Wednesday 5 October 2022
Greg Hayden is a dynamic innovator who is all about reinvention and the power of keeping things fresh.
Over the course of the past 17 years Greg and his team at Ethos Engineering have ridden one wave after another in the constantly evolving tech space. On this episode of the AMPLIFIED podcast, he gives us a front-row view into what it looks like to go from boom to bust, pivot quickly and pioneer frontiers such as data centre transformation, artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things and blockchain.
He also shares what he believes should be our global current priorities (particularly around climate change) and the logic behind basing his company culture on outcomes rather than hours logged.
Whether it’s developing energy-efficient next-gen data centres, creating exciting new points of entry for smart buildings or reconceiving the ways in which we share global resources, Ethos’s … well, ethos … is all about vision, innovation and agility. Greg sees technology and its interplay socially and economically as a fascinating “jigsaw” – with diverse points of view, constant learning and openness to surprise as the central drivers.
“The world has changed so, so fast. We need to not only keep up with it, but surpass ourselves by bringing something new and fresh,” he says. “And the only way you can do that is through innovation!”
Listen below or on your podcast player!
Topics we discussed include
How repetitive tasks represent an area rich with opportunity for digitization through machine learning.
- What smart buildings have to offer in terms of real-time data customized to our individual live/work environments and needs, including things like air quality, energy efficiency, meal planning and other elements of a living lab.
- Greg shares the smart culture at Ethos’s offices, from scheduling conference space for collaborations to controlling room temperature in real time to reserving a parking space.
- Why data centres don’t deserve vilification.
- Why Ireland’s future lies in building out future-facing, ambitious energy infrastructure.
- Should CPDs reflect bleeding-edge technologies? Greg says, Yes! Without a doubt, engineers need to be at the forefront of development and scalability.
- Work-life balance, it’s practical implementation at Ethos and how scheduling non-negotiable pockets of quality time will change your life.
Guest details
Greg Hayden’s role at Ethos is to attract, grow, and enable the best talent in the industry to support clients in the delivery of best-in-class projects. He works with some of the most significant clients in the Data Centre, Smart Buildings, Sustainability, and Commercial Sectors. He enjoys continually learning and developing, from his Honours Degree in Energy Engineering to his International MBA, and recently AI, Blockchain, and current IoT business strategy training at MIT.
Ethos Engineering has has designed, delivered and provided master planning services for 45 data centres, including 23 in Ireland. The firm has also completed 9.6 million sq. ft. of office space (including shell & core and fit outs), 4 million sq. ft. of mixed-use developments, 14 Linac Accelerators, 8,562 residential units, 7,200 student beds, 2,000 dwellings, 1,700 hotel beds, 1,100 prison cells, 3,000 healthcare beds and 30 operating theatres - in Ireland and internationally.
Contact details
https://www.ethoseng.ie/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/greg-hayden-mba-chartered-engineer-7339b514/
More information
Looking for ways to explore or advance a career in the field of engineering? Visit Engineers Ireland to learn more about the many programs and resources on offer. https://www.engineersireland.ie/
Transcription text
For your convenience, here is a 90% accurate automated transcript of the podcast.
Dusty Rhodes 0:01
Right now on amplified the engineers journal podcast we're about to meet the CEO of ethos engineering, Greg Hayden,
Greg Hayden 0:08
engineers are often accused to be not very fun loving. They actually said the two most boring professions are engineering and accountancy. My wife's an accountant. So that probably says a lot for us.
Dusty Rhodes 0:41
Hello, my name is Dusty Rhodes and welcome to the engineers Ireland podcast where we're chatting with our community of creative professionals across the country, about how engineers are delivering sustainable solutions for society both for now and in the future to come. Joining us today is one of the founders of a company which has spent the last 17 years doing some amazing work with data centers in particular as well as smart buildings for offices and accommodation and plenty of other things. He is a big believer in innovation and continuing personal development and asides from his engineering degrees. He has recently added AI blockchain and Internet of Things qualifications to his training for a very real look in engineering today. And tomorrow, it's a pleasure to welcome the CEO of ethos, engineering, Greg, Hayden, Hayden, Greg, it on those things. Delighted to be here. So listen, give me give me a quick overview of ethos, engineering, and where you guys are at in the market.
Greg Hayden 1:34
As you said, their ethos engineering 17 years old, we still think we're we're very young guys and girls, we started out in 2005, three really good years, and then the whole crash happened. And we've found herself in the to survive in the Middle East and North Africa, like many other Irish companies, and we were probably the first to start implying, again back in 2010. But I suppose what we learned then was that never rest on your laurels and always look to reinvent yourself. So we're always changing in ethos is all about change everything we do we actually embrace change. It's been a roller coaster has been up and up and down last 17 years. But it's it's a fantastic company full of fantastic people.
Dusty Rhodes 2:21
Tell me what kind of one of the main areas that you work in?
Greg Hayden 2:24
Well, as you said, there, its data center, smart buildings, corporate headquarters, nearly all different sectors. And in the last two years, we started our own digital consultancy.
Dusty Rhodes 2:35
So tell me what is the company plan then for the next three years?
Greg Hayden 2:39
Right, we launched a whole rebranding of ethos last September. And we've done a course for enterprise Ireland called Global for growth. And after that, we got our five year plan. The whole five year plan was to double the size of the company. Within five years, it was also to bring up the next level of ethos leadership, we talked to our clients and asked our clients, our top lines, what do they want from me to us, a lot of our clients wanted innovation, they want us to bring something fresh and something new. So our whole plan was, you know, everything we do has to be innovation. It has to bring values that look at problems or pain points, or clients pain points, and see can we actually look at ideas to solve those problems. So the next five years is all about doubling the size company, bringing people on board, getting people being inclusive with innovation, everyone has to be part of it. It's not just a innovation team, like from graduates coming in to me CEO, everyone has to be involved. So we have an innovation wallet at ethos, people put up ideas of helping improve how we operate internally, how can we offer better services for our clients. So the next five years up to 2025, is to be the most innovative MEP company in Europe,
Dusty Rhodes 3:59
getting new projects in can be challenging, because everybody wants to you know, it's it's a big job. And there's so many things that have to be done. But then when you have clients also saying we want something innovative, just kind of add on to it. How do you handle that challenge?
Greg Hayden 4:13
I think I think we're very, very lucky. We're working in many different sectors with many different clients. And it's really what you see with different clients and taking some ideas and bring it to somewhere else. So innovation isn't creating something to me, it's not creating something new. It's taking an idea that you see somewhere else, and reapplying of the
Dusty Rhodes 4:35
project you're working on at the moment, which is posing the biggest challenge or what's the biggest challenge you're facing? Without naming names? Of course.
Greg Hayden 4:41
Yeah, yeah, I suppose. There's a number of challenges and that we all know, I suppose the biggest challenge for all of us at the moment is saving the planet. Climate change decarbonisation then, and we all have a role to play in that. All different sectors. And I think the solution around that is collaboration. is working together, not pointing the finger, you know, at different sectors. And if we actually look at data of everything we use, we can curtail our consumption of limited resources. And then you look at you bring in innovation and and you look at ideas of how can we do things better, and everything driving towards sustainable solutions. So I think those three things mixed, you know, data, innovation, sustainability, but doing it in a collaborative way, is the solution.
Dusty Rhodes 5:30
Do you find that clients are coming to you saying that they need sustainability? And as a I mean, a company is being very capitalist about it. It's all about profit for shareholders, why are they interested in sustainability?
Greg Hayden 5:44
I think I think everyone has actually woken off to sustainable buildings, the way forward. I think the way we built things in the past, we can't do that going forward. And everyone's aware of that. And I think there's a freshness about it. It's not greenwashing, everyone wants to be part of it. And the clients, we're working for the very forward thinking in their products and their their solutions and their buildings, and they want them as green as possible. You've
Dusty Rhodes 6:14
spoken quite a bit about data and internet and numbers and statistics and sustainability. And the whole thing, and data centers or smart buildings is a is a big thing for you in your professional life, what what attracts you to that area in particular,
Greg Hayden 6:29
I think limited resources attracts me. And I think, how we use our resources, if we really is like being in the car, you're not, you need to know you need to find out your drive and your speeds, you know, the air temperature, the air temperature, you need to have all these facts and figures. And I think if you know what you're using in real time, you can actually curtail your use or make better use of your resource, wherever you don't know you're going to consume and you're going to consume. So I think what drove me in is actually the technology to say like, there's a lot of what we do, and ethos engineer and that's repetition. So we can get something that's the we don't have to do young engineers coming in young, female or male graduates coming in that they don't have to do the repetition work that we can get technology to do that for us, whether that's, you know, AI or machine learning to do the repetition, and they feel their career is progressing more, because they're not just size and pipes or a size and dock seal day in, day out. They're actually adding real value at a very early stage of their career. And I think to embrace technology. And to bring that into our business, I think construction is absolutely ripe for digitalization. So we're embracing that. And you mentioned their children locked down. And, you know, I found a little bit of time on my hands, I studied three different courses in MIT in Boston, and one of those being blockchain and not an AI in the Internet of Things. Because I knew a little bit about and didn't know a whole lot. And I always find in life that the more you study something, the more you realize, you don't still fully understand it. But we're working there, we're working there. And we're free, very lucky that we have clients that are pushing that same agenda. And they don't have all the solutions. They know we don't have all the solutions. But together we're getting there.
Dusty Rhodes 8:30
So with all of this digitization, you've got more information, and you cut out a lot of the repetition for the designers as well. In reality, how does it make a difference to a building, say a regular building that would have been built, let's just say 10 or 15 years ago, not that not on an ancient building, and something that will be deemed a smart building. Now, I mean, what's the real difference?
Greg Hayden 8:51
The real difference is to know what's going on when you're building in real time. And you don't even have to compare the building back in the day to now, if myself and yourself had two different houses, and we built exactly the same, how I use my space and how you use your space is going to be totally different. The user experience what you want from your space, and what I want for my space is probably going to be totally different. So it's trying to tap into that how do you use your space? How can you better use your space? How are you using the energy in the space, the quality of the air in the space and then tweaking that to the users requirements to get the best user experience out of their built acid
Dusty Rhodes 9:36
when I think of smart building, because I'm more the consumer and I'm thinking you know kind of Alexa and turn on the lights and that kind of stuff or whatever when you think of smart buildings. What do you think?
Greg Hayden 9:48
We'll probably like that. It's it's, it's having a mobile phone here. It's, it's everything that your smartphone can do. So you should be able to, like walk into a building and maybe only Have your phone that, you know, you can book ahead, you book your space, you don't even have to touch the elevator yet, you offer your phone up to the elevator that will take you to the floor. There's that length. So by the way, there's a vegan in the house. So make sure there's that food ready, you know, if you're cycling into work, that there's enough cycling stations for everyone to pack up their bike. So it's absolutely everything of how you use your building, and how you'd like to use your building. So even in the COVID world, you know, where you don't want to touch anything, you can make that possible, if you want, like at the moment we were actually finding in our own space areas and in our office, are free on under utilized. So now we can repurpose that, for something that would be utilized an awful lot more.
Dusty Rhodes 10:47
When a COVID hit us, of course, everything changed. And all of a sudden everybody's discovering zoom and working from home. And then now it's kind of rolling back to working in the office are a bit of a hybrid. You guys are quite proud of the way you work you refer to your office as a as a digitized office or a living lab. And can you describe to me how it works?
Greg Hayden 11:08
We're trying to drive the Digital Agenda for our office at the same time COVID here. And we brought some smart people in from other other sectors to look at our office and look at how can we make this smart? How can we use it better. And we made a living lab to just record anything that we can record in real time on the air quality of our office, but then also how to use our office, I think we had everyone back in our office. Now the office isn't big enough for for everyone. So when you want to go to the office, you book your desk, you can book your parking spot, you can actually see who else is in, maybe you want to work with one of your co workers. And you need that little bit of collaboration space. So you can find out who else is in there. And maybe I'll book the table beside him or her because I want to I want to work with Dusty, we're driving the Digital Agenda smart buildings for our clients, where better to start than our own office. So we're finding out how we're using our own office, how we should design before, I would have always designed from my experience. Now I'm actually designing from the information that we're getting from our space. And it's a different way of designing. So we're very proud. And then we put the office true for the well, performance rating. And we're the only business in the world that has actually got that benchmark for our office, where we're measuring the quality of water air temperature in real time, we know what's actually happening in our office in real time. And then we can tweak our offers to make it more efficient or more better experience for the user.
Dusty Rhodes 12:51
For you as a managing director and the man who's kind of at the top looking down, how does this then improve things for the company?
Greg Hayden 12:59
That's a good question that I think I think all of our staff feel they're on the cusp of something very fresh and very new. And I mentioned to you that we're driving the innovation idea. And to us like it's innovation with capital I that everyone has a say I started my career, dusty, where I said, Well, how are things done around here? And could you change this? Or could you change that? And I was actually told we'll get back into your box because, you know, you're only a young guy, you don't have any experience. And we'll tell you how things are done. And we wanted to turn that on its head. We always have both. We have an innovation while a digital innovation while and from ground up. You aren't we're saying put your ideas down your what you hate about your work. And Anita has put the ideas down or what would you change, and not all ideas, make it all the way through, you know, some that they won't get there. But now a lot of really, really good ideas are coming from the young people that are coming from college, and they're saying, Okay, this bit this business has gone 17 years, but would they not consider this or would not consider that, as somebody ideas that are coming out are absolutely fantastic. Unbelievable. And they're saying back to us I can't believe I just come home from college and the CEO on the other executive directors from ethos are asking us grads, how should we run our company?
Dusty Rhodes 14:27
Let's move on to data centers because you know, Athos are very involved in data centers and as this is a three pronged question on a rarely asked them our data centers are they're known for being power hungry, okay, and it's been in the news and everything. Can you tell us how power hungry they are? Why there's been an official pullback on them, and how can you design them so that they are more sustainable? They're the three things were to ask you about starting with how power hungry, our data centers actually
Greg Hayden 14:58
it's amazing. There's this be in an awful lot of data center bashing. And it's sad, it really, really gets to me, right? Because you have to decouple the data from the center, right? We all know that data is the future, and the use of data will actually help us curtail our use of limited resources. And that has to reside somewhere. But there's a lot of people out there that would welcome the cloud, but then they give valuable data centers and attune to the same things. So for a lot of the clients, the clients we we work with, they're all about investing in renewables, they're, you know, they've they've a role in in to play and stabilize and the issues that we have with our grid, and to me that the powerhouses of digital solutions. So it's a difficult one, because I think there's so much good that comes out of data centers. But you have to start with why we're collecting this data. First. I think if you roll it back 10 or 15 years, we all had our Comms Room, we all had our own little data centers in our offices. And that was so so inefficient. So now they're all it's been collected, it's been centralized, it's run by people that really know their business, they're really really, you know, energy conscious. So it's going in the right direction, but you need the centers for the data.
Dusty Rhodes 16:28
So it's kind of like even though they're they're sucking up so much energy with the use of the the actual computers and the the aircon and everything to keep them cool. For the benefit that we get. It's like a factory, isn't it? Yeah, essentially, why has there been an official pullback in Ireland where they're kind of going right? No more data centers for what
Greg Hayden 16:47
it's the lack of power isn't that we've we haven't invested in our network and our current network for a very long, long time. So back in the day, we put big investment into your roads across Ireland. And we need the same investment into our energy infrastructure.
Dusty Rhodes 17:06
Why are so many of the data centers in and around the Dublin area
Greg Hayden 17:10
I suppose like any business, yeah, it's clustering. And people want to be beside people that they do business with, when you're looking at data centers and data centers around the world. They're all in different cities, whether it's, you know, it's Frankfurt, it's Amsterdam, it's London, it's, it's Paris, and it's Dublin. And if we drive them out to Dublin all the time, maybe the center doesn't come to Ireland, it goes to Frankfurt, or it goes to Amsterdam.
Dusty Rhodes 17:40
But how realistic is that are not even how realistic is how big in the global scale when it comes to data centers? Is Ireland? How popular is
Greg Hayden 17:48
it? It's very big. It's like it's it's one of the big five in Europe.
Dusty Rhodes 17:53
So it's gonna say, Yeah, we're way up there. We always punch above our weight or Irish. I love that. My third part, then to that question is how can we design data centers so that they are more sustainable?
Greg Hayden 18:04
While this is happening, happening? Day in, day out? Does the, as I said, the very forward thinking clients, they're getting their energy, green energy, they're looking to run their facilities, yes, as efficiently as possible to come up with new, innovative solutions. So that's happening day in day out. And our first data center we designed was probably around 2008. And that's miles away from what we're designing now, from an efficiency point of view, is so so much more efficiently? Can you give me an example, just the energy use the energy use for the cooling? It's calmed down so much over over the years?
Dusty Rhodes 18:46
Personally speaking, you live by the motto innovator die. Girl that's very angry. I bet you even have a T shirt that says the innovator Diana dear.
Greg Hayden 18:56
Well, I have to I stole that phrase from this lecture. And in DCU Farrago Brophy, who done a bit of work with back in 2019, and we were doing the Go Global for growth course, which was awesome, probably 10 or 15. Other companies looking at Go Global for growth with enterprise, Ireland, and all the different courses we done. That's the one that grabbed me and figureheads, that statement, innovate or die. And I just realized that we never, you know, when you think of innovation think, yeah, I can innovate for a product. But can I innovate for a solution? It took me a while to get my head around that. And then I was thinking, you know, we've been innovating or change. And since we started in 2005, we just didn't call innovation. And to me is like, what got us here won't get us to where we want to go. So we have to change the world has changed and so, so fast, and not only keep up with it, you need to surpass us and you'll bring something new and fresh And the only way you can do that is innovation. So it's finding the pain points, what are your clients or your own pain points, coming up with ideas, always coming up with ideas, and then evaluating those ideas and putting them together and mixing them with technology and coming up with a solution.
Dusty Rhodes 20:16
You've mentioned before that you studied a couple of things that are going to become enormous ly important in engineering, artificial intelligence, blockchain and IoT, which is the Internet of Things. How do you think engineers should be thinking of these digital assets or tools when they're thinking about buildings in five or 10 years time? I mean, when you put your your little black to the future goggles, how do you see the world in 2050, applying artificial intelligence and IoT,
Greg Hayden 20:47
I think, to me, it's to embrace it, not to be scared of it, it's, you know, there's this whole fear that AI will take all of our, all of our jobs and time, like, that's, that's not going to happen, it's going to take away what we don't like to do, and then leave us working on the areas that we do like to do. So to me, it's, it's, it's embracing, it's using it, and not being scared, but because I think it is the future, we have limited resources and people are, are so limited. That's the whole debate of as has the world population topped out. So we're seeing shortages since COVID, in all different sectors where businesses cannot get the talent they cannot get people in. And I think that's just gonna get worse, they'll stay in time. So we have to embrace the technology to take on those areas where the technology can do maybe didn't an awful lot better than us. And they're probably areas that we don't like to do anyway,
Dusty Rhodes 21:49
give me example, in your own engineering office, because you had mentioned before, where repetitive tasks are being taken away from people and allows them to be more innovative and creative. So what kind of repetitive tasks? Are you using AI and IoT, etcetera, etcetera to do?
Greg Hayden 22:06
Oh, it's, it's anything from any of our sizing calculations, in our buildings, where the COBie so many cables size and so many duct sizes, then when you bring all that together, into one building is the final where all the clashes are. So there's a lot that if there's certain rules that can be followed, AI or machine learning, you know, can do an awful lot quicker than Austin repetitive stuff. So really, that's where we're using them, we're trying to come up with ideas where we can bring in that technology that takes away our date, so nearly have to deep construct what we do day in day out, and then see, can this be done better? With the use of AI or machine learning?
Dusty Rhodes 22:54
There are three quite complex areas. So Internet of Things, my understanding is like the Alexa is in our lives where you can tell it to turn the lights on and off, or draw the curtains if you've gone that far. Artificial Intelligence is, as you say, where it's monitoring and taking all the data and it's then able to kind of predict how many vegan meals you need next week, that kind of a way. Blockchain then is a whole worlds to itself. Do you think that engineers should be looking at these areas as part of their CPD?
Greg Hayden 23:23
Yes, without a shadow of a doubt? Definitely. It's very new to a lot of people, but it's very, very new to engineers. And I think clients are looking for the solution. So we as engineers, have to understand this technology. And the capability that it has to allow us to apply it apply it to our day to day service offering and to bring those solutions to to our clients.
Dusty Rhodes 23:49
And is this something that you look for when you're taking on new people at the moment to see if they've already studied that in college?
Greg Hayden 23:54
That's a very good question. What we've actually found since we've gone down this route, is that we're taking on people that we wouldn't even even considered that they had a role in their company. So we're taking on people that are maybe not engineers, and maybe they've come from to come to the IT route. Or they've come from physics route science route, that they're not mechanical, electrical engineers, but they have a role to bring this whole Jigsaw together and to offer this this service. Yeah, so I think it's actually opened up a whole new horizon for us for the quality people that we can attract into ethos.
Dusty Rhodes 24:35
So are you aware of any particular subjects or courses that you would like to see prospective engineers getting interested in?
Greg Hayden 24:42
Well, the ones I've done in in MIT are free, good on free shorter. I think there were nine week horses each
Dusty Rhodes 24:50
and you didn't have to travel over there for them. No, no, didn't have
Greg Hayden 24:53
to travel. At the time you did. They did want you you know there was nine I think one of the weeks you were meant to travel over because of cold but we didn't. It's online learning, you can do it at your own speed. But then at the weekends, you have to do your homework and you have to submit your homework. It's quite intensive balance that which are your home life and your work life. But it covers a lot of the areas very, very quickly.
Dusty Rhodes 25:17
Let me ask you about engineers, Ireland, because you know, they're very big on on career development. What's one of the most useful things that you've gotten from being in engineers, Ireland,
Greg Hayden 25:27
I think personally, you know, just probably me and and the company, personally, is probably the engineers are on to get asked me to get involved with interview would be chartered engineers. And it was absolutely fantastic. So you'd sit there with two or two other engineers, and you'd have young people coming in and putting their careers in front of you, and you're helping them along to become chartered. I found that very rewarding personally. And then for the company, I think it's the whole CPD, you know, it's their continued professional development, and the log, and we've embraced that and in an ethos, and I think engineers are gonna do a great job in that.
Dusty Rhodes 26:08
Just before we wrap up, is there anything that I haven't asked you about, you'd like to talk about,
Greg Hayden 26:13
Oh, you haven't asked me about my work life balance. And I have three young kids under 10. I like doing CrossFit, like dunes gain. So balance that all off with your business, and running your business, doing what you like to do in life, looking after your family. And getting that right. I think that's what we're all. That's what we're all aiming for. And I say will eat us engineer, I totally enjoy working with them. And I get the time. And we're hoping that everyone that works with us, finds that time. So to push that we actually, it was one of our innovation just before COVID, we brought a whole office together and say, right, we're really gonna drive innovation. What can we do differently. So here's a task for you, how can a task get down to a four day week, but offer a better service to our clients. So we have a three day weekend because we all want to spend time with our family or do what we like to do. And we came up with some brilliant ideas, and then COVID it. And, you know, we didn't think that you could work from home. But then we had over 100 people working from home. And we've done that, like probably everyone else, we've done that over a space of two weeks. So now we're in a stage where we haven't got down to the four day weekend, we're doing a nine day fortnight. So every second Friday, the good people have it as engineering or offer free Friday. And we make up that time over nine days by how I think going back to working smarter, not harder, collaborating with each other. There's a lot I think we do as engineers that we spend time on, and it's not adding value to our clients. And it's not adding value to us. And it's done, because it was always done that way. So it's trying trying to find out how can we do this differently, and not spend so much time offer better value to our clients? So we're challenging anything we're doing, we're challenging, and we're asking our staff challenged the way this is done. Is there a smarter way of doing this? That will take less time? And those make us more productive? So we're not quite there yet. But we're, we're getting there.
Dusty Rhodes 28:21
If I'm an engineer, and I want to achieve the four day week or the nine day fortnight, whatever it is okay, and I want to work smarter, not harder. Yeah. Give me one idea that you have applied in your own company that would help me achieve that goal of the four day week.
Greg Hayden 28:37
We closed the office every second Friday. So it's not a choice that, you know, can I go for this this week, but I have to make up the time. We're trusting people will make up the time will make up the will make up the tasks. I probably the best way to answer that. It's like I'm not really really interested in people doing the time I'm interested in them getting the task done, and the client being happy, and the fellow colleagues being happy under delivering. So hopefully that's done in less time than a normal working week. So every second Friday, we we we closed the app, no, we explained this to our to our clients and all of them embrace that. And all of them are quite happy with it because we were concerned that we're not around on the Friday. So if we're delivering a job that would go out on a Friday, we say to our clients while you're getting it on Thursday night, you're not getting it on Friday, so you get a day earlier. So it's working really well and it's been embraced by all of our staff and it's you know, allows them to have that three day weekend and they're coming in refreshed on the Monday and energized and ready to go we get
Dusty Rhodes 29:49
I had an actual time management tip that actually works because you know the way they normally go, only taking calls from 10am to 11am. And it doesn't work in the real world. All right. Here's one that actually works. I'm actually She falls in exactly with what you said works for you. If you have a particular thing you want to do in your private life, okay? So say it's you want to go for a walk, get in a walk every day, you put the walk in on your calendar, between two and three o'clock or whatever it is you're going to take, alright, and that takes the priority. So then when people are saying, Look, can we have a meeting at such and such data that can we talk at two o'clock? You just look at your calendar go? No, I'm busy. All right, yeah. So you do your work day, and then you do your walk, which is also important. So it folds in exactly what you say. And that's why I smiled when you said, we closed the office every second Friday. So it's like all of a sudden, everything has to work around that. Yeah. And I think that's
Greg Hayden 30:42
brilliant. And I think you're I do exactly the same as you. So I do CrossFit. And I do it maybe most times at 10 o'clock. Yeah, in the day. So I have that in from 10 to 1130. Or you do it already. That's a meeting guy and it's very easy when things are you know, getting very, very busy. To you give up looking after yourself. You give up that walked at you Saturday, give up that time have gone to the gym with you put that in to your point. You know, you make that happen.
Dusty Rhodes 31:11
It has been very illuminating and an absolute pleasure to talk to you. Greg Hayden on our podcast today. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you dusty. If you'd like to find out more about what we spoke about on the podcast today, you'll find show notes and link details in the description area of your podcast player right now. And of course, you'll find more information and advanced episodes on our website at engineers ireland.ie. Our podcast today was produced by just pod.io for engineers, Ireland and if you'd like more episodes, do click the Follow button on your podcast player so you get access to all of our past and future shows automatically. Until next time for myself just to thank you so much for listening. Take care