From Overwhelm to Action: Jennifer Takagi’s 12-Minute Method | 011

Consuela Muñoz: In today's episode, we are going to be talking to the fabulous, the amazing Jennifer Takagi, and she is your 12 minute success and high performance coach. Welcome Jennifer.

Hey Consuela, thank you so much. I'm so excited to be on your podcast. Well,

Consuela Muñoz: we're glad to have you here, and I know the leaders listening in are going to be just astounded and amazed by what they're going to learn today. So to start off, I did want to ask you, as far as strengths, what is a key strength that you've used in the past that's really helped influence or define your leadership style?

Well, I love the Gallup strengths, finders. I've done that. It's awesome. But prior to hearing about it, I had done disc behavioral profile, and not only had I been assessed in that, I also became certified in training it, and my highest category is the category of influence. So as a leader, it worked really well for me, because I could basically convince people to get on board with what was happening. And I was at a leadership workshop, and they had done the disc assessments, and in the room of, I don't know, 1416, of us. I was the only one that scored more than 50% in that category. And the instructor said, if you have a new project you're rolling out, you want Jennifer to be the head of the team to get everybody involved. So that served me well, like when I was when it was explained to me what my skill and gift and talent was, it served me well, and it continues to serve me well. That's

Consuela Muñoz: amazing. I love hearing that I know from from the work that I do with strengths, that influencing is often slightly different than this, but the I and the influencing are both kind of similar in people, and influencing is the least populated of all the strengths leadership domains. And so it's not surprising to me to hear that you are the only person that scored high in there, right So, but knowing that is very powerful as well, and I'm glad that you are able to find that and use that to inform what you were going to do and how you were going to go about leading also amazing hearing that you guys were going to look at Who's doing what based on where your strengths lie. That's, I think, is something that's really key. So you are a 12 minute success and a high performance coach, tell us a little bit about what does that mean. What does it mean 12 minutes to success.

So I was at a conference. And Jack Canfield, the creator of Chicken Soup for the Soul series and also a book called The success principles, was at the event. He and his the president of his company, Patty Aubry, and he had an online train, the trainer program that he was selling, and and I like trampled people to get to the back of the room to be one of the how many ever could get it? I didn't really trample anybody, but it sounds better if I say I did. And I bought this train, the trainer program, and through Dr Canfield extensive research, he's determined that there are specific principles that highly successful people follow that the rest of the world doesn't. And like if you follow these, it'll change your life. And the number one principle is, take 100% responsibility for every aspect of your life. So I'm going through the training, I'm looking at that, and I'm thinking, I do that. I'm a highly responsible person. And then it was like, Oh, wait, I was 10 minutes late to this thing. And I was like, Oh, well, there were too many red lights, or there was a train, or I got, you know, there was a dog in the road. I didn't take responsibility for the fact that I could have left earlier, right? I had 40,000 excuses and reasons, so then I started feeling really guilty. Like, wow, I suck, like I should have taken more responsibility and not blamed others. But he gives us a little bit of an out, because he said, if, if 100% is too much, start by taking 5% more. Okay, great. I'll just be your 5% girl. I'll just say 5% more. I don't need to do 100 I'll do 5% but then I agreed to give a talk at an association meeting, and I named my talk. What was it? Step one on your path to success, take 100% responsibility for every aspect of your life. So I'm putting this talk together, and I'm I'm getting to the part where I'm going to explain the 5% more, but I don't know what 5% is, so then I become completely caught up on that.

Consuela Muñoz: So I can imagine how you can get caught up in that, because we'll easily say 5% but what does that look like? It's really hard to picture what 5% is. And so if you don't know what it is, how are you going to get it accomplished? What does it look like?

And how am I going to explain it to a team, you know, to an audience? So thank goodness you know, the universe delivers. You keep asking the same question, and you're finally going to come up with the answer. And my answer became when I worked for corporate or government, I typically was home around five in the afternoon, and between five and six, my husband and I would figure out what we were doing for dinner or doing that evening. And most evenings during the week, I had from six to 10 when I went to bed to do whatever I wanted. So if I had from six to 10 and I wanted to look out for my own health and well being I could do laundry, I could clean the house, I could meal prep, I could exercise. I could go to the water aerobics class I love like I had all kinds of things I could do in the evening, if my husband and I didn't have other plans. So I had from six to 10. That's four hours. That's 240 minutes. 5% of 240 is 12 minutes. So now it becomes a question of, What can I do for 12 minutes to make a difference in my life? I can go through the mail. I hate going through the mail. I end up with stacks of mail because I won't walk to the end of the driveway and get it. It's not even that far. I just don't want to deal with the mail. Then I have a big stack of mail. So what can I do? 12 minutes, I can quickly go through, pull out all the junk and throw it away, and then sort the rest of it by high priority I need to do something, or it's a bill, quickly and easily, and then I'm not stressed about it, because I went through the mail. I can do the dishes. Just last night, I made a hamburger for dinner. I cooked it on the skillet on the stove, and that puppy popped grease everywhere I had my hamburger. I was super happy. And then I got ready to go to bed. I was working on a project. I stayed up later than I should have, and I walked into the kitchen, and I saw the mess, and I thought, I'm just going to leave it. I'll deal with it in the morning. And it was like, No, it's not even going to take me 12 minutes to get these dishes done and clean up this kitchen and clean the cooktop. So I did it, and then I woke up this morning I was super happy because the kitchen was clean. So what are the things you can do to move forward in a business setting, in an office, whether you're offering from home or work, but like, I'm going to call it a corporate setting, my email would get out of hand away as an entrepreneur too, but if I went into the office. I typically had from eight to 12 and then one to 524, hour increments during the day, I could spend the first 12 minutes, for instance, cleaning out my email. I could go through my actual physical inbox and organize it a little bit if I had an upcoming staff meeting. I have a whole podcast on this, on get prepared for your meeting. Like what to do to get prepared for your meeting? Come up with an agenda. Be prepared. Know who you want to be there. Know where you're going to have it. Do you need any other things than just showing up, right? Do you need a projector? Do you need a TV? Do you need a screen? Do you need a flash drive? Do you need to take your laptop? Those are the kind of things that end up biting you in the tail end. When you plan a meeting, but you don't go over the details. So what if you spent 12 minutes putting the agenda together. What if you spent 12 minutes putting how you wanted to run and what other things you needed? What if you were trying to organize your reviews of employees? Well, you could spend 12 minutes per employee jotting down notes about them. Highly targeted, focused 12 minutes is going to get you really far. And there was someone, actually, I believe, Consuela and I have a mutual friend, who was not much of an avid reader, but she felt like she needed to read some business books and it would help her, but she didn't like to read, and she. Heard me talk about the 12 minute increments. So she started reading 12 minutes a day, and felt very accomplished that she was reading 12 minutes a day. And I thought, 12 minutes a day, what does that add up to? Over a year? 12 minutes a day over a year is 73 hours. Wow. So then I had to go look at the book War and Peace, because that's a huge book by I think it's toll story, three inch thick, you know, hardback book. I looked it up. It is 68 hours of listening on Audible. So if you listen to it 12 minutes a day, you would finish it before a year was out. If you're reading 12 minutes a day, you're going to end up with putting in 73 hours. And my question for you, when was the last time you put 73 hours of effort into any one project

Consuela Muñoz: like focused in that way over the time, yeah,

or anytime, like, you say you're going to clean the garage, and then you don't clean the garage, why don't you clean the garage? Because you're overwhelmed, because there's so much crap in the garage. But if you said I'm going to spend 12 minutes and I'm going to go throw away everything in this corner that we no longer need, and that's all you did. And the next day you went back to the next corner, and a little further, a little further. I looked it up, and I have it here. Did you know, according to a New York post survey, by January 7, 25% of Americans had given up on their New Year's resolution.

Consuela Muñoz: I'm not surprised, and also, I don't set mine until after the seventh. I think some part of me must have known that, and I'm like, I don't want to fail right away, so I'm going to give myself a little grace. I'm not going to start till after, right, which is comical. And also, the point is that that's a hard thing for people to we have this tradition of setting goals at the beginning of the year or setting them ahead before we get to the year, and yet that causes a lot of stress and anxiety when we don't do them. You're offering a solution, whether it's in your personal life or at work, to get a handle on things that you typically don't do. But the other thing I love about that is thinking about time in a different way. In your example, about the hamburger, you could have left it because you had so much else going on. You were like deep into your work. You were really on a project, and you're focused and you're creating, and that was kind of an an inconvenience and a thing that you didn't want to have to face. But then you pulled in and said, No, I can do this in less than 12 minutes. So it's kind of a way of thinking, What? What can I get done in 12 minutes versus I don't have time for this. What can I get done in 12 minutes? And I think if we look at that and bring that into all different aspects, different projects that we're doing, whatever you're doing in work, whether it's getting ready for a meeting or dealing with the pesky email, like, let me give it 12 minutes now I have an a kitchen timer that I help myself focused. Is that something you would recommend, like, a way to keep track of yourself in that 12 minutes. Like, do you excuse yourself after 12 minutes? Or do you keep going? Like, what do you do when that 12 minutes is up?

Yeah, I love that. So we have a mutual friend, Frank King, and Frank got his egg timer, and he said it for 12 minutes. And he had several different areas of his life that he would focus on throughout the day. So he decided he was going to do a little experiment and do 12 minutes of this, and when the timer rang, he was going to put that down and pick up the next thing for 12 minutes. And I know there are professionals out there who say, Oh no, it takes your brain too long to get back on task. That's not a good idea. I'm not disputing that. I am not disputing that. I'm saying I can't sit down and focus on one thing for 50 minutes and commit to that consistently, but I can commit to 12 minutes. So use an egg timer, use a kitchen timer. Use the timer on your phone. If you're going to the gym and you want to work out, all the machines have, you know the count the timer on it, so if you're really into it, and you do your 12 minutes, and you're done, and you think I could go further, go further. I had somebody say that they got on the elliptical after they got to the gym. They didn't want to go, but once they were there, they were like, I'm going to do the elliptical for 12 minutes and I'm going home. I'm like, out of here. Got on the elliptical. They did 12 minutes and thought I can go a little further. They looked up, they were already at 20 minutes, and thought, I can do four more and have. Have two rounds of 12 minutes. They ended up staying on the elliptical for an hour,

Consuela Muñoz: but it's that like, oh, I don't have time, but let me give it 12 minutes, and then once you're in there, it's easier. But that that getting over that moment, you know, getting that momentum going, getting the inertia there to get started, can sometimes but sometimes also 12 minutes is good, because if you spend too much time, then the next time you want to spend 12 minutes, you could be like, Oh, it might. It might not be a real 12 minutes. So depending on your situation, I think you would decide either way. But this has been really good, and I just, I just wanted to ask you one last question here and that as a leader, what is one of the most important strengths that you've leveraged to be able to achieve something that people thought was impossible?

It was that influence. I was put on a task force at Washington, DC, and I was put in charge of it, and what they didn't know is there was only one person in the country who knew how to do all aspects of it, and they had pulled her out and dropped me in, and at the end of the project, which was successful, one of the leaders pulled me aside and said, of all the people in the Country, you probably were the best fit, because I was able to cheerlead and work with and build, you know, a team to get the work done, because I did not need to know how to do the work. I just needed to be able to tell them what to do. And then I left, and the work went on, and I left there almost 10 years ago, and it's still happening. You know, what I created then is still an ongoing concern, which is great, but it was that power of influence and convincing them, this is important, and this is your role, and your role means a lot. Sometimes, as leaders, we forget to tell our employees why all the different tasks are important and how it plays into the bigger picture. And I think that power of influence that I have was very critical in me being able to pull that team together. They didn't know me, I didn't know them. I was dumped in for 16 weeks, and I finished the project after 14 because I was ready to come home well, and

Consuela Muñoz: I love that, and really it's the power of influence. But in in more than that, it's that you used your strengths to get this excellent result. If you weren't aware that you had that power of influence, you might not have leaned into it as much, and might have had some moments of panic or whatever, like what I'm doing, what for who, and because you knew your strengths and you leaned into it, I think that's part and why you were able to achieve what they didn't think would be able to be done. So thank you so much for being here today. Jennifer, any final words before we leave today?

Yes, I have a free gift for your audience. It's 12, one, 212, minute gift.com and it's an audio series of the 12 minutes to success, 12 minutes to win, that will give you even more insights to my methodology.

Consuela Muñoz: Thank you so much. Bye.