Rebel Diaries
Reached #22 in the Apple Business Chart: A podcast that looks into what it takes to be successful at work in the digital age, whilst avoiding burnout and wasted effort. For people who won't accept "because we have always done it this way", that know work can be better and want to serve their customers better. Featuring interviews with thought leaders and inspiring people who have challenged the normal way of doing things and made a big impact as a result. Hosted by Scott Fulton, Entrepreneur, Coach and Speaker. You can find him online here: https://linktr.ee/scottfulton
Rebel Diaries
Rachel Picken - Being 80% Awesome
Leave Scott a voicemail and possibly get featured on the show: https://www.speakpipe.com/rebeldiariesvoicemail
Rachel lives in Cornwall with her boyfriend, two daughters, aged 12 and 10, and French bulldog.
Known to friends as RP or Picken, she is a Frazzled Single Mummy (with a live-in boyfriend) who somehow juggles a national PR career with volunteering for the school bake sale.
A huge advocate for positive mental health and body image, Rachel is a reformed cheese and wine lover, lapsed pole-fit enthusiast and novice Stand Up Paddleboarder.
RP is most likely to be found sharing her love of post-it notes, chilling out on the Marshmallow (her bed), or enjoying the beach and move nights with her spirited girls.
In her professional life, Rachel is a Chartered PR consultant, usually working with the UK’s best universities to wrangle difficult messaging and strategies.
Ask her about: Taking Tiger the bunny for a Brazilian.
What Scott discusses with Rachel
- What it means to be 80% Awesome
- The Pareto Principle
- The tools she came up with together with her business partner to help people measure how they are doing
- Making sense of what's important and the need for boundaries
- The Lean Life Canvass
- How her marriage breaking down was a turning point
- How she's been coaching her mum
- How to minimise your to-do-list
- Lazygation
Links in this episode
- 80% Awesome Website: https://80percentawesome.co.uk/
- Rachel's Agile PR Business Website: https://agile-pr.co.uk
- Working Hard Hardly Working: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/54869218-working-hard-hardly-working
Keep in touch with the show
- Leave Scott a voicemail and possibly get featured on the show: https://www.speakpipe.com/rebeldiariesvoicemail
- Connect with Scott on social media: https://linktr.ee/scottfulton
- Podcast website: https://www.rebeldiaries.net
Leave a review
- Please leave a review (written if possible) on your podcast app of choice
How Scott can help you and your business
- Scott's website for High Performance Training and Coaching: https://www.scottfulton.co.uk
- Digital Rebels - Digital Development and Consulting: https://www.digitalrebels.co.uk
Additional resources (Purchasing using the links below helps support the running of the show)
[00:00:00] Scott: Hi, I'm Scott Fulton, the host of the Rebel Diaries podcast. This show will help you learn how to make work better for you, your colleagues and the organization you work for. I believe the modern workplace is broken for too many people with leaders and their teams, drowning in corporate complexity, information overload, and unnecessary levels of stress.
[00:00:18] Scott: Having spent over 20 years leading disruptive high-performing teams who have won international awards for their impact. I've now dedicated my career to helping coach and train leaders and teams to deliver more value and impact at work whilst reducing the risk of burnout, overload, and wasted effort.
[00:00:34] Scott: This podcast is dedicated to you and thousands like you who know work can and should be better.
[00:00:39] Scott: You'll get tips and insights from me as well as the amazing guests I invite to be the show, many of them have disrupted their industries and are thought leaders, speakers, and authors who have fascinating stories and advice to share.
[00:00:50] Scott: Thank you for listening. I'm Scott Fulton and welcome to the Rebel Diaries show.
[00:00:54] Rachel: Things like Facebook memories were bringing up some of my posts from maybe five or seven years ago I just realized that I posted a lot about what was going on in my life, and I'm just thinking about that now.
[00:01:06] Rachel: Reflecting. I'm like, has that, how did that serve me?
[00:01:08] Rachel: I also experienced a bit of a game over when my marriage broke down, , I was running a business previously with my now ex-husband. And we were both trying to juggle all of these kind of competing priorities and essentially it was all too much.
[00:01:23] Rachel: And unfortunately our marriage didn't survive
[00:01:25] Rachel: We are all kind of spinning plates and juggling a lot and also all trying to be operating at a hundred percent perfect. And it's just not sustainable for people to continue to do that.
[00:01:36] Scott: In this episode, Rachel and I discuss her concept of being 80%. Awesome. What it means and how it can help people get more balance in their life. Rachel is also a chartered PR consultant and she helps the UK's best universities manage difficult messaging and strategies.
[00:01:52] Scott: I met Rachel a few years ago at an Agile conference. It was great to catch up with her on this episode. I'm sure you'll get a lot from this one. On with the show.
[00:02:01] Scott: Hi Rachel. Welcome to the Rebel Diaries Podcast.
[00:02:03] Rachel: Thank you for having me. This is really exciting.
[00:02:06] Scott: So tell us what being 80% Awesome is all about.
[00:02:10] Rachel: I have a business called 80% Awesome with my business partner Claire. I'm actually a PR consultant and agile coach in my main day job. But we set up this as a bit of a side hustle. We're both moms, we're both professionals. We've both experienced the highs and lows of adulting, big life changes, things that can be a struggle. And from time to time we try and take a break away from our kind of work, our life, our kids , our family. And we go away somewhere beautiful. We go to the hours of Scilly, and it's on the Isles of Scilly that we came up with the concept of operating at 80% awesome. So it roughly comes from the Pareto principle. At the Pareto Principle principle. The idea that perhaps sometimes 80% of value can come from 20% of effort, but mostly it's about the idea that it's just not sustainable to be perfect. And if we're continually striving to be a hundred percent perfect it's exhausting.
[00:03:08] Rachel: You're at risk of burnout and so is it better to aim to be 80%? Awesome. So develop something called the scale of awesome. And the idea is that you could be anywhere on that scale between 10%, which is, I've just about got outta bed today. Maybe 30 or 40% is I've managed to cook a decent dinner or kind of get partway through my to-do list.
[00:03:30] Rachel: 80% is almost like the optimum. This is a good day where you feel like you're hitting some of your personal goals and thriving, not surviving. But yeah, the idea is if you're constantly working at 95 to a hundred percent, you're just, you're gonna reach burnout. So that's slightly meandering explanation, but it's gone on to become a business which has a number of different tools that people can use to assess. They're awesome.
[00:03:52] Scott: Do you do in person workshops or is it all online? How does
[00:03:55] Rachel: Yeah. So we We first presented some of our tools back in 2019. We saw a call for papers for an Agile conference in Vienna, and that was before the world changed. Who knew that kind of some of these tools would be incredibly helpful for the last two years that we've experienced. So we developed something called the lean life canvas, which is a bit of a kind of look back at what's been going well what you want to look at and what you want to adjust.
[00:04:19] Rachel: And then there's a, some space for where you can take things. And we initially presented that at this conference and we got really good feedback from that and then we went on to deliver some in-person workshops. One was with the University of Oxford and one in Cornwall where I live around International Women's Day.
[00:04:37] Rachel: It's quite popular. Our tools amongst women And so we run in person workshops and we have been running online workshops, particularly during the pandemic. And that was really popular. Yeah, just as things started to bite in mid, early, mid 2020 and the kind of the grind of lockdown.
[00:04:54] Rachel: Some of those workshops are quite helpful.
[00:04:56] Scott: And so the people you're helping, are they tending to be at that kind of burnout level, , trying to, push themselves too far? Are they the people that come to you for help?
[00:05:06] Rachel: I think a lot of people could benefit from the concept of operating at 80% awesome. Everyone feels particularly busy at this time, even at this time of year.
[00:05:14] Rachel: It's been a struggle over the last two years, I think. Just trying to make sense of different boundaries in our life, working from home lockdown, just making sense of the world. And I think being able to prioritize what's important to you has been a struggle, and these are all themes that are relevant to everybody.
[00:05:30] Rachel: We do have a number of kind of women and parents that are interested in our work because. I've long since understood that kind of the idea of having it all is very challenging if you are trying to be in, work in a professional career, perhaps running a business having a family, and it's not just having a family.
[00:05:45] Rachel: There's other kind of responsibilities we have as adults. Maybe we're caring for kind of parents or family members, so it is just. I get the sense that since we've come back to work the normality of trying to work post pandemic there's quite a lot of exhaustion around and therefore I think some of these tools, they're helpful to all sorts of people.
[00:06:05] Scott: And can you give us an example of what some of that help it might look like for people?
[00:06:08] Rachel: So one of our products that I mentioned is called the Lean Life Canvas, and this is a really good place to start. And there's a couple of sections on that, and it's essentially, it's a big piece of paper with different zones and areas. So one of the zones is what brings you joy, and energy. So it's identifying those things that really help you.
[00:06:26] Rachel: And for me, I, it's really important to me that I get out and I walk in nature. I, despite living by the coast, get a real kind of peace and grounding by walking out in nature and being in forests and trees. So that's really important to me to get out and about. Another key thing that is really important to the baseline kind of wellbeing is getting really good sleep.
[00:06:49] Rachel: I'm slightly obsessed with going to bed early. I'm never, I don't tend to work late in the evening. And just other things like kind of connection with community and connection with people that are important to you. This is what we missed in the pandemic. So I identify all of these kind of aspects that are really helpful to me because sometimes it's easy to forget.
[00:07:06] Rachel: Certainly I've been had a very busy period at work over the last few weeks, so I have been struggling to reconnect with what helps me regain this sense of equilibrium. So I've been able to re-identify what those things are.. Another area we have on the Lean Life canvas is called the Zone of Zero Funks Given, and it's just a place where you can identify the things that are stealing your awesome. So for that, for me at the moment, I think people pleasing is something that I'm putting into the zone of zero Thanksgiving. I think I used to have something on there called caring what my ex-mother-in-law thinks. Mike's mother was very kind, but she, yeah, it's just a place to put kind of things that you're trying to jettison and trying to get outside of your brain.
[00:07:51] Rachel: So yeah, senses of perfectionism, I think people put things on there like ironing I'm not going to do ironing anymore. Or I'm not going to be responsible for cleaning anymore. I might make the decision that I'm going to invest in a cleaner. There's a place that you can identify things that are dragging you down. And then of course we have the scale of awesome on that tool as well, which is, it's physically a scale of kind of identifying where you sit on that scale of awesome today. So I'd say today I'm probably around 50%. I'm not quite 80%. A couple of meetings have over run. I haven't had a chance to get out and exercise yet.
[00:08:21] Rachel: Yeah, I'm hoping to figure out how I can move into my 80% space. And I'm also very ready for break..
[00:08:28] Scott: Yeah, it's interesting. It's important for people to take that time out, isn't it? And just review rather than just being on the constant hamster wheel. And it sounds like this is a really powerful way to just take a pause, take stock, look at your situation, be quite open with yourself about actually how am I doing today?
[00:08:43] Scott: Cuz otherwise you can just wake up straight on the phone, straight onto the computer, straight into work the day, passes, then into life, and then you repeat that cycle. So it's important. To take that time out, isn't it.
[00:08:56] Rachel: Yeah, and I think I work in a, in peer on communications, so I work in an industry that's constantly looking forward and not really looking back. And in Agile we talk about retrospectives and essentially what we're offering with some of these tools is their life retrospective. And when Claire and I came up with the concept in the Isles of Scilly it was essentially a big retrospective if I was able to look back and think what's working for me and what isn't working for me and take that time and that head space.
[00:09:20] Rachel: And it's really hard for anybody. I think. We're in, busy lives, busy jobs, busy. Things happening. It can feel like the world around you is quite chaotic, like the political world. Things that are outside of our control, like rising cost of living and energy bills. And I think now more than ever, it's a great time of year to take that look back, what's gone what's not gone so well, and where do you want to go next? And be kind to yourself. I think it's also easy for us to try to, yeah, we of live in a culture of comparison, don't we? And we see other people smashing their lives and smashing their targets and I think it's good to be able to take stock and just really find some gratitude where you are now,
[00:10:00] Scott: Yeah. And that comparison thing's dangerous, isn't it? Cuz quite often you're not even seeing the reality of what's actually going on for those people. They could be, really struggling, but, the external appearance is everything's great.
[00:10:11] Rachel: Yeah, and I think I've realized I've stopped posting very much on social media recently. I'm a bit, become a bit of a social media lurker. And. Things like Facebook memories were bringing up some of my posts from maybe five or seven years ago, and I was like, I used to, I just realized that I posted a lot about what was going on in my life, and I'm just thinking about that now.
[00:10:30] Rachel: Reflecting. I'm like, has that, how did that serve me? That kind of constantly kind of sharing of things and opportunities for, I guess comparison and, yeah humble, bragging maybe.
[00:10:41] Scott: Yeah. Yeah. You get a lot of that on LinkedIn these days. I'm noticing. Humble brags,
[00:10:49] Rachel: I might try humble brag soon.
[00:10:51] Scott: So what was your career journey like? How did that. If you look back, how did that map out to where you are now and what was the trigger for, you know, setting up the business?
[00:10:59] Rachel: I am a charter PR consultant and I'm now an agile coach as well. And my particular area of interest is applying Agile to PR and communications. But through that and through my kind of exploration of how Agile can apply to things outside the software world, I looked at how you can apply Agile to life.
[00:11:19] Rachel: A friend of mine my business partner on 80% Awesome, Claire, we came up the, with the concept of what would the, what is the Agile guide to life, and we actually presented it at an agile conference in Cornwell called Agile the Beach a few years. And we were looking at things like agile grief, agile parenting in my case, agile dating.
[00:11:38] Rachel: How I used Kanban on a first date with my boyfriend to explain my job to him. And that was really well received and we went on to think about how else you could apply some of these concepts. And that's when we came up with a concept of operating 80%. Awesome. And so someone who runs their own business and has a family and a household to manage and a partner and friends and pets and school admin and all of those things that kind of fold into kind of become part of my life and also part of how I'm running my business, it was clear that we were looking at another way of approaching how we.
[00:12:17] Rachel: Explore what's, what are the best opportunities for us and ultimately what delivers value for us as people.
[00:12:22] Scott: Yeah. And what were the kind of big challenges that you've seen? During that, cuz you, you were obviously motivated to fix it. And did you just naturally fall into that or did you come across, were friends can you help me? Were they, did you start to be asked to give advice or did it just come out of the coaching work you were doing already?
[00:12:37] Rachel: So I think what I was experiencing personally and that the things I could see amongst friends and colleagues of mine is that we are all kind of spinning plates and juggling a lot and also all trying to be operating at a hundred percent perfect. And it's just not sustainable for people to continue to do that.
[00:12:55] Rachel: The, we're expected to Drink, eight glass of water, get to the gym be on top of all like school admin and homework, and keep our, li our homes pleasant and keep on top of our career and keep on top of our relationships and all of those aspects just. Seemed so overwhelming to me.
[00:13:13] Rachel: I personally also experienced almost like a, kind of a bit of a game over when I, when my marriage broke down, , I was running a business previously with my now ex-husband. And we were both trying to juggle all of these kind of competing priorities and essentially it was all too much.
[00:13:30] Rachel: And unfortunately our marriage didn't survive. And that was my kind of major moment of I can't do it all. So where do we start again? And for me, that became about what is the ultimate things? What is the baseline things that are delivering value for me? And that was time with my family and how to keep a roof over our heads essentially.
[00:13:47] Rachel: So when I first started my business my PR business, it was what are the absolute basics that I can put in place that mean that I can spend time with my family and earn money? So I think the, all these pressures and challenges that people are experiencing are not unique to me in any sense.
[00:14:03] Rachel: And I think certainly over the last two years there has been, people have been going through so many different challenges career changes or business failure. My, my brother, for example, was working for Flybe and Airline. That's, That went bust just before the pandemic. And so him and his wife were both outta the job at that time.
[00:14:23] Rachel: That's another aspect of Agile that I find really interesting about the way we are living now is One of the kind of parts of Agile working is responding to change over following a plan. And that's something that is absolutely applicable to life. And it's something that we've had to really get used to over the last two or three years.
[00:14:40] Rachel: It's become a bit of a motto for my mum and I cuz my mum really struggles with responding to change in following a plan . And so we've been kinda helping her when plans have had to change for so many reasons, pandemic or otherwise.
[00:14:53] Scott: So you've been coaching your
[00:14:53] Rachel: Yeah. Responding to change over following a plan, and she's " I'm trying."
[00:14:57] Rachel: Yeah.
[00:14:59] Scott: with her?
[00:14:59] Rachel: No, but we're off for a break, a pre-Christmas break soon. And she's learnt she's recently been recovering from breast cancer and she's been incredibly lucky. But she's realized how she needs to take a step back and she's actually made a bit, few massive decisions about what's important to her.
[00:15:15] Rachel: And so in some ways she's been embracing the 80% Awesome approach because she realizes the things that most important to her are spending time with her grandchildren, getting out in the sea, swimming, being out in nature, and resting.
[00:15:26] Scott: Yeah, that's good. And the whole, one of the agile things, of course, is always be reviewing and prioritizing the highest value. And that's obviously linked to what you're saying around you can't do everything and just do what really matters either to you, but or in your business, trying to do everything.
[00:15:45] Scott: Do nothing or I always say, yeah, I'd rather do a few things really well than lots of things really badly or not at all.
[00:15:52] Rachel: I genuinely believe in like minimizing your to-do list. I would like to think of just three things. What other just three things that you need to achieve today. So one of my, just three things today is finish off my billing that delivers value for me and my team because it means we might get paid.
[00:16:07] Rachel: Another one of my just three things is to pop a proposal over to someone because that looks at kind of areas of other work. And then my third thing that I absolutely as a non-negotiable is I need to get out, I need some exercise today. So what are the, just three things. What are the non-negotiables?
[00:16:21] Rachel: Because we can continue to fill up our do todo list. And the to-do list will always be there, but it's how do we put these boundaries around those things that deliver value for you?
[00:16:32] Scott: Yeah, and if the to-do list just gets too long, then it starts to put you under stress and pressure, cuz you just look at it and go, oh there's just too much. I'm losing the will. So you gotta keep it short and keep it culled as well.
[00:16:43] Rachel: Yeah, and I think I use time blocking a lot and I made myself sit down this week and time block all of the Christmas family commitments that I've got coming up. So things like this morning I needed to make time for a Christmas tree decorating ceremony at my daughter's primary school.. And it's one of those things where I was feeling the pressure of all the other kind of work aspects that I needed to fit into my day. But there is something quite grounding about standing or sitting on a small chair in a school hall watching your child holding a homemade Christmas decoration. And that's the thing that kind of delivered value for me this morning because it gives you a sense of community and connection.
[00:17:25] Rachel: And I also snuck out early. My daughter could see that I was there. We eyeballed each other, we waved at each other that was value delivered for us at that moment in time. And it meant I could come away and get ready for my first meeting of the day. So there's something to be said about reminding yourself of yeah.
[00:17:40] Rachel: What's delivering value for you yourself, and then you within your kind of work context.
[00:17:45] Scott: . And what are your thoughts on like routines and morning routines and how do you structure your day? Is there any kind of way you structure it specifically?
[00:17:54] Rachel: I am actually not massively great at routine sometimes. I tend to I'm in one of those careers where every day is very different. And I'm in a career where I am often away for work. I was recently in Canada for work where routine was completely thrown out the window, and I think rather than a very clear routine in the mornings, it's more about what are the key kind of aspects of routine that you're trying to put into the week.
[00:18:19] Rachel: So time blocking things like exercise. And. Time blocking kind of aspects that, so I mentioned walking in the woods is really important to me. So my responding to change today is gonna be, I swapped out a gym session. I'm gonna go for a walk in the woods instead because the sun's out. So it's from looking at ways you can respond to change during the week.
[00:18:38] Rachel: I, for my partner routine is absolutely everything. The alarm goes off at 6:00 AM and he is either out walking the dog or he is doing a workout in his gym in the garage. I think for a lot of people like routine, it is really helpful to thrive and it helps me to thrive to have that structure in place. Yeah, I'm a bit, little bit less routine other than yeah, absolutely a cup of tea first thing in the morning. That's non-negotiable
[00:19:00] Scott: But that works for you then, doesn't it? So people are obviously wired a bit differently. Some people, as you said, need a routine. Some people are okay with the flexibility. Do you think then the people who are have the strict routines struggle a bit more to the adapting to change rather than following a plan?
[00:19:15] Scott: Cause you've clearly got that mindset.
[00:19:17] Rachel: Potentially I are, when I'm delivering kind of agile training bit with the awesome, or with my PR business, I ask people to get comfortable and chat about where they sit. I guess on that spectrum of like routine and responding to change, it is exhausting living with change.
[00:19:34] Rachel: We. We know this over the last sort of three year, three or four years or so. It can be really tiring. I think partly it's accepting that change is in is inevitable. It's the only thing that's certain is that we know that things are going to change.
[00:19:47] Scott: But we're hardwired to see change as a threat generally, aren't we? If we go back to our cave people days, non-gender specific what's that noise? Or, oh, there's a change in makeup of the tribe. Is that a threat to me Now, that we're hardwired to see things as the negative, aren't we?
[00:20:04] Scott: So it's difficult in the, in a business world
[00:20:06] Rachel: And the kind of that fight or flight feeling of of Yeah, I think I was thinking generally about anxiety and mental health and how. That underlying feeling of that's also quite a kind of back to our cave people days of being highly alert and some in some cases anxious was part of our defense mechanism and enabling us to spot those risks and what's coming.
[00:20:28] Scott: Yeah. And the whole adrenaline shot to run away or fight
[00:20:33] Rachel: It's like a healthy level of Yeah. Trying to operate a healthy level of of not really anxiety. Is it's awareness of what's going on around you.
[00:20:41] Scott: Yeah. Yeah. So I know I've got a few listeners who are in the comms world, so it might be interesting just to touch a bit on that in terms of how this applies to your your other business.
[00:20:50] Rachel: Yeah. I think it's interesting because the PR industry is very much about trend and forward thinking, yet it sometimes amazes me how like perhaps so few PR communications professionals have necessarily encountered and agile approach. Although that's said with I'M training or coaching comms teams and I've took them through things like the Agile manifesto. It, they just see it as common sense. So they've probably been doing, been being they've been being agile for a really long time. Aspects such as customer, collaborating with your customers or finding out more about your audiences or yeah. So yeah, the responding to change or following a plan again and also things.
[00:21:34] Rachel: People and individuals and interactions. And that's absolutely where the coms world sits. And I think also some of the tools that we see that agile teams use basic Kanban for example if comms teams have been working across things Trello That's essentially an agile tool, but it's, I always say those platforms, those digital platforms, the project management are never a silver bullet.
[00:21:55] Rachel: It's their behaviors and the kind of the way that you work your teams and your people around those systems and those structures.
[00:22:03] Scott: . Yeah. I help people with similar things and yeah, I always advise caution around the tools. I'd leave the tools to the end of the training because people just get, "this tool will solve all my problems" and like just it. It then becomes about the tool rather than actually, what's the principles, what's the reason you're using this tool?
[00:22:20] Scott: It's meant to help you be better, not just " oh, I don't need to take responsibility the tool or fix it."
[00:22:25] Rachel: I get a lot of feedback about, "oh, Monday didn't work for me, or Trello didn't work for me". And it's it's not the platform or the tool it's the way the team working together. For example, We sometimes see lazygation of kind of things being dumped on these platforms without the kind of human aspect of working through a workflow to get to collect together
[00:22:44] Scott: I've not heard that term. Did you say lazy Gian like delegation, but
[00:22:47] Scott: lazygation
[00:22:48] Scott: I like that
[00:22:48] Rachel: where you fling tasks onto into the ether of your, of your digital platform.
[00:22:53] Rachel: And just assume that A people have understood the task. B, is it driving value for anybody? All of those questions.
[00:23:00] Scott: Yeah, I like that. . So if you had to give if someone's listened to this now and they're saying, "oh, I'm, 20% awesome today", or, "50%. Awesome". What are your kind of advice for the things they can do to start to move the needle? Or is it about just acceptance that "it's okay that I'm 20% today."
[00:23:18] Rachel: Yeah, so number one, I think, accept that you're going to have a 20% day, I think. I'm very interested in things like the full day working week or mental health days within kind of HR policies of organizations because you cannot be delivering even, you cannot even be delivering 80% every day in, day out.
[00:23:38] Scott: They're saying it's only about four hours a day. Four hours a day, proper productivity, don't they?
[00:23:42] Rachel: I absolutely believe that. Yeah, I think the idea getting, if you work with an environment of billable hours, get the idea of getting seven billable hours out of someone in a day just is exhausting. And it I think it really impacts productivity and creativity if you just are constantly focusing on that.
[00:23:57] Rachel: So yeah, accept that you are likely to have days of 20%. Awesome. I think really take stock of the what brings you joy, energy, and really focus on that. I think, I know that I've been guilty of not focusing on eating nutritious food at the moment. It's easy to get stuck in, I guess winter hibernation eating, just surviving on cheese.
[00:24:18] Rachel: So that's gonna be my focus of the next few days. So focusing on those things that bring you joint energy. And I think also minimizing the kind of, I mentioned earlier, minimizing the to-do list in terms of what three things could you do to to make things different.
[00:24:32] Rachel: What are those simple, quick wins that make you feel like you're slightly moving, slightly further to achieving what you need to achieve or delivering value for you?
[00:24:39] Scott: So one of the questions I ask all my guests, if you could take one book with you to a desert island, what would it be?
[00:24:43] Rachel: Am I not allowed two? okay, I'm gonna mention this one. There is a book called Working Hard, hardly Working by Grace Beverly. Grace Beverly is, I don't think she's even 25 yet. She's an entrepreneur who set up her brands and her businesses while she was studying for a degree at Oxford University.
[00:25:01] Rachel: So she's doing a music degree. She was a social media influencer in the Fitness sphere. And she's got a number of different businesses. One is called Tala, which is quite a disruptive activewear brand. And she's also got another couple of businesses and one of them's around fitness workouts for app and other kind of products like nutrition products.
[00:25:21] Rachel: But she has also got a really interesting approach to productivity. So her book, Working Hard, Hardly Working. It works at first to dispel the myths that that millennials are lazy because she's absolutely not lazy. She's also learned the hard way that she was absolutely trying to operate a hundred percent perfection all the time.
[00:25:40] Rachel: And so the first part of her book is displaying the myth about. Millennials being lazy and what kind of her kind of generation are looking for in their careers, in, in their lifestyles. And the second half is like how important it's to rest, how important it's to put healthy boundaries around your work.
[00:25:57] Rachel: How important it's for her to that she's now got her weekends back. She's got a podcast as well. But yeah. So much wisdom from someone who is about 15 years younger than me, but I really enjoyed it on Audible.
[00:26:07] Scott: Great. I'll put a link to that in the show notes. So if anyone wants to work with you, how do they get hold of you?
[00:26:11] Rachel: I think perhaps like reaching out on LinkedIn's probably the easiest way. We have got a website for 80%. Awesome. And we have also got a one, a full day retreat coming up in, in Northampton in January. So I can probably offer you some links to that as well.
[00:26:26] Scott: Yeah. Brilliant. I'll get those put in the show notes.
[00:26:29] Scott: it's been great chatting. Thank you for being on the show.
[00:26:31] Rachel: Thank you for having me.
[00:26:32] Scott: A big, thank you for listening to the Rebel Diaries show your time is precious, so it is appreciated. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to hit that subscribe button in your podcast app of choice so you don't miss the next one. There's a new episode every Monday morning, ideal for your commute to work or early morning walk.
[00:26:50] Scott: Until next time, take care be a rebel and deliver work with impact.