DAN SIMONS

One of the most important skills in business -- and frankly anywhere in life where there are more people than just you -- is the ability to listen. Many don’t know what this actually means. Many mistake hearing for listening. Hearing is done with your ears. Listening involves the brain. Hearing is the faculty of perceiving sounds, the function of the ear that allows you to distinguish sounds. But when you actually listen, you can absorb what is spoken and even what isn’t, and sometimes this means listening so well that it can challenge what you believe. It’s why when someone says to me, I hear you, I’m tempted to respond, I’m certain you do, but are you listening to me? Most businesses face moments of truth, where they are getting feedback, whether words or data, on how they are doing. Before the knee-jerk defensive canons start blasting, it’s worthwhile to listen carefully to what is being offered. In business, it is even better if you can create systems to allow a true capacity to always listen. In my restaurant company, Farmers Restaurant Group, we have what we call our Social Media Neutralizer, a process we use when responding to negative feedback, primarily online, but this process is useful even with live, in-person feedback. This Neutralizer can help you decide how to respond to the information being received. Some of this is timing. Allowing enough time for the person talking to actually get their full and complete thought out before you jump in to react and respond. You may have friends or colleagues who interrupt all the time, where it feels hard to even get a word in edgewise. Or friends whose words are always nipping at your heels as you speak. I think of all of these folks as not only poor listeners, which they are, but also conversational multi-taskers. They are simultaneously hearing what you are saying and preparing their response while you are talking. We know multi-taskers are essentially doing a lot of things at once – badly – so multi-tasking in conversation, whether business or pleasure, is never wise. If you are lucky, you have that rare friend or colleague who pauses after you speak allowing you to always convey everything you want and allowing time to then collect and process his or her thoughts. Sometimes these folks can feel like awkward conversationalists at first. It can feel too slow-paced and methodical. There are moments of silence, which many rush to fill, but if you allow for them, these gifts of quiet can be great fodder for real appreciation for what has been said, and consideration of what you want to say in response. In truth, these slow conversationalists, the pausers, are the real listeners. They aren’t multi-tasking. They are giving you their all, their undivided attention. Or as the wise Stephen Covey has said, they are listening with the intent to understand. Not the intent to reply. Developing good listening skills, like your friend that may seem like a slow conversationalist in the din of interrupters and blurters, is necessary business acumen. In business, listening extends beyond individual words and communication between colleagues and partners to often trying to listen to a chorus of voices at once, some in unison, some not. Tim Chi, founder of WeddingWire, the multimillion-dollar global company that burst into being in 2007, believes his company’s success is based on listening. “Early on, we became known for our unlimited vacation policy. It was born out of regularly held focus groups and brainstorming sessions with staff. We wanted everyone to be happy working here, and the best way I knew how to do that was to ask them what would make them happy, and listen to their perspectives.” With a burgeoning business and a global staff that has grown to nearly 1,000 people in 11 years, listening and paying close attention to what their own people are saying is clearly one of the ingredients that makes WeddingWire a winner. WeddingWire’s capacity to listen created staff loyalty. Their people felt heard and even respected. Listening also creates trust. Most people know when they are being listened to and when they aren’t. And they are more likely to communicate if they think someone is really listening. So, what’s my point? You may need to give yourself a little bit of self-evaluation. Even if you think you already know what kind of listener you are, see if you can pay attention to your own behavior in conversation over the next day or two. Are you actually listening to what is being said? Or are you one of the interrupters out there, in actual spoken words and/or thoughts? Are you one of the multi-tasking conversationalists? When you are talking to a friend, family member, or colleague, are you planning what you are going to say next? Are you lost in your own thoughts, crafting your own narrative? Are you hearing, but not truly listening to what is being said? If so, here’s my advice for getting started on the path to listening, rather than hearing: Practice just listening. Without planning what you are going to say next. Just listen to what is being said. Notice where your brain wants to go, and if it is hard to give what the person is saying your full, undivided attention. Don’t interrupt. Allow a pause after someone says something and use that time to formulate your response. *Note: If you are conversing with a real talker, one of those people who just fill all time with spoken words, this can be tricky, because they may never stop talking long enough to allow a pause to reflect on what you are going to say. Slow all of your conversations down. Just a tad (or maybe more if you know they need it). Model this good listening behavior across your life. There are a lot of reasons to work on your listening acumen. We generally aren’t learning when we are talking, and we aren’t growing simply by hearing. The magic happens, as in the above illustration, when we stop using our mouths and start using our ears to listen… with our full brain power. When we stop talking, even stopping our mind chatter, is when we really listen. The bottom line: Listening is a path to creating healthy, functional, and productive relationships in all aspects of life.

I grew up on the East Coast, have lived on the West Coast and in Texas, and have visited plenty of places in the Midwest, but my experience with farmers was anecdotal at best, and pretty much dominated by stereotypes. What I have come to find out, from having farmers as business partners for the past 10+ years, is that sometimes stereotypes are true and, in the case of farmers, that’s kinda nice. Here's my list of what I have learned (so far) from my farmer partners: Your word is your bond. It’s about the handshake, not the contract. Have zero tolerance for BS. Don’t complain about the weather (or anything else you can’t control). In fact, stop whining and just do the work. Life is all about family, this generation and the next. Your purpose may require profit, but don’t make your purpose all about profit. Develop strength, toughness, and grit but don’t lose the tender touch that can still handle seedlings. Pretty good life list, right? I am thankful my real experiences with real farmers have shown me that the stereotypes I was harboring were pretty accurate. And, that they are great life lessons worth modeling.

Trash. Waste. Carbon footprint. Guilt. Capitalism. Ugh. It can all get overwhelming for me because I care. I care about all of it. When I feel overwhelmed, there are two things I do in rapid succession: Plan and Take Action. It makes me feel much better when I’m in motion, moving towards something, rather than drowning in self-inflicted inertia. A bit of history. I never used plastic straws in our Farmers restaurants. From the very beginning (2008), we used compostable straws and we had (and still have) a compost program. A few years ago, I learned that if a bioplastic compostable straw goes into the regular trash or ends up in a stream or the ocean, it behaves like a regular plastic straw – lasting for hundreds of years. So, I decided I had to do better than compostable. We made the change to paper and hay straws so that we had a straw that was rapidly bio- and marine-degradable. Then, as I continued to learn more about plastic pollution and its impact on the planet and on humanity, I felt paralyzed, but quickly realized I needed to do something. How could I ever explain to my kids that I stood by, allowing the world to fill up with trash, and I did nothing to try to combat it other than run our business in an enviro-friendly way? I’ve taught them that silence is never an option when a problem presents itself. I’ve taught them to get involved, protect people, stand up for what’s right, and never be a bystander when something bad is going down. Plastic pollution has serious consequences. Ugh. Inertia? PLAN and ACT. I decided I needed to go outside the four walls of our restaurants and spread not just the word, but solutions. Supply chain solutions. Public education solutions. Business-centric solutions. Regulatory solutions. Our Last Straw was born. While I knew nothing about starting a non-profit, I knew that with a mission, motivation, and an amazing team, we could do anything. And here’s the thing. Yes, I know straws are small. I know they are a tiny part of the massive single-use plastic tragedy of how we humans are destroying our planet. But they aren’t insignificant. They are in the top 10 of marine debris. Plus, and here is why they matter to me, they require behavioral change by all of us to #StopSucking mindlessly. Straws allow us to raise awareness that plastics are wreaking havoc on our planet – they are the wake-up gateway plastic to the big picture. The more awareness and resistance there is to the mindless plastic consumption, the more businesses, including manufacturers, researchers, and investors, will be motivated to come up with solutions. Ask many of the traditional plastics manufacturers where they are putting their research dollars. We know: Into better single-use plastic alternatives. That didn’t happen by accident or because they wanted to come up with alternatives. It happened because buyers of their products (end users and retail businesses) are starting to demand it. There is power in individual straws, individual choices, and individual actions… and that power is massively magnified when we plan, take action, and become a focused, sensible coalition.

You don’t actually want to have it all. You want to have your all. But for many, it can feel nearly impossible to get to the good stuff, the work and fun that really make us truly happy. To illustrate that process, I have developed my Personal Productivity Map. Having "your ALL” requires a methodical process of defining and ranking what matters to you most and being realistic about your time, how much you have and how you spend it. My Personal Productivity Map has been developing for over a decade, as I have been learning about and teaching time management and personal productivity to a diverse range of people from our team at my restaurant company to students at George Washington University to my friends and family. It combines teachings I have admired from Stephen Covey and Laura Vanderkam, as well as my own lessons and tricks. Posted below (in PDF so you can download and review more closely), my Personal Productivity Map illustrates a process of sifting through our lives. It provides a clear strategy to examine the awesome parts and the stuff that gets in the way, learning about ourselves and how we spend our time and even how we understand time. The map helps us work to prioritize and calendarize, so we can spend more time on the stuff that really matters – the most important and rewarding parts – and less time wasting what many have called our most valuable commodity. See what you think. Let me know how it works for you. I hope my Personal Productivity Map helps you navigate a path where you get to have YOUR ALL and a life with no regrets. See related blog: Creating Your Own Personal Productivity Map for 2019.

C’mon, did you think I wasn’t going to write about plastic straws? I’ve been nuts about humans destroying the planet and themselves for years. This has driven me to ensure that all of our restaurants are built and operated in sustainably-minded ways. I finally decided to go outside the four walls of our restaurants and try and make a bigger impact. But you don’t have to read about it here, I started a non-profit – Our Last Straw – so I could make a meaningful impact. Our Last Straw is a coalition of restaurants, bars, cafes, hotels, and event venues across the Washington, DC metropolitan region and beyond on a mission: Eliminate single-use plastic straws. Join us and take the pledge to #StopSucking.

Carving out the time to allow for singular focus is a necessity. For your brain to function well, to be creative, innovative, and sharp. There is no question. It is necessary for your health, your sanity, and your career. Research shows that multi-tasking is BS. Earl Miller, a neuroscientist at MIT, sums it up for Fortune: “Don’t try to multi-task. It ruins productivity, causes mistakes, and impedes creative thought. Many of you are probably thinking, ‘but  I’m  good at it!’ Sadly, that’s an illusion. As humans, we have a very limited capacity for simultaneous thought.” The way the brain works, when you multi-task you’re actually making small shifts back and forth between singular tasks, reducing your efficiency and productivity. So it’s not multi-tasking, it’s what I call fast-switching. Stopping one thing, then starting another; paying attention to one thing while stopping paying attention to another. Some people pride themselves on being very good at multi-tasking, and they may be if their goal is to be good at multi-tasking, as in juggling a lot of things at once. But even a juggler, who may be able to keep four balls in the air while riding a unicycle, can’t actually look at each ball carefully, individually, and analyze its shape, even how it moves, or develop new creative ideas to improve its aerodynamics. When you multi-task, you’re dumbing yourself down. You’re reducing your capacity to someone who is very good at flinging their jobs around in the air but can’t really give any of them enough attention to do them well. If you choose to multi-task, you’re essentially choosing to suck at a bunch of things at once. This is especially true if you are trying to be creative, or hell, actually smart about anything. Trying to solve a problem or come up with a new way to do something? Step 1: Give up the fast-switching and replace it with focus. Or, as I am known to say, Shields Up. Shields Up I know it’s hard to work on only one thing when you’re in a world with thousands of inbound missiles. It’s not just the insanity of texting and driving or the miserable parenting move of trying to sort through your email while hearing what your kids did at school today. Those suck, of course, as tempting as they are for most of us. But there are also the big brain moments, when you really need to be on your game, sparkly bright, efficient, clear, and innovative, but it can feel impossible to step away from the clutter of your life. For me, it's Shields Up. Meaning, I create a workspace for myself, which is akin to the library where I went as a kid, with a clear, open place to focus and work, surrounded by books, and librarians shushing the noisy (yes, which sometimes was me). I also have other places where I can go and really think clearly. The shower. The car. And before I got too old and joint-challenged to jog outside, that was very fertile mind space. An elliptical inside just doesn’t compare. My Life-Changing Jog About five years ago, I was in a period of being burned out and feeling mediocre. While our restaurants were doing well and thriving, I was still also running our consulting firm. We were using the same management structure as we had been for six years, and I couldn’t see clearly what the problem was, but I knew I just wasn’t happy. Aspects of work, especially consulting, started to feel like chores, and I was confused about how I could be a partner in my own company yet have classic feelings of worker dissatisfaction. I knew I was having these thoughts and feelings, but I just kept grinding. I actually had no idea WTF I was going to do. I didn’t even think of “change,” because I never really stopped to “think.” I just had feelings, and I suppose my subconscious was trying to work on the problem on its own. So, I was jogging around Casco Bay in Portland, ME during a visit to my sister Rachel’s house, and in my mind’s eye I started looking across all the work I was doing. I could suddenly see very clearly what work I loved and what work I didn’t. As I started to shove the work I didn’t like away, I began to envision the lovely little pile that was left as a rock-solid foundation for a new role and a new structure. In this imagined company, I saw myself and my lifelong mentor and partner, Mike Vucurevich, elevating our team to replace us in specific roles so we could realistically do more of what we loved doing. My mind was able to focus. Perhaps the work my subconscious had been doing diligently for some time and trying to push up through the many distractions finally had the space to surface… the bay became my whiteboard where I drew the mental picture of our roles, the transitions required in our consultancy so that we could immerse into our own restaurants. Hurdles evaporated as my imaginary whiteboard allowed for solutions to be drawn. By the time I got around the bay and was heading up the hill to Rachel’s house, I felt joyous, invigorated, and crystal clear. After the vacation, I came back to work and put that entire plan in place. Since then, our company has tripled in size and my happiness has tripled right along with it. If I hadn’t had that run or didn’t allow myself any time to step out of the fray of my life, I may still be slogging it out with all the crap that felt like it was sinking me. This is a life-changing instance, but each of us have smaller examples throughout our days, where we reduce our brain power by believing we can really do more than one thing at a time. Single-Task or Even No-Task Mindset I have talked a lot in my classes and with my team about the importance of having time to single-task, or even no-task, to allow your brain to think freely and clearly. If you create time and space, the brain wants to do good work. The trick is making space, creating clearings. Albert Einstein nailed it when he said, “I think 99 times and find nothing. I stop thinking, swim in silence, and the truth comes to me.” I recently had another aha moment after jumping on our backyard trampoline with my youngest son, Finn. We were lying on the trampoline looking at the clouds overhead. We were discussing what we saw in the shapes. There were long moments of quiet, just staring up at the sky. There in the clouds, I saw each of our restaurants, and how they could begin to support each other. It just appeared literally out of thin air right there in the clouds. I came off that trampoline, set Finny in front of his Xbox to play Fortnite, and I drew out the thoughts that came to me. In front of me, I had produced a new intercompany communication model. It only happened because I made room for it in my mind. Consider ways you can create more staring-at-the-clouds trampoline time in your life. Or how you can build your own library. Or how YOU can best put Shields Up. Or any other space you can let your brain do its big, amazing brainwork, undistracted by emails, buzzing phones, and the folly of multi-tasking.