Episode 84: Pursuing Your Value with Brian Nelson-Palmer

🎶 Podcast Intro: Welcome to the pursuing uncomfortable podcast, where we give you the encouragement you need to lean into the uncomfortable stuff life puts in front of you, so you can love your life. If you are ready to overcome all the yuck that keeps you up at night, you're in the right place. I am your host, Melissa Ebken let's get going. 🎶

🎶 Episode Intro:  On this episode of Pursuing Uncomfortable, I talk to Brian Nelson-Palmer, founder of Productivity Gladiator, about the value of time and how it affects our decision-making. Brian shares tips on how to live life with the value of time in mind and suggests pursuing uncomfortable ideas that can be transformative. He encourages you to use his free calculator to determine your personal and work time values. Tune in to learn how to live like you're worth the value of your time. 🎶

Episode:
Melissa Ebken  0:01 
Brian, welcome to the Pursuing Uncomfortable Podcast. How are you today?

Brian Nelson-Palmer  0:06 
Thanks, Mel. It is so good to be here. And I am doing amazingly well, just considering I mean, we'll talk about it. But there's like, I don't know. It's just a whole new leash on life right now, with all of this with what we'll chat about and what I'm doing. But it's today's a good day. Thanks for having me.

Melissa Ebken  0:23 
Oh, I can't wait to hear more about that. I do have to say, Brian, you are my first gladiator that I've had on the podcast?

Brian Nelson-Palmer  0:31 
Yes, I'll take it. I don't mind being your first Gladiator. That's fun. I like it.

Melissa Ebken  0:37 
Congrats for that. And congratulations to me for you know, landing a gladiator.

Brian Nelson-Palmer  0:43 
There you go look at you, you. I don't know whether you're working your way up in the world, or some people might not think as highly of Gladiators. So maybe you kind of went back in time instead, I don't know. But either way,

Melissa Ebken  0:54 
I'm a big history fan. And I do like ancient history the Mesopotamian era and whatnot. I love reading about the Assyrians, but I'm also a big fan of the Roman Greco-Roman era, and gladiators are pretty big there. So I'll take it.

Brian Nelson-Palmer  1:10 
Nice. Well, absolutely. And for those of you who don't know anything about Gladiators, except that movie that came out, that was really popular a few years back, there you go. And we're joking about this, because I'm Brian Nelson-Palmer and I founded a company called Productivity Gladiator. And so I teach life balance and practical productivity skills to to overworked project managers, and people who work in offices in different places. And it's, it has been so rewarding to kind of get to do this as, as a profession, but also, Productivity Gladiator was such a fun name that I am honored to own the trademark for it. And it is it is my brand. And so that's I get to tell people, I was actually just at happy hour the other week, and I was hanging out with some colleagues that I didn't know. And I don't know if you've been to happy hours, but sometimes the you know, they people lead off with that question. Well, what do you do? And my really fun answer is I get to say, Hi, I'm Brian, I train gladiators. And that's like, it's fun to that always inspires a fun conversation. So having a good time.

Melissa Ebken  2:13 
Absolutely. And though you don't work in a forum, you do host forums, and see what I did there.

Brian Nelson-Palmer  2:20 
Yeah. That's so clever. So whoever I know, this is why we listen to her right? This is it. Yeah, absolutely.

Melissa Ebken  2:29 
So Brian, tell us a little bit about how you got into this whole. What is this concept? How did you get into it? What do you do with folks when they come into your forum?

Brian Nelson-Palmer  2:40 
Sure. So here's what I do. I teach life balance and practical productivity skills. And what that means is, there's a lot coming at you all the time in life. And so my target audiences, overworked project managers, people that work in office jobs, oftentimes, a lot of the stuff you hear about people talking about life balance is a struggle or work life balance, that they're feeling overwhelmed by work and stuff. That is, I teach a series of workshops called Productivity Gladiator training, that gives people the skills to handle the overwhelm to figure out what your life balance looks like, and how do you actually live that. And so it's been, I started, it came about because back in 20, I've always been for, for my whole professional career, you know, more than two decades, I've been an instructor and a facilitator on teaching professional development courses and stuff. And one of the things that I noticed in teaching some of these other workshops, like for example, I used to teach, if you're familiar with the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, I was an instructor for those training courses for a little while. And one of the things I would notice is that people would come in to the workshops, and we would, the whole time you're in the workshop, people are are actively learning, they understand the concept, they totally get it. And then they go back to real life, and nothing changes. And it's that application piece that's sometimes a challenge for folks. And especially for me because I work in office environments, right? So people are you go back to your desk, you're back in your other environment and nothing changes. So what I what happened with Productivity Gladiator was, I very much have been living I've been blessed to live this awesome life where for example, when it all started, at the time, I was the drummer in a rock band, you could check me out fellow Craft is the name of the rock band, and it's on Spotify and Apple and wherever you get your music, a couple of albums out so I got to be a rock star for five years, which was fun. I also hosted a syndicated FM radio show and a podcast at the time that was about local music. And I'm a group fitness instructor. So I teach body pump and cycle classes. If you've ever taken those, highly recommend a great way to just sort of show up and get your fitness without having to plan it ahead. You just got to get there and they'll take care of it. So I love the group fitness thing, and I had a day job at the time working for the government. And so I basically had a lot of really cool things that I was doing. I was traveling Europe, I was taking these epic adventures, I was like living life to the fullest. And the the question I kept got the I, the question I kept getting was, how do you keep track of it all? How do you how do you do it all? And I realized that, like, you know, I have a system that I could teach people. And the challenge to myself was, could I actually teach people the system? It's one thing to do it, it's another thing to be able to actually help other people do it. And so that's been my sort of lifelong challenge is to see how I can help other people do that. How do you keep track of all the things? How do you not forget, if somebody's counting on you to do something? Do you have a system to not forget that thing. So that's where Productivity Gladiator training started. And back in 2022 2022, I had the opportunity to do a TED talk. And the TED talk is on or it's a TEDx talk, I should clarify, it's a TEDx talk that was on the title of the talk is reimagining the actual value of your time. And during that talk, one of the concepts that I share in that talk, is I share one of the concepts from training that has been very transformational for folks, which is about how much is if you had a number as a frame of reference for how much your time is worth? How could you use that number as a tool? And how would that change your life. And that one concept has been really transformational for a lot of the people with the friends in my life colleagues long before Productivity Gladiator became a brand and a thing. I was helping friends with this concept on hey, let me show you these tricks, these tactics, these hacks, productivity hacks and stuff. And so now it's a system. But in that TED talk, if you haven't seen it, I certainly hope you'll check it out. But I was able to share the concept. And I was really honored because it at the end, after I did the talk, the team at TED, watch the talk and there's something like 500 TEDx talks that get uploaded a day to the YouTube channel. So it's there's a lot of content on there. But the TED team picked my talk, and maybe like one other out of those five hundreds to be an editor's pick. And so it was one of those things where the talk got 10s of 1000s of views in a matter of a few days. And I mean, it was a, it was a very cool experience. But what that said to me was, keep sharing the message like Brian, there's other people that are benefiting from this or interested by this concept. So I say that my phrase throughout the talk is live like you're worth the value of your time. So I certainly invite you to do that and check out the talk. But that's that's been that's the sort of, I guess I gave you the sort of short but yet long winded look at me, I've been talking for a few minutes. That's the that's the brief background on Productivity Gladiator and what I've been doing.

Melissa Ebken  7:50 
So to make a long story short, you're a big deal, right?

Brian Nelson-Palmer  7:57 
Flattery will get you everywhere Mel, don't you stop, just keep it up. Yes, I love it. I don't think of myself that way. I'm just a normal guy. But I do appreciate that. I've gotten to do some very cool things with this. And I just want to keep sharing the news, sharing the tactics.

Melissa Ebken  8:14 
And I love that you focus on that how how do we implement. In my profession, as a pastor, a lot of people want to grow their faith, they want to increase their spiritual health. And they know the things to do to do that we all do. We know that we need to pray we know we need to engage with source however we call upon that and define it in whatever way we can. But we don't always know how to do that. And that's really the missing piece in so many aspects of our lives. I would think, would you agree?

Brian Nelson-Palmer  8:47 
Agree. It's I'm obsessed with the how, like, it's one thing you tell people to lose weight, they know what to do. And yet they struggle to lose weight they and I'm guilty of this too. I don't have the six pack that I wish that I had that movie gladiator we were talking about I don't look like one of those guys. I got I mean I do pretty well for myself. I do teach fitness classes. So I think I got a good thing going but I don't have a six pack like they do and so I mean, we know what we're supposed to do. But a lot of times it's the tactics and what do you actually do to get there what what's the how how do I do it? And so that's the part that I'm really obsessed with with productivity gladiator is okay, let me show you how. Here's very simple concepts that will help you make better decisions, help you handle the email help you handle your to do list and you're overwhelm with everything going on. That's what Productivity Gladiator is about. So totally agree. Mel, it's all about the how.

Melissa Ebken  9:44 
And I read something not too long ago actually, I didn't read it. I misspoke there. A doctor shared it with me that you're not going to change your life until you change something you do every day. And wow. And when I looked at into you. Because, you know, I totally Facebook stalked you and internet stalked you after we spoke. But one of the things that is deeply ingrained and and all that you do is changing that mindset, which is something we do every day?

Brian Nelson-Palmer  10:16 
Absolutely. It's, it really boils down to the day to day, right? What is what is your system for handling the day to day, because if you want to take those, you want to make those changes. That's something that is important. You need to change your environment, you need to change your regular actions, you know, so I, they actually I'm reading a book right now that I have to I can look at the title, but it's about changing your environment. And that that's a really interesting concept, right? Something we all know, if you're trying to lose weight, you probably shouldn't keep Oreos in the cupboard, because you're going to eat them. And you got to kind of change your environment and

Melissa Ebken  10:54 
Let's not get crazy on us Brian.

Brian Nelson-Palmer  10:59 
Do you have a weakness for Oreos too, because I just told you my secret, right? Oh, gosh, I can't keep Oreos in the house. Oh, gosh, I eat them all, like the whole package. There's just no stop button for me, I just keep going I got so I can't keep Oreos in the house because of that. So you change your environment, but also the way that you make decisions. If you start to change the regular behaviors, the keep track of all the stuff you need to do. And your to do list and how you prioritize or in this case, what we're talking about is how you make decisions with your time. That's what this whole concept of live like your work the value of your time I'm going to give you I give you a number. If you watch the TED talk, I'll give you a number for what your an estimate of what your personal time outside of work is worth. And once you know that, what do you do with that? How do you how does that change your life? And so it's that day to day peace so I'm like, yeah, making better decisions every day, and you'll start to make progress, it'll make a difference.

Melissa Ebken  11:56 
And I have to back you up on that one. You know, I went to your website, and you know, I put my numbers in the calculator and calculated my time. Excellent. And funny story, though, I didn't realize you needed to put the the zeros in. So for the income, I just the first numbers before the comma. And the calculation gave me some cents per hour of what my time was worth. I'm like, no I disagree. My time is worth a lot more than that. And then I realized, oh my goodness, okay, maybe there's user error here. And oh, that's so hard to admit. Right. But yeah, it was pretty blatant and ridiculous user error. So I went back and put in the full amount with all the zeros. And I tried to use the decimal point, which it wouldn't take the decimal point just to be sure, but okay, and that gave me a little more accurate result. There you go. I love it.

Brian Nelson-Palmer  13:00 
Now, how did you? Is there something once you found out that number that you kind of immediately noticed off the bat was like, oh, you know, knowing this now, I might change something?

Melissa Ebken  13:10 
Absolutely. Absolutely. There was a series, I'm not. I don't want to say I'm not much of I'm not a regular TV watcher. But I do fall into that, oh, this is a really compelling series. And I want to catch all of it. And then I'm done until the next thing comes along. So yeah, it was really eating it me finishing out that series, because you know, you can't leave a little bit undone and got to finish it all. I just felt this clock ticking in my in the back of my mind. And you know, the sound of the cash register going in my mind of what it was costing me to spend time finishing out that series.

Brian Nelson-Palmer  13:57 
Mel, I have two things for you there. The by the way, is it alright, if I call you Mel, I know Melissa is the person. Okay, so I. So I, there's two things I want to share. First of all, for you listening, what she's talking about is if you go to my website, if you go to productivitygladiator.com I do have a free calculator that lets you calculate the number that I talk about in my TED Talk. And it will tell you an estimate of what your personal time is worth, and what your work time is worth. And so it's it's free, you don't have to give me your email address or anything, I put it out there because I want you guys to know I want you to share. I want I want you to know this and be able to use this tool. So jump on there and give it a shot if you want. It's on the very first page, you just I think it's a couple of scrolls down you'll see the time value calculators and it's the one for calculate the value of your time so you can do it right now while you're listening. And it'll give you a number and so that's what she's talking about right now is that you can't you you, you need to make sure you put the full values that asked for like your annual income before taxes and it asks you for how many hours of sleep how much time you spend in bed a night and just like two or three numbers, but it will give you an estimate, right. And so in order to, like the whole concept behind how you use that number is what my TED talk is about. So check that out. But so first I wanted to share that's an invitation for you listening to go check out your number for yourself, productivitygladiator.com. The second thing was Mel, I have a really funny story about what you just said about finishing a TV series. This was, it was a good friend of mine. I don't know if you ever watched or remember Game of Thrones. Game of Thrones was like an obsession for a lot of people. And my buddy was, we'll call him John, I'm not gonna call him out. But my buddy John was like, oh, Brian, you have got to watch Game of Thrones. So all right. One afternoon, I had an hour to kill, I don't watch much TV actually, after he, after I calculated my number. And I teach this stuff, I actually found that it's not actually very rewarding to, for me personally, to spend a lot of time watching television because I don't make memories that will last forever watching television. So like, for me, priority wise, it doesn't. That's just a personal decision for me. But now that I share that with you, he wanted me to watch Game of Thrones. So I sat down and I watched the first episode. And it was like, meh. I mean, I didn't love it. It's not that I didn't like it. But I didn't love it. It wasn't Oh, my gosh, this is amazing. So I started the second episode. And by halfway through the second episode, I was like, this is not worth my time. This is not I have a number value for my time, right. And I'm looking at this going I am spending spending, quote unquote, this much of my time on this. And this is not what I'm interested in. And by that point, they were on like season three or something. So to get to, to catch up to my buddy, John, I would have had to watch 15, 20, 30 something episodes. So we're talking like 30 hours of my life. And now that you know how much your time is worth, you got a number for that. I'm doing the calculation in my head. For me personally, I value my time right now my personal time is worth 30 bucks an hour. So having that calculation there made me go Okay, wait a minute, this is like $900 worth of my time. Now, do I love it that much? Like, is it that good? No, definitely not decided not to watch Game of Thrones. And he and I laughed about it. Because he knows that I teach this concept. He's familiar with my TED Talk. So it was just so funny that he's trying to convince me, because then his when he came back to me, he said, Brian, you know, here's what you need to do. Just make it through the first season. And by halfway through the second season, you are going to love this. And in my head, I'm going so you want me to spend 20 hours just to get to the point where I might like it like what? No, no, I'm not doing that. So that was just That's a funny on your talk about TV. That was oh my gosh, that was just a funny story that had happened recently.

Melissa Ebken  17:56 
That and it's hilarious. And I have to admit, there have been a few points that have brought me some anxiety. And they have really highlighted and pointed out my own issues and struggles that are my issues and my struggles. But I was raised in a family that you don't show up late. 10 minutes early is on time. Okay. The early is to be a half an hour early. And I served in the military and they kind of highlight that too.

Brian Nelson-Palmer  18:31 
That's that's a thing for them. Yes, absolutely.

Melissa Ebken  18:34 
That's a big thing for them. So I always struggle. And I have a teenager who interprets that concept somewhat differently than I do. Let's just say. So yeah, I'm standing there and waiting. And let me just say my teenager moves with the urgency of Lou Pinella making a pitching change. If you're a baseball fan at all, you know that the manager will spend as much time as possible making that trip from the dugout to the mound to allow the pitcher in the bullpen to warm up. Lou Pinella, raised this to an art form. Okay. He would walk heel to toe, heel to toe heel to toe and at a snail's pace to get from the dugout to the to the mound. But he was taking such short steps. It looks like he was walking really fast. And he worked his arms and everything really fast, though. That's my favorite image. And I feel like that I'm getting growing old waiting on not just that family member but other family members to just get out the door. And I feel the clock ticking and I feel the sound of money changing hands. It's like oh my gosh, all of my time. All of my value is here, waiting of this and then I had to read think, Okay, well, this is an issue of mine, not theirs. And so it just highlighted something that causes me anxiety that I had to own is my issue, and that there isn't something that I needed to work on. So

Brian Nelson-Palmer  20:16 
And you know, as I, as I hear that you are not alone in this talk, we definitely talk about in the workshops when I teach this concept, right, because the TED talk is just a very brief and succinct introduction to the lesson that I teach a two hour workshop on. And so whenever I'm doing these workshops, we have a lot of discussions about little things like that, like, Well, what about if you're early? So there's a lot of things clearly, life is not a math formula, right. So let's just get that out of the way right now, I am not telling you that it's as simple as just plugging in your numbers. And that's it, there's a lot of all the decisions in life, we're going to come to more than that. But the couple of things as I think about what you're talking about, that's a few things. First, it might give you permission to not be 10 minutes early, if you know that everyone else is going to be on time, then you're not going to be late, if you're just on time with everybody else, you know, or something like that. So that's because you are like live like you're worth the value of your time. Right. So that's one thing. Another thing is I have some friends, I'm going to be honest with you. And if they hear this, well, they don't know who they are, specifically, I'm not going to name them. But I have friends that I have a factor of 15 minutes, where if we're gonna meet at 130, I tell them 115, because of exactly what you're talking about, they've got a track record, I know how this works. And so I don't, I don't want to be the one sitting there waiting, killing time. While I'm waiting for them to get there. I would rather all of us get there at the same time. So it's funny little things like that, that like, you know, if my time is worth something, then how does my behavior change because of that. And that's so it's just, it's awesome that you bring that up, because that's a true point.

Melissa Ebken  22:01 
And then there are times when, you know, given my professional again, as a pastor, that people can't be put on a clock, that sometimes you just got to turn off the clock, let it do its passing somewhere else. So that you can just have a safe space and let people be people.

Brian Nelson-Palmer  22:23 
And that you're speaking right to we talked about it's not always a number or a formula. There are times that are worth your time. And so actually, I mean, if we I talked about it in the TED Talk that there, if there was a study done by there's a woman who worked in hospice, and she recorded the thoughts and advice that people of all ages, right, so we're talking teenagers, they use tick tock where you're talking older folks, we're talking middle age, everybody who's in a hospice, these are their final days, what were their what's their tips, or thoughts or advice that they would pay forward in their final days looking back on their life. And these are the kinds of things that are worth your time, right, and you can't put a number on that. So some of the some of the things she shared were be a better more loving spouse, parent or child. Family time, that's something or be do more for others, right? So you're just talking about give someone time to share intimate details, or if it's something terrible just happened to them, and they need a shoulder to cry on, you're not going to put a value on that time, because the value of being there for that person is so worth it in the long run. Absolutely. So like, there's things like that that are that you don't even put a number on that or it doesn't matter what it would cost, you would still make that decision. And I fully support that stuff, though. Those things are so worth it. I really it's about making those decisions. This is more targeted toward things that are time wasters, or I mean, in my in my workshops, I asked everybody right off the bat, the first question that I ask, it's a sharing activity that we do is share the biggest time waster or time suck in your life. And for the majority of people. And boy, more and more kids these days too. Social media is the biggest one and they know it, they spend tick tock hours on tick tock hours on Instagram. You just don't even realize where the time goes. You just keep going. And like, gosh, a transformative event that happened for me was I actually once I realized once I had this idea for all right, my time is worth something. And let me use that as a tool to help make better decisions with my time. I looked at my phone if you don't know this, but your phone will actually tell you how many hours you spend on social media each week. It'll give you an average for the week, how much per day. And so I checked my phone and my phone said at the time I spent two hours per day on social media. So two hours per day times I shared with you guys earlier 30 bucks an hour or I will say 25 bucks an hour right or so. 25 bucks an hour do the math times two hours per day. Times 365 days per year is something like 15- $20,000. Like, that's a lot of money. And so in the year, I am investing as much as a car, the worth of my time into social media. And that was like this mind blowing like, no, no, I am not doing this anymore. That is that is, I can't believe that that is happening. So that was all the inspiration I needed to your phone. If you don't know this, if you take one thing away from this podcast, I hope you calculate your number. But the other thing that I hope you do more than anything, is go on your phone, and put time limits on the apps that kill most of your time, right. So the social medias, or if you're a YouTube person that just goes down YouTube rabbit holes for hours, or whatever your your crutch or, your thing is that you do on your smartphone. And whether it's Android or iPhone, you have the ability to put a time limit on how much time you spend. So I want you to make the decision on how much time you're going to spend and help your phone tell you when that time is up so that you don't lose track. Because it's not your fault. You just lose track of time and I get it but the phone will help you. So please, please go in your settings right now. It's screen time or whatever it's called on your on your operating system and put limits on that time, it will be transformative for me, if you're asking for a number, my phone is set to 15 minutes, I get 15 minutes on social media a day. And after that it's over. And I got a whole bunch of other hacks about that because I talk about this all the time. But that's the one. 15 minutes per day social media. Oh, I challenge you to do it.

Melissa Ebken  26:44 
That's amazing. And friends, all the links we've talked about are in the shownotes a link to the website that will give you the calculator tool. All of that is in the website. If you want to eat away at some of Brian's 15 minutes, those links are in the show notes too. I think I misspoke. I said website, the show notes has all of those links. So make sure you follow those sign up for some of this is gonna blow your mind and inspire you to to be a little uncomfortable as you create a life that you really want to prioritize. So Brian, thank you so much for joining us today.

Brian Nelson-Palmer  27:23 
Absolutely. Thanks, Mel, thank you very much for having me. Thank you for listening. And and the thing that I hope out of all of this, aside from putting that if you haven't done it already, did you go in and put that limit on your phone yet, I Please do it. But the other thing is looking back on your life, it really is if you that woman who worked in hospice, and you think about if you were looking back on your life right now one of the concepts that they talk about in the seven habits, which by the way, I Seven Habits is a great program, one of the seven habits is begin with the end in mind, right? So let's zoom out to your life. If you were looking back on your life right now, or sometimes there's there's that exercise where you can pretend someone's giving your eulogy, what will they say about you or that kind of thing. But when you're looking back now, please live like you're worth the value of your time. And so that means the way that you're spending your days, please do at least part of your day doing things that you will be proud or happy or satisfied that you spent part of your day that way if you're looking back at the end, and there is no more time. I want you to be proud and happy and fulfilled with that. So please take that step. And if this is giving you ideas, start thinking about those ideas and lean into we talked about pursuing uncomfortable right this is probably going to be a little uncomfortable, but please pursue it because I think it will be very transformational for you.

Melissa Ebken  28:50 
And be the gladiator you need to restate

Brian Nelson-Palmer  28:54 
Yeah. Oh, I love it. Mel you're hired can be a gladiator. That's awesome.

Melissa Ebken  29:01 
Thank you Brian.

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