The Uncomfortable Truth About How We Waste Our Time with Paul Holbrook | S2 Ep10

08/01/22 • 66 min

Conversations with My Mind: The Learning Podcast

Paul Holbrook left his corporate career to become a leadership coach and in the process realised that almost everyone he talks to struggles with time. He decided to tackle this challenge by creating a self-leadership programme Diary Detox focusing on healthier distribution of time and published a book ‘What Are You Doing? The uncomfortable truth about how you waste time at work’. Instead of being a CEO, Paul chooses to call himself a Chief Management Rebel.

In this episode Paul and I explore the challenge of understanding where our time goes. Paul is a strong believer we all need to make time for our personal life, health and wellbeing in order to protect our work productivity. He explains about the five key categories where our time could be potentially going and how we can start distributing it in a healthier way. We speak about how to move away from working long hours in spite of there always being more work and how to have the sometimes uncomfortable conversations with our colleagues, teams and managers, when we have decided to work differently. We also discuss the ‘Great Resignation’ and the new ‘Hybrid Ways of Working’ to understand the impact they might bring.Find Paul Holbrook on:
His website: https://diarydetox.com/
Personal LinkedIn: Paul Holbrook
Diary Detox LinkedIn: Diary Detox
To learn more about me go to:
Instagram: @conversations.with.my.mind
LinkedIn: Ance Vanaga
Website: https://conversationswithmymind.buzzsprout.com
Lovely music created by: Harlowe King

Previous Episode

What Sports and Success can Teach us about Mental Health with Dean Allen | S2 Ep9

Dean Allen is the kind of lecturer you’d like to have in your university - friendly, down to earth, all for encouraging everyone to use their critical thinking and a genuinely good person. He’s been building his career between the UK and South Africa, but in the past few years his heart and opportunities have grounded him and his family in the Eastern Cape.
As a historian and an author of the bestselling book “Empire, War & Cricket” Dean has been giving lectures and speaking extensively on the influence of sports. Coincidentally, I’m publishing this episode on the 18th of July, the Nelson Mandela day. Nelson Mandela is someone Dean mentions in his talks with utmost respect and admiration.
However, this conversation is much bigger than Dean’s studies and lectures. He approached me as he also wanted to share his own mental health journey to remind us to not take everything at its face value. While on the outside looking like he was having the time of his life, Dean had to go through a number of darker periods to get to where he is today.
This episode has two equally important parts. We start by exploring Dean’s personal mental health journey and his experience with support available in the academic space and then we chat more about his research on how sports are not only a great entertainment, but also a power that can influence social, cultural and even political direction.
Find Dean Allen on:
His website: https://www.deanallen.co.za/
Instagram: @dr.deanallen
Facebook: Dr Dean Allen
LinkedIn: Dr Dean Allen
To learn more about me go to:
Instagram: @conversations.with.my.mind
LinkedIn: Ance Vanaga
Website: https://conversationswithmymind.buzzsprout.com
Lovely music created by: Harlowe King

Next Episode

‘New Year, Same Me’ and Other Goals with Nick Elston | S2 Ep11

Nick Elston is one of the leading inspirational speakers on the lived experience of mental health. He is described as a big man with a big heart and a big story, who is incredibly honest. Nick strives to encourage individuals as well as businesses to engage and open up talking about mental health by showing how to harness the same energy that could bring us down into a catalyst that can help us achieve our success.

As I return from a longer podcasting break, I am right on time for us to reflect on our New Year’s resolutions and our struggles to keep up with them. In this episode I team up with Nick Elston to explore how we could set healthier, more sustainable goals. As he is someone, who lives with obsessive compulsive disorder and anxiety, he knows especially well the ups and downs that setting way too challenging goals can bring, but he is also someone, who has learnt better ways to tackle that and is happy to share his learnings with us. Throughout the conversation we get to know Nick a bit better, discuss the vicious cycle of overindulging in December followed by tight restrictions in January, look at the tradition of setting New Year’s goals, reflect if Blue Monday should be ‘a thing’ and check-in on how it all actually impacts our mental health.
Find Nick Elston on:
His website: https://nickelston.com/
LinkedIn: Nick Elston
YouTube: Nick Elston
To learn more about me go to:
Instagram: @conversations.with.my.mind
LinkedIn: Ance Vanaga
Website: www.conversationswithmymind.com
Lovely music created by: Harlowe King