Ep 187 - Mindful Productivity Especially for Introverts with Wesley Evan Smith

Have you ever wondered how introverts can leverage their unique strengths to become more productive and balanced in their daily lives?

In this episode of The Quiet And Strong Podcast, host David Hall is joined by Wesley Evan Smith, a mindful productivity coach and founder of the Mindful Productivity Academy. Wesley shares invaluable insights into the importance of recognizing introverted personalities and how embracing these traits can lead to tremendous personal and professional growth.

What You'll Learn:
- How to manage energy levels across physical, emotional, cognitive, and creative domains to achieve peak productivity.
- Effective methods for digital organization to manage projects and tasks efficiently.
- The significance of preparation and mindful engagement in navigating social interactions and public speaking.
- Techniques for stretching your comfort zones and integrating mindfulness to tackle overwhelm and anxiety.

This episode is a must-listen for anyone who identifies as an introvert or works closely with introverted individuals. Wesley's practical advice, grounded in both personal experience and professional expertise, offers actionable steps to harness the strengths of introversion. Whether you're looking to improve your public speaking, manage digital clutter, or achieve a balanced workflow, this episode provides essential guidance for transforming your productivity through mindful practices.

Tune in, learn new strategies to enhance your productivity, and be strong.

Episode Link: QuietandStrong.com/187


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Wesley Evan Smith is a proud INFJ and a passionate advocate for the empowerment of introverts to rise and thrive through the practice of Mindful Productivity. He's a Mindful Productivity Coach for Introverts and founder of the Mindful Productivity Academy.

Connect with Wes:

Website: WesleyEvanSmith.com
Socials: Youtube |  LinkedIn

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Contact the Host of the Quiet and Strong Podcast:

David Hall

Author, Speaker, Educator, Podcaster

quietandstrong.com
Gobio.link/quietandstrong
david [at] quietandstrong.com

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Minding Your Time: Time Management, Productivity, and Success, Especially for Introverts

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Transcript

Wesley Evan Smith [00:00:00]:
One of the key aspects of mindful productivity is taking that time to step back and do an assessment of your life. What are the important things? What are the areas of focus? What are your passions? The things that you are really wanting to commit your attention to.

David Hall [00:00:28]:
Hello, and welcome to Episode 187 of the Quiet and Strong podcast, especially for introverts. I'm your host, David Hall and the creator of quietandstrong.com. This is a weekly podcast dedicated to understanding the strengths and needs of introverts and strategies for success. Introversion is not something to fix, but to be embraced. Normally we will air each episode on a Monday. Be sure to subscribe on your favorite platform. Leave a review or a rating that would mean a lot to me and also help others find the show. Tell a friend about the podcast.

David Hall [00:01:01]:
Help get the word out there that introversion is a beautiful thing. Wesley Evan Smith is a proud INFJ and a passionate advocate for the empowerment of introverts to rise and thrive through the practice of mindful productivity. He's a mindful productivity coach for introverts and founder of the Mindful Productivity Academy. All right. Well, welcome Wes to the Quiet and Strong podcast. It's so great to have you.

Wesley Evan Smith [00:01:29]:
David, thank you so much for having me. It is a pleasure and an honor to be on the Quiet and Strong podcast. This is one of the best podcasts out there, and I'm thrilled that you're doing it. The work that you do is incredible for introverts, so thank you.

David Hall [00:01:45]:
Oh, thank you. That's so nice of you to say, and I'm excited for our conversation. We both know how important it is for introverts to look at productivity and time management differently, and we're gonna get into that. But first, as a fellow introvert, tell us a little bit about your journey to the work that you're doing now as a coach for other introverts.

Wesley Evan Smith [00:02:04]:
Sure. Well, when I was growing up, I could tell that I was introverted, but didn't have that defined. I was just an awkward kid growing up living in my head, and now I'm just grown up version of that awkward self still living in my head. Yeah. But what's different is along the way I discovered my introversion and found a way to embrace that. Now when I was in my early twenties, I wanted to crack my coconut, figure out what it was about me that just seemed off, that was different from everybody else. And I came across David Kersey's book, Please Understand Me at the time, getting into the the four temperaments, and that really exposed me to the Myers Briggs and the personality assessments there. And during that time, I discovered, you know, I was an INFJ, and I began learning more about just the nature of introverted personalities, and that opened me up to an understanding that I didn't have before.

Wesley Evan Smith [00:03:05]:
There was an assumption that introversion was this problem that needed to be fixed, much like what you address, throughout the podcast here. And it's not a flaw. It's not something that needs to be corrected. It's something that needs to be understood. And the more that I understood that, I found myself able to leverage that, those strengths that we have in an extroverted world. So when in 2014, I was going through a really difficult time, both professionally and personally. A lot of disarray, a lot of issues that had followed me through life with procrastination, perfectionism, what I call time anxieties. There's an existential element to this as well.

Wesley Evan Smith [00:03:58]:
At the time, I was in my early forties. I had several very close friends that had passed, and there was an awareness that kind of entering a midlife crisis awareness of wanting to get things done in my life that matter to me, not to just everybody else, not about work. I had, during that time, become a workaholic. It was impacting the relationship with my wife, with my family, with my friends. And I really pulled myself back from that and started developing a system that would help me focus on doing and getting done more of what mattered most in my life. Through that, this became mindful productivity, which is a holistic system that addresses the issues that we face as introverts, that introspective elements, those time anxieties, the existential anxieties, our organizational skills, all of that comes into play. So that led me to developing a system that was really working wonders for me, turned my life around. I had started practicing mindfulness and mindful meditation, and that was a game changer that integrating those practices of quieting the mind and and letting those distractions go to the periphery so you have room to kind of grow your awareness and consciousness in your head.

Wesley Evan Smith [00:05:30]:
Integrating that with these productivity strategies that I had developed, that's what ultimately became mindful productivity. That opened me up to wanting to work with other introverts who were struggling with the same issues that I've been struggling with throughout my life to bring us all on a journey moving forward so we can really live the lives that we wanna live and not find ourselves at the finish line holding too many regrets.

David Hall [00:05:57]:
Yeah. Thank you. Your story sounds so familiar to me. And you mentioned a great book. Please understand me. There's also please understand me too by David Kersey and

Wesley Evan Smith [00:06:06]:
Have it right here.

David Hall [00:06:07]:
Yeah. Yeah. That's a, that's a awesome book. I really benefited from it. I don't know if it's as well known as it should be. So thank you for bringing that up.

Wesley Evan Smith [00:06:17]:
Yeah. No. That was that was my starting point. I had just stumbled across it at a bookstore when I was probably 19. Okay. It it spoke right to me and and opened me up. So I was that started my journey in understanding my introversion.

David Hall [00:06:31]:
In general, you know, he's not talking just about introversion, but he has some really great quotes, like, you know, don't try to fix me just because I'm not exactly like you, you know, embrace who I am while I embrace who you are. And so, yeah, it's a great book. So Wes, what would you say is a strength that you recognize because you're an introvert?

Wesley Evan Smith [00:06:55]:
Realizing that introspective nature that we have and the pause that we take to think about things before we respond, before we react, It can be challenging in a room full of extroverts that may just be firing off thoughts and speaking on the fly, and things that are a little more challenging for us as introverts to do because we like to think before we speak. When I see well, let me rephrase that. When we have that space to think things through, I've always found that just hanging back and not trying to jump in, losing that, touch with our authenticity to give ourselves that space, to give ourselves the permission to not try to compete with extroverts, to be engaged at the same level they are in the conversations. But when we give ourselves that opportunity to step back, that's where our strength really pulls us through, and that's what gets recognized. Even if we're the last person to speak in the room on something, we usually bring something that nobody else has brought that makes everybody go, oh, yeah, let's think about that. So it's a it's it's an asset. And if we don't recognize that we have this as a strength, and we just think it's a discomfort that we're trying to suppress, we won't really fully realize the potential of our strength. Because it does come with a bit of discomfort, but we have to accept and embrace that and move through it.

David Hall [00:08:43]:
Yeah. Yeah. I won't tell in detail this story, but that's what quiet and strong means. Someone told me as a compliment, you're quiet and strong, you know, meaning that I wasn't speaking a lot, but when I spoke, people listened because I had something valuable to share, and that's exactly what you're describing. So that's where the name comes from. And the quiet part doesn't mean shy. It just means we're thinking. We're putting all of our ideas together and putting what we think is most valuable, and often it is valuable because we've taken some time to think and observe and and other things reflect reflection.

David Hall [00:09:17]:
It's a big gift of ours.

Wesley Evan Smith [00:09:19]:
And once we establish this credibility with, in the extrovert realms, there's a respect that comes with this. So when I'm asked, you know, on the fly, well, what do you think? Like, well, how about you give me like a little bit to think about it, and I'll get back to you on it. That usually gets acknowledged with credibility and respect because they know that I'm gonna come back with something that's going to be kind of worth the wait, so to speak.

David Hall [00:09:48]:
Yeah. Absolutely. And that's something, you know, it it does come with time as people get to know us, that it's worth the wait. That's another thing that is introverts. We just need to be able to articulate, Hey, give me a moment to think about that, or give me a few minutes, or I'll talk to you tomorrow, whatever it is that it, it it's worth the wait. And we don't always need to think, but sometimes we do, and we need to express that, but it'll start to get recognized by the people that we work with. And,

Wesley Evan Smith [00:10:17]:
and that's the empowerment. That's where, when we recognize this and we understand it about ourselves, we can help other people understand it about us as well, and then we're truly empowered.

David Hall [00:10:29]:
Yeah. You started to say something earlier that I think is probably the most important to all this, and we talked before and also, you know, watch videos and read some posts from you and it's really, what are we meant to do? What's the most important thing in life for us? And are we doing that? And, you know, like we don't wanna have a ton of regrets. I think this mindful productivity is really all about that. Like, are you doing what you feel like you're supposed to do, or you want to do, you know, and a lot of times we get caught up in survival mode and then year years pass and, and we're not doing what we think we should be doing.

Wesley Evan Smith [00:11:10]:
Exactly right. And when we get to that point where we recognize that life is finite, and we may be halfway through it, and you never know how much time you actually have. That is our most valuable asset. We know it, but we don't always appreciate it. Time is a long term relationship. It's something that has to have a mutual respect, and it ultimately has more power over us than we have over it. So managing it is theoretical, but we do our best to have a respectful relationship with time. And by focusing ourselves on how we can do and get done the things that matter to us, we can structure our time so that we're using it more wisely rather than letting the time get away from us and wondering where it went.

Wesley Evan Smith [00:12:12]:
That's where the regrets will come in and follow us to our grave. So one of the key aspects of mindful productivity is taking that time to step back and do an assessment of your life. What are the important things? What are the areas of focus? What are your passions? The things that you are really wanting to commit your attention to. Now, this can be personally or professionally. I use it for both, but the theory is the same. So once you have and I I refer to this as the first of 5 stepping stones in the mindful productivity methodology that I teach, which I call a dozen cats. And cats are your categories, actions, temperaments, and simplicity. And This is where you break down your life into those areas of interests and no more than 12, which is why it's a dozen cats, and integrate that with your values.

Wesley Evan Smith [00:13:11]:
So it's really an opportunity to step back, make that assessment of what matters to you, what do you want to focus your time and attention to, and how do those relate and integrate with the values and virtues that you want to move forward with and make the emphasis of how you interact with life. And that becomes the structure that you begin designing your life to focus on. And again, like anything, that can evolve over time. It's our lives and everything we do really are a path of mastery learning. What we know this year isn't going to be the same that we know the following year. So we adapt and we adjust to that. But if we have a methodology that we're approaching, our time and our tasks and our energy, if we have that infrastructure in place and a design, we can find ourselves actually doing these things that maybe for the past 10 years, we've somehow the time has gone by, but we haven't finished doing these things that we really don't wanna die without having achieved these really meaningful things in our lives.

David Hall [00:14:27]:
Is there a process that you have clients do or how often I know that can definitely vary by the person.

Wesley Evan Smith [00:14:35]:
Oh, yeah. I approach it even though there's 5 stepping stones to mindful productivity, it's a dynamic process. So depending on what a client is most interested in focusing on working on, we can jump into these. This could be either, you know, the time management structures that I use, the energy management structures, the digital organization, how we organize our lives, that life assessment, you know, where we categorize things. Those are all aspects of it. Now, ideally, and and the course that I'm developing for the mindful productivity academy, these do follow a specific order in those stepping stones. But from a coaching perspective, a 1 on 1 perspective, it's more about focusing in on what is going to be the most beneficial for that client, what they're struggling with and challenged with in the moment. And it circles back to all of the other aspects.

Wesley Evan Smith [00:15:31]:
So those become integrated into it, but there's a sense of urgency a lot of times with what somebody's trying to address, whether that's their time management or their energy management.

David Hall [00:15:43]:
Yeah. So this is a big question. I think, how is this different for introverts?

Wesley Evan Smith [00:15:52]:
Introverts and extroverts struggle with things like procrastination because we're distracted by different things. Extroverts are distracted more by external issues. They're the stimuli that's going on around them in their lives, the external distractions. Whether it's having too much to do, too many obligations, too many commitments, these are external things that, you know, that over commitment and trying to do too much, and then focusing on the things that maybe is preferred to do and procrastinating on the things that I'd rather not do that. With introverts, our distractions are largely internal. So we will overthink things. We give our since we are living in our head so much of the time, that internal thinking and and makes a step back and wonder, oh, okay. Well, maybe I should do this, and maybe I should do that, or, you know, that that perfectionist tendency.

Wesley Evan Smith [00:16:57]:
And that is our struggle. So really that's where I define the differences between these time anxiety issues and the struggles that introverts and extroverts have is the difference between external distractions and internal distractions.

David Hall [00:17:13]:
Yeah. And then how is energy management different for introverts?

Wesley Evan Smith [00:17:21]:
I would say it's actually the same. It's not specific to introverts, but we're going to be a little more receptive to it just from our own self analytical introspective nature. And I break down our energy management into like a pyramid with 4 levels. And at the foundation of it, you have your physical energy. If you were, if you haven't been sleeping well, if you're not taking care of yourself and your physical energy isn't sufficient, you're gonna have a hard time managing your emotional energy, and that's the 2nd tier to that energy pyramid. So if you've, if you're well rested and you're feeling good physically, your emotional energy is more manageable. You can tackle the things that might need addressing with appropriate physical energy. Now, if those are aligned, your physical energy and your emotional energy, and those are good, that opens you up to your cognitive energy.

Wesley Evan Smith [00:18:20]:
And you'll be able to think, process things more logically, problem solve all the things that you need to do to take care of the more deeper work and tasks that are part of your agenda. When you have those three energies, if your physical energy, your your emotional energy, and your cognitive energy are all working synchronously. That opens you up to your creative energy. Now you're really focusing on the creative ideas of of what you're doing. How can this be done differently? You're getting a momentum that puts you into that flow state. And this is, you know, people chase flow states as if there's something, you know, precious, like, oh, there's a flow state. Now I'm gonna I gotta catch it while I can grab it. And they're really not.

Wesley Evan Smith [00:19:11]:
It's a matter of just having that physical, emotional, cognitive, and creative energy all happening that creates the flow. The flow just rises naturally from that. And if you can maintain consistency of your energies, then you can predictably expect to go into flow states.

David Hall [00:19:37]:
Yeah. I really like how you put that. I haven't heard it exactly like that, but that's what we're after is that creativity and flow state, especially as introverts, because we have great imaginations. We're, you know, gifted thinkers and we're great at reflection. And that's where we wanna be, you know, is is in that flow state where we can use these gifts to come up with some amazing innovations and, and creative solutions for things.

Wesley Evan Smith [00:20:04]:
Yeah. And there's, there's another aspect of flow states. And I mentioned that people find flow states to be this, you know, this precious thing. Like, oh, if you can find it, if you can achieve it, great. Flow states, once you're comfortable with, you know, managing these energies to establish the flow states, break your flow states. Don't stay in it. And you can restart a flow state if your energy is still solid. And it, to me, it's like, if you're exercising a muscle, you have to pause and give it a break for that to rebuild.

Wesley Evan Smith [00:20:40]:
And if we're too concerned that we're going to break our flow state, that we keep going deeper down our rabbit holes, and we just wanna hold onto that and get as much done while we're in that flow as possible, it's gonna backfire. It's gonna come back and bite us. We're going to push too hard. We're gonna cross that line of where the quality of what we're producing, our output is going to begin to diminish. We will have peaked, and begin to diminish, and we'll find ourselves out of not wanting to break that flow. Flow already left the building before we realized it, and now we're just not producing the quality of results that we could have otherwise made more sustainable if we had just taken breaks from it. So this is why, I break down deep work and shallow work. Thanks, Cal Newport.

Wesley Evan Smith [00:21:29]:
I break those down into rabbit holes and whackamoles, and I use a time structure similar to a Pomodoro technique, but I break things into 45 minute of really deep work and 15 minutes for shallow work, where you take a break away from it. You disrupt the flow, And these can be adjusted, into, you know, 90, 30. But with the core of 45 minute, 15 minutes between your deep work and then a break for some shallow work, and then you return back to the deep work again. And that's how we can keep a sustainable flow state. If we're not scared to break it, we're not scared to break flow, then we can get right back into it. And a lot of times, it's the same as when you're trying to figure out a problem, and you can stare at it and dwell on it and think about it. But it's when you get up and you go out and you take a walk for 10 minutes, but suddenly on that walk, the solution hits you, and you're like, oh, that's what I need to do. Boom.

Wesley Evan Smith [00:22:36]:
You come back, and you're back in the flow because you figured out the problem. You could have stared at that, or you could have sat and just over focused, and and you wouldn't have figured it out. And all that time and energy would pass and nothing got done. But it's because you stepped away. You broke that flow. You broke the energy. They were able to find that solution and then reestablish your flow again and keep moving forward. So it's a, it's a little dynamic dance of our focus and being willing to let go when we need to let go so we can come back and reconnect.

David Hall [00:23:19]:
Yeah. That's a great strategy. I can't tell you how many times that that's worked where when you stop thinking about it, your mind is still, is still working on it in the background and you come up with some great stuff when you're not trying so hard.

Wesley Evan Smith [00:23:34]:
Well, we get so caught up in the moment that, and and again, this is it's part of a mindfulness practice of giving ourselves, giving our minds that space between our thoughts. Because as introverts, especially, our minds are so active. There's thoughts constantly racing through our heads, and most of them don't really serve as a benefit or a purpose in the moment. So we could be working on a particular task, and all these thoughts are popping up in our heads. Through a consistent mindfulness meditation practice, our ability to recognize, oh, okay, I'm thinking about things I don't need to think about. Let me just okay, thank you, pause it, let it go. The more we do that, when we find ourselves caught up in feeling that overwhelm, you know, that overwhelm and I know you've spoken to this as well. Overwhelm to me is the core issue that causes our procrastination, our perfectionism, and our anxieties, and that fear.

Wesley Evan Smith [00:24:37]:
It all comes from an overwhelm. And when we're able to keep our minds calm and focused and have that space between our thoughts and our and our mind, what we're focusing on, Overwhelm doesn't have a place to go. And we can we can let that subside. And that's when we do our best work. That's when we feel the best about ourselves. That's when we're calm and focused on what it is that we want to be doing. And our energy is is balanced to help move us forward in that direction.

David Hall [00:25:14]:
Yeah. Yeah. And with overwhelm, it's like, if you can identify your most important things you have to do, because too many times we're trying to do everything. I've learned the hard way you can't do everything.

Wesley Evan Smith [00:25:27]:
There is a person needs to prioritize very mindfully about what we commit our time and energy to. And that's where having a structure. If, you know, in the beginning when I'm working with my clients, and if we're focusing on that dozen cats, stepping stone, A lot of times we have so many things that we wanna do that we don't know where to put our focus, what to focus on next. We don't have a means of order. And a lot of these things that we want to do, we need to kind of align these with the energy that we have to perform those tasks. We can't predict necessarily how we're going to feel tomorrow at 2 o'clock, and I'm gonna work on writing my book at 2 o'clock tomorrow. You may not be in that your energies may not be in a a place where you can really create the best output. Now you could be fully disciplined and say, nope.

Wesley Evan Smith [00:26:27]:
It's on my calendar. I said at 2 o'clock tomorrow, I'm gonna work on this, and that's what I'm gonna do. That's one way to approach things, but I've I've found that you allow yourself the opportunities to say, I'm just not there. There's other things that are equally as important, but they may not be as demanding on that creative and cognitive energy. And if you focus on those, you're still being productive. It's not pseudo productivity, it's actual productivity. It's productivity. It's stuff that needs to get done, but it's aligned with where your energy's at at the moment.

Wesley Evan Smith [00:27:04]:
Once those are done and your energy is more restored, then you can commit that time to the more demanding deeper work.

David Hall [00:27:13]:
Yeah. Yeah. And you did mention earlier, a great book, Cal Newport Deep Work. That's awesome book too.

Wesley Evan Smith [00:27:19]:
Oh, and and slow productivity is fantastic as well. I just read that, a couple of months ago, right after it came out and yeah, another brilliant book. Gotta love Cal Newport.

David Hall [00:27:31]:
So with all of this, all the things that we're talking about in general, I mean, do you have some general advice for introverts really designing their lives around their strengths and their needs when it comes to productivity?

Wesley Evan Smith [00:27:47]:
I think it really comes down to stepping back and giving yourself the opportunity to lay out everything that it is that you're working on, and then structure it in a way that you can begin doing that you could you can leverage the time that you have most efficiently. One of the things that I ran into was and this gets into the organizational aspect of it. There was so many things that I wanted to do, and those were all written down in, you know, this page, this document, this counted all over the place. It was I refer to a lot of this as like digital hoarding, where you just collect all this input, and these ideas, and these thoughts, and you're like, well, I'm gonna write it down. I'm gonna make a note. I'm gonna make a note. But there's no structure, there's no organization to it, so all of it goes all over the place. So when we're working, and our time is being consumed, and we're busy, and we know in the back of our heads that, Oh, I really wanna work on this project when I get the opportunity.

Wesley Evan Smith [00:28:57]:
Okay, That day arrives. You've got a couple hours. You can actually focus on whatever it is that you wanted to do. If you don't have a structure and an organization, you'll begin you're well intentioned, and you'll dive into wanting to work on this project. But by the time you go through and go, well, where was this? What was this? And you're putting everything you're trying to pull everything together. By the time you get it to the point that you can begin doing some actual constructive productive work on that task or that project, time's up. You're getting pulled into whatever the next whirlwind hurricane of of stuff you gotta do in life, and you missed it. So that was, for me, everything started with this concept of digital organization, because that's where I found myself just struggling with so much clutter that when I had the time to work on something, it would be gone before I would be able to get anything done with it, just from a lack of organization.

Wesley Evan Smith [00:29:58]:
That was that was the beginning, that that inspired all of this evolution from being a time management and organizational system to something that really tacked the larger existential aspects of what we struggle with at a deeper level. So I would encourage introverts in particular, because we're more inclined to do this, to really go through and at least begin organizing the want to dos in your life. The things that what are your top 12 projects or tasks, the things that you really wanna do in your life, and begin organizing things that are going to give you the opportunity to work on those when you have the opportunity to work on them.

David Hall [00:30:52]:
Yeah. Tell us a little bit more about that. Like, how do you organize things digitally?

Wesley Evan Smith [00:30:59]:
I take and and this goes into that first stepping stone of a dozen cats where where we take what what are the core aspects of our lives that mean the most to us. And this applies not just into defining our lives, but that design aspect of how we organize all the other elements to it. So from a digital organization aspect, those 12 core passions, areas of interest, that becomes a structure for everything in your workflow, how you design your folder system, your folder, your naming structures, how you handle your task categorization, your internet bookmarking, you know, all these things come back to this core structure that is all founded on the categories that you've established as being the areas of focus in your life. It's similar. I was reading, Tiago Forte's book recently, and and he has a similar approach, to what, I'm doing as well of where we structure things in accordance to our areas of focus. So it follows a similar thing, a similar workflow methodology to that, but it's a little more nuanced and a little more focused on, the bigger, more existential aspects of life, I guess you could say.

David Hall [00:32:39]:
Introverts, we do best with some time to think. Like we, we talked a little bit about that. How does preparation for certain things, maybe it's a meeting or presentation or conversation. How does that fit into this whole productivity plan?

Wesley Evan Smith [00:32:56]:
Preparation is the key, whether it's planning our day, what we need to work on, what we're going to be doing the next day into the next week. The ability for us to show up and be present and say a meeting that we're not as skilled at showing up and doing things on the fly, giving a presentation on the fly, speaking off the cuff. Even extroverts aren't necessarily good at that. And a lot of introverts are really good at it. It it's not a problem that we necessarily struggle with, but that preparation, if we give ourselves that time to prepare for something, we begin reducing the anxieties. 9 times out of 10, we find ourselves spinning in this cycle of anxiety just before we're going to do something because we realize oh, we either didn't have the opportunity to prepare, or we just didn't prepare. And that is what causes us so much stress and anxiety in the moment where if we do have the opportunity to prepare for these things and life is full of things that you just, you're not going to be prepared for, but there's a lot of things that we can be. And taking the time to do that will allow us to flow and our interactions with what we're doing and what we're engaging in.

Wesley Evan Smith [00:34:40]:
So our ability to be fully present and deliver the most from ourselves in an environment like a meeting or in a presentation, that's where our preparation is going to allow us to make the most impact.

David Hall [00:34:59]:
Yeah. And I liked that you said that we can't prepare for everything. Because I think once you realize that you do your best preparation and it can take away some anxiety realizing, you know what? I did my best preparation. There's gonna be something I'm not prepared for. And then the other piece I say, sometimes we don't need to prepare because you and I could talk about introversion or productivity without preparing. We're prepared already.

Wesley Evan Smith [00:35:27]:
It's, there is a, a dynamic in the course of conversation and experience where if things are, you know, we, we, we have to have space in our lives and our interactions with others for impromptu.

David Hall [00:35:49]:
Oh, yeah.

Wesley Evan Smith [00:35:49]:
Things to happen as they happen, and you never know what the natural course and direction and flow of any kind of engagement interaction is going to be. That's what makes life exciting, because you really don't know. You don't know what you're going to learn 5 minutes from now. You have no idea that that something's either going to happen, or you're going to experience something that could be profound and impact your life, because it's just there is no crystal ball. There's no scripting of your life. It is a thing that happens in the moment. And the more that we allow ourselves to be in that moment and to not be so caught up and distracted, the more of an opportunity we have to realize when a connection's being made, when something is happening around us that we might not notice if we were too caught up in the distractions that flutter our minds. And, that's another aspect of how a good practice of mindful meditation to slow our minds down and let go of the thoughts that distract us, to give us that space, we open it up for those more impromptu engagements where we can participate in those more fully and with more consciousness and awareness.

David Hall [00:37:13]:
Yeah. And circling back. So, you know, you do your best preparation. There's gonna be a lot of impromptu aspects. And then we were talking about sometimes you just need to say, Hey, give me a moment to think about that. And those things, like definitely when I was younger, I I was shy because I didn't understand my introversion and understanding that that I'm a deep thinker. It's great. It's amazing.

David Hall [00:37:41]:
That gave me all the confidence of the world that, you know what? My mind works a little differently than maybe the person I'm talking to, and we're gonna have some great conversation, but I may need to just articulate my need. Hey, give me a moment, or again, maybe tomorrow, whatever it is that I need, and it's normal. And and that made all the difference in the world for me.

Wesley Evan Smith [00:38:02]:
And it's such a shame that it is not a standard practice to recognize the introversion personalities, especially when we're growing up. And and introverts are, you know, we are introverts and extroverts. You know, we're we need each other. They we balance each other out. We're half the world is introverts. Half the world is extroverts. It's a yin and yang thing. But I think a lot of people make the assumption that extroverts are the norm, the standard, the majority, that somehow, you know, I've had people, you know, well, I'm an introvert.

Wesley Evan Smith [00:38:43]:
And they're like, oh, oh, no. You're, you know, no. Like it's like it's something to, you know, there's that stigma that that still exists. It's like, no, it's the world can't exist. You know, we we need extroverts as much as extroverts need introverts. And I think there's more attention being paid now to emotional intelligence, and we're beginning to be more aware as a society of these differences that exist in personalities that are not flaws. They're not things to be fixed or corrected. They're not problems.

Wesley Evan Smith [00:39:20]:
And the best teams and say a corporate or, you know, a work environment are the ones that are balanced between the extroverts and the introverts. If it goes too far one way or the other way, you're going to lose a certain degree of either quality or productivity. And the people that I've worked for, the management and leadership that I've worked with, that I've found are the most effective are the ones that understand that balance. And maybe it's, you know, you can't test everybody and build a team with the knowledge of what everybody's personality is, but I think it's a benefit. If you if you're perceptive enough to see it, and if, you know, at at one point, I had given my boss, you know, my a breakdown of my personality type, And he really appreciated it. And he could understand them how I would fit into different roles with different teams for different projects. And it like if everybody if those metrics were available for management to construct teams with, you could you could have such a much more productive benefit to the bottom line of of any company. But I I suppose it's a bit it's a bit too abstract at this point still and a bit too far off to to expect these levels of changes.

David Hall [00:40:56]:
I'm not giving up yet. That's why I do what I do because we should understand each other's personalities. We absolutely well said. We have to have a different we complement each other. And there's a lot more to our personalities as you well know besides introversion, extroversion. I just focus here because there's so much misunderstanding, I think, but there's lots of other aspects and the more we can understand our needs and our strengths and how we all fit together the better. And, you know, I, I, I am surprised it's 2024. We still don't know each other that well, or even ourselves.

Wesley Evan Smith [00:41:33]:
Absolutely. And and the more that like yourself, the work that you're doing with the Quiet and Strong podcast, and and the more attention that these conversations gather, the better off everybody's gonna be. Everybody wins when we have a full understanding of ourselves and each other. Then everything gets easy.

David Hall [00:41:59]:
Yeah. We we bust this on this show and you you brought up one. It's really funny because people will say to somebody, oh, you can't be an introvert. And a lot of times, it's just because they're being social, which introverts are social, you know? We might need different doses. We might like different or prefer different settings, but it's just funny that that's what people think is the determining factor. And it's really not. It's we're internal processors. We're deep thinkers.

David Hall [00:42:32]:
We do need to manage our energy a little bit differently, but, you know, the social aspect doesn't make us an extrovert.

Wesley Evan Smith [00:42:39]:
Absolutely. And the same could be said for, you know, public speaking. And you have introverts that are incredibly gifted public speakers, and nobody would expect that they're introverts because there's this assumption that they're not going to be the ones that are willing to step up, and they could actually perform and speak to an audience in a way that really captures them. It's instantly thought, you know. I mean, they'll they'll, Barack Obama last night, you know. People assume like, oh, well, you know, he's just a great speaker, and, you know, it would be assumed that he's an extrovert. He's known as being an introvert, and that strength of being able to speak and share what's needing to be said, what needs to be expressed, is something we can unfortunately suppress in ourselves. And the largest well, the most significant struggle that I've had in my life is through public speaking.

Wesley Evan Smith [00:43:53]:
I've had a lifelong fear of that. And it was only recently that I was able to break that cycle and worked with a wonderful, wonderful coach that guided me through a lot of this, Naxin Chen. Fantastic. And in my work with her, it was so transformative. I was at a point where we wouldn't be having this conversation right now if I hadn't found a way to break that cycle of fear and anxiety. And a lot of that is from being so caught up in that cycle of anxiety that you can't gather your thoughts with clarity and that ability to step back and pause. So I guess going back to on the myth busting is that there's an assumption that great public speakers must be extroverts and that introverts won't be. We may have issues that will get in the way of our ability to step up and speak out.

Wesley Evan Smith [00:45:10]:
But extroverts have that too. That fear of public speaking isn't just exclusive to introverts. Extroverts struggle with that as well. And from an introverted personality, I think I was able to use that almost as an excuse for why I wasn't willing to push through the discomfort that comes with your first efforts at speaking publicly, at speaking openly, even if it's, you know, just within a meeting or in a Zoom call and a breakout, those are environments where I would, I would freeze and go blank or just leave the meeting. And by pushing through that discomfort that we might be feeling, we can find ourselves to be a lot stronger and more capable of doing things that we hadn't imagined. But if we buy into a myth that, well, I can't do this because I'm an introvert, then we're selling ourselves short. It's not a problem that needs to be fixed. Our introversion our introversion needs to be understood by ourselves, and then other people will understand it.

Wesley Evan Smith [00:46:33]:
And we have to push ourselves through that discomfort to really achieve the things that matter in our lives.

David Hall [00:46:44]:
Many famous public speakers are introverts. It's funny because people think we don't have a lot to say, but as we've been talking about, we're always thinking, so guess what? We have a ton to say, and we just might might need to look at how we prepare, manage our energy. In your coaching, just in a nutshell, was, what was the major breakthrough in that coaching that you received that helped you get over your anxiety or fear of public speaking?

Wesley Evan Smith [00:47:16]:
Practice. More than anything, being being pushed to do the work. And, I mean, there's a structure to it, and there are certain things that that from a practical perspective. And I I guess if we have time, I'll I'll share a quick story with you about that that journey. Take a little drink.

David Hall [00:47:43]:
Yeah.

Wesley Evan Smith [00:47:43]:
Go ahead. I realized that my ability to speak publicly and to engage, with either 1 on 1 with clients or with larger audiences, if I'm unable to speak, then it's a done deal. I can't do it. I'm my business dies. So I thought, okay, I'm gonna tackle this. I'm gonna go to a Toastmasters meeting. And, you know, I applaud myself for making the effort, but it was the single most traumatizing experience I've had in my adult life. When it came time for me to speak at the Toastmasters meeting, and I get up to the podium, I'm thrown a random topic, and I completely froze.

Wesley Evan Smith [00:48:34]:
My heart was just going to pound out of my chest. And I say the only three things that went well were I didn't throw up, I didn't piss my pants, and I didn't pass out. And I got done with that, fortunately. And shortly after, when I was trying to figure out what I could do, you know, what would bridge that gap, I found an AI program. Now this is this is 2020 when well, late 2022, early 2023. I had found a program called Yoodly dotai, y0odli.ai. And it was absolutely brilliant. AI program where you look into the camera, it's monitoring your eyes, it's recording your voice, your inflection, the number of filler words that you're using.

Wesley Evan Smith [00:49:28]:
These have started to become more commonplace tools. It's even available through LinkedIn, for practicing interviews. They have a program similar to this, and you get the feedback on your performance. But you're not struggling with the anxiety of being judged by other people. So I worked with that initially. I I thought it was the most brilliant program, and I still think it's fantastic. It's a great exercise for getting used to speaking and improvising your thoughts, on the fly. I had gotten in touch with one of the co founders that was developing Houdini, shared my story and how significant the program was for me to interact with.

Wesley Evan Smith [00:50:14]:
And he connected me with Nasheen, who became my coach for public speaking. I worked with her for about 3 months, and that was the transformation that made all the difference. That interaction of working directly with somebody that was highly skilled in putting me through the rigors and discomforts of improvisational speaking and these exercises. And I credit her. She would she would quickly credit me for doing the work, but I would encourage anybody that is struggling with public speaking to not let it be something that becomes one of those regrets that you carry with you at the end of your life, and wish that you would overcome. It really is just a matter of getting over the initial hurdles, and just practicing, and getting comfortable with it. We have to not shy away from discomfort, and that goes with anything that we choose not to confront, and the challenges that we don't push ourselves to work through. It's just discomfort.

Wesley Evan Smith [00:51:41]:
It's gonna be a little painful. But we can't grow ourselves from the inside of our comfort zone. We can't push the walls of our comfort zone and and move them out and grow them from inside. We have to step out of our comfort zone and pull the walls from the outside. We have to stretch it to make it bigger. And it's gonna be scary. It's gonna be uncomfortable, but it's through that discomfort that we grow.

David Hall [00:52:10]:
Yeah. And I love that you said stretch it because often it's just talked about get out of your comfort zone. And what happens with a lot of people is every time they're doing something that's scary, they're getting out of their comfort zone, and again and again and again. But if you don't change your thinking, or you, you do have to get out, but you can stretch it, expand it, and that, that's the key. So, yeah, introverts can be amazing, public speakers, leaders, fill in the blank, but a lot of times it comes with understanding your introversion and your gifts and your needs. Wes, this has been such a great conversation. Is there anything else you wanna add?

Wesley Evan Smith [00:52:52]:
No. David, I just wanna say thanks for having me. The work that you do with the Quiet and Strong podcast is so empowering for introverts and for everybody that needs to understand more about introverts. So I applaud you for what you do. And if anyone is interested in learning more about mindful productivity and the services that I provide, you can go to wesleyevansmith.com. Everything you need to know, you'll find there, and I'm happy to work with anyone that is struggling with the issues that we've talked about over the course of this conversation today. So I just really wanna thank you for having me, David.

David Hall [00:53:37]:
Thank you. This has been a wonderful conversation, so thanks, Wes.

Wesley Evan Smith [00:53:40]:
Awesome.