can we embrace strategic laziness?
Chris Lovett: Yes. So, and for those of you listening, for those of you who like a lay in, this is not just a way to get an extra few, but ultimately we’ve been taught ever since we’ve been educated to work really hard. And I think the narratives in society is like, you know, if you work really hard, you’ll get everything you ever wanted.
And, you know, that was a narrative that I grew up on and my folks worked to the bone.
And that was how I started my career. I was like, you know, you work all day, you work all night. And then over time, I started to notice that my performance wasn’t great. You know, I was stressed all the time and I was like, but I thought this was supposed to be the way that you do it. This is how you succeed in life, right?
And so I decided to do a little more experimenting on like breaks and naps and time away from the screen. All the stuff that science tells us to do but we just forget about it when we’re in the midst of busyness.
So rather than just say, take a break or take your eyes away from the screen for five minutes, those things are already being ignored. So I kind of, how can I rebrand it that makes people go, oh, that sounds really interesting and a little bit rebellious because people do, deep down, they love a bit of rebellion.
And so, yes, I kind of labeled it as that, but ultimately it’s just taking some time out of busyness and away from your work because that’s where you get some of your really good ideas and that’s where you can recover and that’s where you can think, which ultimately is a lot of knowledge workers role is…
Alison Jones: mm.
Chris Lovett: …to think about stuff. If you’ve got no time to think, is that, does that really equate to you being a role model or a high performer? So, yes, I came up with that term and I thought, you know what? I’m going to stick with that. That sounds pretty cool.
Alison Jones: It’s so interesting because what you’re doing there is I think one of the great gifts of the business book author, which is to give someone a bit of a term, a bit of language, that they can use for something that lands, that sticks in the brain, that they can use with other people.
It’s really valuable, but it does also speak to the fact that you are writing for insanely busy people sort of by definition, you know, you are writing, you’re saying, Hey, people with too much to do, here’s a book to read, you know, which is…
Chris Lovett: Yes. I am aware of the irony.
Alison Jones: Right. So how, but I know that you really, really consciously designed that book so that it could be more easily read by busy people. So tell us about that.
Chris Lovett: So, I’ve kind of coined this book as this is the book for people who don’t have time to read a book. So it’s less pages, it’s less words, and it has built in breaks. So every chapter is four to five minutes long. So everybody’s got four to five minutes.
Whether that is, let’s say, okay, let’s say right, you’re on the toilet, right? Just pick it up while you’re on the toilet, right? Okay. Read a chapter and within that chapter, there is no fluff. There is no additional stuff that you don’t need to know. There’s no additional context. It’s basically just right to the point about why do we get caught in this trap? Here’s a case study or a bit of science or a bit of research that tells us why. Here’s some reality check about what it might look like for you. And my kind of personal stories about what it might look like for me and how I’ve been caught in the trap. And then, here are three ways of potentially avoiding it. And you can put them into your workplace or implement them into your approach to work right now.
And so basically people could pick it up, read it, and go, oh yes, that’s me. I struggle to say no. Here’s a few ways to put no into your language a little bit more and go, oh yes, well, I’ve got a meeting in a minute. I might try that. Book down, back to work. And so, it’s not like a novel where you have to keep reading and knowing what happened in the previous episode and stuff. You can literally just pick it up, open it wherever you like, and then kind of go, ah, well I might try that.
So yes, that’s kind of how I’ve approached it because all of my clients are extremely busy. They do not have time to sit down and read a book. My partner is extremely busy. You know, my friends are extremely, everyone I know is extremely busy. So I’ve got every one of those in mind.
And ultimately the point of it being is I want to make sure that everyone is healthy enough to do the best work they can. Because, you know, my friends are texting me, going, I’m crying at my desk, you know, I hate all of this and I feel like there’s no way out.
So it gives people enough hope, enough empathy to kind of go, I hear you, I’m there with you, but here’s some things that you can try because actually a lot of the solutions are within you. So here’s a couple of things and here’s some proof they work. Now, off you go, smack on the bum, see you later. I’ll see you in about another, I’ll see you next week when you come back for chapter two.
Alison Jones: Now you are busy too. As you say…
Chris Lovett: …yes…
Alison Jones: …writing a book takes even longer than reading a book. How did you do that?
Chris Lovett: I started writing it in 2022 and I even, I was so confident it was going to be out in like 18 months, so I’d even recorded the audio book of my first book and put chapter one on the backend of the audio book for number one, thinking here’s a little thing that you can like, coming soon.
Alison Jones: Yes, really soon. Like, any day now…
Chris Lovett: Yes, yes, yes, yes. Yes, that didn’t happen. So…
Alison Jones: I think we’re going to need a little bit more context there actually.
Tell us a bit more about the whole not happening thing.
Chris Lovett: Kind of just life, I moved house twice. Relationship breakdown, new relationship. My dog passed away. Just loads of, kind of life stuff happened and all this time, I’ve got a full-time job as well as having a side hustle and running an Airbnb and trying to write a book.
And doing, still doing the marketing for the first one. So yes, I just had to…
Alison Jones: …they call it, don’t they? Multihyphenate.
Chris Lovett: Yes, I think that’s the term, yes.
Alison Jones: Something like that. Thank you.
Chris Lovett: Yes. And so, yes, it was just kind of, one of those projects that I was like, I will get round to that when I have the energy and the time. And I think, yes, it was just one thing that I’d settled on is like, similar to what the content, it didn’t need to happen immediately.
And that was kind of validated externally as well because I went and had a couple of conversations with some publishers. I started to get really impatient and I was like, it’s ready now, it’s ready now. And they’re like, don’t, there’s no rush. What’s the rush? And I’m like, it’s been sat in my laptop for three years, like I just want to get it out.
And they’re like, Chris, just, you know, just, there’s no, there’s no rush. Be patient. Be patient. And so I had, that was a skill that I learned.
Alison Jones: Publishing has crazy long timelines, and I’m sure they explained it all to you, but it’s not about the manuscript. You think the manuscript’s ready, let’s publish it. But they have to prepare the advanced information sheets for the reps and they need to sub it into the bookshop six months ahead of publication. And the timeline on that is extraordinary and hasn’t shifted in 120 years.
And I don’t understand why, but there we are.
Chris Lovett: Yes, and I hear you. And, this is why I kind of, I did the first one independently and this, my second one is now gone traditional…
…yes, and I kind of planned it to happen that way, so I could experience a different avenue. And yes, basically the feedback so far is quick, quick, quick, slow, slow, slow, quick, quick, quick, slow.
So yes, so basically in the midst of between book one and book two, life happened and that was priority and that needed me. So, I attended to that.
Alison Jones: But you did get the writing done even sort of ahead of the long, the publishing stretch. So tell us about how busy people can carve out that time to write and why should they?
Chris Lovett: Yes, it’s a great question. I just basically, I took that step back and listened to, it’s going to go a bit woo woo now, like the universe. And I was tapping into like my gut feeling, and there were stories everywhere, you know, and whether it was like someone just throwing out one line, like for example, I mentioned earlier about my friend who just text me saying I’m crying at my desk. Like, it’s relentless. And I’m like, oh, there he is again. There’s the term.
And it was like, right, let’s just pull on that thread. So I chatted to lots of people and I was like, what is it that’s causing this chaos in your working life. And so, yes, rather than me trying to come up with all of the answers or trying to come up with all the content, it was already out there.
I just had to pull from different threads and different avenues and talk to different people and go, right, what is it that puts teams, you know, in this kind of spiral of false urgency and these alarms that keep going off? And everyone says, oh, we got to, you know, jump to that nearest thing and then that actually, that’s not the most important thing.
And so, yes, so then I kind of went into the psychology of it all, but I was taught, Alison, and all the stuff when I did book one is that, you must just keep writing, keep writing a number of pages per day. And I know you mentioned that on your TED as well back in 22 that you write…
Alison Jones: …writing practice.
Chris Lovett: Yes, and I started that and I was like, this kind of works to a point for me and I had to have moments of motivation and then knowing when that motivation dipped and I was like, well, do I stay in this because there’s something here? Or do I just put it down and come back to it another day? So I still haven’t found my exact approach, but I’ve found that stepping away from the work for a period of time and then coming back, whether that is just going out for a walk or whether that is, you know, going into a new context.
And then when I come back and reread, I then realize how shit it is and have to change it.
Alison Jones: Yes. That’s going to, a lot of sort of nods of recognition, I’m sure, all around the place at the moment, so there’s two ways you can respond to that, isn’t there? You can just say, well, what’s the point? Or you can go, something here, there’s something here. I’m going to lean into it and get past that discomfort.
What do you find? I don’t want to put words into your mouth, what’s positive about that process for you?
Chris Lovett: I think there’s an element of, deep down you know it’s a message that needs to get out or there’s a story here that people need to hear, but because you’ve been in it for so long, it loses its shine. And you’re like, Ugh, this just doesn’t have the pizazz as it did when I first wrote it. But it is purely because you’ve read it 50 times and people reading it for the first time will get that same feeling. It’s like a song. It’s like your favorite song. If you keep listening to it, it loses its shine.
And so, what I’ve tended to do with songs, right, I’m a big music fan. When I find a song that makes me go. Oh, well fill in the blank. I leave it alone. I stick it in my, kind of, liked Spotify playlist and I try to get that same feeling again in a distant future when I don’t know when it’s going to pop up and it’ll pop up and I’ll be like, oh my God, I remember this. This is brilliant.
Alison Jones: I love this song.
Chris Lovett: Oh, this is, what a great track.
And so I try to have that. So I step away from it for a bit and then leave it alone. Then I come back and work on something else.
Also having outside help, outside help does really give you that sense of perspective as well. Because having an editor is great and having someone you can talk to, who basically will tell you it’s rubbish or will tell you it’s good, is a lifesaver. Because you know, I could looked at it and gone Alison that’s brilliant, all of it’s great. No problem. Let’s get it out. And then my editor looks at it and goes chapters one to four, really good, needs a bit of work. Five, six, or seven what, I don’t even know what you’re trying to say. And I’m like, ah.
Alison Jones: That’s feedback that really helps, isn’t it? It’s lovely when Beta readers say, oh, I loved it. It’s really good. Doesn’t help, you can’t use that. Doesn’t help you at all.
Chris Lovett: Yes, yes. So I think that’s a, there’s an element of taking it to a point yourself and then leaning on your most trusted editor friends.
Alison Jones: Yes. Brilliant.
And if there’s people who are on this journey, maybe they’ve had a manuscript for four years, who knows, what would you say is your sort of best tip for someone on this journey?
Chris Lovett: I would definitely say find the way that you get your creative juices flowing and go there. So there is a way that traditionally other people would’ve approached it, that might not be your way. So my way was different. My way was go out and leave it alone. Don’t go through, don’t go through the wall and, you know, push myself to the limit because I’m not you know, I have other stuff to do, right?
So, and I generally get my best ideas, either in the shower, out in nature, or weirdly in traffic. So once I hit that wall and it was a struggle to write a sentence or to finish a paragraph that was just so, it looked so easy, just finish the paragraph. Alison, just finish the sentence, right. Just finish it.
How hard, right?
Once you know that this is getting really, I’m really struggling to write this sentence, after a period of time, I need to get out. So once you kind of realize that bit, make that bit shorter, go to where you get ideas. Just go there, spend more time there, and then you come back and you go, oh yes, and that’s it.
The amount of times I have woken up the following morning, looked at something and within less than five minutes, finished the thing. Or come up with a brand new line, it was just there all along. I just had to remove myself and then plug myself back in.
And that was, once I realized that, everything became so much easier.
Alison Jones: And I guess what we’re saying is that strategic laziness works for writing as well, actually.
Chris Lovett: Well, there you go, right?
Alison Jones: Yes, yes. Walking the talk. Brilliant. Thank you for that.
I also always ask my guest, Chris, to recommend us a business book and you can’t recommend your own, sorry, not allowed, but what book would you… sorry… what book would you recommend that listeners pick up if they haven’t, if they’re not aware of it?
Chris Lovett: I’m reading a few at a moment, but the one that has really piqued my interest is Today Was Fun by Bree Groff, first time American author, and you can’t miss the book cover because it’s just a massive neon shiny face. So you’re able to see it.
Bree has endorsed Relentless, so once I read her book, I reached out to her and I said, I love, I love this. Would you mind? And she’s like, yes, great, because we, it was quite in the same wheelhouse. But yes, ultimately it was a book about fun at work and how that kind of lost art is kind of ebbing away and eating at our energy and things like that.
And I remember when I was starting out in my career, work used to be really fun. Like I used to go around and hang out with now friends, people I still consider like really good friends of mine. And then, just as you get older and into your career, everything just becomes really serious all the time and really boring. Then you become really serious and really boring and you’re, I don’t want to be like that. I want to have fun conversations and do fun things and come home and like, you know, your kids or your partner or your family goes, how was work? And I don’t want to go, oh, well, you know, I got really annoyed because Dave in HR, you know, wouldn’t let me sign off a thing that no one really cares about.
So yes, so it aligned perfectly with who I am, who I want to dial into more again. And so yes, that would be my recommendation, Today Was Fun.
Alison Jones: Great. I’ve never heard of the book, so thank you. I’m going to seek that out. That’s absolutely brilliant.
And Chris, if people want to find out more about you, more about Relentless, more about the work that you do, more about the simplicity movement, where should they go?
Chris Lovett: Probably LinkedIn is the main place to go, I would say. I’m on there quite regularly. I even went on to TikTok last year because my publisher said, why are you not on TikTok? And I went, because I’m 45 and…
Alison Jones: There’s an limit, did you not know.
Chris Lovett: Yes, it was like I had to provide different sorts of identity to log into, but yes, so I thought, you know what, this is a really great platform to help people who are, you know, let’s just say moving into the workforce and maybe earlier on in their career, who are looking at the workforce going this is weird, I don’t want to, you know, exchange my health for a paycheck, and I don’t want to have the same job for 40 years.
And so, actually it is, it’s quite popular. I didn’t think it would be, but those kind of 45 second snippets of me just kind of going oh, by the way, here’s a quick tip to simplify your work.
If ever you receive a meeting invitation and then later on it gets canceled, just leave it in your calendar. Don’t remove it, and then that time is yours to do what you want because you were already unavailable and now you are just unavailable to everybody else. And then the amount of people that go, oh, oh my God, this is life changing.
And in my head I’m like, I’m, oh, it is so simple. It’s just, just do that and it gives you that little bit of breathing space to, you know, to perform and, you know, to do more of the things at work that matter.
So even things like, I’ll go on there and go, did you know that it’s National Lunch break day today? Well it’s not, but you know, did you know that the average lunch break is now just like 28 minutes or something? And the lunch break will be something that we tell our grandkids, similar to like picking up the house phone and renting a film from Blockbuster video, like those types of things. So I just kind of share little tidbits that help people on those platforms.
So yes, come to find me, Chris Lovett, once you see the big hair, you know you’ve hit the right place.
Alison Jones: Yes. If you’re not watching the YouTube, you won’t understand that reference, but he’s got magnificent hair. Thank you for bringing the hair. Brilliant.
So I’ll put those links up on the show notes @extraordinarybusinessbooks.com along with the full transcript of this conversation.
Chris, it’s been really fun talking to you today.
So, today was fun. It was great.
Chris Lovett: There we go.
Alison Jones: Thanks so much for your time and good luck with Relentless.
Chris Lovett: Thank you so much.
