Beyond Busy

This week on the Beyond Busy podcast we welcome Dr Samantha Boardman. Samantha is a clinical psychiatrist and she has a Master's in positive psychology, so her work joins the dots between all those different fields. She combines years of training in medical school and psychiatry with studies in the field of positive psychology. Samantha is also the founder of ‘Positive Prescription', and the author of a new book called ‘Ready for Anything'.In this episode, we talk about resilience being on you, how to create uplifts in your mood, and many other practical ways to deal with stress and be happier in your thinking. Samantha kindly shares her background, her education, and the way she came to positive psychology.She also said what was the reason to turn to positive psychology:"It was about 10 years ago, I was seeing a patient who had this. Maybe she didn't qualify for a full sort of diagnosis of depression, but she wasn't, she wasn't thriving. She wasn't feeling great. She was having issues with her husband. She had three kids. She was exhausted at home. And we were trying to minimize the conflict with our spouse.We were trying to help her have less issues with her mother-in-law and her kids. And one day she came into my office. I'd been seeing her for about six weeks. You know what, sometimes I just dread coming here. All we do is talk about what's wrong in my life. And even sometimes I'm having a good day and I have to think, what can I complain about?And it makes me feel worse and you know what I'm done. And it was this weird sort of wake up call to me that I had been. So laser-focused on everything. That is, you know, on her symptoms, on her issues, on her problems, on her chief complaint, in everything sort of radiated out from, from that, that I wasn't focusing at all.And I actually hadn't been trained to focus on what actually sort of promotes well being even. Could I help her with some of these issues, find strength within her stress and find sort of meaning within the madness of her everyday life. And that got me to go. Back to school and I, and to study applied positive psychology.That was the opposite of everything. One learns in medical school, in residency, in psychiatry, and it's really the study of, of health and wellbeing. And what are the factors that promote that and, and trying to now, I really, my, I think of myself as a positive psychiatrist and that I really try to.Ameliorates symptoms, but also how can I sort of promote wellbeing and they're not mutually exclusive and the idea of wellbeing being icing on the cake. Oh, let's just get somebody to feel a little bit better. And then you can talk about that other stuff. And I think you can, they can really go hand in hand." We also got an interesting insight on vitality:"I think of vitality is this sense of this feeling of a liveliness and energy that, you know, sort of tells you that you are ready for anything. And it's the opposite of feeling sort of depleted or down. And I think people often think that happiness is the opposite of depression, but it's actually vitality and it's what we need to counter the hassles.And it's something that then I think gives rise to little, our resilience, the idea of having resilience on a daily basis, not the big, our resilience, the are you know, the response. You know, big sort of bad stuff that can happen, but vitality is what fuels that everyday resilience. And it's, I think it's, it's really maybe undermining even our ability to feel strong.And, and they're just little things we can do in our daily lives, like connecting and contributing something and challenging ourselves that are really the wellspring of vitality. And it's not in your head again, it's actually in your everyday actions."The full conversation is available on the Beyond Busy YouTube channel. If you prefer listening, you can find the audio version of the episode on Podtail. Graham Allcott is the founder of the time-management training company Think Productive.Brought to you by Graham Allcott of Beyond Busy. ✔ Links: Positive Prescription:https://positiveprescription.com/ Follow Dr Samantha Boardman: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sambmd 6 Weeks to Ninja:https://www.grahamallcott.com/6weeks Productivity Masterclass:https://thinkproductive.co.uk/workshops/productivity-masterclass/ Subscribe to Graham's Newsletter: https://www.grahamallcott.com/sign-up​​ Buy “How to be a Productivity Ninja”: http://amazon.co.uk/dp/1785784617​​  Our Show Sponsors: Think Productive - Time Management Training:http://www.thinkproductive.com​​ Useful links:https://www.grahamallcott.com/links Edited by Pavel Novikov:https://www.linkedin.com/in/pavelnovikovf/  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This week on Beyond Busy podcast we welcome Ndidi Okezie. Ndidi is a rising star in the charity World, the CEO of UK Youth and a board member of three boards, including Centrepoint. In this wide-ranging episode, we chat about having courageous conversations, kindness and much more. The conversation starts off with Ndidi's current plans and the mission of UK Youth: 'So UK Youth is a leading charity with a vision that all young people are equipped to thrive and empower to contribute to every stage of their lives. We are an open network organization. We have about 7,000 youth organizations and national partners in our network. Based on our new strategy, we are very much focused on unlocking youth work as a catalyst of change that we believe is needed now more than ever. Fundamentally, we are a bit of a hybrid organization. So, we're an infrastructure body for the youth sector. We are a direct and program delivery organization as well. And, we're a campaign for social change. So collectively our work is to kind of build a movement of like-minded people who are determined to create a society that understands champions and delivers effective youth work for.' Ndidi also reflects on the problem of youth homelessness: 'Well, if it's not school and it's not home, where do young people go? Because there's a question there about when home isn't a place you can go. What happens there? And when they're there, you know, there are issues with home. When you think about how young people end up homeless, there are so many different things that tend to happen for young people before that can happen. And having that safe place to go is such an obvious thing. But I think the sad reality is as a society we can't answer if they can go to a youth club. They can go to a youth provision because we know that the majority of young people. Don't have access to that. I think now most people can understand and accept that young people are one of them, if not the hardest hit demographic coming out of COVID, whether it's from the economic perspective, in terms of job prospects, whether it's from academic learning, whether it's from issues around online safety.' Then she shares what is like being a CEO as a black woman: 'I would love to think about it: well, you're hired to be a CEO and that's what you are. But the reality is that I am a black woman CEO, and actually each of those things comes with its own thing. And then you compound them together. And again, I've experienced the gender dynamic. I've experienced that through my own leadership journey where you are invited to speak on things because you are a woman. You're invited to feed into issues and topics because you're a woman. I've been invited to speak on issues on the race for many, many years. Right. So it's not, it's never really been something I've been able to decouple. As a teacher, students would come to you because they could identify with you in certain things you've got speak on issues from a place of connection, whether that's a locality based on like London. What it is to work, grow up in particular environments all the way through to, you know, being African, being black, being female. So I think we all draw on all or aspects of who we are. I've never experienced a way where I just get to be the thing I am, as opposed to all of those things together. But yeah, I think again, the CEO level, I wasn't expecting it. I, again, feel very naive walking into it. When my appointment was announced, I just cannot explain to you the reaction and the responses that I got, the messages, the people kind of reaching out like, oh my God, celebrating the appointment more than celebrating me. If that makes sense. It was like, oh my God, you know, a black woman is leading youth charities, you know, an organization and the third sector. And this was all before everything that's happened. So I didn't even know all the issues the charity sector had when it came to be. So, you can almost understand that now, but at the time I was really taken aback.' The full conversation is also available on Beyond Busy YouTube channel. Graham Allcott is the founder of the time-management training company Think Productive.Brought to you by Graham Allcott of Beyond Busy.✔ Links:  Subscribe to Graham's Newsletter: https://www.grahamallcott.com/sign-up​​ Buy “How to be a Productivity Ninja”: http://amazon.co.uk/dp/1785784617​​  Our Show Sponsors: Think Productive - Time Management Training:http://www.thinkproductive.com​​ Useful links:https://www.grahamallcott.com/links See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This week on the Beyond Busy podcast we welcome Jodie Cook. Jodie is an entrepreneur, a powerlifter, and a writer. She writes regularly for Forbes and is also an author of a number of books including ‘How to Raise Entrepreneurial Kids'. We caught her in a quite interesting moment in her life - she just sold her business JC Social Media. In this episode, we talk about this and her experience of leading the team through the pandemic. She also tells us why she's determined not to make plans just yet, how to get mentored by your heroes, and much more. The conversation starts off with Jodie sharing the big news including releasing two new books. Then they move the conversation to her first new book - ‘Instagram Rules'. Jodie kindly shares her story of writing this book and finding a publisher:‘The story of how the book came about is actually quite indicative of how people can use Instagram right now. And that's the 'Instagram rules' that came about from an email in my inbox, from a publisher who I didn't know who said: 'I've got this book in mind. I've seen some of your writing on Instagram. Do you want to write it?And I was just like: Sure! And so I think that was my first ever published book with an actual publisher. Because all the rest have been self-published. You don't need to ask permission and you don't need to just bang down the doors of publishers or anyone who you want to give you a chance. You can just create your own chances and Instagram itself lets you do that.Just writing and producing and creating means that you can create your own presence, your own brand, your own audience. And then it means that those people that you thought were really hard to find and really hard to get in front of like publishers, agents, whoever else they come looking for you.' She also shared her thoughts on online holy-wars:‘I think being right does not matter. I think what's so much more important and what's so much harder to get right is knowing when to let it go and being able to let it go and being able to just be like and just go fine, someone else who can deal with that. That's not my battle. Cause you could, if you want to pick a fight with someone on the internet, you could do it every single minute of every day.But what would your energy look like after you'd done that? It would be horrendous. I don't think the solution to anything is boom and bust. I think there are ways of having a healthy relationship with social media and perhaps the reason why I think that is because I ran a social media agency for so long that I had to find that healthy relationship with social media, because otherwise. I wouldn't have had a company.So there's a way of taking the best bits without the worst bits. I'm sure of it. And one day I will convince you of that and we'll find an amazing balance where you can just be happy online.' Later on, Jodie shared why it's better to focus on the present moment and experience, and not the plans for the future: ‘I have been the judge for a lot of different awards. And when you read applications, sometimes you have to almost strike through everything that hasn't happened yet. And so you have to be able to see past what we're going to do there. So we have plans to do this, or I have projections to do this. And it's not like you are discrediting anyone else's really exciting plans for their future. It's just that it has not happened yet. And what we want to focus on right now for you winning this award is what has happened. So I find myself mentally doing it when I'm reading through them. And I think that it's really easy to get lost in some potential. And then, you know, if someone said, oh, you could get this million-pound valuation and you could get this funding and you could win this award and you could do all this stuff, but it's like, what have you actually done? And I think that always bringing yourself back to what can I achieve right now?Or what can I focus on right now? I think it helps you stay in the present. And it also helps you focus on what you put in rather than what you may or may not get out of it in the future.'The full conversation is also available on the Beyond Busy YouTube channel. Graham Allcott is the founder of the time-management training company Think Productive.Brought to you by Graham Allcott of Beyond Busy.✔ Links:  Subscribe to Graham's Newsletter: https://www.grahamallcott.com/sign-up​​ Buy “How to be a Productivity Ninja”: http://amazon.co.uk/dp/1785784617​​  Our Show Sponsors: Think Productive - Time Management Training:http://www.thinkproductive.com​​ Useful links:https://www.grahamallcott.com/links  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This week on the Beyond Busy podcast we welcome Cal Newport.   Cal is the author of ‘Deep Work' and ‘Digital Minimalism' and this is his second time on Beyond Busy. Last time we discussed the evolution of knowledge work, how social media compulsion has shifted in recent years and lots of other things. In this episode, we talk about his new book ‘A World Without Email' and why it is so hard to make time and space for deep work. Cal also shares his own strategies on how to beat it. The conversation starts off with Cal and Graham talking about how they've dealt with the pandemic and how we finally got used to the new normality. Although, Cal tells us he is lucky enough to have some not-online-guests in his studio in Washington DC to record podcasts soon. Then they move to Cal's new book ‘A World Without Email'. Cal shares that he actually paired his other workpiece ‘Deep Work' with ‘A World Without Email' so they work as a tandem. He also talks more about the main idea of the book: The Hyperactive Hive Mind.  'The hyperactive hive mind workflow was enabled by email. So, you need email for the hyperactive hive mind workflow to be possible, but it's not equivalent to email, and it's not a necessary consequence of having that technology. So, what is it? Well, it's a mode of collaboration and office work, where you say we will primarily work things out with unscheduled back and forth ad hoc low-friction digital messages. That's a very distinctive mode of collaboration. It emerged following email spread there haven't since been additional tools that implement the hyperactive hive mind even slicker. But it's that way of working that I think has a lot of problems that we underestimated and it's the villain of my book. And it's an important distinction because again, email is a tool I'm not super interested in, right? I mean, I think it's useful. It replaced a fax machine. It replaced voicemails, but the hyperactive hive mind that it helped enable. That's a real problem.' Cal also shared his personal productivity tips in Trello: 'I use a different board for every role that I have so I break up my professional life into different roles. There's a role as a researcher. There's a role as a teaching professor. There's a role as a writer because when I'm looking at one context, they only want to be thinking about that context. I have cards for all the different things.  I need to do obligations for those different roles. And they're categorized on different columns that keep track of what their status is so I can look at this thing each week and figure out what's going on. What should I be working on? Where can I put the information? This is a key one. Oh, here's a nugget of information related to a project that I haven't started yet, but I want to work on soon for my writing. Now I know what to do with it. I go to that board. I go to that card. I put it on there. Another key innovation of these boards is waiting to hear back from the column. So, okay. I'm waiting to hear back from this person about this. I'm waiting to hear back from my web developer about this. You have a post in the ground for each of these here. It's here. I'll see it. I don't have to remember it. You know, when I'm looking at this board. I'm waiting to hear back, look at that card and waiting to hear back from this person about this. I never heard back. It's been three weeks now. I know to actually ping them or to nudge them to see what's going on. All of this makes a huge difference. We're used to this idea that, well, it's all just kind of in an inbox and Slack and we just kind of go after it and figure it out. But it is cognitively so much superior to segregate these things into their own isolated context and deal with each thing when you deal with it.'The full conversation is also available on the Beyond Busy YouTube channel. Graham Allcott is the founder of the time-management training company Think Productive. ✔ Links:Buy Cal's books: https://www.amazon.com/Cal-Newport/ Follow Cal Newport: https://www.calnewport.com/ Subscribe to Graham's Newsletter: https://www.grahamallcott.com/sign-up​​ Buy “How to be a Productivity Ninja”: http://amazon.co.uk/dp/1785784617​​ Our Show Sponsors: Think Productive - Time Management Training: http://www.thinkproductive.com​​ Useful links: https://www.grahamallcott.com/links Edited by Pavel Novikov: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pavelnovikovf/    See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Phoebe Benta is the guest of this week's episode of Beyond Busy.Phoebe is the national president of JCI (Junior Chamber International). She's also the founder of North West Charity Awards and she also has a day job! Phoebe is a Global Digital Events Manager at Atos Medical.The conversation starts with Phoebe's background experience and JCI.'JCI – Junior Chamber International. We're a global nonprofit membership organization for young people, 18 to 40. And we have approximately 200,000 members across the world. JCI's mission is to provide development opportunities that empower young people to create positive change.'Graham then shares that he was involved in student volunteering.That leads the conversation on to empowering leaders: why it is important to learn by doing:'I think for me, from my experience with JCI, the learning by doing part in leadership, that's been absolutely amazing. And just given me a lot of different ways to try new roles without being like in a paid job, but you're actually doing these things. I think that's really important.'They also talk about such topics as post-COVID interaction, handling two jobs at the same time, dealing with burnouts, the importance of pep talks, and others.The full conversation is available on Graham Allcott's YouTube channel.Graham Allcott is the founder of the time-management training company Think Productive  ✔ Links:  Subscribe to Graham's Newsletter: https://www.grahamallcott.com/sign-up​​ Buy “How to be a Productivity Ninja”: http://amazon.co.uk/dp/1785784617​​  Our Show Sponsors: Think Productive - Time Management Training:http://www.thinkproductive.com​​ Useful links:https://www.grahamallcott.com/links See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Welcome Perry Maddox, the guest of this week's episode of Beyond Busy podcast. Perry is the CEO of Restless Development, an international development charity that puts young people at the heart of change. His passion is helping other leaders to create change in this world. Over the years, he has led teams in more than 20 countries across 5 continents, and interviewed thousands of people for jobs, developed hundreds of senior leaders, and supported tens of thousands of diverse leaders to unleash change. He had led organisations from small grassroots outfits to complex, global organisations. The conversation starts off with Perry’s explanation of his work:'We are all about young leaders. What we do is we work with young leaders around the World to tackle problems that they think are most important. Like getting a job or taking care of the families. We work with young people to kinda make changes happen.' Graham also shares that his career had a lot of enabling young people into work. They discuss the difficulty of it as some seniors take youngsters less seriously than they should. Perry also tells his journey of becoming a CEO. Interestingly, he came into this field by the love of the Spanish language! They also discuss such important topics as empathetic leadership and productivity. The full conversation is available on the Beyond Busy YouTube channel. If you prefer listening, you can find the audio version of the episode on Podtail. Graham Allcott is the founder of the time-management training company Think Productive.✔ Links:  Subscribe to Graham's Newsletter: https://www.grahamallcott.com/sign-up​​ Buy “How to be a Productivity Ninja”: http://amazon.co.uk/dp/1785784617​​  Our Show Sponsors: Think Productive - Time Management Training:http://www.thinkproductive.com​​ Useful links:https://www.grahamallcott.com/links See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This week's guest on Beyond Busy is Cyril Bouquet.Cyril is a co-author of the book called ‘Alien Thinking: The Unconventional Path to Breakthrough Ideas’. He is also a professor of Strategy and Innovation at the IMD Business School in Lausanne, Switzerland.Cyril has worked with a lot of big companies, e.g. UEFA, which welcomes the European Cup 2020 this year in 10 different countries.In this episode, we talk about productivity, how we can use our imagination in the working process and much more.The conversation starts with Cyril’s background experience and his interesting job title which is Professor of Strategy and Innovation.'If you would ask me when I was a kid what I’d like to do when I grow up, becoming a professor would be the last thing but somehow it was my destiny.'Cyril tells his fancy story of how he loved being a professor during his civil service time. Then the conversation moves to Cyril’s workday, how it usually looks like and how it looks now during the COVID-19 times.Also, Graham is interested in Cyril’s experience in facilitating the meeting with 650 leaders from different companies.'I had a lot of nightmares visualising it. How am I going to essentially mobilize a group of 650 people coming from different organisations and cultures?'Graham then introduces Cyril’s book ‘Alien Thinking’ and tries to figure out what Alien Thinking is to Cyril.The full fascinating conversation is also available on Graham Allcott's YouTube channel.Graham is the founder of the time-management training company Think Productive.✔ Links:  Subscribe to Graham's Newsletter: https://www.grahamallcott.com/sign-up​​ Buy “How to be a Productivity Ninja”: http://amazon.co.uk/dp/1785784617​​  Our Show Sponsors: Think Productive - Time Management Training:http://www.thinkproductive.com​​ Useful links:https://www.grahamallcott.com/links See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This week on Beyond Busy we are happy to e-meet Dr Robert Livingston, author of the book "The Conversation: How Seeking and Speaking the Truth about Racism Can Radically Transform Individuals and Organizations". Dr Robert Livingston is a social psychologist, based at the Harvard Kennedy School. He is one of the World's leading experts on science underlying bias and racism. In this episode, Graham talks with Robert about biases, what we can learn from the #blm movement, and what YOU can do in your workplace. In the first part, the guest talks about the reason he wrote a book.'My book is a tool so it's neither a thesis nor a testimonial. I wanted to write a book that would help move the needle on racial equity. So the purpose of my book was to provide a tool for managers, leaders, organisations that are interested in increasing the level of diversity, equity, and inclusion.'Robert tells us about his experience and his press model. Also, Robert explains why black people are really tired of educating white people on interacting with them.'It isn't their job to educate white people on racism. In many ways, it's my job. This is why I wrote this book. Read the book!'He also explains how to learn not to hurt the black people community:'It's a skill that you can learn. There are books out there that will tell what the right thing is and what the wrong thing is. Do you care enough to spend one day reading this? The simple answer may be that they don't care.'Dr Robert Livingston talks about the problem of different values as well. Interestingly, Robert used very extraordinary metaphors for this one.'The other layer to this is people have different values and some people don't want equality - they want power, they want to dominate. So, if you come to a shark and tell them about the four cookies and the zero cookies. They're gonna be great! That's the way it's supposed to be. Because they operate on the model of greed. They are not trying to strive for two cookie allocation for everyone. That seems like communism for them and what they want is the Game of Thrones.'The full conversation is also available on Graham Allcott's YouTube channel. Graham Allcott is the founder of the time-management training company Think Productive.✔ Links:  Subscribe to Graham's Newsletter: https://www.grahamallcott.com/sign-up​​ Buy “How to be a Productivity Ninja”: http://amazon.co.uk/dp/1785784617​​  Our Show Sponsors: Think Productive - Time Management Training:http://www.thinkproductive.com​​ Useful links:https://www.grahamallcott.com/links See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The guest of the new episode of Beyond Busy weekly podcast is Lauren Currie. Lauren is a serial entrepreneur with a background in service design and she is the CEO and founder of Upfront. An organization that’s helping women to tackle issues about confidence. She is one of the most interesting and articulate speakers on subjects of gender, race and diversity. In this episode we talk about empathy, curiosity, and what it meant to her to be awarded an OBE. The episode starts with the description of Lauren’s main activity right now - Upfront. She explains the mission of the company and how the organization can help. ‘UpFront is an organization on a mission to change confidence - not women. We were founded in 2017, we work with women all over the World to change their relationships with confidence. And we do that in three ways: one is through bonds. We have a six-week online course, the fourth bond starts in a couple of weeks. We also have membership space which is the global community bond for women who are really intentionally looking to build new muscles of confidence, visibility, and advocacy. And content! We run newsletters, we do keynotes, we talk on podcasts to smart people like you. That’s UpFront’ She shares a nice goal of having worked with 1m women by 2023. Which is very possible due to the high demand. If you want to join, press here! In the episode, Lauren also tells about her opinion on the positive future of work: ‘I think it looks feminist in its values, practices and behaviour. It looks intersectional, genuinely diverse, inclusive, and fair. Universal basic income, healthcare. There’s also a bunch of useful staff for the planet: vegan, sustainable.’ Lauren also tells about her past experiences to better understand her path. Graham recalls the first meeting with Lauren where he first admired her: ‘You were pitching for a project around leadership. I was such a fan of your approach to design thinking and serving design.’ There are also some useful tips from Lauren on productivity & work/life balance: ‘I don’t work weekends, I usually don’t work evenings, I don’t have email nor notifications on my phone. And I really don’t do stuff that I don’t wanna do anymore.’ The full conversation is available on the Beyond Busy YouTube channel. If you prefer listening, you can find the audio version of the episode on Podtail. Graham Allcott is the founder of the time-management training company Think Productive.✔ Links: Find out more about UpFront:https://www.weareupfront.com Subscribe to Graham's Newsletter: https://www.grahamallcott.com/sign-up​​ Buy “How to be a Productivity Ninja”: http://amazon.co.uk/dp/1785784617​​  Our Show Sponsors: Think Productive - Time Management Training:http://www.thinkproductive.com​​ Useful links:https://www.grahamallcott.com/links  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Jon Smith, CEO of Pobble is this week’s Beyond Busy episode guest. Pobble is an Edtech startup platform for teachers and students to improve speed, confidence, and enjoyment in writing. The platform won the Bett award for the Best Classroom Aid for Learning, Teaching and Assessment and the GESS award for Best Paid ICT Product. Graham and Jon start off by talking about how Jon’s decision to move to Cornwall from London helped his work with Pobble within the startup tech scene.'A lot of education startups aren't actually in London because it’s expensive to grow a star top talent. It’s very expensive because you're competing with companies like Google and Amazon. When we arrived in Cornwall, I didn't really expect any sort of ecosystem at all for anything. What I found is that there are a lot of socially-focused entrepreneurs.''If you can show children real examples of other children's writing, it becomes motivating for them. If you've got a load of people that are publishing their writing online, those examples can then be used as a means for planning lessons so that you can show children what good writing looks like. It doesn't matter what culture you go to whether China, Australia, or the Middle East. Everyone has the same struggle about engaging children in writing.'Jon talks about how having famous authors critiquing the children’s work helps make a huge difference for Pobble.'Authors have engaged in Pobble and as a result, the schools had these wonderful experiences and children have gone from being reluctant writers to being excited and engaged. I think we've got a lot more of a kind of stable ecosystem. We don't rely on the authors. Still, they jump in, which is wonderful, but now, it's a lot more about that peer to peer feedback.'Then, Graham asks Jon why education hasn’t been more disrupted or advanced by technology. Jon shares how he introduces Pobble to schools prior to the pandemic.'Prior to the pandemic, it was really hard to basically make progress. When we first started, schools were had absolutely no experience of buying software. In order to sell people, what we would do is we would run writing workshops and we would sell those to schools. During the workshops, we would introduce Pobble, as a concept.We’ve just gone from a situation where tech was just so far from being the present thing in schools. There were some schools that were quite tech savvy. But now, every school is trying to kind of make that transformation of being a little bit more tech enabled. That's obviously really positive for the industry.'Graham and Jon discuss Slack, the team management platform which Jon and his team uses for easy communication.'Slack is like everything. It's like far better than email. Slack has been absolutely key and I think Slack and Google Hangouts or Google have been central to Pobble for the last two years. We do all of our communication through Slack and we very rarely email one another.'Jon shares a book called Remote which he and his team use to know how to work remotely and how to tackle remote working. 'Pobble’s mission is all about inspiring children and the future and help people express themselves and be creative. A lot of us are parents so there's a real sense of camaraderie within the team.'One thing that Jon finds really hard is not being in control. For him, having real control over what his team do and the choices that they make, even if that means that they have to be a little less ambitious as to how quickly they grow, they won’t need a huge team.'The biggest challenge for us is that we need to be basically at cash free breakeven. If we're at cash free breakeven, we are in control of our destiny, because we don't need to go and raise more money. The second thing is getting to cash flow breakeven. You don't need to rely on having to raise more money because that’s when you give away control. When you're desperate you have to raise more money. By learning how to do it myself, I was able to identify what is the most scalable, cost-effective way to drive this process forward. Rather than hiring an expensive other person to design a process that may not even work anyway. We always now have this philosophy where if we haven't done this thing ourselves, as founders, we don't hire someone else to do it. We have to have done it ourselves in order to understand how to get the help we need in order to do that. No one comes into a business and can immediately deliver things.'Finally, Jon discusses the importance of being in a classroom. His 6-year-old daughter joins in with the chat and shares her experience in learning from home and learning in school. 'Unfortunately, you're going to have a generation who lost a lot of education. In those children, you're going to have the ones that were able to be educated at home, and had very engaged parents or even had the ability or the time and the ability to help do homeschooling. Having children in school is important unless you're done obviously. Lots of homeschoolers do a great job but they’re planning for that and they're set up to do that. But if you're not, I think that's a really tricky thing for any parent to figure out.'The full conversation is available on the Beyond Busy YouTube channel. Graham Allcott is the founder of the time-management training company Think Productive.✔ Links:  Find out more about Pobble:https://my.pobble.comSubscribe to Graham's Newsletter: https://www.grahamallcott.com/sign-up​​ Buy “How to be a Productivity Ninja”: http://amazon.co.uk/dp/1785784617​​  Our Show Sponsors: Think Productive - Time Management Training:http://www.thinkproductive.com​​ Useful links:https://www.grahamallcott.com/links See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.