Lead Your Life in 2025 with Les Watson

Les Watson’s passion for and expertise in self-management and productivity comes from over 30 years of experience as a trainer, speaker, facilitator, and coach in self-management, motivation, and communication. He is the author of Get Back An Hour In Every Day and facilitates the acclaimed Creating Success Program.

Les talks with me about identifying your tendency and how it can cause trouble as you manage your time; how parents can take care of themselves first even in a busy household to make sure they get to their creativity; why deadlines are magic, not a medieval torture device; the keys to getting an hour of your time back every day, and more. I hope this conversation gets your New Year’s creativity resolutions off to a great start.

Episode breakdown:

00:00 Les Watson discusses self-management, productivity, and creativity.

05:35 What do you want and commit to?

08:51 Keeping self-appointments is as important as others.

12:17 It’s easier to prioritize others over yourself.

15:44 Prioritize self-care first, like oxygen masks.

18:13 Setting boundaries for personal time with kids.

22:55 Clarify priorities to focus efforts effectively.

25:57 Incompletions persist, haunting and overwhelming thoughts.

28:57 Organize goals efficiently with a single system.

31:16 Deadlines motivated MFA completion, ensured timely submissions.

34:03 Get accountability buddy for art exhibition preparation.

39:41 Maximize return on investment using minimal effort.

42:25 Start big picture, identify steps, take action.

46:31 What do you want? Sacrifice for creativity.

50:13 Planning creates personal time and builds self-trust.

51:22 Write goals down to stay focused and organized.

55:38 Capture fleeting ideas before they vanish forever.

Show Links: Les Watson

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Transcript: Les Watson

Please note: This is an unedited transcript, provided as a courtesy, and reflects the actual conversation as closely as possible. Please forgive any typographical or grammatical errors.

Nancy Norbeck [00:00:00]:
Welcome to Follow Your Curiosity. Ordinary people, Extraordinary creativity. Here’s how to get unstuck. I’m your host, Creativity Coach Nancy Norbeck. Let’s go.

James Marland [00:00:19]:
Hey, Follow Your Curiosity fans. It’s James Marland from the Scaling Therapy Practice Podcast.

James Marland [00:00:26]:
That’s the show where I help therapists take their expert knowledge and increase their influence, impact and income by creating online content and products. Check out the episode number 84 where I go over the 15 elements of a homepage that converts.

James Marland [00:00:44]:
You are listening to Follow Your Curiosity. Here’s your host, Nancy Norbeck.

Nancy Norbeck [00:00:48]:
Hey folks, I have a quick announcement before we get started. This past autumn I launched a six week group program called Make Bad Art. The first round of that program finished just before Christmas and it was a rousing success. During our time together, we tackled self judgment, challenged our perfectionistic behaviors. Were those rules we’d been led to believe really true or just arbitrary or even made up, and gave ourselves permission to be our imperfect selves. We also, of course, spent time making bad art quite intentionally to shut down those voices and bring out the creative inner kids we’d lost touch with. You know, the ones we all used to be who knew how to play without worrying what others think.

Nancy Norbeck [00:01:33]:
Along the way, folks in the program rediscovered themselves as artists and found their true selves under all the things our culture tells us we have to be. They loosened up and above all, they remembered how to play and have a lot more fun. Sound appealing? I invite you to check out the course for yourself. The next round starts very soon on January 20th, and we would love to have you join us. If you have any questions at all, please get in touch with me. I’m happy to help. No pressure, no judgment, just a chat. You can find all the details and my contact info at makebadartcourse.com Hope to see you there.

Nancy Norbeck [00:02:13]:
Les Watson’s passion for and expertise in self management and productivity comes from over 30 years of experience as a trainer, speaker, facilitator and coach in self management, motivation and communication. He’s the author of Get Back an Hour Every Day and facilitates the acclaimed Creating Success program. Les talks with me about identifying your tendency and how it can cause trouble as you manage your time; how parents can take care of themselves first, even in a busy household, to make sure they get to their creativity; why deadlines are magic, not a medieval torture device; the keys to getting an hour of your time back every day; and more. I hope this conversation gets your New Year’s creativity resolutions off to a great start. Les, welcome to Follow Your Curiosity.

Les Watson [00:03:02]:
Great to be here, Nancy. It’s. This is gonna be fun. This is gonna be real fun. I’m really looking forward to the conversation.

Nancy Norbeck [00:03:09]:
Excellent. Me too. I start everybody with the same question. Were you a creative kid or did you discover your creative side later on?

Les Watson [00:03:17]:
Oh, model planes. Does that count? Like, sure. Wait, I’m going way back there. And I was more analytical than creative. And I would say that my creativity came on later in life. When I got married, I said to my wife, I’m, I’m not creative at all. She said, I tend to differ. I beg to differ.

Les Watson [00:03:41]:
And in doing so, let’s just give you the opportunity to do some art. And I did some drawing and was really good at it and it just came out of nowhere. So would I say I’m creative? Yeah, I would say I’m creative.

Nancy Norbeck [00:03:57]:
Kudos to your wife. Well done. Well done. So what did you do with the art that you discovered?

Les Watson [00:04:06]:
It becomes a pastime. It becomes something that I can put my hand to from time to time. And it, it didn’t really go into a major part of my life, but I’m surrounded by art people. My wife is a writer and she’s written award winning books and edited them and loves the written word, so she’s written a couple of books. My mother in law is an artist. My wife’s sister is an artist. My niece is an artist. My son has got good at art.

Les Watson [00:04:45]:
So I’m surrounded by people who have creativity in their veins.

Nancy Norbeck [00:04:52]:
And you do too. Even if you don’t make it. Your primary thing, which is totally okay, that’s, that’s part of the point of this podcast, is that you don’t have to do it as your primary aim in life. You just need to find time to do what makes you happy anyway, which is why you’re here.

Les Watson [00:05:09]:
Indeed.

Nancy Norbeck [00:05:10]:
Indeed. So since it’s the beginning of the year and people tend at the beginning of the year to try to figure out how to make more time for things that they have not been making time for. I am really curious to hear what you have to say as a time management expertise about how people might want to do that in 2025.

Les Watson [00:05:35]:
The question would be, what do you want? Ah, so. So it does come down to what do you want? But if you take it back to the annual, and that is, oh, news resolutions, and three weeks later they are in the bin, they’re just out the back door. Like, what happened to my New Year’s resolution? What happened to my resolve that this year is Going to be different. And what it, what it does is what, what do you want? And how committed are you to creating it? And in that commitment, are you willing to carve out the time specifically to allow yourself to do the thing that you want in the year? I’ll give you an example. I’m a very committed Christian, and one of the things I love to do is read the Bible, but I only like it now. I never used to like it. And what I ended up doing was getting a. An app that said, you’ve.

Les Watson [00:06:37]:
You’ve. You’ve done one day. Do two days. You’ve done two days. Do three days. You’ve done three days. Keep going. Now I’m over 700, and that’s the second time that I’ve done it.

Les Watson [00:06:46]:
The, the other one, I went to Europe and the airplane wi fi didn’t work and it dropped out and I, I lost seven.

Nancy Norbeck [00:06:54]:
Like, no, that’s awful.

Les Watson [00:06:58]:
So I’m back onto my 700, but I’ve been doing it 700 days in a row. And you kind of go, how’s that possible? That’s called discipline. And I, again, I don’t necessarily call myself a disciplined person yet. I am, but it came through me just carving the time called what where today am I going to do my Bible reading? So for anyone creative, it’s a matter of what do you want and where are you wanting to. Where can you create and carve out time to follow your passion, to follow your curiosity? That sounds very familiar. Follow your curiosity. So. So the thing around time is it just doesn’t happen.

Les Watson [00:07:41]:
Your creative process just doesn’t happen. You need to purpose to make it happen. You need to go, what do I want? I want to eat. Okay, if you want to eat, you’re going to have to do something like breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Okay. So I’m going to purpose to make time to have breakfast and the same for lunch and the same for dinner. And we’ve all had those instances where we’ve gotten engrossed with what we are doing and we forgot a meal. So that’s, that’s the creative process called.

Les Watson [00:08:16]:
Where did that time go? Oh, I’m really hungry. Oh, I should go and eat. So it’s very similar on the back end of that. If you, if you don’t carve time out for your passion, you won’t find time for it. You need to purpose to create. You need purpose to be the curious person and go in that direction. And the way I do that is I have a time management system. It’s a plan, it’s a calendar.

Les Watson [00:08:51]:
It doesn’t matter what it is. But I actually put it in my calendar so that when there’s an appointment with another person, I’ll keep it. And I also keep the appointment with myself. So say I’m going to get up at 5 o’clock and I’m going to journal. Then the alarm goes off and I get up because I keep my own agreements. The other one that’s very, very curious for me is that you can’t make an appointment with me at lunchtime. And the reason being is that I’ve actually taken it out of my calendar between 12 and 1 because that’s the time I have lunch. And it’s similar with anybody’s life.

Les Watson [00:09:34]:
They can go, you can’t get me there because I’m painting. You can’t get me there because I’m drawing. You can’t get me then because I’m writing. Are you actually carving the time out and making it important? Someone once said, keep the main thing. The main thing. And what’s your main thing? What’s the thing that you want to do? What’s that passion that drives you? And are you. Are you wanting this year to be different than other years? Are you wanting to go up a level? Are you wanting to create more? Are you wanting to do more? You need to be purposeful and in. For me, it’s two things.

Les Watson [00:10:14]:
Two words come to mind, and that is leadership and discipline. Leadership and discipline. Leadership and discipline. For you to create in your life, you need to be the leader of your life. No one’s actually going to come and wave the wand and go, there’s all the time. There’s a space. They’re not going to do that. It’s you as the leader to say no.

Les Watson [00:10:37]:
Today I’m going to, at this particular time, do this activity for this period of time. And funnily enough, I’ve mapped it out for the whole week. So whether that’s every day or every second day or every third day, it doesn’t matter. But are you purposefully leading your life to make things happen? That’s number one. Number two is discipline. Once you do it once, do it again and again and again and again and again. If you have a look at the Olympic sports people, let’s just take swimming, for example. There’s on a swimming pool, there’s a black line, and these swimmers follow the black line and follow the black line and follow the black line and follow the black line.

Les Watson [00:11:19]:
And it is boring as all get out and it hurts. And you have a bit of fun at the end of the pool. But the rest of it is just black line, black line, black line, black line. For runners, it’s tarmac or, or road or concrete or grass. Doesn’t really matter. But it becomes a thing of one foot in front of the other, one foot in front of the other, one foot in front of the other. It becomes a discipline with me. It’s.

Les Watson [00:11:42]:
It was actually purposing to do one day on one day, on one day, on one day. And I’m over 700 now. And you kind of go, that’s, that’s over. That’s over two years. It’s like, yeah, it’s over four years without the brain. And how did I get there? I purposed to make it happen one day at a time. So here we are, 20, 25. What do you want? What do you want this year? Are you willing to lead your life this year and do what’s required to make stuff happen?

Nancy Norbeck [00:12:17]:
I’m really curious because what’s coming up for me as I’m listening to you is how much easier it is when you have things on your calendar that involve other people to make those things happen than when it’s something that’s just you. Like when you’re saying, I’m going to set my alarm for 5am and I’m going to get up and journal. It’s so much easier to say when that alarm goes off at 5am Ugh, I’m still tired. I’m going to hit the snooze button than it is to actually get up and journal at 5 o’clock in the morning. Which I will admit sounds like something that I would be less likely to do at least the first couple of times, you know, maybe, maybe once it becomes a habit. I just feel like it’s so much easier to deprioritize ourselves and prioritize everybody else. And I don’t know how often you encounter that. And what you tend to find gets people over that disparity.

Les Watson [00:13:28]:
Yeah, yeah, it’s a great, it’s a great awareness because some people find it really easy, some people find it really hard. And there’s a really good book, and that is the Four Tendencies by Gretchen Rubin. The four Tendencies by Gretchen Rubin. And the four tendencies are you’re either an upholder, an obliger, a rebel, or a questioner. And they’re all about the expectations of self and the expectations of others. And an obliger meets the outer expectations like the expectations of others. And also meets the expectation of self, the inner expectations. Whereas the obliger, you’ll love this one.

Les Watson [00:14:13]:
This is where you. That where you were going. And that is meets the outer expectations of other people, but resists the inner expectations of self. That’s like, no, I’ll look after everybody else but me. Why would. I’m insignificant. I, I don’t matter. It’s all about them.

Les Watson [00:14:32]:
So it becomes a people pleaser. It becomes a yes person. And I’m not saying that you are a yes person. You. I’m saying as, as a, I’m not saying you are a yes person. But notice that that part inside that goes, yeah, that’s me. I look after everybody else and I don’t look after myself. So just to, just to wrap it up and then I’ll come back.

Les Watson [00:14:55]:
The rebel resists everybody, others and self. And the questioner resists outer expectations, the expectation of others, and meets themselves, their expectation of self. So when it comes to carving out time for self, it’s easy as an upholder, and I’m an upholder. It’s more of a challenge for an obliger because I’m happy to work around other people, but when it comes to me, I don’t matter. And that’s a good awareness for someone that’s listening to go, that’s me. And it’s not only the awareness. It’s like, what are you going to do with the awareness? So you talked about journaling. I love to journal.

Les Watson [00:15:44]:
When you get that question and you stop and you write and you write and you write and you do the self analysis and ask the question, it’s like, where does that relate to me? What does that mean to me? Where did that come from? How is it that I do that behavior and am I willing to do something about it? In doing so, what is that first step? Are there people around me that I can, that I can ask the question of and get support from and help from? So it’s, it’s a very good one. It’s a very good one. Carving time out for self is a challenge for a lot of people where they’ll go, oh, I lost the day and now I don’t have time for me. And I’m going. The oxygen, oxygen theory says in the air, in the aircraft, if the it depressurizes, a mask will fall from the space above. You grab your mask and put it on yourself first and then assist others. I’ll say it again, put your own mask on before helping others. So oxygen theory, when it comes to Looking after yourself and being creative, it’s a thing of, where can you look after yourself? Where can you carve time as the first thing and put everything else around it? And for those that are challenged with it at the back end of the day, I’m saying put it in the front end of the day so you can give yourself a big tick.

Les Watson [00:17:15]:
I was able to paint, I was able to draw, I was able to run, write, meditate, whatever it is at the front end of the day, because I carved that time for myself.

Nancy Norbeck [00:17:28]:
That makes sense to me. But I’m also thinking, first of all, that I suspect a lot of women fall into that people pleasing, obliging category. And a lot of women are mothers who have kids, especially little kids, who make it really difficult to put that oxygen mask on first because, you know, as the joke goes, you can’t even go to the bathroom in peace, much less find time to meditate, paint, whatever, first thing in the morning when you have to get them up, fed, dressed and off to school. So I’m curious on their behalf, how, how do they do that?

Les Watson [00:18:13]:
Yep. No, it’s a great question, great question. It. It’s a thing called boundaries. Do you have boundaries? Do you have the ability to set up boundaries in your life now when you’ve got little kids and you can’t go to the bathroom on your own, you can’t carve out a minute, two minutes without a toddler going, mum, mum, mum, mum, mum, mum, Mum. It is, it is a challenge. But as they get a little older, you can set up where Mummy needs, Daddy needs time out. So whether that’s a minute, 2 minutes, 5 minutes, 10 minutes, and you can start the process of having a boundary where I have my own person, you have your own person, and we do need time apart.

Les Watson [00:18:59]:
Could we go into the psychology of that? Sure, of course we could. And I’m not going to. However, there is a thing of setting up boundaries so that you can carve your time out. So let’s just take that step forward into teenagers. It’s like, mom, I need, Dad, I need. It’s like, yeah. And according to the schedule, I said I wasn’t available at that time and we agreed on that at the beginning of the week. So I’m not changing my schedule because of your emergency, because I need to look after myself.

Les Watson [00:19:37]:
And I know that’s tough for some people. It’s so tough to actually put in a boundary and go, no, no, no, no. We had an agreement and you’re breaking the agreement. And I don’t I don’t agree. So based on that, you can do that with teens and you can also do it in relationships. Now here’s where the dilemma comes and you’ve already, you’ve already said it. And that is as a wife, as a mother, sometimes in a. An adult relationship, it does come down to saying no.

Les Watson [00:20:10]:
And that’s not no. It can be. That’s not going to work for me right now. I need to take time out. That’s really important for me. So can we get that at 3:00? Can we do that one tomorrow? I really wanted to spend time with you on that thing, but now is not an appropriate time because I’m doing something else where it’s taking back your power to do the thing that you want to do. And a lot of times it doesn’t need to be creative. It can be stopped and still.

Les Watson [00:20:43]:
And rest. I had someone only yesterday, say, are you sure you’re stopping or are you resting? And I went, yeah, you’re right. I’m, I’m really, I’m really resting. Why? Because coming off an illness and I normally go, go, go, go, go. Even. Even in our conversation previously, I got up at 4am this morning and that’s just because I went to bed early. However, I’m resting in it rather than, well, where’s the next thing I need to do? I have to, I have to, I have to, I have to. So can you rest? Are there times.

Les Watson [00:21:22]:
I’ve got a wheel of life and a lot of people have heard about the wheel of life, and if you, you want to hit me up for the wheel of life, I’m, I’m happy to, to send it to you. And it looks at 10 areas in your life and in those 10 areas, your level of satisfaction in each of them, creativity being one of them. But if you don’t have them in balance, you don’t have a wheel that works. You have it out of balance and it becomes wonky and the journey of life isn’t enjoyable. So based on that, can you work on those areas, particularly now being the beginning of the year, can you get balance in those areas? Can you work on those areas so that they may not be perfect, but you are giving yourself the opportunity to spend time in those areas, so your level of satisfaction in those areas come up?

Nancy Norbeck [00:22:21]:
It’s interesting thinking in terms of balance. I’m not sure that we think in terms of balance when we’re trying to sort of shoehorn something into a busy schedule, but that seems like an important idea. Because you do want to have, you know, you don’t want to have too much of one thing and not enough of another. And shoehorning something in usually means that you’re squeezing a tiny bit of something in when you’d really like more of it.

Les Watson [00:22:55]:
Correct. And it’s. I like your term of shoehorn because the term is, well, how do I. How do I fit it in? Because we can’t do everything. We just can’t do everything. You can’t do everything, but you can do some things, and sometimes you need to let go of some other things to focus on the things you want to focus on, which is the thing of, what do you want this year? What do you want this year? What do you want to do this year? What do you want to create this year? Where are you this year? And again, I’ve got hours and hours and hours talking about how to do the certain things around productivity and time management, because I’ve been doing it for so long now, and I wrote a book on it called Get Back an Hour and Every Day. And we could do a whole lot of it. But at the bottom of it, at the foundation of it, is a thing of, number one, clarify what it is you want.

Les Watson [00:23:56]:
Here we are, New Year. What do you want? What do you want? What do you want? What do you want? Now, I would have said to people in my circle, let’s do that in December and we’re in January. Don’t worry about. Did I miss the boat? No, you didn’t miss the boat. Next year. Well, this year. Later this year, let’s do it in December. But.

Les Watson [00:24:16]:
But now we’re in January. Have you decided, have you chosen what you want to create for yourself this year? Get clarity on that, set up structures enabling you to head in that direction, and then choose to have the discipline. Oh, but, Les, I’m not disciplined. Yes, you are. You got out of bed today, you ate today, you. You dressed today. If you didn’t dress, that’s undisciplined, however. And.

Les Watson [00:24:42]:
Yeah, let’s let that one go through. The thing about that, you are really disciplined. You do have a discipline there. Just need to direct it in the area that you want to go. And boundaries enable you to do that. Boundaries enable you to have that thing of, that’s not going to work for me, or I need time for me. Someone once said, we’re a human being, not a human doing. I like that.

Les Watson [00:25:09]:
We’re a human being, not a human doing. And what’s. What’s that mean? That there Needs to be balance. Because you can’t do, do, do, do, do, do, and fall into bed at the end of the night and then go again the next day and the next day and the next day. It doesn’t work.

Nancy Norbeck [00:25:26]:
Yeah, you’ll just wear yourself out.

Les Watson [00:25:28]:
Correct. And that’s. That’s not what you’re after. So I’ve got this process I do with people, and it’s getting stuff out of your head, down onto paper, and it’s everything out of your head. It’s what I call incompletions. Stuff that you’ve thought of but not started. Things you’ve started, not continued, continued, not finished, finished, not acknowledged. And with what, like, they’ve.

Les Watson [00:25:57]:
You can have examples of that all through your life. And they are sitting. Those incompletions sit in your head and on your shoulder, and they go, nancy, Nancy, Nancy, Nancy, Nancy, Nancy, Nancy, Nancy, Nancy, Nancy. And after a while you go, shut up. And they don’t go away. They just go numb. So when I do the process of asking people what their incompletions are, and I go through a list of trigger words that trigger incompletions at work and incompletions at home, the process creates such an immense amount of incompletions that people are going, I need more paper. I need more paper.

Les Watson [00:26:44]:
I need more paper. I need more paper. And. And I get to the end, I go, how do you feel after doing that exercise? And they go, I’m overwhelmed. It’s like, well, what happened? I’ve just had so many incompletions. I said, well, notice that I didn’t do that to you. They were already there. All I did was drain the swamp.

Les Watson [00:27:02]:
And what’s left is the incompletions that have always been there, and you haven’t addressed them. One of the reasons why incompletions are there is because you don’t set deadlines. So if you’re writing notes in this one, one key is to set deadlines for yourself. What can I get done by the end of the day? Get done by the end of the week, get done by the end of the month, get done by the end of the quarter. It’s like, what my book. Get back an hour and every day. It’s. It came to be because person I was coaching said, you know, you’ve got enough material to write a book.

Les Watson [00:27:38]:
And I dismissed it and said, oh, no, I don’t. And my wife kind of thumps me and goes, yes, you do. And I went, okay. And I. I move in circles where people if they give you a challenge, you don’t walk away from me, you take it up. And I went, okay, well within 12 months I’ll have a manuscript. So there’s your deadline. I had a deadline of 12 months and I went, well, as an, as an upholder, not an oblige wrap.

Les Watson [00:28:09]:
As an upholder, I not only keep their agreements, but I keep my agreements and I’ve already agreed with myself I’m going to do this. So I need to put in the work. So 12 months later I had a manuscript and six months after that I had a fully fledged book that went on and put me on the Australian version of the Today show. And you kind of go, how did that happen? Start at the beginning where I made a deadline.

Nancy Norbeck [00:28:31]:
Deadlines are magic.

Les Watson [00:28:33]:
Yeah. I’ve got a friend who’s writing a book at the moment and she’s got a hard stop on a deadline because she’s got a speaking engagement and she needs to have the book ready for the speaking engagement. So you can’t go, oh, I’m speaking about the book but it’s not finished.

Nancy Norbeck [00:28:54]:
Right, right.

Les Watson [00:28:57]:
So it’s an interesting one for that because the incompletions, if you set a deadline on it, it will enable you to get things done and not be incomplete. There’s a couple of things around that, categorizing and contextualizing. I won’t go into it but then I say to people, where, where’s that list going to live? Where’s it going to live? Where are you going to put it? And I’m inviting people to have a trusted system. Doesn’t matter if it’s paper based or app based, paper based or digital, doesn’t matter. But where is it going to live for, for you? So for me I’ve got a mixture of both. But from a day to day perspective I use a paper based day to day planner and I have areas of responsibility and it’s like it’s right there, but it’s all in one place and if I walk away from that, I’ve got my phone. So the key to having authority over your goals and where you want to go and the ability to create is do you have the ability to put it all in one place? Like what’s your one place? What’s the one like? It’s around here somewhere, Nancy. It’s on the back of an envelope.

Les Watson [00:30:27]:
No, no, we were at a diner and we’re on napkin yet. No, it wasn’t. That was one of these notebooks. Fifteen notebooks around here somewhere. So you get the. And it happens to people all the time that they can’t find the things that they want to then go and do the things that they want to do. So they’re wasting time over here. Whereas I could have been creating, I could have been having fun with that desire of mine.

Les Watson [00:30:58]:
So if you can set up systems for yourself and for me, it’s the trusted system. Something that enables you to not have to get confused or lost or in the quagmire of, oh, I’ve got 101 things that’s in here somewhere.

Nancy Norbeck [00:31:16]:
Yeah, yeah. And I’ll just say really quickly that I discovered the magic of deadlines when I did my MFA program, which I started in 2007. And I suspect if it had not been for deadlines, that I would still be trying to finish that MFA program. But I decided straight off the bat that I was never sending in a packet late. And there were so many times we sent in a packet of work every three weeks. And it was always, I had to read three books. I had to write two or three pages about them. I had to write something like 20 pages of my own work, plus the letter that went with it.

Nancy Norbeck [00:31:57]:
I mean, it was an obnoxious amount of stuff on top of working full time. And there were so many times in the middle of that three weeks when I would be sitting there looking at it all going, there is no chance that I can finish this and send it in on time. I never sent in a packet late. And there were so many times that I was sitting there sending it off, going, I literally do not know how I got this done. I have no idea how I got this done. I know that elves did not actually show up in the middle of the night, even though I wish that they would.

Les Watson [00:32:29]:
Yeah.

Nancy Norbeck [00:32:30]:
But somehow this got done and it was the deadline because I knew I was not sending it in late. Beyond that, I don’t know. Some kind of deadline magic happened. But I know a lot of creative people shudder at the idea of a deadline. They think. Think that, you know, it’s evil. And non creative people don’t like deadlines either. I don’t know if it’s the word dead in deadline.

Nancy Norbeck [00:32:54]:
I don’t know what it is. But deadlines are absolute magic if you’re willing to open yourself up to the idea that they can be. Because they help you get stuff done.

Les Watson [00:33:05]:
Yeah. And that could be a book. Could be a book.

Nancy Norbeck [00:33:08]:
It could be anything.

Les Watson [00:33:09]:
Like, I want to get it written. So find, find a publisher or find someone that gonna sell the book. And you go, well, you’re too far down the track. Okay, great. Find a mate. So Nancy, you and me, let’s write a book together. You write your book, I’ll write my book. So how much are you gonna get done by the end of the week? I don’t want to do that.

Les Watson [00:33:32]:
That’s okay. But guess what? I’m sure that if I find somebody and we partner up, I will write a book faster than what you write a book.

Nancy Norbeck [00:33:40]:
Yep.

Les Watson [00:33:41]:
So for example, if your creativity is art, enter an art show.

Nancy Norbeck [00:33:48]:
Yeah.

Les Watson [00:33:49]:
And, and in doing so, you go, by November, I’m going to have three pieces of art to enter that art show. Guess what that deadline will, it will.

Nancy Norbeck [00:34:01]:
It’Ll make things happen.

Les Watson [00:34:03]:
You betcha. It will urge you to get stuff done so that you don’t have egg on face at the time of the art exhibition. So writing, painting, drawing, those sorts of things. And even down to mine is reading, reading the Bible. So you kind of go, okay, but you can actually take it to a one on one with somebody else and go, what do you want to get done? What do I want to get done? How do I support you and how do you support me? So you get yourself an accountability buddy to keep you on track. And that’s a trusted friend. Now if you don’t have one ring, Nancy.

Nancy Norbeck [00:34:45]:
Yeah.

Les Watson [00:34:46]:
Or if you don’t have one, reach out to me. Hey, I’ve got clients all around the world, so it’s no skin off my nose to take you on and work together with you. But it’s a matter. Hey, I’ve got an Australian coach that. That’d be, that’d be an awesome thing to say. And, and for me, if I’ve got. I knew that I was in a bad place when I got stuck and didn’t have anything to get myself out of it. So I got myself a coach and I’ve still got a coach.

Les Watson [00:35:20]:
Why? Because they are going to see things that I don’t see. And what are we talking about here? We’re talking about you being creative. Not about have to, but about a want to. What, what do you want? If you were to follow your curiosity along those. And that’s your want, how do we, how do I support you in doing that? Well, part of it is get the clarity around it, set up the boundaries to it and do the work required, be disciplined to get you where you want to go.

Nancy Norbeck [00:35:53]:
Yep. And to be fair, you know, speed is not always the goal in creativity. You know, sometimes you want to just play around and Poke with something. But, you know, that’s not always the way you want to go. When you have something that you’ve been working on for a while and you seem to be stuck with it, sometimes deadlines and working with friends and working with a coach is absolutely what you need. There’s different. Different kinds of projects that have different kinds of needs. So it’s not one size fits all.

Les Watson [00:36:25]:
No. And I’ve got two P’s on that. One P is procrastination. The other one is prioritization.

Nancy Norbeck [00:36:31]:
Yep.

Les Watson [00:36:32]:
When you prioritize, you’re choosing to do one thing over another. So we can come back to that first piece of do you prioritize others over yourself?

Nancy Norbeck [00:36:43]:
Right.

Les Watson [00:36:43]:
And is that working? Is that working for you? I have the choice of writing or doing the dishes. Well, guess what? The dishes can wait. And so can the writing. But if I don’t get the writing done, I miss my streak or I miss my opportunity to. To do 17 days in a row. So therefore, I’m going to choose to do the writing. So prioritization enables you to prioritize one thing over another, and sometimes you need to prioritize you over other things. So that’s number one.

Les Watson [00:37:16]:
The second one on there was procrastination. And there is good creative procrastination. It’s like, I have no idea about that. I’m gonna. I’m gonna put that on the back burner until I get greater clarity. Nothing wrong with that at all.

Nancy Norbeck [00:37:29]:
Yeah, we call that percolation.

Les Watson [00:37:31]:
Yeah. See? Another p alliteration of Ps percolation. Why? Because you’re sitting in it and going, I have no idea where this is going to go. But I’m not going to rush it. I’m just going to. I’m just going to be with it.

Nancy Norbeck [00:37:44]:
Right.

Les Watson [00:37:45]:
And it will come up and you go, oh, there it is. And you can run with it. So that in and of itself is great. The other side is the procrastination, which stops you from creating because you don’t think you’re worthy or you don’t think it’s important, or you don’t think that it’s something that other. Like maybe it’s about other people. And you’re not prioritizing because you’re procrastinating because of others. And it. It kind of links into each other.

Les Watson [00:38:25]:
So therefore, awareness is a great thing. Where are you procrastinating? Where are you putting stuff off that you don’t need to? And there’s your pp, PP and P prioritization. Percolation with your procrastination.

Nancy Norbeck [00:38:47]:
I’ll throw another one in there that can overlap with procrastination, which is perfectionism.

Les Watson [00:38:53]:
Oh. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yep, yep, yep. No, I can’t give it up. And I did that. I did that with my book. And I went.

Les Watson [00:39:02]:
My wife came in and said, can I have the manuscript? No, I’m not finished. Can I have the manuscript? No, I’m not finished. Third time she said, can I have the manuscript? I’m not finished. She said, give me the manuscript. And I gave it to her. And she. She kind of wrapped it up and gave it back to me. There’s your book.

Les Watson [00:39:17]:
And I went, oh, wow. Because I was wanting it to be perfect. It’s never perfect.

Nancy Norbeck [00:39:24]:
Never.

Les Watson [00:39:24]:

80. 80 of something is better than 100 of nothing.

Nancy Norbeck [00:39:28]:
Correct. Yep. But sometimes procrastination is actually your perfectionism acting up because you’re just sitting there thinking, it’s never going to be good enough. So I’m just not going to do it.

Les Watson [00:39:41]:
Very good, Very good, Very good, very good. Yep, I like it. Another P. Pareto with a Pareto principle, the 8020 rule that 20 of your time goes into 80% of your tasks and 20% of your output comes from 80% of your input. Those sorts of things. So what you’re looking at is return on investment. How can you put in a small amount and get a large amount of return on it? And even stopping and resting can be a small amount that gives you a large amount on the back end. That’s not an excuse for procrastination, but it is just an awareness of can you get further return on investment?

Nancy Norbeck [00:40:25]:
Yeah. What are we up to? 6p’s now?

Les Watson [00:40:29]:
Yeah, something like that. I’ve got another one for you. Planning, planning. So planning. And here we are at the beginning of the year. But you can do it on a daily basis. Finish your day by planning your day the day before. And it saves so much heartache by going, what am I doing tomorrow? Where am I going tomorrow? What appointments have I got? And not only that, where am I being creative tomorrow? Where’s the time for me? Where am I carving out time for me tomorrow? And if that’s 4:00am, 4:35, 5:36, I’m choosing to do that.

Les Watson [00:41:07]:
I choose to do that for me. So that planning, you can do that at the end of the day for the day coming up, and you can do it for the week as well. That the last thing you do on this week is plan for next week. And I always, always Always do a quarter. And I do a financial year and the big one for everyone. And again, we’re in January, don’t worry about that. But what’s your planning for the year? If you haven’t planned, kind of go, okay, line in the sand. I’m planning now and I’m sure you’ve already made some plans.

Les Watson [00:41:44]:
That’s not, not, not the point. But is it in all areas or have you kind of planned for everybody else and not yourself? So where can you plan ahead? And again, invitation to plan going forward, plan for the next year in December and then come back to plan for financial year, plan for quarter, plan for week and back on the day, plan for tomorrow, today.

Nancy Norbeck [00:42:13]:
When you have people make this kind of plan, is there a specific way that you have them? Think about it.

Les Watson [00:42:25]:
I like the way we started. And that was, what do you want? Okay, what do you want? Go big picture, because it’s with the big picture. And then come down to what’s happening right now. But unless you go big picture, you don’t know, you won’t have the opportunity to go. What’s the end result? What does done look like? What are we ultimately trying to do this year, this financial, this quarter, this week, this day? So go big picture first and then go to get that goal, what do I need to, what do I need to put in place? What plans do I need to do to create that big picture? And sometimes you don’t know, but there’s always a next step. There’s always a single next action step that you can take that will lead you towards what it is that you’re after. So if you want to enter an art exhibition, then what’s your next step? Because you know what the ultimate goal is, the exhibition. And if that’s what you want, what can you do today? What can you do in that case for planning, what can you do tomorrow to get you further along the track towards that art exhibition?

Nancy Norbeck [00:43:39]:
Say you’ve made your plan for the year and it’s April and you’ve just learned about an art exhibition that’s in October. And so you haven’t planned for it. How would you handle that?

Les Watson [00:43:55]:
Renegotiation. Okay, renegotiation. A lot of the stuff that we do is not set in stone. No one’s going to die from it. It’s like, good point. And I make, I make a joke about that, but it’s more, it’s more a thing of, hey, is this really, really, really, really, really serious or is it okay to renegotiate this and change the outcome, change the date, change. Like renegotiation really works. So an example would be I’m meeting with you in town at a coffee shop, and rather than in my, in my haste, I’ve left it really late and, oh, lo and behold, a traffic jam.

Les Watson [00:44:46]:
So rather than not actually not arrive on time, I’m going to renew and renegotiate the start time, the me time. Why? Because I’m stuck in traffic. So in that renegotiation, we keep our agreement because you’re communicating with me. So in that renegotiation, it’s an opportunity to go, oh, no, that’s okay. I’m, I’m happy here. Listen to the birds and doing some people watching. Now take your time, don’t rush. Or the person can say, oh, I only had the 15 minutes that we had and you’re going to be 15 minutes late.

Les Watson [00:45:26]:
Why don’t we renegotiate and reschedule for tomorrow? Oh, I can do tomorrow. And you go from there. So the relationship in the communication enables both parties to go what works and what doesn’t work. So if you’re headed towards something and things move, renegotiate. It’s okay. It’s okay to renegotiate. It’s not a matter of it’s set in stone. It’s not a matter of you can’t renegotiate or things will happen.

Les Watson [00:45:56]:
No, just renegotiate. How’s that?

Nancy Norbeck [00:46:00]:
Sounds good to me. I think, I think that, you know, a lot of creative people tend to feel like, oh, you want me to plan everything ahead of time, and then I’m trapped and I’m stuck and there’s no room for anything. And that’s part of why I asked the question, because I think that, you know, we. It’s kind of like the deadline thing, you know, you know, you’re giving me a deadline and then I’m stuck and I don’t want a deadline because it means I can’t be creative. And that’s totally not true. But we get that idea that, that it means things that it doesn’t. So.

Les Watson [00:46:31]:
And what do you want? What do you want? What do you want? What do you want? What are you willing to give up to get there? What are you willing to do to, to be creative? Because the, the if it’s creativity for creativity sake, it’s an outlet. It’s a God, it’s, It’s a bliss. It’s, It’s a wonder. I get to, I get to play over here and have Wonder and creativity and fun for no other reason than creativity and fun. I’m not entering an art show on. It’s not about anybody else. But guess what? If you’ve carved the time out, if you purpose to do it, you get to look after yourself in that. Yeah.

Les Watson [00:47:18]:
As opposed to, oh, push, push, push, push to get a result for somebody else or a deadline for somebody else. I’m going carve the time out for you for no other reason than you’re important and you matter and, and you’re, you are important.

Nancy Norbeck [00:47:33]:
Yes. I think that is like the really overlooked truth about having a creative practice is that it’s just really good for you.

Les Watson [00:47:44]:
Yeah.

Nancy Norbeck [00:47:45]:
And you know, we just think that, oh, it’s just this frivolous little thing on the side and it’s not actually true. It’s actually really good for you and something that you should do on a regular basis because it’s fun and it’s really good for you.

Les Watson [00:48:01]:
Perfect. Absolutely perfect. I think if, if we gave ourselves the opportunity to just stop and reflect, we’d find that looking after ourselves is a great thing to do. As opposed to push, push, push. Too many people get to the end of their life and say, I wish I had, have. And this is an opportunity for us to speak to the listener and go, this is your wake up call. Now’s the time to give yourself the opportunity because you’re worth it, you’re important, you matter, we see you, we hear you and do the things that you want to do in amongst everything else. I’m not saying tell people to go take a hike.

Les Watson [00:48:51]:
I’m saying carve out the time because it will serve you in the long run.

Nancy Norbeck [00:48:57]:
Absolutely. Yeah. So since the title of your book is Get Back an Hour Every Day, if I’m remembering that correctly, I’m curious to know, you know what, how do most of us tend to waste that hour every day in ways that we don’t necessarily need to? And I’m sure that that lovely screen that we carry in our pockets is part of it, but I’m betting it’s not all of it.

Les Watson [00:49:31]:
No. And systems was one. So having a system as opposed to it’s around here somewhere and looking for things, that’s one. Prioritization is another one. Procrastination is another one. Email is another one where we get stuck in, in the quagmire of email. So I have a whole raft of things around email boundaries where you don’t set up good boundaries and therefore you tend to give to others, not to self and you lose time in that regard. The lack of planning and the lack of planning eliminates that time for you.

Les Watson [00:50:13]:
Whereas if you put the planning in, you end up with time for you. Deadlines, as I mentioned, deadlines push you towards creating the stuff for you, whatever that might be. Even just that planning piece of I want to at 5:30 in the morning set something up for myself and therefore I’m going to do it for me. And that can be an early bird or it can be a night owl called okay, everyone’s asleep and it’s 11, I’m gonna go and paint. And you can do it that way. So you’re carving time out that way. That thing of keeping your own agreements of actually saying that you’re going to do something and do it and it builds trust inside of you. Those are the, those are the things that, that really help.

Les Watson [00:51:03]:
There’s one other on there and again I’ve got 101 but the other one is don’t trust your memory. So have a good idea. Write it down. You have things to do. Write it down. You have tasks you want to do. Write it down. And where do you write it down? In your trusted system, in the system that you trust.

Les Watson [00:51:22]:
And that can be paper based or digital as an app on your phone doesn’t really matter but put it somewhere so that you continually looking to that piece to go what’s next? Where am I going? What’s the big picture? What’s the next step? What are the actions I need to take? What are the tasks I need to do to get me towards the thing that I want to create? So that don’t trust your memory. Write it down is real, a real key for, for that. So there’s again the, the book is available online. Get back an hour and every day. My, my website get more time.com au it is an Australian website so don’t forget the AU but there’s a couple of things in there. In fact I do have a. Because it’s January, can I give the listeners something?

Nancy Norbeck [00:52:11]:
Sure.

Les Watson [00:52:13]:
I’ve got 25 time tips for busy people. So if you want to it’s either on the website or maybe Nancy, you can put in the show notes.

Nancy Norbeck [00:52:23]:
Sure.

Les Watson [00:52:23]:
And it’ll be getmoretime.com tips and it’ll be in the, in the description. It’s just a PDF as a gift from me to you at the beginning of the year and it covers off quite a few of the things I’ve already talked about but happy to have anybody reach out. Happy to talk to anybody Help them along the way and get them more of those times so they can be creative.

Nancy Norbeck [00:52:51]:
That’s fantastic. And I know, I am so sure that I am not alone in having committed the sin of trusting my memory and regretting it later. I have done it more times than I can count, and you would think that I would have learned by now. And sometimes I remember that I should write the thing down. And sometimes I think, oh, that’s okay, I’ll remember that later. That’s too good to forget. And then, you know, a couple days later, I’m like, what was that thing? Geez, I did it again. Yeah, yeah.

Nancy Norbeck [00:53:24]:
Learn from my mistakes, folks.

Les Watson [00:53:28]:
I’ll give you an example. I was with a colleague, and we were in an office, and then along a corridor to the boardroom overlooking the water. And it’s about 40 steps to get to the boardroom. So we went into the boardroom, and prior to the meeting, my colleague went, I’ve got this really good idea. And unbeknownst to her, I wrote it down. And then we’re talking some more, and she said, I’ve got this other idea. And unbeknownst to her, I wrote it down. And then she came up with a third, and I wrote it down.

Les Watson [00:53:56]:
Then we had the meeting. Then we came back past a couple of offices and we talked to quite a few people, and we got back and. And she had this. This look on her face. She goes, I cannot remember what I said in the. In the boardroom. And I went, what these three things? She said, how did you do that? I said, I wrote them down and changed it changed her life. Just like a big.

Les Watson [00:54:18]:
A big fish slapped across the face. She went, oh, my goodness, I’m. I’m. I’m never going to do that again. I’m going to write things down. And it really changed her life because she had a classic example of three really key things that she thought of that went in one ear and out the other and just got lost. If I didn’t remind her, they would have taken an age to get back. But because I told her, she then changed her way and she went, good idea, write it down.

Les Watson [00:54:47]:
Good idea, write it down. Good idea, write it down.

Nancy Norbeck [00:54:51]:
Yeah. I think sometimes, you know, if you’re in that moment and you don’t have something handy to write it down, you just think, oh, it’s okay, you know, I’ll remember, you know, or it’s inconvenient to go get the phone or get the thing or stop what I’m doing, and you will Forget.

Les Watson [00:55:09]:
Yeah, most people have their phone and I like ever had a good idea in the middle of the night. And I always invite people to have a pen and a piece of paper beside the bed where those, those pearlers just drop. And you go, oh, that’s awesome. And you just roll over, write it down and go back to sleep because you will not remember it the next day. You will look at that piece of paper and go, that’s that idea I had last night. That’s awesome.

Nancy Norbeck [00:55:38]:
Yeah. I mean, you hope that you wrote it legibly enough to be able to read it in the morning. But, but yeah, it’s, it’s amazing how many of those things because, you know, human beings are constant idea generators and, and they’re constantly coming up and, and you gotta, you gotta catch em. You know, it’s like you gotta have your, your butterfly net at the ready to catch the butterflies that pop out of your head at any given moment. And yeah, if you don’t catch this one, there will be other ones, but you’ll be going, that one was really good, but I don’t remember what the heck it was.

Les Watson [00:56:22]:
Yeah, indeed, indeed. And we’re creative. We are creative by nature.

Nancy Norbeck [00:56:27]:
Absolutely.

Les Watson [00:56:28]:
How we channel our creativity.

Nancy Norbeck [00:56:30]:
Right, Right. So if you have one thing to leave us with, the biggest thing that you would Recommend Going into 2025, what would it be?

Les Watson [00:56:41]:
Is leadership. You need to lead your life this year. Lead your life this year. Lead. Be the leader. Be the leader. Be the leader. Be the leader.

Les Watson [00:56:48]:
How can you take control and go, no, no, no, not everybody else. It’s not about ditching people. It’s about how do I create the life, how do I craft the life, how do I create from a creativity perspective the life that I want this year? What do I need to do? And start to do the plans. So be the leader this year.

Nancy Norbeck [00:57:08]:
All right. Well, Les, thank you so much. This has been really, really interesting, given me a lot to think about. Like, I had never thought about boundaries as a time related thing, but I do now, so I’ll be thinking about that for a while. So thanks so much.

Les Watson [00:57:24]:
You’re welcome. It’s been a great conversation and look forward to talking soon.

Nancy Norbeck [00:57:29]:
That’s our show for this week. I’m so grateful to Les Watson for sharing his ideas for a more creative new year and, and I hope you’ll put at least one of them into practice. If you know someone who would appreciate this episode, please pass it along. Thanks so much. If this episode resonated with you or if you’re feeling a little bit less than confident in your creative process right now. Join me at The Spark on Substack as we form a community that supports and celebrates each other’s creative courage. It’s free, and it’s also where I’ll be adding programs for support subscribers and listeners. The link is in your podcast app, so sign up today.

Nancy Norbeck [00:58:05]:
See you there and see you next week. Follow Your Curiosity is produced by me, Nancy Norbeck, with music by Joseph McDade. If you like Follow Your Curiosity, please subscribe, rate and review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And don’t forget to tell your friends. It really helps me reach new listeners.