The 30-Minute Hour With Blaine Oelkers

Mindset and training our brains to think in a certain way play such a big part in our productivity. And in today's episode I'm joined by Blaine Elkers and we're Talking about the 30 minute hour and the 21 second. Forming a habit. Such an interesting concept and I learned an awful lot. And there are things that I'm going to take away from today's podcast that I am going to be applying in my business. So grab a pen and paper, clear your schedule for the next 30 minutes and join me as we learn how to be super productive and create new habits in 21 seconds and also work 30 minute hours. Now I know all of that sounds really far fetched and if I'm honest, I thought that would be the case before I interviewed Blaine. But as you will find out, he's going to give you some really practical advice on how to achieve both of these. So let's get going. I'm Rob Da Costa and this is the Agency Accelerator Podcast. As someone who has stood in your shoes, having started, grown and sold my own agency, I know just how it feels in the ups and downs of agency life. So this podcast aims to ease your journey just a little by sharing mine and my guests experiences and advice as you navigate your way to growing a profitable, sustainable and enjoyable business. So good afternoon everybody and welcome to this week's episode of the Agency Accelerator Podcast. Now, many of us feel really overwhelmed. In this on demand world where we're trying to work 24 7, we always feel like there's just not enough time to get everything done. And this is especially true for agency owners who are trying to juggle so many plates. The answer isn't to run faster, it's to work smarter, to get the results that you want and take back control of your life and yourself. So I'm really excited to dig into this topic today with my guest, Blaine Elkers. First of all, we're going to talk a bit about the concept of the 30 minute hour, how to get more stuff done in just 30 minutes instead of an hour. And I'm also going to talk about the 21 second habit, which sounds really fascinating. So Blaine, welcome to the show. And why don't we just kick off by you telling us a little bit about yourself and how you got into the world of productivity and efficiency.

Yes. Rob, thank you so much for having me on the show. Happy to be here. And I just want to say thank you for the time, the effort that you put into bringing out these podcasts. I listen to a bunch of episodes. Love the podcast and I love that you're kind of giving back. You're trying to help these agency owners navigate life. And I think service to many leads to greatness, and you are experiencing some greatness by doing all this. That being said, I hope today. Yeah. To add some value, we'll talk about how to get an hour's worth of stuff done in just 30 minutes. That's fun. Habits is also fun. And so for me, I live in Phoenix right now, but I was born in New Jersey, and I had a couple of moments of dawning comprehension. And this is where, like, the light bulb goes off and then you're never the same. And sometimes you make a clarifying decision based on that experience. And for me, the first one occurred in college. I went to a place called Purdue University, and maybe like many of the listeners, I've always been kind of a seeker of knowledge. And I saw this little ad and you could send away for an audio cassette now, probably dating myself, some people might not even know what an audio cassette is, but I certainly do. In the 80s, in the 80s, we had them put them in your Sony Walkman. But. But it was an audio cassette where it was the reading of this book called Think and Grow Rich. And it was actually read by Earl Nightingale. He actually became one of my mentors. But. But anyway, so it was the reading of this book thinking grow rich. I listened to that and then I bought the book and I read the book. And the moment of dawning comprehens was this concept of what you think about, you bring about. I made a little acronym called waitaba, but what you think about, you bring about. And I really discovered there, luckily, I think at an early age, the power of my mind and my thoughts to kind of not only dictate reality, but. But dictate how I perceived reality and the choices I made and the decisions I made. So a lot of stuff is. Is. Is. Is your thoughts and kind of directing those thoughts. So that was a big. That was a big me. The second one, which kind of led me to become a chief results officer was that I. My degrees in computer science and I came home from this long business trip and my son, he was one year old, and he was like, kind of like giving me the cold shoulder and acting weird. And so I said, beth, you know, is both sick or what's. What's wrong? And she said, well, you were gone so long on that business trip that he kind of forgot who you were. And I was like, oh, man. That, like, emotionally, that like hit me pretty hard. And then I realized when I was a kid I would come home, both my parents worked and I come home to this empty house and it was a little scary. A lot of times my brother wasn't there. And so that night I made a clarifying decision and I said, no matter what I do, I am going to become a work from home dad. And so I started a couple of businesses that year while I kept my full time job. So I had to have some. I learned a lot about productivity and efficiency there. But then a year later, I broke free, I left that job. And that was 27 years ago. So for the last 27 years I've been this work from home work remote before it was cool to work remote person. And. But what that did is that gave me the flexibility to start to pursue what I really loved, which was kind of self development. And I realized that I'm here to help people take control of their lives by taking control of themselves. Something I call self fluence, which you alluded to in the introduction. You know, and it's this, it's the art and science of influencing yourself. It's the power you already have to influence yourself. You don't need anything else. You got it right here. Three pound tool is all you need. You don't need the fancy apps or any other new stuff. You can, you can do it all yourself. And so in 2009, I started this company called Selfluence. And since then all I've been doing is helping organizations mastermind groups, business owners, to kind of get more from themselves. I call it personal implementation. Getting yourself to do the things you know you should do, maybe getting yourself to stop the bad things you're doing as well. But it's all about yourself. And when you do that, which we'll talk about today, when you start to take control of yourself, everything, everything turns out to be better. Everything starts to get better, people get nicer, people get easier to deal with. When you're kind of in control of, of what you're doing and what you're thinking.

Yes. So that sounds fascinating. You make it sound very easy. But I'm assuming it's not that easy, otherwise you'd all be doing it. So talk a little bit more about how you influence yourself.

Yeah, so here's a couple of things. So all the, we often say powered by self loons, but all the frameworks that we teach, you know, everything you need is within reach. You're already doing it. That's a big key. And you can master it. If you choose. But the thing is that most people underestimate their powers. But, but we're going to, we're going to prove to you that you know how to do it and you're just going to be able to do more of. And it's going to be kind of self evident. It's kind of fun actually. So, so let's, let's like, let's unpack one of these. Let's unpack the one you talked of, which is, you know, I'm good at naming things. Right, so the 30 minute hour. Right, so how to get an hour's worth of stuff done in just 30 minutes. Now this is, this is a very powerful framework and it's so powerful that Rob, I've got to make sure that we use it for good and not for evil. And so let's say that, let's say you and I had four 30 minute hours in a row. So we had four 30 minute hours in a Row. So we got four hours worth of stuff done in just two hours and that leaves us two hours of guilt free time. Now the type a business owner, agency owner is going to say, oh, I got two extra hours, let me work some more. No, no, that's the evil part. So what I want to do is I want to ask you, and I'll answer the question first, if you had two guilt free hours that you were not going to work, what would you do? And so for me, I do, you know, I enjoy. My kids are out of the nest now, 27 years, they're out of this. But I like to stay connected with them. So I probably reach out to the kids, you know, maybe a FaceTime, maybe texting. I also like to reach out to old friends. I feel like I don't do that enough. So if I had the guilt free time, I would do that. I like my Peloton bike, I probably ride that. And I do like to hike. So I probably kind of get out in the Phoenix area, get a little hike in if I had time left over. I do like, like a little nap, a little 15, 20 minute power nap. That's, that's me. What about you? You have two hours of guilt free time not working. What would you do?

Yeah, such a good question. I would probably do some more self development stuff. So I would definitely go to the gym, listen to my favorite podcasts. I would also spend time, I work a four day week and I spend my fifth day working on my sort of passion project, which is my YouTube channel, which has got nothing to do with work. So I probably do more of that. And for sure I travel more because I'm, I'm a big lover of experience over material things. So if I had that time and I could later, I would travel more. I think, I think there's plenty of things I could do if I had that time. But I, I think I put my hand up and confessed to be the evil person because I feel like when I win back time, I just find more stuff to do in work. And it's interesting, it's probably advice you give as well. But I've recorded podcasts on my four day work week and the only way I could eventually make that work was by filling that fifth day with stuff that wasn't non work. And in this case it was editing videos for my YouTube channel. But if I found, personally, if I, if I said I'm not going to work five diet days and I have four days work and then I've just got a fifth day where I think I'm gonna just lounge around and do nothing, invariably I would work. So that's the evil version of me coming out, I think.

Yeah, but you, you did well to fill that fifth day with the right stuff. Right? And so I, I do, I'm like you, I've got to have something to do. Like every day I'm making a plan, even if it's, you know. Well, you know, even if it's do nothing. So my wife and I, you know, at least once a month we have a do nothing day. So we, we actually force ourselves to put nothing on the calendar. Now we end up doing something. Maybe we go to a movie, maybe we tidy up, you know, we do something. But there's nothing that you have to do, right? So I, I enjoy en, you know, my wife helps me, you know, kind of to stop and smell the roses. I, I think the other thing that helped me the most was I studied people in the last few weeks of their life and it was interesting that they all said the same thing. They all said, I wish I had more memorable moments with the people I love. And so the, the people they love. It could be family, but it could be close friends, it could be peers that they worked with a long time or staff that worked with them. But the people they love, they wish they had more memorable moments with the love. So when I generate that extra time, I'm looking for that, I'm looking for those memorable moments with people I love. The only other thing they said in that last few weeks is I wish I had more impact with what I learned. So in other words, they wish that, that somehow they took their life experiences and they were able to share that to help other people, you know, you know, to impact other people's lives. So anyway, if you can ever do more of those, any of those two things, that you're going to be a happy person.

Yeah. And certainly no one's going to lie on their deathbed and say, I w. I earn more money because I can't take that with you. So let's assume that we've bought into this idea of winning back time and we're going to use that time for something that's good for our mental health. That's nothing to do with work. How do we go about actually moving from a one hour to 30 minutes and being equally productive in that 30 minutes as we were in an hour?

Okay, so now you know, this is what we want to do. The listeners like you just thought of what you would do and I want you to put some of that back into your day as you start to have these 30 minute hours. So let's talk about. And I said you're, you're already doing it. So let's talk about. There's a day, sometimes it happens more than once a year. But there's a day that people, it's their most productive day of the year. And on this day, people are 3 to 10 times more productive than an ordinary day. Now that's 3x to 10x. We're only looking for 2x. So this is going to be easy actually. So do you know that day of the year where, where people are, you know, experience their highest level of productivity?

Do I know it? No. I can probably tell you where mine is. Mine is the day before I go on holiday because that's when I've got to get stuff done. So my mind is super laser focused. There's no faffing around, there's no being distracted by things that aren't important because I've got to get the key things done because I've got a hard stop. So for me it would be that.

Okay, that is the day, it's the day before vacation. So when you think of the 30 minute hour, I want you to think of the day before vacation. So what I did, I realized that myself. Right. And so in looking for productivity, I went in and studied the day before vacation. And why is the day before vacation so productive? And how can we extract things from that that you already know how to do? Everyone thinks back just like you did. What's my most Productive day of the year. That day. We just want you to, now that you know that you know you can have that high protocol productivity now, we want you to master that, we want you to bring that into your regular life. So when I studied it, I made a little acronym to help you remember and the acronym is PDF. Now PDF is easy to remember. People say email me the PDF or print out the PDF. And in the tech world that stands for portable document format. That's not what it is for us in the productivity world. I want you to think 30 minute hour, day before vacation. PDF. And PDF stands for plan, delegate, focus. All right, so let's unpack each one of those so that you can have more 30 minute hours. So the first one is planning. Now what happens on the day before vacation, people. And I know you're, I've listened to some of your podcasts and you're, you're a, you're a next day planner like, like me is that they plan that day out typically the day before. They plan that day out, sometimes down to the minute because it's that tight of a day, but certainly at least by the hour. This I'm going to do this. This I'm going to do that. So the first thing you do that to gain some more productivity, have 30 minute to plan your day, especially if you can do it the, the night before. So when you wake up, you're ready to go. But planning the day is, is key and kind of scheduling the whole day. Now I know that life is going to come in and things happen and there's emergencies and clients need you, that's okay, but you're going to do better. Your productivity is going to be higher if you have a plan, even if part of that plan gets overwritten with some urgency later. The other thing about planning is that if you want to have a 30 minute hour for your very first hour is on the day before vacation. People typically wake up 30 to 60 minutes earlier. Right? So I'm not saying you do that every day, but if you want some extra time, you know, you can just wake up 30 minutes early. That's what happens kind of on the day before vacation. The other two planning things that happen is just like you said, you kind of have a hard stop, but you have a clear vision for what you want to get done. Done, right? So having a very clear vision about these are the things that I want to get done, that's what happens on the day before vacation. And not only is your vision clear, but you're actually applying and using the 8020 rule. Now, have you heard of the 8020 rule before?

I certainly have. And I use it so much in all the work I do with my clients. So, yeah, the Pareto effect.

Yes, the Pareto principle. I love that guy. I was actually born on his birthday. And so. But this Pareto principle is 8020 rule, you know, simply says 20% of what you do produces 80% of your results. And then 80% of what you do only produces a small 20% of your results. And everyone I ask, they say, oh, I believe that, I know that. But it's not until the day before vacation that they actually start using it. And they focus in on the 20. Like, this is the stuff, most important stuff that I have to get done that only I can do. And they start to oust the 80 and they start to push it out. And that leads us into the second one pushing out, delegating and deferring. Right? So you got plan, delegate, focus. So the second one is delegating. And so what happens is there's a little phrase I like that people that I learned from the day before vacation, people think, who before do? So they think, who could do this? Before I do this, before I go do this, they'll think, who before do? And so on the day before vacation, you're thinking, who else could do this? I, I don't have enough time to get everything done. Who else can do it? And the delegation, again, takes that higher priority. Now, you know, when you deleg Delegate something, you know, the watching of your pet or the, or the, the watering of the plants or whatever, it's probably not going to get done as good as you're doing it. But you don't care, right? You don't care. You just know that has to get done. So you start to, you start to do that and you start to defer things. I like to call it, I created a practice I call proactive positive proactive procrastination. Which means when I make my to do list for the day, I look at it and I say, well, if I only had of. Instead of eight hours to work today, if I only had two, you know, what are the most important things that I need to get done and what can I defer? What can I procrastinate, what can I push out till tomorrow? And most of the time, most of my list, I can push out till tomorrow. So I do that. Now my day opens up for more important stuff, you know, and if I push something for a few days in a row, it wasn't that important, right? It wasn't that important. So defer and delegate. And that leads us to the last one. So plan, delegate and focus. Now focus is where I personally get my most 30 minute hours, right? And so when you think about focus, first think about on the day before vacation, what doesn't happen, right? There's no idle chit chat, there's no long conversations. You're not as susceptible to the shiny objects because you're so on task, right? So those little ads when you're scrolling, Instagram or Facebook or whatever, they don't have as big of effect on you when you know, when you're really, really focused? Right. The other, let's see, so you're, you're an England fellow. So do you like James Bond movies?

Sure. Then we all.

Okay, I do, I love them. Do you know in 1963, the very first James Bond movie came out. Do you know which one that was?

No.

Okay, so you, the answer, you're correct. No, no. You just said the answer. You are correct. It was Dr. No no. And so what happens on the day before vacation? You become Dr. No. So people say, blank, can you do this? Blank. Can you do this? Can you? No, no, no, no, no. I say no is my default answer on the day before vacation. My plate is full. I am not accepting anything else. And what I'm asking you to do is to bring that back into your normal day. Right? Your normal day. So saying no no needs to be your default answer to most things. And, and you know, I'll say I've got to check my schedule or I'm not sure I' project. I'm working on. Whatever you have to come up with for yourself to make no your default answer, that's key. Now that's key for the 30 minute hour. But the no, the Dr. No is also key in you avoiding the 90 minute hour. So the 90 minute hour is where someone asks for an hour of your time and it takes 90 minutes. You're the big loser there. Or someone says, could I just have 10 minutes of your time? And it takes 30 minutes. Right? So we want to avoid that. So being doctor knows go is is really key. All right. A few other things on focus. The day before vacation, people tend to stay on schedule. So if they say, I'm going to do this at 1 o', clock, this at 2 o', clock, this at 3 o', clock, they tend to stay on schedule. So look to push yourself, map your day out as completely as possible and then push to stay on schedule. And one of the ways they do that is that they use timers. And so I use a lot of timers. So if I'm going to do, I'm going to check email, I'm going to say list is 15 minutes, 30 minutes. That's all I'm to give myself that, that amount of time to check email. So I'll, I'll tell my, I, I'll tell Siri to set a timer right for 15 minutes. I can use a voice command and do that. So use timers throughout the day, that'll increase your productivity. And then where I personally get my most 30 minute hours is that on the day before vacation, people become masters of tasking. Now tasking has three components. Single task, multitasking and batch tasking. Now single tasking, that is where that's my sweet spot of productivity. And single tasking is total focus on the single one task you're doing that typically is, is a task that only you do or you do the best. And so for example, I can get an hour's worth of article writing, I write a lot of articles. I can get an hour's worth of article writing done in 30 minutes if I'm totally focused on that and the outside world is gone. Meaning my phone is maybe totally off or at least no rings, dings and bings, right? I, I have no, nothing open on my computer except the one screen. Some people even turn off their wi fi so they're not interrupted in any way. But I'm single minded focused on that one thing. My doors close. You know, my wife knows that I'm in, in single tasking mode mode and I stay in that mode and I wipe out all distractions. Now I will say I got better. When I first started single tasking I had the monkey mind. Hey, don't forget to do this. Hey you got this. Hey this. Blah blah, ideas were popping in and so to tame the monkey mind I have a scrap, pieces of scrap paper and a pen and when the thought comes I capture the thought and I just put it in my little daytimer, you know and then I get right back to what I'm doing and over time I quieted it down. So now I can come in here and I, I crank out, out, you know, more than in 30 minutes than I used to do in, in more than an hour. So that single tasking mode super important but you really have to kind of push out all the distractions completely so that that's single tasking. Multitasking is when you can do two things at the same time. Without sacrificing the quality of either one. Right. So I, I can't do this podcast and check my email at the same time in a high quality way. But there's many things that you can do together. For example, I can listen to your pod driving in my car. I can do high quality of both of those, right? Or make phone calls while I'm in my car or exercise and listen to a podcast or make a phone call. Right. I, I have a peloton bike, but I have a little insert that turns it into a desk. So literally I can pedal. Sometimes sweat drops on whatever I'm working on, but I can work out and, and do, there's my type A coming through. You know, work out. No excuse not to work out because my bike turns into a desk. But there's many things, there's many synergies there. You know, I, I love my family, but I loved exerc, taught the kids how to play tennis. So we would go out and play 30 minutes of tennis. Well, that was 30 minutes of tennis and 30 minutes of exercise hours worth of stuff in just 30 minutes. So look for those synergies and especially where you can keep the quality of both those items high. And then the last one is batch tasking. Now, you know, when you look at the people a day before vacation, they're batching everything. Like for example, if you have three errands to raise, run, you're not going to run an errand, come back, run an errand, come out. No, you batch them together. You go out, you run all the errands, you, you put all your phone calls, you're, you will get an hour's worth of phone calls done in 30 minutes. If, if they're all spread out all over your day. But you, you push it into 30 minutes. Say I got to make these three calls in 30 minutes. Now you know, it's 10 minutes a call. And it helps you that, the batching of that helps you email batching working, you know, on the computer, you know, I'll even batch, My wife and I will batch our communications with. We used to text each other all day long and interrupt each other. Now we have a shared note. There's a, on the iPhone, there's a notes app and you can share the note with someone else. You can add stuff to it, but they don't, you know, there's no ring dings or bings, but you can go in and look at it. And the last thing that people did on the day before vacation is they batched their Distractions, kind of like what I, what my wife and I do there. But for example, let's say you're going into the agency and you tell everybody, look, look, from 9:00am to 11, I'm going to be in this office in single tasking mode. If there's a fire, come in and get me. Otherwise, don't come through that door, don't touch the door. But at 11 o', clock, I'm going to emerge from my single focus time and I am going to answer all the questions you had and give you 20 minutes of, you know, focus time for you. Right? So, so this kind of almost office hours concept, you batched all those distractions for those first few hours into that 20 minutes and then you can handle them quickly. Boom, boom, boom, boom. That's key. So think 30 minute hour. You already know how to do it. Day before vacation mode, PDF, plan, delegate, focus. And the one overarching thing that happens on the day before vacation is that you release your inner perfectionist. You release your inner perfectionist. Done is better than perfect. The deadline is here. You, you can't, you know, you have to get it done. And just doing that alone begins to help you get a lot more stuff done. And like the day before vacation, you could give yourself a reward end of the day, especially if you had a bunch of 30 minute hours. Give yourself some of that time with the memorable moments. Give yourself some time for your hobbies, give yourself some time for connecting, you know, with nature or whatever you want to do. And so that is the 30 minute hour.

Wow. So, so interesting and such a good way to show that we actually already know how to do this. We just don't apply every day. It's really interesting what you talked about. Single tasking, multitasking and batch tasking. I've recorded an episode about batch tasking before. Such an efficient way to do things. But I've always been a believer until now that there was no such thing as multitasking, because I feel like humans can typically only think about one, do practically think about one thing at once. So multitasking is actually leads to a lot of inefficiency. But actually you've just described multitasking in a way that actually is true. Like, you know, like you say we can drive and listen to a podcast or make a phone call. So that is, that is really interesting. Tell me this though, so I intellectually get everything you said and no doubt I'm going on holiday on Friday 13th January, so no doubt on 12th January, I will be totally achieving lots of 30 minute hours. But when you don't have that deadline and you've got more time, how do we make sure we don't flow back into our old habits of getting distracted and you know, letting someone steal an hour of your time, like you explained, or just making sure that we keep that discipline of focus and planning and sticking to the 30 minute hour?

Yeah, I think if I gave one key, it would go back to next day planning. That that would be the one keys to never let a day end without planning the next one. And so if you'll do that, even if, you know, at the end of the day you're brushing your teeth and you don't have a plan, you put together a plan and you know, that's probably the biggest thing. And I, I do this, you know, day before vacation mode, you know, every single day to some degree. But it starts with me planning. So that night before, you know, planning out my day, especially that first hour is kind of critical that when you wake up, you just get going, you know what you're going to do and, and you, you've, you've decreased the resistance to whatever the things you're trying to do, you know. Right. Especially first in the day. Because if you can win that morning, typically you'll, you'll win the day and by the afternoon, the day from you. But that morning time is yours. So, so anyway, but, but planning the day over, planning the day scheduling, using timers, you know, and, and once you start doing that, once you get into this habit of kind of over scheduling day and you can schedule blocks for thinking and exercise and eating and all that. But like the day before vacation, do a little over scheduling and then use timers, you know, and say, hey, I'm gonna, you know, wherever your distractions come from. For me it's typically online, I'll be honest. So it's either, you know, social medias or, or you know, researching something, then getting lost, you know, in all kinds of stuff. And I wake up and it's two hours later, you know, and I really haven't done anything. So, so that is, is key is, is that, you know, is having that schedule and then setting that, that limits on the time. The other thing, you've talked about this on your podcast before. Brian Tracy wrote a book about it, you know, and he called it Eating the frog. Right. And so there's a saying that, you know, if you eat a live frog first thing in the morning, the rest of the day is all downhill, you know, about something you've talked about. And, and that is doing that harder task first, you know, and so some of that, you know, can also play out, is that the night before now, I like to do, I like to get a little morning momentum, so I like to put some small nuggets in, you know, some tadpoles first. But I do, you know, before noon, I want that frog to be eaten, you know, before noon. So getting that bigger project done helps out. Having reminders and cues. Right. Like, I've got a little card up here, here. You know, day before vacation mode, you know, some people, I might talk about day before vacation mode so much. People say, blaine, where are you going? Well, I'm not going anywhere, but I'm. I'm. I'm making, you know, making believe it's the day before vacation because I want to get all these things done, you know, and then giving yourself a reward at the end of the day, you kind of get conditioned to say, if I get X part of my list done today, then I'm going to have the glass of wine with dinner, or I'm going to, you know, watch a little extra TV tonight or, you know, whatever that little reward is, is for you and putting those things in place. And we talk about habits and setting up new habits. But. But once you establish some of those things. Yeah, over time now we can talk about how to create a new habit in 21 seconds. But. But brain science, neurologically, it takes about 21 days for the habit to start to form and take 63 days for it to be able to run on its own without you having to kind of think about it.

Yeah, that's so interesting. I am a massive fan of plan planning my day. I do it every single day. I'm also a big fan of morning and evening rituals, which is a Michael Hyatt type of concepts, which just basically says you start and end your day in exactly the same way. And for a lot of us who are working from home, that becomes particularly important because you need to have a sense of leaving the office. So for me, my day ends with me closing my computer down and shutting my camera off and turning the lights off and shutting the door. But my day always starts with planning the day, and I'm a massive fan of everything that you just said, so I'm glad to see I'm getting some of this right. I plan every single day. Today's been a particularly busy day for me, with lots of client calls and podcasts and so on. So planning my day is super important, and it means That I feel like I'm moving the needle forward in my business rather than just being a busy fool. I think it's really interesting, Blaine, that many, many years ago I wrote a blog called Being a Busy fool. And it was a, you know, in my early days of coaching, back in 2013 and, or even earlier than that. And it's not a very long article, but when I look at Google Analytics, it's always the most searched article because clearly a lot of people are typing being a busy fool. And none of us want to be busy fools. Filling our days with stuff so that we feel productive. But then we look back and think, well, I actually haven't really focused on those big priorities. So let's just see. Let me test you now because we're going to run out of time. But I do want to ask you before you go about the 21 second habit and how, how, how we can form new habits in 21 seconds rather than 21 days. So can you do that in a real nutsh. Nutshell. And maybe we'll get you back again to dig into it in more detail on another episode?

Yes, I'm going to treat it like it was the day before vacation. And so. All right, so just like the, you know, the 30 minute hour, the 21 second habits, you already know how to do it. You're already a habit master. Okay. So I often talk to people, you know, about habits that you already have that you don't have to think about, like brushing your teeth. Everybody brushes your teeth. I'll tell a story about my wife. This is how I discovered the 21 second habits. She had to fill out this headache log and she couldn't do it and she'd lose the log and forget. And then one night I realized she brushes her teeth every night and every morning two minutes, just like the dentists say. And so the first key to the 21 second habit is what we call habit linking. So she put the headache log under the toothbrush. When she brushed her teeth, she filled out the headache log. She did it 90 days in a row, you know, and she went from daily migraines to maybe once every couple of months she'll have a migraine. So the first key there is habit like linking. The second key is urge surfing. You need to surf some kind of an urge, a desire to give you the energy to do the habit, the new habit that you're linking to the existing one. So for me, I had, what I want to do is I want to start a new habit of this, of reading The Bible Bible app. But then I want to take a mind shower. And so I wanted to wash my mind every morning, just like I shower my body. And so I said, blaine, what do you do without any willpower required first thing every morning? Yes, hello, smartphone. I turn my smartphone on, right? So what I did is I moved all the apps off the homepage and I just put the Bible app in headspace. That's one I. One of these apps I use for a mind shower. And when I open my phone, I have this desire to want to check my text messages. My son lives in Denmark over by you, and. And I want to check the orders that came in and the news and the social media. Like, I have this big desire to find out what happened in the world while I was asleep. And I surf that urge, and I say, I can't touch any other buttons until I do those. Those two. Now, what I like about those apps is they track how many days in a row has Blaine gone in there? And Today was day 17. 21 days in a row that I've woken up, opened my cell phone, my smartphone, my iPhone, you know, and I did those apps and then I went about the rest of my day.

So.

So the one thing is habit linking. Find a habit you're already a master at. Link to that. Surf some urge to get yourself to do the one. And then the last part is leverage. Leverage. And you can give yourself a carrot, a reward, or a stick, a penalty if you don't keep the habit. But once you get three or four days in a row, you don't want to break the chain. And psychologically, it becomes really, really strong. And one last example, I did have a client, and she's like, blaine, I want to do that next day. Planning. The planning. I'm not doing it. I'm like, ann, what do you do first thing in the morning that you don't even have to think about? She goes, well, I wake up, I'm still asleep, but I walk to the coffee maker and I make the coffee. And I said, that's great. And put a. A pad of paper and a pen by the coffee maker, go to the coffee maker, make the coffee, smell the coffee, get all excited to have that coffee, but you can't take a sip until you start that plan, even if it's just, here's the top three things I'm going to do today, right? And. And so for her, now she has this new habit in 21 seconds linked to the old. No willpower required. Surf the urge, make it happen. That that's probably the quickest rendition.

I don't think we've done that justice. So I'm definitely going to ask you to come back and dig into that more because it is really fascinating. And I, I mean, I. Half the most of the audience will be listening to this on a podcast, so they won't be able to see me. But by my door on the floor, I've got a piece of paper that says turn your camera off. Because I keep forgetting to turn my camera off at the end of the day. And I figured the only way I'm going to remember this is by having something that shouldn't be there. And I'm hoping that because I'm going to repeat that, then I will sort of be able to link turning the camera off to shutting the door. But I'm not there yet. So listen, I. Like I said, I think we should bring you back because I think a lot of people will be really interested to talk to learn a bit more about that than the sort of superficial two minutes I gave you to describe it. But I'm just conscious of trying to keep these podcasts to sort of around about a half an hour mark. And I also want to ask you the question that I ask all of my guests, which is if you could go back in time and give your younger self just starting out in business a piece of advice, what would it be?

Yeah, I mean it would, would be don't underestimate the power of your own mind and your thoughts. That, that would be my thing. I think that's, you know, when you argue for your limitations, you get to keep them. And, and I wish I argued for less of my limitations and, and kind of had more of a growth mindset and, and the way that you look at the world is, is, is, is kind of how the world shows up. So I think that would be the biggest thing, you know, and maybe second if I throw a second one in there to get couple a good mentor. So that, that also helped me.

Good, good bits of advice. I love asking that question because we always get such a varied response. Now if people want to find out more about you, Blaine, where would they go?

Real simple, just go to blaintedx.com so B L-A I N E T-E-D X.com there you can opt in to get my TEDX talk that I did about this concept of white table. What you think about, you bring about and yeah, and then we'll be connected. You'll get my articles. If I could serve you in any way because be happy to do it. Great.

Well we will include that in the show notes and just want to say a big thank you for joining us today. That was absolutely fascinating. I always love a podcast where I leave having learned something that I can really apply for myself. So I'm definitely going to start applying this day before the holiday. And I'm glad by the way I answered that question in the right way that wasn't seeded for me to answer it like that.

So no, that's and that's, yeah, that shows that it works. Right? You recall that most productive day. Right? So that's awesome. You did great.

Great. Thanks so much for joining us today. All right.

Thank you so much for having me. I'll leave you with this. The bad news is time flies. The good news, you're the pilot. So pilot. Well, my friends, pilot.