374. The 15 Minute Method with Sam Bennett

 

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Sam Bennett: 

We do not have an unlimited amount of time in which to make our contributions to the world, in which to do the things that we love to do, and we don't know how long it is. So if there is something that is on your heart to do, this is it. Start now. Start today.

 

Dr. Richard Shuster: 

Hello and welcome to The Daily Helping with Dr. Richard Shuster, food for the brain, knowledge from the experts, tools to win at life. I'm your host, Dr. Richard. Whoever you are, wherever you're from, and whatever you do, this is the show that is going to help you become the best version of yourself. 

 

Each episode, you will hear from some of the most amazing, talented, and successful people on the planet who followed their passions and strived to help others. Join our movement to get a million people each day to commit acts of kindness for others. Together, we're going to make the world a better place. Are you ready? Because it's time for your Daily Helping.

 

Thanks for tuning into this episode of The Daily Helping Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Richard. And our guest today is awesome. Her name is Sam Bennett. And she is the author of Get It Done, Start Right Where You Are, and most recently, the 15 Minute Method, The Surprisingly Simple Art of Getting It Done.

 

She's a writer, a speaker, an actor, and a creativity productivity specialist. She's the founder of therealsambennett.com, a company committed to helping overwhelmed creatives and frustrated overachievers get unstuck. She is also a popular course instructor on LinkedIn learning with over a million class participants worldwide. Holy moly. Sam Bennett, the real Sam Bennett, welcome to The Daily Helping. It is awesome to have you with us today. 

 

Sam Bennett: 

Thank you so much for having me. I'm delighted to be here. Hello, everybody. Hi. 

 

Dr. Richard Shuster: Hello. Well, you have this. We've set the bar pretty high, right? So you've done some lofty things and I'm excited to hear about your journey. And actually, let's start there. Let's jump back in the Sam Bennett time machine. Let's kind of dig into your superhero origin story. What is the path or the seminal moment if there was one that puts you on the journey that you're on today helping so many people worldwide? 

 

Sam Bennett: 

The seminal moment, my goodness. I mean, so the -- just so everybody knows, the point of the book is that you can change your life in 15 minutes a day. So that's what we're talking about. So if you're interested in that, stick around. The seminal moment, it was really more of a series of moments. I mean, it was really inadvertent. This was not my plan, particularly. 

 

But I started out as an actor. I was a kid who did plays in the living room. I went to theater camp. I went to school for theater. I grew up in Chicago, which was a fantastic place to see and study theater. I ended up at Second City for a long time which was great. So I'm friends with a lot of great comedy minds. 

 

And I went out to LA and I had an acting career in LA that went well enough that you didn't want to give up on it, but not so well as to be able to support a person. And along the way, I just got really interested in this question of how to highly creative people make decisions. When you could do anything, how do you know what to do? When you could do anything to promote what you do, what do you do? You could have a podcast. You could fly one of those planes with a banner. You could stand on the street corner with a sandwich board. Like, how do you know what to do? 

 

And as it happens, I have a little quirk of the mind that when faced with a question like that, I immediately go like, well, how would I figure that out? And so I started to make worksheets and exercises and imagination games. And I started teaching a class in a church basement in Van Nuys, California called Get It Done. And eventually, that turned into a book and then three books, and here we are. 

 

Dr. Richard Shuster: 

I love when people condense a large swath of time, 90 seconds. But what I'm so fascinated and curious about, and I know this is your other book, really, but I've never thought about well, if you literally could do anything, how do you choose? And so the other piece of that, that I also found interesting is not just if you could do anything, but if you're a really creative person, how do you choose? So I'm excited to hear what you discovered because those are things that I think most people don't really think about. 

 

Sam Bennett: 

Yeah. I mean, especially when we're talking about things where there's no right way, right? There's no right way to have a successful acting career. There's no right way to be an author. There's no right way to have a podcast. There's no right way to be an entrepreneur. There's no right way to be a parent or a friend, right? There's just your way. 

 

So what I found is a couple of things really help. One is getting out of the prison of your own thinking, right, because we'll think things to bits and the highly creative people, especially will overcomplicate a paper bag. So getting into action, right, this is where the 15 minute thing comes in. Like, stop thinking about it and just do it, do something. Because when you do things, things happen, right? Thinking about things, very little happens. 

 

But if you do things, things happen, and you get more information. Like, you're like, oh, I did that, and it turns out I don't like it. Great. Now we know. We're not going to do that anymore. What's next? But also doing things in the way that makes sense to you and that suits yourself. So it's a little -- so it's some self-inquiry who am I, what kind of person am I, and what kind of person do I want to be? And then what are the daily activities that can help me grow my life in the way that I would like to see my life grow? 

 

Dr. Richard Shuster: 

And it's interesting because you found a formulaic way to do something to where there's no right, right or wrong way to do it. So I love that you've done this. So I want to talk about the book, but I have to ask, I would be remiss if I didn't ask you a little bit about your acting career, anything that we could pop on Netflix or we'd see you that we might recognize?

 

Sam Bennett: 

Sure. I was -- I mean, everything -- I did an episode of the Drew Carey Show. That was a lot of fun. It was my first gig in Hollywood was the Drew Carey show. 

 

Dr. Richard Shuster: 

Oh, that's so cool. 

 

Sam Bennett: 

It was great. They were lovely. I actually worked a little bit with Drew again later, and I can't say enough nice things about him, he's wonderful. I was on -- the last thing I did was an episode of Modern Family, which was, again, a wonderful experience. I play a waitress with Ty Burrell and Rob Riggle. It's one of the best 37 seconds of television you'll ever see. But yeah, it was on Days of Our Lives. I was -- I did a lot of TV. 

 

I also did a lot of work with a company called LA Theaterworks and we did full cast productions of radio plays. So I got to work with a lot of celebrities doing audio work, which was really, really fun. 

 

Dr. Richard Shuster: 

Was there a moment because Modern Family, it was pretty recent, right? That wasn't all that long ago, that show.

 

Sam Bennett: 

Might have been 10 years ago though.

 

Dr. Richard Shuster: 

Okay. I guess that shows older than I think about it, maybe because the reruns are on all the time. But at what point when you were starting to build your Get it Done, call it a portfolio and that had momentum? When did you decide to kind of make the switch? 

 

Sam Bennett: 

I don't know that I ever thought of it as a switch, because I still think of myself as an actor. I still love to , and I'll do it any chance I get. And I think when you're -- I think actors are born, not made. So I don't -- it's not a part of me that I ever feel is very far away from me. And certainly, all the skills of acting are used all the time. I mean, anybody who says that teaching isn't acting is lying and doing podcast interviews, like, watch me tell the same story again, as though for the very first time. Oh, I'll make you cry. Oh, I will make you. 

 

So there was actually a moment. It was -- I was getting -- when I would get an audition and think more like ugh than yay, when it felt more like a drag to drive all the way across town, sit in the waiting room with eight other women who looked like me to go up for a job. And I'm just -- I'm a big fan of following the sparkly breadcrumbs. I like sort of go where the energy is, go where the path is leading you. 

 

So yeah, it's just -- this sounds so woo, but sort of energetically, it just started to feel less and less aligned. And it didn't feel risky to me. I mean, Hollywood's not going anywhere. My talent wasn't going anywhere. And I think someday I'll probably get back to it. 

 

Dr. Richard Shuster: 

That strongly resonates with me. And when I started my show years ago, I was still a practicing clinician. But the more I put on my headphones and did this, the less that was exciting and the more it felt like trudging through mud. So I absolutely get the sparkly breadcrumb analogy. So let's jump to the now your newest book, The 15 Minute Method is now out. It's available everywhere. Talk to us about the impetus for writing that book. Why this book and why now? 

 

Sam Bennett: 

I don't know about you, but I hear the word overwhelm all the time and more and more. Right. I feel like I didn't use to hear it as much. And now I hear it all the time. I'm so overwhelmed, I'm so busy, I'm so overwhelmed and busy. And it's a little deceptive, right, because overwhelm sounds like an outside problem. It sounds like I'm overwhelmed because of all these things that are happening in my life or because the way my life is structured, but it's not. 

 

And we can tell because when we look at people who are in chronically overwhelming situations, people who work in the ER, people who are first responders. I was doing an interview on television a week or two ago, and the broadcaster said, oh, right, like when we're covering a breaking story, or when something really tragic has happened, and there's all this chaos and unknown, but she's not overwhelmed. She's a journalist doing her job. The person at the ER is not overwhelmed, they're a person doing their job. 

 

So it's not the circumstances that overwhelm us. It's the inside of our head that overwhelms us, which is good news because that makes it a fixable problem, right? We can't do very much about the outside world, but we can do a lot about what's inside of our own mind. So, to -- and I wanted to take away the excuse of busy from people too. I get worried when people are not spending at least a little bit of time every day doing something that matters to them. Oh, by the way, that, da, da, da, da, everybody grab a pen. You ready? Here's The 15 Minute Method. Brace yourselves. Spend 15 minutes a day, every single day, on something that matters to you. Ta da! That's it.

 

Dr. Richard Shuster: 

This was a great episode. Podcast over. No, but it -- this -- I'll tell you why I love this, that there is a clinical correlation to this. In psychology, we talk about an internal versus an external locus of control. And Sam, there's a lot of research, and this research is very old. It's been done in every country. It's across genders, across ethnicities. Those people that feel they have agency in their life are healthier and happier. Mic drop. That's it. 

 

Sam Bennett: 

That's right. 

 

Dr. Richard Shuster: 

If you believe things are happening to you versus that you can control, like we can't control the weather, we can't control which countries are going to get mad at each other and throw rocks at each other. We can't control the stock market. But we can control our attitude. We can control how we choose to treat other people. We can control how we react to things. 

 

And so I love this. So let's keep going. So this is -- you wrote it and I'm glad that you did. Now, take us kind of through it. And I know you said take out the pen, but there's more because I have the book. I know there's more. So take us through, give us kind of a 15 minute method one on one. Let's go through some of the high points of the book. 

 

Sam Bennett: 

Yeah. I mean, the main thing is getting out of the thinking that there's going to be some perfect moment for you to do the thing that you want to do. Right. I hear this all the time. Like, well, after the summer when it's not so busy. Well, when the kids leave for, well after -- and there is no other time than now. There is no other time than now. 

 

Stop delaying your joy. Stop delaying the things that matter to you. What matters to you start today. And baby steps. I mean, people ask me all the time, like, oh, Sam, can you really change your life in 15 minutes a day? I'm like, you already are. You already are living your life in 15-minute increments. And the decisions you make in these 15-minute increments are affecting your future. 

 

If you want to be healthier, well, you don't -- you can't just do that. You have to make the decisions in every 15-minute period of like, well, what would a healthy person do? What are the choices that I can make right now that are going to make me healthier now and down the line? I want to be more creatively fulfilled. I want to write a book. I want to have better relationships. I want to feel more peaceful. Great. Start right now. Right. Do the thing. 

 

And I think sometimes, especially again, highly creative people who, as they say, will overcomplicate anything given the opportunity, I'm like, well, but Sam, it's too big, I can't do my project in 15 minutes. It's too much. I can't do it. I'm like, I think you kind of can actually. I mean, if you write -- if you want to write a book, if you sit down and write every day for 15 minutes, you can get out, depending on how much you self-edit, 250 words in 15 minutes. Well, in 200 days, that's 50,000 words. That's a book. So where were you 200 days ago? Would you like to have a book now or at least some draft of a book because you can. 

 

I also think there's some real magic to touching a project every day, right? So even if your project is I want to go live in Turkey for three months, which I hear great things about Turkey, why not? You can be prepping and managing and moving forward on that project in 15-minute increments until you actually get up and go, right? 

 

So the other story I've been making up is like, sometimes people are like, well, but my, again, my project's too big, I need to clean out the entire garage, I need two free weekends to clean up the entire garage. Well, first of all, show me those two weekends. What two weekends is that that you have completely free? Because it's not -- I don't think you have them. And if you did have them, I don't think you would spend them cleaning out the garage. 

 

Dr. Richard Shuster: Right.

 

Sam Bennett:

Right? So, let's start now. Let's go in there right now. Let's take a little mug of something and walk into the garage and just spend 15 minutes contemplating, just be with the garage, absorb the message of the garage, notice what you notice about the garage. And it may be that at minute 12, you go, hold on, those seven boxes are my brothers. And you spend the last three minutes going, Jeffrey, come get your things. And now we clearly don't have the garage, and we didn't even have to do anything. 

 

And maybe the next day we go in there, again, mug of something. Oh, there's a Rubbermaid tub. Oh, that's filled with holiday things. Great. Well, let's label it holiday and put it in the back, because we only need that once a year. Right? 

 

And maybe the next day we take that broken bicycle and put it out on the street corner with a sign that says free broken bike, right? It's amazing how much you can get done in 15 minutes. And it's amazing how much you can get done in 15 minutes every day, for a week, or a month, or a year, or six years, or 60 years. 

 

Dr. Richard Shuster: 

I like this. There's a compounding -- it's reminded me actually the compound effect by Darren Hardick, right? It's small, incremental shifts.

And one of the things that I also enjoy that you just described about being one with the garage and feeling the garage, what you did there behind the humor was you actually carved out time to let's take a look at what this whole project is, right? Stephen Covey talks about beginning with the end in mind.

 

Sam Bennett: 

Okay. 

 

Dr. Richard Shuster: 

So, if we know what the goal is, and we take inventory of what we're doing, then it does become easier to break it down, to categorize it. It's okay. And you could actually, you could map out what a plan would be 15 minutes a day over a course of X number of weeks very easily. 

 

Sam Bennett: 

Right. And again, pardon me, what you learn by doing, by actually getting in it. We don't know if it's a good idea to get on the dance floor while we're standing against the wall of the gym, right? You only know if it's a good idea when you're actually on the dance floor. And yes, you risk making a fool of yourself. You probably will make a fool of yourself on the dance floor but you might also find out that you love dancing or that you love dancing with this person, or you love dancing to this music. 

 

You may get into the garage and go I have no interest in this whatsoever. I'm going to spend my 15 minutes calling out the We'll Clean Out Your Garage for You people. I don't want to pay somebody to do this because I'm tired of torturing myself about it and it turns out I have no actual desire or interest in this. Great. Good to know. 

 

I once spent several months trying to write a screenplay and finally went, I don't think I like writing screenplays. I think I like writing books. I like writing poetry. I like writing books. Not interested in screenplay. I was so glad I spent that time to find out that that was not my medium, right, and be able to go, great, I'm going to put that project aside and I don't have to feel bad about it or think about it again. Lesson learned, right? So it's not just the project. It's also who you become as you do the thing. 

 

Dr. Richard Shuster: 

And there's a bit of, I suspect, self-nurturing, self-hand holding, especially in the beginning part of this, when you are having those feelings of overwhelm, whatever the project may be. So, what advice can the book give somebody who's kind of in that state, right? Like, they've had their cup of coffee, they tried to be one with the garage, they looked around, the boxes are pounced at the ceiling, and they're still freaking out. 

 

Sam Bennett: 

Yeah. 

 

Dr. Richard Shuster: 

What do we do then, Sam? 

 

Sam Bennett: 

Yeah. The beautiful thing about the 15-minute thing is that it's only 15 minutes. So it hopscotch is right over your perfectionism, right? You're not going to do the whole project today, right? It doesn't have to be perfect today and you're going to do it again tomorrow and the next day and the next day and the next day. 

 

So this feeling of just like just get a -- this doesn't have to be perfect. Let's just get a C. Let's just investigate. Let's just play around. And sometimes I hear from people like well, I don't know what I would do. I don't know what I would do. It's great. Make a list of a bunch of things that you think you could do, and then every day pick one and try it, or pick one and try it for the week, or I don't know, whatever you want.

 

But again, every health practitioner in the world will tell you that 15 minutes of movement of any kind is great for you. Every linguist in the world will tell you, you can learn a language in 15 minutes a day. Every writer will tell you you can write whatever you want in 15 minutes a day. These things are manageable. 

 

You want to clutter clear. You can do this much of your closet. Move the paper stack from this side to this side. Eventually, you will see a difference. And that sense of progress, right, Tony Hsieh wrote about one of the elements of happiness is progress or perceived progress, right? It's one of the reasons why those lines at Disneyland are the way they are. It's because you feel like you're getting closer. So if you can trick yourself into feeling like you're getting closer to the life you want or the person you want to be, that's going to have a really positive effect on you. 

 

And here's the other thing that I think is really important is we spend all day, every day, doing all kinds of things for everybody else. And the things that really matter to us often don't even make it onto the list, right? The projects that really matter to you stay in a drawer. And it may feel like, oh, it's selfish. It would be selfish of me to take time for these other things. And I kind of want to call bullshit, because what's actually selfish is you running around exhausted and stressed out and with no sense of humor, and the rest of us have to deal with you like that.

That is selfish. That is an imposition, right? 

 

You taking 15 minutes for something that matters to you, well, you know how it is. You get that little sort of inner smugness. It's like when you work out in the morning or you have sex in the morning, you sort of spend all day being like, that's right. I'm awesome. How are you? Hair toss, hair toss, right? It gives you a light in your eyes. You're less reactive. You're a better listener. We love that version of you. Please show up as that person. 

 

Dr. Richard Shuster: 

Well, I love that you're saying this because self-care really became a buzzword when COVID hit. Everybody was self-care, self-care, right, but it's critical. And there are things if you're a parent, you need to find things that you like to do that you can't do in front of your kids, right? Whatever that is, because you don't feel like you're missing out on that when it's time to hang out with the family, right, because you've scratched that itch. 

 

I think another thing I was thinking about as you were talking about this, because you're right, we put the stuff for us in a drawer and the reason we don't touch it is because we attribute how busy we are with our life responsibilities. And I was thinking, as you were talking, the importance of putting this on your schedule, whether it's in the middle of your day, whether it starts your day. If you block time intentionally for the 15 minutes or anything that's a personal pursuit, then you don't have an excuse because it's on the books. 

 

Sam Bennett: 

I actually sell a thing on my website. It's called the Daily Practicum. It's a subscription. People buy it. And every weekday at 12 noon Eastern, we get on the Zoom, wave hello, set the timer for 15 minutes. Fifteen minutes later, the timer goes off, wave goodbye. And I'm greeted with, first of all, this gallery of faces, glowing, happy faces. 

 

And every face, it's amazing. People are amazed every single day. And I'm like, oh my gosh, Sam, I did it. I made that phone call. I've been putting off that phone call for six weeks and I did it. I wrote that note to my friend who just lost her husband, and I didn't know what to say, but I just said -- I just did it. I took out a pen and I wrote that note to her. Yeah, I clutter cleared this drawer. I did this. I did that. I did this doodle. I did this needlepoint, whatever. I sat in the garden for 15 minutes with the sun in my face, right? 

 

And I can see people constantly underestimate how much they can get done in 15 minutes and the profound impact that that 15 minutes can have. And something -- and part of what we're -- I mean, the parallel play part of it, the body doubling, especially for the neuro spicy among us, the ADD, ADHD, all the things, knowing that you have an appointment to go into that Zoom room, be there with other people, there's a little bit of mommies watching, I have me and other student teachers who lead it, being in community, super helpful and supportive. 

 

And there's some people who come every day. There are some people who come occasionally and there's some people who never come in person, but the fact that they've subscribed to it, that they've invested money in it, and then it shows up on their calendar every day makes them do it. 

 

Dr. Richard Shuster: 

Makes sense to me. Makes perfect sense to me. 

 

Sam Bennett: 

I have a fantasy I'd like to share with you. My fantasy has to do with corporate America. Because I'm -- again, I've spent most of my life as a performer, which meant that I had every job there was. I delivered flowers, I was a Whitewater River Guide, I did all of it. But I never had a job in corporate. So I don't really know what people do in corporate America. 

 

But I keep reading the statistic about how 77 percent of employees are disengaged. 77 percent? That's a lot. Could you imagine if 77 percent of your friends were disengaged, or 77 percent of your money went away? Like, that's a lot. So my thought here is, first, for companies to just adopt this to say, hey, you know what, we're going to take every day from 8:15 to 8:30 or 3:45 to 4:00, whatever, that's going to be your 15 minutes. Don't make meetings during then, don't respond to emails, don't make your dentist appointment. Spend that 15 minutes on something that matters to you. We recognize that you are a person with a life outside of this and dreams outside of this office, spend 15 minutes doing whatever that is. 

 

First of all, I just think that would be really, a really cheap, awesome way to acknowledge your people and give people a little space to be themselves. But here's what I know, or at least what studies tell us, is that if we then take all these people who've been spending 15 minutes a day on something that matters to them and put them in a meeting and maybe have them share about it, right? So now I'm not just, hi, I'm Sam from sales. Hi, I'm Sam from sales. And I spent my 15 minutes today working on that needlepoint project for my godchild that was supposed to be when they were born and now, they're graduating from high school. So I'm really looking forward to finishing that up, right? I will have better ideas. I will have more innovative problem solving, because I've reminded myself of the fullness of myself. 

 

And more than that, maybe there's someone down at the end of the table that I've never really gotten along with particularly well. But then I find out that that person spent 15 minutes doing cross stitch. Well, now we're needlework pals. Now we can talk embroidery thread. Now we've got something in common. And you know what they call that? Engagement. Now we are engaged with other people, and we are understanding them. Not just as Debbie from accounting or Sam from sales, but as people. And people will do a lot more for people than they will do for a paycheck.

 

Dr. Richard Shuster: 

Especially in a world where we know that most of the employees who are coming into the workforce and certainly those who fall into the Gen Z and millennial demos, they really want to work where they feel appreciated where they feel a sense of purpose. And it feels like these fits into that beautifully. So I am in support of your dreams, Sam. 

 

Sam Bennett: 

Thank you.

 

Dr. Richard Shuster: 

This is good stuff. Well, Sam, I have absolutely loved our time together. I knew that I would, as you know, I wrap up every episode by asking my guests just this one question. And that is what is your biggest helping, that one most important takeaway you'd like somebody to walk away with after hearing our conversation today?

 

Sam Bennett: 

We were talking before we turned on the mic about one of the things we have in common is a broken back. I was in a terrible accident in my 20s and had to learn to walk again and the whole thing. And I don't know if it was that experience or if I was always this way, but I have an acute awareness that we are not here for very long. We do not have an unlimited amount of time in which to make our contributions to the world, in which to do the things that we love to do. And we don't know how long it is. So if there is something that is on your heart to do, this is it. Start now. Start today. 

 

Dr. Richard Shuster: 

Beautifully said. Tell us again, Sam, where people can learn more about you and get their hands on The 15 Minute Method?

 

Sam Bennett: 

Yeah, I'm @TheRealSamBennett on all the socials. And if you come to my website, therealsambennett.com, opt in. I do almost everything through email, so opt in and then you can write me and tell me about your 15-minute project. I'm getting the most amazing emails from people, little things, big things, little things that turn into big things. So write me, you can tell me about your project. We'll be pen pals, best friends. It'll be great. 

 

Dr. Richard Shuster: 

Fantastic. And for those of you in the car, at the gym, we got you covered. Everything Sam Bennett will be linked in the show notes at drrichardshuster.com. Well, Sam, thank you for joining us today. I had so much fun. I knew it was going to be fun. I mean, you're a comedian. You're an actor, right? If it wasn't funny, it was going to disappoint. So you delivered for sure. 

 

And to each and every one of you who took time out of your day to listen to this, I'm grateful for you as well. If you liked it, if you learned something from it, if you're going to go pick up this amazing book, go give us a follow and a five-star review on your podcast app of choice, because this is what helps other people find the show.

 

But most importantly, go out there today and do something nice for somebody else, even if you don't know who they are, and post in your social media feeds using the hashtag #MyDailyHelping because the happiest people are those that help others.