Chris Croft, an author and speaker on productivity and happiness, joins Brian on the show to share his unique "productivity animal" framework. He explains how different animal personalities represent different combinations of goals, efficiency, enjoyment, and achievement. The banter between Chris and Brian is humorous and insightful. Take the quiz to find out your Productivity Animal, and tune in to find out what it means.
The Audio/Podcast
Links to References In This Episode
Chris Croft’s Productivity Animal Quiz
BOOK: The book by Victor Frankl, Man’s Search For Meaning, that Brian mentioned - Goodreads - Amazon
Chris’s Youtube Video: Time Management In Under 8 Minutes
BOOK: 10 Natural Laws of Successful Time and Life Management by Hyrum W. Smith - Goodreads - Amazon
BOOK: Getting Things Done by David Allen - Amazon - Goodreads
Episode Digest
Chris Croft’s Productivity Animal Quiz
Your Productivity Animal: Achieve More by Understanding Your Natural Tendencies
We all want to be productive - to achieve our goals while still enjoying life. But the reality is, most of us struggle to find that ideal balance between efficiency, achievement, and happiness. In this insightful podcast, author and speaker Chris Croft introduces his creative "Productivity Animal" framework to help individuals identify their natural productivity styles and what shifts are needed to reach their full potential.
The Genesis: Goals, Enjoyment, Achievement
Croft's animal archetypes stem from his realization that true fulfillment comes from a harmonious blend of goal-setting, enjoyment, and achievement across all life domains - work and home. As he mapped this out visually: Goals and Efficiency are the "inputs" that lead to the "outputs" of Enjoyment and Achievement.
Croft emphasized the crucial role of defined goals: "If you set a goal, it's like putting a destination in your GPS - every day you'll make decisions pointing you toward that end point." Yet goals alone are insufficient; you need efficiency and discipline to propel you forward on that journey. As Croft summarized: "Goals make you more disciplined and assertive, so you go faster in the right direction."
The Productivity Animals Revealed
So which animal represents your current productivity style? Croft outlines six key archetypes:
The Greyhound: Efficient but goalless, the metaphor of chasing the incentives round and round a track but never really getting anywhere. "If you don't have GPS set, you'll just drive at random and end up in a swamp. A shocking 38% of people who took my quiz are Greyhounds - hard workers lacking goals and a clear purpose.”
“If you don’t have GPS set, you’ll just drive at random and end up in a swamp. A shocking 38% of people who took my quiz are Greyhounds - hard workers lacking goals and a clear purpose.”
The Kangaroo: Enjoyment-seekers living purely in the moment, devoid of goals or efficiency. "You can do this in your 20s, but eventually you need to get a grip on what you want to achieve."
The Mountain Goat: Relentlessly pursuing goals while forgetting to enjoy the journey. "Like goats scaling a mountain but never stopping to admire the view." At risk of burnout from all work and no play.
The Soaring Eagle: The ideal state - crystal clear on goals, efficient in pursuit of them, while still making time for enjoyment in all life areas. "If you have the right mix of home/work and joy/achievement goals - you've got life sussed."
““If you have the right mix of home/work and joy/achievement goals - you’ve got life sussed.””
The Koala: Has goals but is inefficient. These people are often dreamers, who have high aspirations but don’t seem to accomplish any of their dreams. This also might be where someone who has “golden handcuffs” sits, which means they’ve got a great paying job, and are afraid to lose it to try for something more.
The Tortoise: Doesn't have goals and is also not efficient. They don't achieve anything and they don't enjoy themselves. And these are the people who plod through life and they're just unhappy and they just go, well, what can you do? I'll just have to carry on doing this job that I hate. They have all sorts of potential if only somebody told them. They're just plodding along through the grass thinking, well just have to eat grass again today.
You Evolve & Change Throughout Your Life
Once you identify your animal, Croft provides wisdom on evolving toward the enlightened Eagle. For Greyhounds, it's simply a matter of getting clear on goals to give your work purpose. Kangaroos need to find a motivating vision to work toward. And Goats must embrace enjoyment and inject play into their relentless pursuit of success.
The Hedonic Treadmill Trap
But even the lofty Eagles must guard against a insidious productivity pitfall - the "hedonic treadmill." This is where you achieve a goal like running a marathon, only to immediately start chasing the next goal without pausing to celebrate. You buy your dream car, but a few weeks later, the thrill is gone and you're longing for the next material prize.
To counter this, Croft advises setting a mix of achievement and enjoyment goals across life domains. "If all your goals are financial, you'll just want newer cars. Have goals like writing a book or performing music too." He also stresses regularly re-evaluating your goals, letting go of completed ones, and setting new inspiring challenges.
The Path to Soaring
The key takeaway? We're all a work-in-progress on the path toward becoming more productive, purposeful, and joyful. Knowing your current productivity animal is the first step. From there, implement Croft's wisdom to integrate the missing elements - whether that's defined goals, improved efficiency, or scheduled enjoyment.
As Croft summarizes: "The Eagle must continually ask - what's next? How do I follow up Everest? Because it's never finished...you climb one mountain only to see a bigger one on the horizon." A meaningful, fulfilling life is a perpetual journey of striving towards elevated visions of achievement and happiness. Embrace your productive nature, but keep soaring toward your highest ideals.
““The Eagle must continually ask - what’s next? How do I follow up Everest? Because it’s never finished...you climb one mountain only to see a bigger one on the horizon.””
Today’s Guest
Chris Croft
Author, Speaker, Trainer
on Productivity & Happiness
Chris Croft is one of the world's leading trainers, having provided courses to over 87,000 people in-person and a staggering 18 million online across platforms like LinkedIn Learning, Udemy, and YouTube. With top-selling courses on project management, happiness, negotiation skills, and more, Croft has cultivated a massive global following - his tip of the month email reaches over 20,000 subscribers. A prolific author and former chartered engineer with an MBA from Cambridge, Croft brings decades of corporate experience and an interactive, practical teaching style to help professionals achieve more while finding greater fulfillment.
Website: chriscroft.co.uk
Linkedin Learning: linkedin.com/learning/instructors/chris-croft
LinkedIn Contact: linkedin.com/in/chriscrofttraining/
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About The Creator/Host: I’m Brian. At age 4, I was diagnosed with insulin dependent (type 1) diabetes and told that my life was going to be 10-20 years shorter than everyone else. As a kid I took time for granted, but now as an adult, time is the most precious thing that I have. After spending a career hands-on in the trenches as a senior project manager, I now help others to level-up through my Productivity Gladiator training. These Gladiators wield email management superpowers, a laser-guided ability to focus, samurai-grade prioritization skills, a sniper-precise task tracking approach, Jedi time management skills, and a secret sauce for maximizing their personal life balance. If what you’ve seen here intrigues you, reach out, let’s chat! Time is the currency of your life, spend it wisely.
Transcript
Brian Nelson-Palmer
I'm Brian Nelson Palmer, and on this show I dive into personal practical productivity skills. And in this episode, we're finding out what's your productivity animal. I've been so excited about this. I found out there's a little quiz that I'm going to give you the link to. I found out I'm a soaring eagle. What on earth does that mean? Chris is here and we're going to find out what yours is. And we'll dive in now, just as a primer, I'm going to introduce Chris. But before I do, I'm going to get the link to this little quiz is going to be in the episode notes of this episode.
So right now, before you listen, if you want to find out what your animal is, so when Chris tells us about all this, pause the episode right now and jump in there and take the quiz and then hit play again and come back or take it while we're talking. But let's jump in. But I've got the link for you right there so you can find out what your productivity animal is. So now with me on the show today is Chris Croft. Now he's an author and a speaker on productivity and happiness. Chris, thanks so much for being here with me.
Chris Croft
Well, thank you for having me. It's great. Great. I love it. I love talking about my animals in particular. So yeah, thank you for having me, Brian.
Brian Nelson-Palmer
Yeah. So for people who aren't familiar with you, you talk about productivity and happiness, share a little bit about you and your background on this topic. And then of course, where do these animals come from?
Chris Croft
Yeah, well, I started out as an engineer. I don't know, at school I didn't have very good memory but I could do maths. So I sort of went into engineering. I was not a very good engineer though, too much detail. Went into management and I was quite a good manager but I didn't enjoy it. I had to do horrible things to people and stress. And I just thought, I don't want to do this my whole life. And then I escaped out into being a university lecturer and then a freelance trainer. And training is what I love doing, it's great.
I've mostly been teaching time management and project management. So real efficiency stuff, but I keep coming back to the idea of happiness as well, because what's the point of time management if it, if it doesn't make you happy and that's what first got me started thinking about these animals actually, um, because I was very efficient and organized, but not achieving very much.
And I first started thinking about this actually when I was playing in a band, I play the saxophone quite badly. Anyway, I was in this really loud rock band with, with sax added and, um, all the other people.
Brian Nelson-Palmer
Nice, I play the drums. Also, saxophone and loud rock bands don't always go together. Okay.
Chris Croft
Well, yeah, but Bruce Springsteen, you know, he obviously Clarence Clemens no longer with us, unfortunately, what a god he was. But there's a occasion you get it, but not very often, you're right. So, so anyway, the other people in the band were quite different to me, because I, you know, did my engineering degree, and I was very organized. And the other people in the band were all smoking unusual cigarettes and stuff like that. And I've never really met people like that before. I went to a pretty tough boarding school and things. And suddenly I'm with these guys who were just spaced out and disorganized and they would ring up and say, hey, Chris, are we playing tonight? And I'd go, yeah, I gave you a list of all the gigs. And they go, oh yeah, I've lost that. I think I may have smoked it or something, rolled it up or whatever. And then they'd say, oh, Chris, my car's broken down. Can you come and get me? And I'd be going, oh, so I go and fetch them. But I give them this lecture on car maintenance on the way to the gig, you know. And I...
At the time I looked down on them because they were so disorganized. I used to think their life is a shambles. How can they live their life like that? And, and one day I was installing all the wires into the sort of, into the mixing desk, because I was the only person who really understood the mixing desk. Cause I'd read the manual and all that. And, and they were down the other end, just having a laugh and having a drink or whatever. And it suddenly dawned on me that maybe they had a better life than me, you know, as they were just having fun.
And there was me like Mr. Organized, but I was organized, but I wasn't achieving any more than them, you know. And so it made me think, what is life all about? And at that moment, when I was sort of like 22 in that pub with my saxophone, I suddenly thought, have they got life sus? But I kind of knew they hadn't either, you know, I didn't, because the problem with them, they just go for happiness straight away, just what's the most fun option in any situation? Should we practice or should we party? Oh, we'll party. And yet they complained that the band wasn't famous and why weren't they on TV and things. And of course, until you get a grip and record an album and market it, you're not gonna be famous. So I was thinking their style of life is not sustainable. You can do it for a few years, but at some point it's gonna bug you that you're not making progress, you're not achieving stuff. And so I started thinking that maybe the whole point of life is to somehow achieve, but also enjoy yourself, achieve and enjoy. Okay. And by the way, while we're on that, I've got a theory that the meaning of life might as well do the meaning of life, shall we? Yeah, we're diving in.
Brian Nelson-Palmer
We're diving in. Chris was like, Chris goes, oh, productivity animals? Shoot, we're going right to the meaning of life. Okay.
Chris Croft
Yeah. Well, we're going to come to the animals because they were kangaroos and I was a greyhound, but I'll explain why in a minute. So I'm just going to draw the meaning of life over here. And I think the meaning of life is to enjoy yourself as much as you can, but also to achieve stuff. And in a way, you could say enjoyment is about the present and achieving is about the future. So you might have to do stuff you don't want to do right now in order to achieve later, like studying, taking exams and stuff. So, so you want to get the most out of the present, which would be enjoy. And by the way, I think I'm doing both at the moment talking to you. It's great because I'm really enjoying it. But also we're recording this podcast, which will give me a feeling of achievement and perhaps have an effect on the people who see it and things. So you can do both. But, but, but some people just do a lot of enjoyment, they never achieve anything. And some people achieve stuff, but they forget to enjoy themselves. And that's another one of my animals I'll come to.
And then, but the other dimension on this chart is home and work. So I think quite a lot of people's plan is to enjoy themselves at home, by home I just mean outside of work really, enjoy themselves at home and then achieve stuff at work. And that's their plan. And sometimes they don't do particularly well at either by the way, like some people don't even enjoy their home life. They've got a wife or a husband who they don't really like or, you know, well they...
I don't know, they just don't seem to enjoy their life much. And then there's other people who, they actually don't achieve that much at work. They just turn up and do the minimum or whatever, which I don't think is a good plan. But most of us vaguely kind of want to do those two things, I think. But clearly, you know what I'm gonna say, which would be, it'd be quite a good idea to enjoy your work as well. If you could find a job that you enjoy, wouldn't that be good? And also, I think achieve some things outside of work because you don't want your only achievement to be at work. Because when they suddenly lay you off one day, and after 30 years of loyal service, not that I'm bitter, you sort of think, is that it? All I've done is increase the sales in Minnesota by 3%. And that's the sum of my life or whatever. And often your work goals feel a bit trivial. Nothing wrong with Minnesota, by the way. It's the first place I thought of.
But you can see that achieving at work is not enough. You want to achieve some stuff in your personal life as well. Write that children's book and upload it to Amazon or whatever it might be that you want to do. So I'm not, by achievement, I don't mean being famous. I mean doing things that you'll feel proud of that you feel good about. And it might be, you know, making your own dining table or it might be playing in a band, you know, just playing in a bar, enjoying yourself. And if you people know the words or something.
So we're not talking about being famous, because actually I think being famous may not make you happy, but that's a whole other subject I don't know the answer to. Yeah, so anyway, I was starting to think about enjoy and achieve particularly. And so on my animals chart that I'm gonna show you here, I've got inputs and outputs. I'll just write that on here.
Brian Nelson-Palmer
And if you're tuning in, well, he's, I know he sounds like he's disappearing from the mic a little bit. And he's, what's happening is if you haven't checked out the video, he also, if you want to watch the video, he's got a board behind him that he's starting to describe this stuff. So if you're listening, we'll describe it for you. And if you're watching, you'll see what he's writing on the board behind him. So this is fascinating. Keep going, Chris. Just wanted to hear.
Chris Croft
Yeah, if you're watching, you'll see that he looks a little bit like Brad Pitt, like a sort of even more intelligent version of Brad Pitt.
Brian Nelson-Palmer
You clearly need to watch the video. If you haven't seen this man write? It's a beautiful thing. Absolutely. Ha ha ha.
Chris Croft
Well, this black pen I'm going to use next, that's my favorite, but it's really good. You get loads of ink, but it does make a slight squeaky sound. But at least people who are on audio only will know that I'm writing. Uh, so that's good. So yeah, we'll describe it. Won't we, as we go along. So you don't, if you haven't got video, it's fine. It'll make sense. So we've got these outputs, um, and the outputs are to, um, enjoy yourself, but also to achieve.
I'm going to put enjoy and achieve as the two outputs. It is squeaky actually, isn't it? Just be glad it's not right near the.
Brian Nelson-Palmer
This is really, this is fun. So he's got inputs on one side of the chart, outputs on the other side, and enjoy and achieve are under the outputs. Okay, I'm following you.
Chris Croft
Yeah. But what are the inputs? Because there are things you can do, which are going to lead to either enjoyment or achievement. Okay. And I think the big two inputs are to have goals and to be efficient. Okay. So I'm just going to write that one there and I'm going to explain what I mean. So I'm going to put here goals and efficiency. Yeah. And obviously time management is efficiency. So.
Brian Nelson-Palmer
Interesting. Okay. So under input, there's goals and being efficient. Okay.
Chris Croft
So when we were, and what we're gonna come to in a minute, you'll see that some people have goals, but they're not efficient. And that just means they have a dream, but they never do anything about it. They don't get on and get organized and make it happen. And then there are other people who are efficient, but don't have goals. And this was me with the band. So I was just efficiently organizing something that just went around in circles really. And so on my little chart,
That's the first one I'm going to have. So I'm going to say I didn't have goals, but I did have efficiency.
And so I was organized, I had my little checklists and things, but what was the point? And what it meant was that I wasn't achieving.
And that bugged me really. In fact, I wasn't really even enjoying it as much as them, because I was too busy being the organizer. So I was on one out of four. And I realized at that moment that being efficient without going somewhere is never going to work. And I thought, what animal shall I call that? And I've decided on the greyhound for that one.
I'll explain why. We have a Greyhound racing track near where I live. Do you have Greyhound racing in the States or is that an English thing? Dog racing.
Brian Nelson-Palmer
We sure do. I would say you're coming to us if they don't know you're over in the UK. And I'm on the US side. And yes, Greyhound Racing is definitely a thing in the US as well.
Chris Croft
Yeah. So we had a Greyhound, there was a hole in the fence and we had a Greyhound that went straight on and it went through the hole. And it just went for about 20 miles in a straight line. It went all the way to somewhere called Weymouth, which is like a long way away from here. And nobody could catch it. This dog was just gone. And I think they got it back eventually. But when I was listening to that story, I was thinking that a lot of people just go round in circles like the Greyhounds, chasing after that sort of fluffy fox thing they chase after and their life, people's lives can, if you're not careful, just be Monday to Friday, just going around in circles doing stuff for your boss and the weekend, maybe you sort of clean the car or whatever. And if we're not careful, we have routines and we just go in circles. But if you had a goal like that greyhound and you just went in a straight line, you know, it could be epic. So that's the first animal, the person who's efficient but doesn't have goals. And a lot of people are like this. In fact, the greyhound is the commonest animal
I've been doing the stats from this questionnaire that Brian mentioned earlier on, you can do online. It's free. It's very quick. It'll tell you which animal you are. And 38% of people are greyhounds. So a third of the people who do that test are greyhounds, which is really interesting. And that's because nobody's told them about the fact that you can have goals. And if you set goals, it'll change your life. And I don't know whether you've done many podcasts on goals, Brian, but goals are just huge, aren't they? Would you agree?
Brian Nelson-Palmer
It's a big, it's a big part of it. Chris, it's goals and what I love, it's so funny. I teach, I also have a workshop that I teach on life balance and what is included in life balance. And I love the overlap that you and I have is very similar in that you describe it as efficiency and goals. And I talk about the goals and the journey as being the two pieces that you need. Cause if you have one without the other,
Chris Croft
Yeah, you've got to embark on the journey, otherwise you're just a dreamer, aren't you?
Brian Nelson-Palmer
I love it. Yeah, we're totally, oh my gosh, I'm sitting here and I'm just nodding going, yes, totally. Greyhound would not be a good life forever and ever. And I think it's also possible that you might go in and out of Greyhound status and then people have midlife crisis and they suddenly realize they've been a Greyhound for 10 years with efficiency and no goals. And they're like, what am I doing? What have I done with my life? So if you're having one of those moments, like it's an amazing wake up call. And...
Chris Croft
going faster and faster doesn't help because you just go around in a circle faster. Yeah. In fact, you have less time probably to think as you go really fast in a circle. So yeah, we totally agree on that. And by the way, you mustn't spend ages on goals, but just a little thing that I've been thinking about with goals that I hope you like is why does having goals and preferably writing them down make them much more likely to happen? And I think there are two reasons, direction and speed.
If you set a goal, it's a bit like putting a destination into your GPS, you will get there. Every day you make little decisions and your mind will take you a little bit towards that goal. In fact, it's very like a GPS because sometimes you take a wrong turning or there's a roadblock, but it doesn't matter because the next turning will be right. If you miss a turning, your GPS recalculates and it says your journey will take two minutes longer. It's usually nothing if you miss a turning. It doesn't matter.
So as you go through life, you'll not always follow the GPS and you'll make mistakes, et cetera, but you will get there. Whereas if you don't have GPS set, you'll just drive at random and you'll end up in a swamp in Alabama or somewhere. And maybe you didn't wanna go there. Although I actually do want to visit Alabama because I've got a feeling the food's gonna be great, but that's another subject.
It's one of the states I haven't been to. I've been to New Orleans and food was interesting there. But anyway, and Missouri, oh, the food was good in Missouri. Yeah, they had a thing like, was it called a barbecue restaurant or something? And you went in there and you just had a big pile of meat. It was so good. The fried chicken. Anyway, so, yeah.
Brian Nelson-Palmer
Phenomenal right? Alright, Chris. So listen, we were talking about if you got that thing in Alabama, that spot in Alabama better have a pile of meat. Now we know this is how Chris.
Chris Croft
Yeah, exactly. Better have a part of me, alligator stew or something. So, so that's direction is one thing, but also if you have goals, you'll go faster because you'll be more disciplined and more assertive and all your time waste has come from either you, you know, flicking through Instagram or something, or they come from other people hijacking your time to achieve their goals instead of yours. And so to go faster, you have to be more disciplined and that comes from having goals to focus on.
And you have to be more assertive about other people. And that comes from having goals because I haven't got time to do that because I want to do this. So goals make you more disciplined and more assertive and therefore you go faster in the right direction. So anyway, for all these reasons, goals really, really work. And the poor old Greyhounds have just never been told about goals probably because they don't teach you that at school, do they? I mean, it's like a kind of secret that you and I have discovered and-
My list of goals, I mean, when I wrote them down, they all happened within a couple of years. They happened. I couldn't believe it. So I did another list and that one happened. I'm on my third list now and it's big. You know, once you discover that whatever you write down is going to happen, I mean, you can write to some big things down.
Brian Nelson-Palmer
And Chris, if we're in, I do a similar thing. I started a year in review practice about three, four years ago. And I have every year at the end of the year, I do an assessment and I actually did. I've got a podcast episode on this if you're curious about it, because I publish what my I do my self assessment and then I put it on social media. If you're friends with me, I put it on social media because now and not only that it's public, but what's also been amazing is in that goal, I talk about what went well, what didn't go well, what was frustrating, what were the things I said I was going to do, and I'm reporting out now, last year I said I was going to do this, how did it go, and then this year here are my intentions, and I'm going to do this and this, and then the next year I do the same thing, and I report on the last year, and what you're talking about, that goals thing, man, that's been a very powerful thing, because you, like you said, direction
Every year I am course correcting and looking at the direction and going, all right, I want a little more of this. I want to change this. But it's about your whole life. It's not you talked about home and work. And I so agree. You got to do assessment on both. It's not just one or just the other.
Chris Croft
Home and work, achieve and enjoy.
Yeah. And people say, is it okay to change my goals? Yeah, every year you should be readjusting because every year you realize that one's not so good after all and this is more interesting, you've discovered something else. So absolutely, all the time you climb one mountain, you see another one then, a bigger one perhaps or a different one. So yeah, absolutely. You should always be adjusting and adding to your goals and finding what other people's are. So maybe you can pinch a few ideas from them for goals you can have and things. So.
Anyway, I will be quicker on the other animals, but that's the greyhound. Okay. And if all they have to do is add goals, because they've done the difficult part, they've, they're already efficient. They've just got to add their goals, but without goals, you won't achieve anything. And you probably won't have that much fun either, but that takes me to my second animal, which is the kangaroo.
Brian Nelson-Palmer
So we got the first line was the Greyhound and the Greyhound is, it has goals. It does not have goals, but is efficient and it does not necessarily enjoy life and you don't necessarily achieve anything. So now the Kangaroo.
Chris Croft
or achieve. We can, I don't know whether we can give out a sheet with all these on, but you can also, if you go to my website, you'll be able to find a little table of all the animals. And if you do the questionnaire, it'll tell you all about the pros and cons of your particular animal. Anyway.
Brian Nelson-Palmer
I was gonna say, I hope you've already taken the quiz to find out. We haven't gotten to your animal yet, but it's coming. So I hope you took the quiz already. So go ahead. Yeah, Chris, the kangaroo.
Chris Croft
Yeah. So the kangaroo is really the other people in the band. Cause what they were doing is they, they didn't have goals really. Uh, and they were definitely not efficient, but they were enjoying themselves. They weren't achieving anything. So they only get one tick as well. Whereas the Greyhound just had a tick on efficiency. These ones have a tick on enjoyment. Um,
But as we said at the beginning, it's probably not sustainable over a long period to keep just being a kangaroo. You know, you can do it in your twenties. If I would recommend doing it in your twenties, but at some point you have to get a grip and decide what am I going to do with my life? But, but, but actually.
Brian Nelson-Palmer
Chris, you and I are about helping people and we just told everybody in their 20s to go be pot smoking band members. I love that this is what you've done too.
Chris Croft
Well, I'm not sure about the pot side of things, but I do think, I think it's okay to have a bit of fun before, because actually you're learning while you're having fun and you're, you're deciding what you like doing, what you don't like doing. And, and you're, you know, cause I know some very serious people in their early twenties and I'm thinking, you know, and they go, I want to run a company. I want to be rich and successful. And I'm thinking, but you don't even know what the options are yet really. So maybe the fool around to have a bit of fun is, is an option.
But probably without too many drugs because they're bad for your brain and your brain is your most valuable tool you've got in life, isn't it? So anyway.
Brian Nelson-Palmer
That's so true. When you finally come out of your 20s and you're ready to be in your 30s, if all you did was a lot of drugs, then you're never gonna be able to climb on top of that mountain you wanna climb because your biggest muscle that you need to do that is now like, man, it's, yes. The long-term implications of it, well, it's really enjoyable at the time. Yeah.
Chris Croft
Yeah. At the very least you've just wasted 10 years. So yeah, but I would recommend, for example, traveling and going to somewhere like India, just to see, and it'll just broaden your mind. You'll have ideas, you know, all that sort of stuff in your twenties for sure. So anyway, that's the kangaroo. And I know a few people who are kangaroos. And I, in a way, I envy the way they can just party with no thought of tomorrow, but it's not sustainable. And in the end, it bugs them because they're not achieving. They're enjoying, but they're not achieving. And that bugs them. But if they're going to achieve, then they're going to have to have goals and be efficient. Because you can't achieve without knowing what you're trying to achieve and without being reasonably efficient as well. And you may say, well, some kangaroos could live their whole life like that. But all the ones I know are actually a bit annoyed that they haven't achieved anything. But the people I know in bands, they always want the band to be famous. Why are we not successful? And I'm thinking, well, it's pretty obvious.
You know, it does bug them. Everyone wants to achieve something. I think it's built into us to have a need to achieve.
So, going back to me as the Greyhound, I realized that I wasn't achieving anything. And I decided that efficiency wasn't enough, but I had to be going somewhere, like the Greyhound going in a straight line. So, I got some, I was gonna say I sat down and wrote out some goals, but actually it happened because a friend of mine told me about goals at just the right moment. And I thought,
That's why I'm going round in circles. So it was a big, I was probably mid twenties. So I'm gonna put a tick on goals and I was already very efficient and organized. I was just that sort of person. And it was pretty good. I started to achieve quite a lot of things. And my goal was at the time, I decided to be a senior manager. I was actually working for a helicopter company and I knew that the directors.
all had big cars. I still am into cars actually. I just thought, oh, I'd like a car like that. It's a bit sad because there is more to life than cars, although cars are great. I decided that I would set a goal to be a senior manager and to be well paid and also to make a difference because I wanted to make a difference to the company. I thought there were loads of things wrong with the helicopter factory. I thought if I was a senior manager, I could get a lot of it sorted out.
I was wrong about that, by the way, because, you know, as you get more senior in a company, you have affect a wider area, but you affect it less. So instead of 100% of one person yourself, you have 1% effect on 100 people. And it's still, it's still the same I felt. So, so anyway, I what happened really was that I was achieving a certain amount, but I wasn't really enjoying it.
And I think a lot of people who go up the management tree, sorry, I'm just getting my throat there. A lot of people who go up the management tree find that they've achieved quite a lot, but they don't really enjoy it. They have to work long hours and they have to almost sell their soul to the devil a little bit. And of course there are good companies and bad companies. And I was, I think a bit unlucky in where I was, but I felt I was selling my soul to the devil. And I just didn't enjoy being a boss.
And I've called this the mountain goat.
I was trying to think of an animal that sort of goes up a mountain, but doesn't really seem to have much fun while it's doing it. And the best animal I can think of was the goat, the mountain goat. Now, I just want to stress at this point, by the way, that you're not stuck with an animal for your whole life. So if you're thinking, oh no, I'm a goat, then that's fine. Because all you have to do is sort out the enjoyment part. So all you have to do is make sure you get that home life balance and don't spend too much time at work.
but also have some enjoyment goals. So my little matrix of enjoy and achieve, often the goat people have, they have goals for achieving both at home and at work. I'm going to build my own house and I'm going to do this. And it's all achieve, achieve. And they forget to have fun along the way. They could actually take a lesson from a kangaroo really. So yeah.
Brian Nelson-Palmer
Yeah, you know, there's Chris, there's a I'm reminded of a quote and I reference it a lot in my session on life balance. We talk about because I talked to I told you I talk about the journey. And one of the things there's a quote from oh, my goodness, I'm going to forget the name of now that I need it. There's a quote, Victor Frankl and the meaning of life is the book. And he this the story is from him. He was a psychiatrist or a psychologist that went to the Nazi concentration camps.
And he talked about what he knew they knew in the camps. You all got to know each other really well because you spend all day in a camp together and you're sleeping in the same place. And so they got to know when that person was gonna die within a week in the camp. And the way that they knew it was because you could tell that the other questions, you always have the questions on why am I here? What am I doing? The questioning, like you said, you don't have the goals. Like,
You need goals and where you're headed. And all of a sudden they weren't on their journey anymore. And the way it showed up is they were just, they were like, I don't want to do this anymore. Why am I here? And I saw the same thing with my grandmother before she was going to pass away. She was a hundred years old and she was not on her journey anymore. She was not enjoying her journey because she was like, why am I still here? And like, this isn't fun anymore.
Chris Croft
Yeah. If you're not enjoying it and also you've got nothing left to achieve, then what's the point?
Brian Nelson-Palmer
Right. So I share that because like you're talking about the goat and what's amazing is, man, it's about the achieving but figuring out the journey, which you're talking about enjoyment. And for me, I talk about it as the journey. That's what Victor Frankl was talking about, which is you need to stay on a journey and enjoy your journey, but make sure you're still journeying. Because if you ever get there, that's the end. And so especially by the way, if you have seen your parents or anything and they're not on a journey anymore. You'll see it. They'll tell you things like this isn't fun anymore or waiting to die or when they start talking about that stuff, that journey piece and the goals, what are they working toward? Are they learning anymore? Are they growing? And if they're not, get them back on that train cause otherwise they're at the end. So I-
Chris Croft
Yeah. I've still got my dad, he's 93 and he's learning croquet and he's having an extension built on his house and he's, he's doing, he's, you know, still got loads of projects he's doing and he's enjoying them as well as achieving them. So yeah, absolutely. It's great. And actually you reminded me when you said the journey there that I think a really good example of this is that some people climb mountains because they really want to see the view from the top and they hate the process of climbing the mountain, but they think it's worth it just for the view from the top. You know, like you get one minute on top of Mount Everest before you start to die or whatever, you got to quickly come back down and you have to get back down before it's dark, et cetera. So they do it all for that one minute going, yes, I'm on top of the world. But that's crazy because most of life is the journey. Just as most of climbing Mount Everest is the journey. In fact, all of life is the journey really. And you may be climbing mountains down on top, but what do you do then?
You're going to climb another one, aren't you? So the key is to enjoy the journey. And if you can enjoy climbing the mountain and the view from the top, then that's great. Then you're doing enjoy and achieve, aren't you, rather than just achieve. I mean, imagine just crossing off mountains, even though you didn't enjoy climbing them. I mean, that would be pointless. So, you know, the great mountaineers obviously enjoy the process of climbing the mountain.
And it's the same with whatever you're doing in life. You've got to enjoy, you know, building your shed or building your business or going to see customers or you got to enjoy as much as you can of all of it, haven't you? And so the goat has kind of forgotten about enjoyment because they're too busy working on it. And I've got various ambitious friends who are making quite a lot of money, but they're never available to see them. They're always busy. And when you do see them, they're kind of distracted because they're thinking about work and, oh, hang on a minute. A phone call has just come in. There's a crisis. What? Oh no. Sorry, Chris, I got to go and all this. And I just think you've forgotten to have any fun. You've got all this money, but why aren't you having a good time? And with some people, the more money they make, the more things they have to worry about, the more things can go wrong. So, so anyway, that that's the goat. And I think it's so easy to fall into that kind of career trap of being a goat. But you're so nearly there as a goat because all you gotta do is get a few enjoyment goals in and get your work-life balance pushed back a bit against long hours and you can do it because you've got both your inputs sorted. Well, you just haven't got that the input called goals is just a bit lopsided because it's kind of too much work goals and too much achieve goals. And there should be some enjoyment goals and some outside work goals as well, and then you can get the balance better. Anyway, that's the goat. Now, while we're sort of just moving on from the goat, I'm going to mention the one that you got, which is the eagle. And the eagle is what we want to be, of course. So the eagle is Yeah, in fact, when I was first, when I was first working on this, I was describing the six animals to my son and I mean, he was about 25 then he's 30 now. And he said, which animal are you dad? And he went, in fact, don't tell me, I bet you're a bloody eagle. And I went, yeah, I am. And I felt a bit bad about that. But then if I wasn't an eagle, I shouldn't be able to invent this theory, should I? I mean, it's my theory. But anyway, the eagle is the person who obviously has got their goals really clear in their mind and they've got the right mixture of home and work and joy and achieve and they're efficient. And that means that they're enjoying and achieving. So they have fun in their life, and they're achieving a certain amount. And I do feel I'm an eagle now. But I've spent a lot of time as a greyhound and a goat. So, you know, I think I'm allowed to be an eagle for a bit now. I actually think though, it's quite hard to know whether you're an eagle. So for example, I know somebody who is a PA, a personal assistant and she is organized. But I think, I don't think she is an eagle because I think she could achieve a lot more. So she's like a small fish in a small pond going, look at me, I'm in charge of my pond. I'm king of my pond. But really, if she only knew there was a massive ocean out there and she's only a minnow, she could then expand. And I think maybe she should have bigger goals and move on up to another level.
But you could say, well, no, she's happy as she is and she's happy being a little eagle and that's great. You know, why interfere? Why tell her, but actually there's a bigger world out there. I don't know, I haven't really got an answer to that. But I think, you know, it's easy to be like a self-perceived eagle and to think that you're achieving, but actually what you're achieving is quite small. And you could, perhaps you have potential to achieve a lot more. So I think one of the challenges with an eagle, and even you and I as quite big eagles, we think.
You know, maybe we should be still thinking, yeah, what am I going to do next year? And I love the way that you, Brian, have every year you refresh those, you aim higher every year because it's never finished, is it? You can't just sit back and go, well, I'm an Eagle now. You know, that's it. I've made it. You know, my advice to the Eagle is so what are you going to do next? And, and that's one of the most difficult things. How do you follow Mount Everest? You know, because when you achieve your goals, you're left thinking, well, I don't know, what am I going to do next?
Brian Nelson-Palmer
Chris, it's the term that I, when I heard it, I'll never forget, I was listening to an audio book, I was coming home from work, and I was walking by a bus stop, and I actually had to sit down when I heard it, because I was a goat for years and years and years. And I was reading this book, and I can't remember where it came from, which kills me right now, but the term was hedonic treadmill.
Chris Croft
Oh yeah, the hedonic treadmill.
Brian Nelson-Palmer
Where you're always trying for the next thing and the next thing and the next thing. And you don't celebrate where you got to because you're always on to the next. So as soon as you achieve, like, I'm going to run a marathon. And then you run a marathon. And immediately, as soon as the marathon is over, you're contemplating the next marathon or at work. It's the same thing. And so it's a hedonic treadmill in that it never stops. It's never good enough.
Chris Croft
You get your fancy car and within a few weeks, you're used to it, it's just the car and then you want another car, et cetera. Yeah, relentless. So the eagle must resist that, but I do think you wanna keep stretching yourself a little bit and doing things that are gonna develop you, but probably not just financial things like cars. And I think eagles, if they're not careful, they don't spend enough time with their friends because they're too busy achieving, you know. And then also there's the whole question of your exit plan.
Um, is how do you, um, you know, how, where does it stop? How do you retire? What are you going to do when you do retire? Or if you sell off your business that you've created, um, how are you going to, um, how are you going to do nothing or what are you going to do instead? So I think there are questions for Eagles, but, but really that's what we should aspire to, you know, we want to make sure we've got goals, we want to make sure that we're efficient and then if you can be enjoying and achieving both at home and work, then you've pretty much got life sussed. So that's the eagle.
We've got two more animals to look at. And the next animal I wanna talk about is the koala.
So the koala is the person... Do you remember when we started, I was saying you can have goals but be inefficient or you can be efficient but not have goals. So the koala is the person who has goals but is inefficient. Now we haven't had that combination at all yet, have we? We've not talked about people who've got goals but they just don't do anything about them for whatever reason.
And I think there are people in life who are kind of dreamers. Sometimes people in bands are like that as well, actually. So they have this dream of, you know, being on stage with Bruce Springsteen or something like that. But they just never do anything about it. Maybe the goals are too big and scary, and they don't realize that you can just make a small start towards it. Maybe they keep just putting it off. Sometimes they're a bit negative as well. So they...
They have this dream, but they also go, but of course, it'll never happen to me. It's hard. It's not even worth trying to do it really. And well, sometimes they have to let go of something that they've got to take a risk. And the reason I call it a koala, because I was imagining them hugging onto a tree. And they've got quite a good view. And they can see where they'd like to be. Oh, I wish I was over there on that other lovely green tree over there. But they can't let go of the tree they're on.
not like the eagle who can soar above everywhere and go wherever they want. But the koala is thinking, oh, I wish I was over there, but I can't let go of this. So maybe they've got a job that they've settled for and it's okay, it's not quite well paid and you need the money. And they don't wanna take the risk of chucking that in and setting up their own business, let's say. So I think koalas are often nice people and they're...
they often introvert thinkers perhaps and they just need to take the plunge and get an efficient plan of how they're going to do it. Perhaps it's more project management than time management that they need so they need a plan in steps of how they're going to get there but nevertheless they need that they need to execute the plan rather than just have a dream. So the result of the koalas is
And it's such a shame because they've got those dreams and all they have to do is start. But starting can be scary. So that's the koala.
Brian Nelson-Palmer
You know, Chris, and I'm thinking of two different koalas, right? On the one hand, you've got the koala who's like a member of a band who has these goals and then never goes anywhere. That's one sort of koala or that kind of thing where they have goals and then nothing happens. But what I'm also thinking about are the people I jokingly have called it, you've probably heard it as well called Golden Handcuffs, where you have a really good job and you get paid really well and you have a family to support or you have a lifestyle to support. And so in order to take that leap, you could lose the paycheck and you could lose. And so then, and what's funny is those people have probably achieved a lot and they probably have enjoyed some things along the way. So the koala, you know, the way we're talking about a koala almost sounds like a failure. And I think it's important to note that koalas like golden handcuffs doesn't mean you are a failure. It actually means it's a really good thing. So now how do you push yourself? Well, right.
Chris Croft
So they could have been a goat or an eagle in the past, but now they're at a point where the next step is just a dream and they can't, and they're not doing it for some reason.
Brian Nelson-Palmer
And so, and sometimes maybe that's just take, maybe you need to let go of, you know, let's go with the koala metaphor. You're holding onto that tree with your arms and your legs, and maybe you need to hold onto one branch with another limb. Maybe you need to start a little something or put a foot in the, maybe in your off time, you start whatever that other thing is, just so you can experience it. So you don't have to let go of the tree yet, but you're not stuck either. So I'm just thinking about, you know, it's not necessarily just, because you didn't take the leap. Maybe you came so far already that you're afraid of dropping back down.
Chris Croft
Well, the koala metaphor for those golden handcuff ones would be they'd have to come down their existing tree across an upper new tree, and they've got too much to lose. I think that you're absolutely right. I went to a university reunion recently. Now I went to quite a posh, I went to Cambridge University. I don't know how I got in, but anyway I did. And I went back to this reunion, and I was thinking this is gonna be really depressing. All these people are gonna be rich and successful and things.
And I got there, there's a Ferrari in the car park. And I thought, I knew it, you know. And I went into this sort of dinner, everybody had to wear a DJ and all this, you know, dinner jacket, black tie and things. And the guy with the Ferrari, actually, he was a software guy and he was, I remembered him. Cause he still looked exactly the same. And he had like a sort of greasy beard and very sort of scruffy clothes, but he was just a total software genius. And he'd made some software for call centers, and he'd made millions. And that was great, I was pleased for him. But everyone else there, they were all doctors and lawyers and accountants who were sort of like senior partners in consultancies and things. And they were all making quite a lot of money, not millions, but you know, like good pay, but they all had golden handshakes and they were all pretty much all unhappy.
And they all said, well, you know, I've ended up in this quite well-paid job, but it's boring and it's stressful and I don't really like it. And I never have any time at home. I don't even take my holidays. And they'd all become koalas really. But it was really interesting because as you say, they can be well-paid and successful, but they had dreams which were never gonna happen because they didn't have the time and they couldn't also take the risk of leaving their well-paid jobs.
And they all thought I was some crazy sort of bohemian hippie because I was just doing training courses and talks and writing books and having ideas, you know, and I thought I wouldn't swap I wouldn't swap places with them. So yeah, so so the koala is the one with the dreams. I originally called them a frustrated dreamer. And I think it's quite sad to go through life as a frustrated dream. It's almost better not to have a dream. Because at least then you're not beating yourself up because you're not achieving it. And that takes me to my final animal, which is the tortoise.
And the tortoise is the person who doesn't have goals and is also not efficient. And therefore they don't achieve anything and they don't enjoy themselves. And these are the people who, originally I was calling them the dissatisfied plodder. And there are people who plod through life and they're just unhappy and they just go, well, what can you do? Because that's what life's like.
You know, I'll just have to carry on doing this job that I hate. And, you know, but what can you do? And quite possibly they have all sorts of potential. If, if only somebody told them and said, look, you, you can do more than this. I'll show you how, you know, and a life coach could probably blow their mind. But the thing about the tortoise is they don't look up. They can't even see the eagle. They don't look up and realize, oh my God, there's a mountain there. So they're just plodding along through the grass thinking, well,
just have to eat grass again today, you know. And I think it's really sad because there's a whole lot of potential they probably could have. So I think I would start probably with goals, but of course the tortoise is gonna say, well, what's the point? I can never achieve those. So you'd have to start in small steps, you know, with a little bit of goals, a little bit of achievement. And then once they achieve that bit, they can then think, whoa, what's my next goal gonna be? And what do I have to do to get that?
and they'll get more efficient and have more goals and get more efficient, have more goals and they could work their way up. So if you're living your life as a tortoise at the moment, you don't have to, you know, get some goals and be a koala or get a bit more organized and be a greyhound. And once you've got both your goals, you know, then you can do it. And all you have to do is make sure that you don't forget to have fun and become a goat. You know, so you can go up that ladder to be the eagle. You know, you can do it. You absolutely can.
I think the one dead end I wouldn't go down if I was a tortoise is just to take up hedonism, to take up drink or drugs or excessive food or whatever it might be. But, you know, and just to have short-term fun. I mean, you could argue that's better than tortoise, but the trouble is that's a dead end which won't get you anywhere because you don't have goals. So that's the final, the sixth combination is the tortoise. Now, you might be looking at these and thinking, well, hang on a minute, if there's two inputs and two outputs, that gives me 16 possible animals, not just six. But the other 10 animals are impossible. So, you know, you can't achieve without goals. And you can't achieve without efficiency. So although those combinations are just gone, you can enjoy yourself without goals and efficiency because you can be the hedonist, you know, the koala, sorry, the kangaroo. But if you think about all the, and I've put a blog post on my website, chriscroft.com, which explains why you can't have the other 10 animals. There are only six combinations that are possible. So we're all doing one of those six combinations. And like we said, even if you can make it to eagle,
After a while, you may then think, but I've got a bigger goal than that now. And you go back to being a koala, perhaps. And you can absolutely swap between the animals. But the good news about all of this is that it's not that difficult to get some goals sorted. Just takes a bit of imagination, bit of perhaps courage to say, I'm gonna do this. And then it's not that difficult to get organized. I mean, you know, get my time management course from you to me for $10 or whatever or a book on time management, but it's only making some lists, you know, and having a calendar where you make a note, write everything down. Make sure you don't forget anything. Try to overcome procrastination by some sort of technique that works for you, maybe blocking time in your diary or promising things to other people so you have to do them or maybe starting the day with the toughest job first. You know, swallowing the frog, it's sometimes called to bring another animal into this.
Brian Nelson-Palmer
Oh, eat the frog first. Oh, I just talked about this on another episode, which was such a funny moment. Oh yes, absolutely. There's, yeah, learning these tools.
Chris Croft
Yeah. So, you know, time management is a well-known, well-trodden path, isn't it? But it's so important because your life is only time and every day slips by. And when you get, I'm older than you, I'm pretty sure, Brian, but when you get to older than about 55, then at that point, you've only got 800 weekends left. 800 weekends, that's all. 800 weeks and you can do the maths on what age you are and how long you've got. And you might have 2000, but remember that, you know, you don't know, because anything could happen even next week, you know, especially driving is quite dangerous, et cetera. You just don't know. So it's really important to make the most of every day. And time management is really only about how you live your life. But then you've got to add goals on, because which direction are you going to go with that? So I think those are the two inputs really.
Brian Nelson-Palmer
It makes perfect sense in that it's, and we talked about the journey too, where it's like, you know, if you love the goals you achieve and you're enjoying the journey along the way, then that is what you're talking about with the eagle. And what's funny is a lot of the things when you're struggling to achieve some of these things, one of the things people often forget is to keep growing and to keep learning.
Right? You're consistently learning. And so all of the things that you need to go do these bigger goals, to be the Eagle, to try that new thing, to go, to stretch yourself. All of the knowledge that you need is available in online courses and YouTube videos. And it's amazing how whatever it is that you kind of looking to do, the knowledge is out there if you're willing to go get it. And so.
Chris Croft
I've just made a video on YouTube, by the way. I've just remembered. Um, I only put it out last week and it's called time management in under eight minutes and it's already, well, that's good use of time. It's already had 40,000 views in a week. Can you believe? Yeah. It's been really popular. So if you're listening to this, at least just have a look at time management in under eight minutes and
Brian Nelson-Palmer
That's a very appropriate title for a time management.
Very, very clever, Chris. Absolutely. People want time management in a short amount of time. Yes.
Chris Croft
And that's going to be a good start, isn't it, to get you out from, you know, from being a tortoise. By the way, the tortoise is the, is the rarest of, of my animals. And I think, you know, I think a lot of people probably don't admit to being tortoises when they are, because tortoises don't realize that they're tortoises. But, yeah, only 6% of people ended up on my surveys of tortoise. The other one that was rare was the kangaroo actually. Not many people think they're kangaroos. The second commonest after the Greyhound was the goat. And I do think I think there's a lot of goats out there doing careers. So 20, about 25% of people came out as a goat on my survey. And then you add the, the eagle, I thought everyone might go, Oh, I'm an eagle, but only 13% reckoned they were eagles. So I think I've got the questionnaire quite good so that it really does make you be honest. And so only 13% were eagles and 10% were koalas.
So the questionnaire seems to be working pretty well, but you've got to be honest with yourself, haven't you? I mean, don't try to fool the questionnaire because if you are a tortoise, let's say, the first step is to acknowledge it and think, right, I need to get some goals for my life and I need to get some efficiency going, get a bit of speed going, but anyone can do it. That's the great message. So there we are, Brian, that's the animals. I don't know how much time we've taken.
Brian Nelson-Palmer
Yep. Absolutely.
Oh my gosh, all the animals. We took quite some time. And at the same time, it is really helpful when I was just talking with another speaker about this the other day, it's helpful to have a model when you talk about these things, because the relation between these things is great. So Chris, I love the model you have with the animals here, because it's, which ones do you relate to? And you're not gonna be always only one for the rest of your life, always.
I definitely, I've gone through phases, if you got an animal in the quiz and you don't like that, then certainly many people will think, oh, I'll just have to take the quiz again and change my answers. And I don't know that that's necessarily what you were intending. I think it's probably like, well, let's self-reflect. And what are the things that I could do to change it so that the next time I take the quiz, it really is different answers. I didn't just check the box to get the better thing. So that's really helpful.
And I want to share, I wanted to ask you one follow up question on this, Chris, which was what about now, where does this mean for you personally? So you, you came up with these animals, you were talking about it. Is there, is there a personal story or a personal meaning behind where this whole animal thing came from?
Chris Croft
Well, the animal thing is really just me trying to understand life and particularly mine because you have to start with yourself, don't you? And looking at my friends and thinking, do I want to be like them? Because I have got some very successful rich friends who are goats, who have no fun. And then the people in the band who I think I would call friends, but they're also friends from a very different world to me. You know, they regard me as a sort of corporate
And so looking at them and some of them are koalas with big dreams and some of them are tortoises who just plod through life, but mostly they're kangaroos, at least having fun. And so I've been thinking, do I wanna be like them? And what do I wanna be like? And what is life all about? And I'm pretty sure it's enjoy and achieve. And then I sort of was thinking, well, the inputs have got to be goals and efficiency really. So I've...
I thought about writing a book about this. What I've actually done is done six little mini eBooks. So whatever animal you are, you can get the eBook for sort of like $3 or something. So I've made those. The book I'm doing at the moment is actually doesn't talk about animals, but it's called Seven Paths to Happiness. And it's really about the stuff that's behind this. So it's about, is it good idea to be self-employed or trying to go up the management tree
Is it a good idea to just have a job where you do the minimum so you can have plenty of time with your family and plenty of energy with your family? Or what? So, you know, and is it best to have a little niche that you're a real expert in? Or is it best to do what I call multi-harvesting, where you do a bit of quite a few things? So you have a bit more security and a bit more variety. So, I've been writing this book, which is very nearly finished. It'll be out in about a month on
the different paths you could choose through your life and which ones will make you happy. So that's the, I just enjoy thinking about this stuff really. I mean, that's why I'm doing it. And I think not enough other people are thinking about this. You know, there's a lot of people who think about time management and there's some great books on time management. You know, Getting Things Done, for example, by David Allen is fascinating, but that's really only about systems. There's a book by Hiram Smith called the 10 laws of successful time and life management or something like that? Hiram Smith, that's a really good book, I think, because he does talk about goals and efficiency in there. But I don't think there are many people who go up from time management up to the big question of life itself and happiness particularly. So there are lots of books on success, but which I'm calling achieve, but there aren't many books on happiness and success. There are some books on happiness now, happiness is starting to come up as a subject, isn't it? But I think it's gotta be happiness and success, happiness and achievement. And I haven't really seen much that brings it all together into a big picture of life. And so I just think it needs to be thought about. I think it's the most important thing, isn't it? You know, why write a book on say marketing or something, which is great and you have to do it when out there, there's this big thing called the meaning of life. You know, that's what we should be thinking about. So that's what I'm trying to nibble away at, like a little tiny mouse trying to nibble at this cheese mountain.
Brian Nelson-Palmer
So I almost I you want to figure out it's like a book on how to maintain your eagle or the topic is how to maintain your eagle because it's you eventually you the motivation or things life changes things change and even though you might have been soaring for a while. Now you hit this point where maybe there's golden handcuffs and you went from soaring to now you're in that sort of there's a little bit of a koala creeping into your eagle life or like that kind of thing. It's that thing, it's about the journey and how do you maintain this indefinitely going forward? And I think you're really hitting on some really good points with goals and efficiency. I love the, well, so you and I, clearly we could talk about this for hours and we won't put you through this listening to us. Chris and I just nerd out on this topic because my God, we definitely could. But Chris, I want to bring it to a close. And what I want to do is I want to say, here's what I love. I love that you've pondered your mouse self, you've taken your mouse self and you've pondered this into a model that helps people reflect. Because oftentimes many people need to hear this 40 to 50 times in different ways before it might have the effect. Timing is a thing. Maybe you've, all the stuff that Chris and I talked about today are things that you've probably heard in different formats, in different ways, sometime in your life up to now. But if you're in the right frame of mind to hear it and you recognize it because you had heard it before, but now it hits home a little differently. Chris, I love that you've created this model to kind of the six animals are ways to reflect on yourself and where are you going? Where are you now? And it's almost like it's a self-assessment way and I absolutely love it. So thank you for sharing it with me today and with us today, because it's really interesting to reflect on yourself and how do you, where do you wanna be, where are you now, and what would it take to get there? It's just fascinating.
Chris Croft
Absolutely. It's so important, isn't it? It's such a big, important subject, this. I mean, there might be another animal I haven't thought of, but the fact that it's based on these two inputs and two outputs means that there can't be any more combinations. So, I think, yeah, absolutely. If it helps one person, it's worth doing. I want to say thank you for having me because this is the first time I've talked about this properly on a podcast or anywhere really. I've made one short video on YouTube, but it's much better to be chatting to somebody about it and it feels really good to have got it all out there now. So I hope loads of people see this and I hope it helps them and we get a few more Eagles out there and move people up from tortoises at least, you know, so yeah, I really hope it makes a difference. Thank you for asking me to do this.
Brian Nelson-Palmer
Absolutely. And Chris, what's now if people want to keep in touch with you, what are the best places for them to go?
Chris Croft
Well, I would say definitely LinkedIn. If you're on LinkedIn, it's free. I mean, why would you not be on LinkedIn? Um, so follow me on LinkedIn. You can't connect, unfortunately. I've run out of connections. Um, you only get, you only get 30,000 and they don't tell you until you get to 29 and a half thousand. So you can't, it's really hard to sort of, you can't delete people very easily. So, but you can follow, follow me on LinkedIn. Cause I post things almost every day about happiness, time management, meaning of life type stuff. So follow me on LinkedIn.
Um, YouTube is another good place because I put things on YouTube, probably every week I put a new video on YouTube. So I've got about 400 videos on there and obviously it's all free. So why would you not? So LinkedIn and YouTube,
I've got a website, chriscroft.com, which has got, I put things on my blog that I'm a bit nervous about putting out in public on LinkedIn, but my blog is mine. So if you want to see what I really think then have a look at my blog, chriscroft.com. And that's a little bit more eccentric, a little bit more strange, but I hope interesting. And then the final place would be if you want to buy a training course, you can get stuff from udemy.com, U-D-E-M-Y.com. Just put Chris Croft in there and you'll find me. And I've got about 30 courses on Udemy. And they only cost like $15 or something. And there are all kinds of things, time management, project management, happiness, assertiveness, difficult people, loads of stuff on there.
I've got one called Planning Your Career and Your Life, which it covers this kind of thing. And it actually talks about the animals a bit as well. So I'm quite proud of the courses I've made on Udemy. But if you want free stuff, LinkedIn and YouTube will be the place to start, I would say.
Brian Nelson-Palmer
There you go. And I'll include all those links to the things he's talking about. I'll put those, I'll drop those in the episode notes and in the, in the, in the, in the comments on this. So you can do that. So, um, now, and two things now for you tuning in, there's two requests I have. The first one is, do you have a friend or colleague who has been struggling with productivity or these questions about the meaning of life or this kind of thing? If you have one of those, I know Chris and I both would love for you to share this episode specifically with them, because there's a million podcasts out there. And while I certainly I hope thank you for liking and subscribing to this podcast and being a part of Predictivity Gladiator with me, but with Chris, it's definitely helpful for this specific episode to get shared with somebody. If we can help, like Chris said, if we can help one person or two people with this, this this is wonderful.
So thank you very much for tuning in that way. And certainly thanks for subscribing and liking. And I do have an email list that you can subscribe that gives you a little something extra compared to just what's here on the show. So I love sharing this productivity gladiator thing with you. And that's a wrap.