Our interview series with productivity professionals continues - this time with Thomas Mangold . He is a self-management trainer and supports people - both online and offline - who want to have more time for the really important things in life. It helps you become more productive, more efficient and therefore able to complete more tasks or the same tasks in the same or less time.
Where did the idea for your company come from and what was your motivation for it?
Even when I was at school, I always dealt with the topic of time and self-management. It got a little lost when I started working, but when I started blogging, I thought it would be a good topic to take up and write about my experiences with tried and tested self-management -Methods. Yes, and I actually had a lot of fun with it from the very first moment. Then books were added, coaching was added and the whole thing developed further and further to where it is today.
Do you see connections between your previous professional experience and your current freelance work in the area of self-management? You were a social worker at the youth welfare office of the city of Vienna, later a football coach… are there any parallels?
I always loved being a social worker, but both self-management and social work would no longer have been possible. And that’s why I had to choose one and then I chose the independent option. But of course, also as a football coach – it all had to do with self-management and mental things. I am also a sports mental trainer, which has to do with mindset and that is of course a very exciting thing in all three areas.
What excited you most about it?
Working with the children was really nice, seeing the successes and I’m still happiest today when I realize: Yes, people are really successful with what I teach them. I think that’s the common denominator: I just really enjoyed seeing how people developed with my help.
What does self-management mean to you?
For me, self-management means that I complete my tasks as efficiently as possible so that I actually have more time for the really important things. It’s often the case, especially in today’s society, that there are always and everywhere distractions, that it’s always very easy to get lost in a secondary theater of war - yes, and if you really want to achieve your goals, then you need a lot of focus and… Self-management is extremely important.
What are the biggest benefits of self-management?
More time and less stress is definitely part of it. If I have good self-management, then I usually complete my tasks on time, namely when they are not yet urgent and that is the optimal thing. You can work much more stress-free and of course you will get a lot further because under stress you make mistakes, under stress you are tense and you can improve all of this through good self-management.
That sounds wonderful, but it’s definitely not always easy. What are the biggest challenges in self-management?
The biggest challenge, of course, is to distance yourself from all the distractions. It’s not just about colleagues or customers who keep interrupting or calling when you want to do something productive, but it’s also about Facebook, emails, about the phone, about the smartphone in general, which just keeps vibrating, beeping or whatever… If you’re working very focused and then it’s interrupted, it can take you up to 20 minutes until you get back to the concentration level you were at before , before being interrupted. My clients are always very surprised when I tell them: Have this high productivity time where you don’t let anything or anyone bother you! And they are always surprised at how much progress you can really make if you eliminate all sources of interference. And there are already many companies that are reacting to this… I know a service provider that only lets employees get emails once a day because they say that the employees should work and not constantly answer emails, which of course is a problem good idea is.
One topic in self-management is delegation and automation – which tasks should you hand over or automate?
Basically, it’s about tasks that others do faster and better, and about tasks that are not part of my core area. Giving things away isn’t always easy. I keep hearing statements like: “Yes, only I can really do that!” or “Yes, then I have to work on it again!” Sure, in the beginning delegating takes a little time because you might have to train someone, but In the end, you save yourself a ton of time. Or even automate: There are many tools like this If This Then That (IFTTT) or like [ZapVier?], where you can automate a lot of everyday things on the computer and that’s really a very, very cool thing.
Would you say it’s already saving you a lot of time or is it more of a thing you see in the future?
So I definitely save a lot of time by delegating things. I’ve already handed over a lot of things that an assistant has done for me and without him I wouldn’t be able to progress so quickly. So not only of course, but especially for self-employed people it is extremely important to move forward quickly, you also have to learn to be able to hand things over. Yes, of course it is very difficult at the beginning. I remember when I handed in the video editing, it didn’t work that well at the beginning because I didn’t really train the person well enough, but now it’s working great and I don’t have anything to do with the editing anymore, I’ll see then at the end I briefly talk about whether everything is good, but that’s completely incidental and that used to make me… I spent maybe four or five days a month cutting, which I can now spend doing other things, which is of course a great thing !
What do you think is the most important component of self-management?
It’s very individual, so I think it always depends on what the individual person’s weaknesses are. A really big weakness that many people have is of course focused work, i.e. sitting consistently on a task for two hours without doing anything else or checking emails in between or looking at Facebook or doing something else… Me I think that’s really the burning topic at the moment and that’s also the course that works best for me, the “focused work” course. And there’s… with a few simple tips and tricks you can make a huge difference and I think that’s what works the most. And otherwise it is of course very, very individual, many people have problems with procrastination, that is also a big issue, so that things are not addressed but postponed. And yes, those are the topics, I would say, the biggest two.
So you would say that it is better to work in one go than to take more breaks - not as TomatoTimer suggests, for example?
Exactly, yes, that is again very individual. So I can’t do anything with the TomatoTimer because it’s far too short for me. I do take regular breaks, but they tend to be short, close my eyes and take a few deep breaths, but otherwise… So a five minute break every 25 minutes, that would disrupt my workflow too much. I take a break every hour and that works for me. In self-management, everything is individual; what suits one person doesn’t necessarily have to suit someone else. And you just have to experiment a little – what works for me, what is good for me? – in order to then pick out the right one for you. And I think that’s the job of a self-management trainer, not to provide a ready-made concept, but simply to see what suits the person in question best and what they are most productive with.
So you try to find a very individual path for everyone because there is no global path?
Exactly, in my online tools it works in self-management, I just provide tips and tricks and strategies and say: You have to test, one after the other and then perfect the one that suits you. And when I’m really in 1-on-1 training, we look very closely at the options, try to find out a little in the past, what has worked well so far, and then apply that to the new strategies.
What was your biggest challenge on the way to becoming a self-manager?
Phew, good question, the biggest challenge for me has always been working from home. Because at home you of course have the opportunity to quickly go to the kitchen, do something there, then maybe distract yourself in some other way, the TV isn’t far away… but thank God I quickly put together a good workflow suits me, luckily I have my own office that I can use. When I’m in this office, I work productively in there and there’s a kind of “timetable” where I carry out my tasks and where I have my appointments. And when I’m done, I leave my office and then I can do whatever I want. Yes, that was basically the biggest challenge.
What do you smile about today when you think about your early days?
I had a 45-50 hour commitment to the city of Vienna and I had to adhere to a very, very strict daily schedule while being self-employed. And then on January 1st, 2016, when this 45-hour workload was eliminated, I suddenly couldn’t get any further done, because for the first two weeks I always thought, yes, I don’t need to stress myself now, I have There’s enough time now anyway, I’ll do it later… And it was a very, very funny experience that something like that happened, I should have expected it, but somehow it slipped through and I was totally unproductive for two weeks, much more unproductive, than when I still had my job, it was completely normal and well – that might be something to smile about.
Where do most people lose most of their time?
Yes, they spend most of their time doing things outside of their work. If they don’t really say, I have my focus time now, I’m highly productive, then I’m not allowed to concern myself with any other things, but only with my task - that’s one thing. And the second thing, I think, is that a lot of people don’t yet know how to do things in the right order. So I always start my day the same way, the first task I have is the “eat the frog” task, that is the most unpleasant task of the day, thank God there aren’t any of those every day, but there is one when I do I’ll do it straight away so I can get it out of my head. And the second task is the most important task of the day. And there are a lot of people who always start with the simple things that don’t require so much concentration and do it over the entire morning and in the afternoon, when they usually feel a little tired and unfocused, then they want to work on important things and then they usually get postponed and that’s actually a shame.
Yes, that’s right. Haha, guilty as charged!
Yes, you know that – everyone knows that.
I’ll definitely take that with me. What would you like to spend more time on?
Travel, definitely travel! So at the moment I’m still working very hard on my independence. I’m definitely on the right track, but I don’t have enough time for traveling at the moment. So to travel without a computer and without actually having to work somewhere for an hour or two every day, but to actually fly somewhere for two or three weeks a quarter without any obligations, that would be cool.
I haven’t seen the USA yet, Australia, South America, those are the areas I have on my agenda.
That sounds very inspiring. Finally, do some advertising: Who should definitely hire you?
If you really want to have more time for the really important things - how you define them is up to you, whether that’s family, friends or a hobby - you absolutely need me! And those who sit in the office from morning to night and are perhaps not quite as productive as they want to be, they need me too. They can find out more about me on my Blog , there’s a lot of free content and those who like it can join my membership, where there are special courses on specific problems where you can really tackle it.
