High achievers are not superhuman. They have simply built habits that make their days more effective. In episode 38 of Maximum Octane, Dr. Mary Kelly delivers what Kim Hickey calls a mini masterclass on productivity, tiny habits, and keeping good employees.
Mary is a leadership speaker, business growth consultant, and author or editor of more than 15 books. She served over 21 years in the U.S. Navy, retiring as a Commander, and holds a PhD in economics. In this conversation, she shares how to use your “big brain” wisely, turn dead time into productive time, and make your team feel truly valued.
What You Will Learn
- Mary shares a bit about her background and her family of high-achievers
- Mary explains the advantages of multitasking
- Mary talks about why we shouldn’t use our “big brain” for small tasks
- Mary talks about the best ways of using the dead time
- Mary goes through the importance of making our internal customers feel appreciated and valued
- Mary and Kim talk about the flexible hours concept and why it is so resisted
A Family of High Achievers
Mary opens with a look at her background and her family of high achievers. Growing up around driven people shaped her habits and expectations. Her military career added structure and discipline. Those experiences inform her practical, no-nonsense approach to productivity.
High achievers often share certain habits: they set clear goals, plan their days, protect their time, and keep learning. These habits are not personality traits that some people are born with. They are skills that anyone can develop. Mary’s background shows how family and military environments can reinforce those habits, but her advice makes them accessible to anyone willing to practice.
When Multitasking Works
Around the 7 minute mark, Mary talks about the advantages of multitasking. While deep work requires focus, some low-effort tasks can be paired. Listening to an industry podcast while driving, or making quick calls during a walk, are examples of combining activities that do not compete for the same mental resources.
Research on multitasking generally shows that trying to do two demanding mental tasks at once reduces performance on both. However, pairing a routine physical task with a low-effort mental task, such as listening to an audiobook while driving or exercising, can be efficient. The key is knowing which tasks require full attention and which can be combined without sacrificing quality.
Do Not Use Your Big Brain for Small Tasks
One of Mary’s most memorable ideas is that we should not use our “big brain” for small tasks. Important decisions, planning, and creative problem-solving deserve your best mental energy. Routine tasks like sorting e-mail or filing invoices do not. Schedule your most demanding work for when you are sharpest, and handle simple tasks when your energy is lower.
For shop owners, this might mean reviewing financials and planning first thing in the morning before the phones start ringing, and saving routine paperwork for later in the day.
Decision fatigue is a related concept. Every decision draws on mental energy, and making many small decisions can leave less capacity for important ones. Leaders can conserve energy by creating routines for small decisions, such as standard responses to common questions or set times for routine tasks. That leaves more mental energy for strategy, hiring, and complex problems.
The same principle applies to the team. A shop foreman who spends the morning chasing parts orders is spending skilled judgment on clerical work. A service advisor who rebuilds the same estimate from scratch every day is doing the same. Looking for repeat tasks that can become templates, checklists, or someone else’s responsibility frees the best people for the work only they can do.
Making the Most of Dead Time
Around the 15 minute mark, Mary shares the best ways to use dead time, the minutes spent waiting, commuting, or between tasks. Those small windows add up. Keeping a short list of quick tasks ready makes it easy to fill them productively: returning a call, reading an article, jotting down ideas, or sending a thank you note to an employee.
Dead time is everywhere in a typical day: waiting for a meeting to start, sitting in traffic, waiting on hold, or standing in line. Having a short list of tasks ready, such as reading an industry article, sending a quick thank you, or reviewing tomorrow’s schedule, turns those minutes into progress. Over a week, those small pockets of time can add up to hours.
Tiny Habits, Massive Results
The title of the episode captures Mary’s core message. Small habits, repeated consistently, compound into big results. That might be one extra follow-up call each day, a few minutes of reading, or a quick daily huddle with the team. ATI’s How Making Small Moves Creates Giant Results and How to Plan for More Effective, Efficient Workdays build on the same idea.
Behavior scientist BJ Fogg, author of Tiny Habits, recommends attaching new habits to existing routines and starting with versions so small they are almost impossible to skip. For example, after pouring your morning coffee, write down one priority for the day. Once that tiny habit becomes automatic, it can grow. Shop owners can use this approach to build habits around reviewing numbers, recognizing employees, or planning.
Making Internal Customers Feel Valued
Mary moves from personal productivity to retention around the 23 minute mark. She emphasizes how important it is for employees to feel appreciated and valued. People who feel invisible eventually leave. Recognition, growth opportunities, and genuine interest in their lives make people want to stay.
ATI’s How to Avoid Quiet Quitting and Keep Great Employees offers additional ideas.
Feeling valued often comes from small, consistent actions rather than occasional grand gestures. Saying thank you for specific contributions, asking for input, remembering important events in employees’ lives, and providing opportunities to grow all communicate value. Employees who feel valued are more likely to stay, perform well, and recommend the shop to others.
Why Flexible Hours Meet Resistance
Mary and Kim discuss flexible hours and why so many businesses resist them. Concerns often center on coverage, fairness, and control. But flexibility can be designed in ways that protect customer service while helping employees manage their lives. Shops that figure this out can attract people who would never consider a rigid schedule.
Resistance to flexible hours often comes from concerns about fairness and control. Owners worry that if one person gets flexibility, everyone will want it, or that customers will be underserved. Clear guidelines, cross-training, and transparent scheduling can address those concerns. Many businesses find that offering flexibility within defined limits increases loyalty and productivity.
Productivity Lessons From Military Leadership
Mary’s 21 years in the Navy shaped her approach to productivity. Military organizations depend on clear priorities, defined roles, and disciplined routines to accomplish complex missions. Many of those principles translate directly to running a repair shop: knowing the mission, planning each day, delegating clearly, and following up consistently.
Military leaders also learn to take care of their people, because the mission depends on them. That emphasis on caring for the team aligns closely with the internal customer philosophy at the heart of Maximum Octane. When leaders combine personal productivity with genuine care for employees, they build organizations that achieve more with less stress.
Bringing Tiny Habits to the Whole Shop
Tiny habits are not only for owners. Teams can build them too, and small shared routines often have a bigger effect on the customer experience than a big new initiative. A two minute huddle at the start of the day to review the schedule and any waiting parts keeps everyone aligned. A habit of photographing every concern during an inspection makes recommendations easier to explain. A habit of calling customers with an update before lunch prevents the afternoon flood of “is my car ready?” calls.
The key is to introduce one habit at a time, explain why it matters, and make it easy. If a new routine needs a form, have the form ready. If it needs a reminder, put it on the schedule. Recognize the people who stick with it in the first few weeks, because that is when new habits are most fragile. Once one routine is automatic, add the next. Over a year, a handful of small team habits can noticeably change how the shop runs.
Tiny Habits to Try This Week
- Do your most important thinking work in the first hour of your day.
- Keep a list of five-minute tasks for dead time.
- Send one thank you message to a team member every day.
- Pick one small daily habit tied to your biggest business goal.
Mary returns to Maximum Octane in How to Make Your Clients Forget the World Is on Fire. For more on discipline and goals, listen to Adam Kushner in Getting Into the IRONMAN Mindset to Run Our Business.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are tiny habits and how do they work?
Tiny habits are very small behaviors attached to something you already do every day. The idea, popularized by behavior scientist BJ Fogg, is that starting small makes a habit easy enough to repeat even on a bad day. For example, after you unlock the shop, you write down one priority. After the habit sticks, you can expand it. Because the behavior is linked to an existing routine, it does not rely on willpower or memory. Repetition makes it automatic, and automatic habits are the ones that compound over time.
Is multitasking good or bad for productivity?
It depends on the tasks. Trying to do two mentally demanding things at once, such as writing an estimate while taking a phone call, usually lowers the quality of both and increases mistakes. Pairing a physical or routine activity with a light mental one, such as listening to an industry podcast while driving, can be efficient. A good rule is to protect focus for anything that involves numbers, decisions, or customer communication, and save combined activities for low risk routines where a lapse in attention does not cost anything.
How can a shop owner use small pockets of free time better?
Keep a short, ready list of tasks that take five to ten minutes and need no setup. Good examples include returning a vendor call, reading one article, sending a thank you text to a team member, reviewing tomorrow’s schedule, or jotting ideas for the next team meeting. Store the list on your phone so it is always available. When a wait appears, pick something from the list instead of scrolling. Over a week, those small windows can produce real progress on tasks that would otherwise keep slipping.
What makes employees feel valued at work?
Most people feel valued through consistent, specific attention rather than occasional big gestures. Thanking someone for a particular piece of work, asking for their opinion before making a change, following through on promises, investing in their training, and showing interest in their lives outside the shop all send that message. Fair pay and reasonable schedules matter too. Leaders who ask their team directly what makes them feel appreciated often learn that the answers differ from person to person, which helps recognition land.
Can flexible schedules work in an auto repair shop?
Many shops make them work by setting clear boundaries. Common approaches include staggered start times, a four day schedule for some roles, rotating Saturdays, or shift swaps approved in advance. The essentials are adequate coverage during peak hours, cross-trained team members who can step in, and written guidelines that apply fairly to everyone. Starting with a trial period and reviewing the effect on customer service and productivity lets the owner adjust before making the change permanent.
Resources and Links From This Episode
- Productive Leaders website
- Books of Mary Kelly
- Productive Leaders Free-resources
Connect With the Guests
- Mary: LinkedIn
