Ep. 45 – Season 8 Intro to The Cadence Effect

Mich Bondesio:

Hi, and welcome to Creating Cadence, a podcast for life and work in motion. I’m your host, Mich Bondesio, a writer, coach, consultant and solo entrepreneur.

It’s my aim to help high achievers stuck on the treadmill of hustle culture and the hamster wheel of overwork to transform how they approach life, work and business. To activate more of their potential and perform better in every part of their life. At a cadence that’s more suitable to them. Despite this fast-paced world we live in.

This is episode 45, the first and long-awaited episode of season eight of the podcast published in September, 2023.

Hello, lovely people. It feels so good to be back. If you’ve missed why I’ve been gone, check out episode 44, which explains it all.

So, it’s August as I record this, and while elsewhere, several parts of the world have been on fire, all I can say is that we’ve had a pretty crappy, cold and rainy summer in the Northwest of England.

Climate change is the largest existential threat of modern times. And it’s super important that we’re able to adapt our thinking, being, and doing to survive and thrive in these dramatic times.

But all is not lost. Let’s not get trapped by our eco anxiety. If we stay open and curious. If we’re willing to take action. Even though it may put us well outside of our comfort zones. And if we’re able to remain hopeful of changing the outcome. Then there’s always another way.

Funnily enough, that phrase, “There is always another way” is also a guiding motto I live by, and which I talk about in my new book, The Cadence Effect.

In the same way that we can find a way through these big challenges in the world. So too, can we make small changes that can have profound and far reaching effects on not just our wellbeing, creativity, and productivity, but also in how we engage with the world. Our internal world and the world around us.

Everything is connected. We’re part of something bigger than ourselves and even tiny actions ripple outwards. This interconnectedness has a rhythm to it. And it’s an example of the cadence effect in action.

So diving into season eight, what’s it all about?

Well, for the foreseeable future, the Creating Cadence Podcast is going to be firmly rooted in themes related to my new book, The Cadence Effect.

This season I’m interviewing some lovely people about what cadence means to them. And how they apply the concept in their life and their work.

But before we get there. I want to start by setting the context. In this episode, I’m explaining a little bit about why I wrote the book. I’ll also read a short excerpt from it.

The Cadence Effect is for people like you and me who are striving for better business outcomes and seeking to integrate more meaning into your life and work.

Although the primary focus is on work-related activities and skills that support working better. You’ll find that what we cover will aid you in other parts of your life, too.

This book is about considering the bigger picture. And then taking smaller, manageable steps to achieve that broader outcome. It’s my hope that it will inspire you to develop your skills and activate more of your potential. So that you can become even better at what you do and how you do it. In a way that’s more meaningful for you.

I wrote this book for three reasons.

First, to help you build supportive skills before you might need them.

Second, to help you navigate what might otherwise be a hard path, if you’re already experiencing challenges.

And three. To also spread the word that there is another way for us to be living and working. One which supports our wellbeing and productivity far better than our ingrained traditional norms and current working cultures dictate.

So here’s what to expect from the book.

Most of us spend a vast amount of time using digital tools as part of our workday. The exercises in this book assist you in identifying exactly how your current use is helping or hindering your wellbeing and performance, and then enabling you to make positive change.

I look at how you can develop better digital habits and behaviours. And what you can do to build stronger work foundations and a healthier culture around work.

This includes reviewing the current context of our modern working environments with digital tools and emerging technologies. And the impact they all have on our ability to do good work.

At some points, things get a little scientific too, to help you understand the physiological roles that things like habits, procrastination, stress, and burnout, all play in affecting our performance.

There are other factors at play too, which may surprise you, including wait for it. The moon. We look at cycles of productivity and how we can build practical skills and routines that help us become healthier, more creative and more productive.

Our mindset also has a major influence on our wellbeing, focus, abilities, behaviours, performance, and perception of the world. So in the book, I dig into the different mindsets that we can cultivate to support us better too.

To round things off, I share some handy tips, tricks, and hacks. These include simple ways that you can prepare yourself for digital work and intentional productivity. And practical actions that you can take to improve your working environment, work, style, and workflow.

There are also reflection exercises throughout the book. To help you examine your current situation. And explore ways to improve it. These could also be used as prompts for book club sessions.

As a bonus, I also offer free access to a Cadence Canvas Cheat Sheet, to help you set up better routines.

You can get your own copy of the Cadence Canvas Cheat Sheet, when you sign up for my Cadence newsletter at creatingcadence.co/subscribe.

So I’ve spoken about the concept of cadence before in earlier episodes of the podcast. If you’re new here, you can check out the podcast discovery packs at creatingcadence.co. These discovery packs are compilation playlists of episodes that cover a specific theme or topic.

In this episode, I’m revisiting three aspects of creating cadence, that if leveraged and applied in our lives, help us to experience and reap the benefits of what I call the cadence effect. They are space, place and momentum.

So here are a few more excerpts, this time from chapter two of my book, The Cadence Effect, to help explain these three aspects in more detail.

Cadence equates to the concepts of rhythm and pace, movement and flow. It’s linked to mathematical, musical, and artistic pursuits, but is also increasingly common in arenas like sports and marketing.

For me, cadence connects with this idea of our life and work being constantly in motion. If we can create cadence. Then we don’t get stuck on attempting to create a perfect, but static moment of balance. One that is unsustainable over the long term.

Creating work-life cadence facilitates forward motion.

It enables us to build momentum in all parts of our life. Even when one part is demanding more than the rest.

There will be times when we need to move more or less, or at a faster or slower pace.

Cadence is about keeping the rhythm of our actions fluid. So we can easily adjust to the ups and downs of our environment without needing to stop.

Creating cadence is about creating space, creating place and creating momentum. When we experience these things in our life and work. Then we benefit from the cadence effect.

Creating Space

The practice of minimalism involves becoming more purposeful about the stuff, including digital tools, that you choose to use and have around you. We’ve become more aware of the benefits of minimalism as psychologists, neuroscientists, and advocates have shone spotlights on how clutter of any kind affects our health and wellness.

Due to the ever increasing need to be online. There is a danger that the way we use our digital tools can become more of a hindrance than a help. And it takes practice to create a space away from the blue lights and the deluge of information constantly coming at us.

The problem is this. Our brains get hijacked by social tools and apps. As companies have purposefully designed them to trick our dopamine response. This raises our cortisol levels and plays havoc with our hormones. I talk about this more in the Challenges chapter.

This bombardment and manipulation means that our focus and attention are all over the place. When we’re in this state, we compromise our performance and our health. It’s no wonder our productivity levels suck.

When we’re perpetually distracted, we can’t do the deep, meaningful, creative, clever, and innovative work that generates our attention capital, and helps move us and our businesses forward. So to create cadence and benefit from the cadence effect, the first area of focus is to create space away from the distractions. Then we have the room to consider how our sense of place affects creating cadence.

Creating Place

As the future of how we work evolves, we need to upgrade our understanding of how we can use technology and design to support our wellbeing and our homes, workplaces, and communities.

Our workspaces extend beyond the physical office. Our office hours extend across time zones. In light of what we’ve experienced with the pandemic and how it has shifted our ways of working, as well as heaps of research pointing this way, it is in our business and economic interest to focus on wellbeing first and productivity second.

When we consider the idea of placemaking in relation to wellbeing and productivity, how can our organisations, both big and small, be more human-centred workplaces, which cater to a diverse range of needs and requirements.

If we can support our individual well-being that enables both businesses and communities to flourish, despite the adversity of whatever our current situation is.

Aside from new opportunities to make alternative places in the virtual world, placemaking also needs to take different forms to enable connection in the physical world.

So creating place is the second important focus point for creating cadence.

This brings us to how motion, movement, and momentum play a role in activating the cadence effect.

Creating Momentum

There’s a difference between creating movement by taking action versus succumbing to an indoctrinated culture of perpetual hustle and grind.

I explore the concept of the hustle culture in more depth in the challenges section of this book. But in brief. It promotes autopilot behaviors because it focuses on time scarcity. So much to do. And so little time to do it. Yet we put more time into doing more.

Having crashed and burned due to overwork. I now rail against the hustle culture. And I devote a sizeable chunk of attention to the notion of overwork in the next section.

My experience of burnout helped me to find a much healthier, better way of working. I discovered that there are ways to disrupt and innovate without killing yourself. It starts with being more intentional.

Living and working with intention requires us to pay more attention to the things we’ve become accustomed to doing on autopilot. It means changing our approach, our way of thinking. Our behaviours and our actions.

Making change of any kind is challenging, especially when we try to do it in big steps. And being intentional is no different. But based on my experience, I’m happy to say that there is always another way to make this more doable.

The way to develop and sustain the habit of being more intentional is through small, simple, incremental steps and repeated practice.

Small steps, help us build momentum. By moving forward at a slow and steady pace. A pace that works for us.

We create meaning through movement. This movement doesn’t have to be at breakneck speed. It may sound counterintuitive, but we actually achieve a lot more, when we slow things down.

Maintaining perpetual motion is about building momentum. One step at a time.

So that’s a bit from chapter two of The Cadence Effect to give you a taster of what to expect. But there’s so much more to explore in the book too.

To end off this episode. I want to bring this back to my mention of the climate crises at the beginning of this episode. You know that how we do one thing is how we do everything. And we can decide how we show up. And in making those decisions, we can either have a positive, neutral, or negative impact on the world and people around us.

So I encourage you to give some thought to how you want to move forward and how you want to show up.

How can you create space, place and momentum in your life, in a way that can ripple out into the world around you in a positive way. Because that’s also the cadence effect in action.

In the next episode, I’ll be introducing you to the first of my guests for Season 8. And, A few things before you go…

You can find out more about the book at TheCadenceEffect.com.

If you’ve already purchased it and found it helpful, please leave a review so that others can find it too.

So, thanks again for listening. Until next time, keep moving forwards with courage, curiosity, and cadence.