Make Time For What Matters

Brendon Burchard on cutting non-essential tasks and delegating to focus on what actually matters. He argues that assertiveness about your time, not just managing it better, is what lets you build meaningful work and deeper connections.
Think about this. Doesn't this, when you know this rule, when you know these rules, doesn't it feel more possible to look at something like this, like none of this? You want to be assertive in your life, do this when you get home. What is assertiveness, Brendan? What does this mean? Do this get around people who are constantly talking about these things. That peer group will change your life. What are we going to delete? What are we going to remove? What are we going to take away? So we just work through the calendar of the last year. What did not need to happen, what did not move the needle, what was not necessary. And remember, I want you to all hear this because some people still are trapped in 30 years ago research. It's not the Pareto principle. 80, 20 is actually not how high performance happens. The good news is high performance happens at 60, 40, not 80, 20. The research is super clear. High performers spend 60% of their week on needle moving activities. They're human just like the rest of us. The other 40%, they got to do email too. And slack and workplace too. They got to take the dumb call too. They got a prospect too. They're doing other things that might not lead to a spiritual result, that don't push it forward, that don't move the big needle. Right. All it is, is like they're handling life and work just like everyone else. And we think they're doing it 100%. They're not doing it 100%. They're doing 60% of their time. They're very clear. You know what that leads to. It means about 3.2 days of your week. Have to be really thoughtful about the major things that you should be doing. Other things will fill in there that, you know, one call, you gotta do that meeting with the employee. Like stuff fills it in. You need to know your needle moving activities, those are your most important ones. That's only 60% of your week. That's good news. 40% is everything else. What we need to know is what that 40% is on a recurrent basis and delete it. Right? Get rid of it. And I mean you can be extreme at this because if you delete it, you can always bring it back. But I always go be assertive in the deletion. Right? Some of you guys saw this last year Shopify joined many other companies in this idea of they stopped doing standing meetings, recurring meetings with three people or more across the entire company, that we no longer do weekly meetings with more than three people. You just don't do it there's no reason for it. It ends up being wasting a lot of people's times. We're going to delete that entirely. And they saved over a million hours from the employment force already. A million hours where now those people were doing stuff. See, it's simple. What can you delete for me? I tell people, most people, I'm like, make sure you delete that hour of social media. That was just consumption. I know most people are doing two or three hours, but I want you to make sure you get an hour back a day. I need you to delete something from your day. I want an hour back. This is the gift I wanna give you. Delete an hour somewhere of stuff that you do. Either be more planned or efficient at it. Get an hour back. Can you all say it with me? Get an hour back. Write it down, underline it. Get an hour back. It's the best gift I give to people all the time. I want an hour back a day. I don't care where it comes from, but you gotta delete something to get it. I want an hour back. That's it. I will change your life. An hour back a day. That's 30 hours a month. That's 30 hours a month. That's three to six months. You get back a year. It's unbelievable. I just need an hour. That's it. I'm not asking something crazy. I'm not asking for five. I'm not asking you to change your life. I'm not even asking you to change anything in your life except to delete stuff so that you get an hour back. If we can do that, we're on. We're in motion now. I'm going to ask, well, is there anything there that we could just delegate because it's not moving the needle or it's not an initiative important enough to double down on. Is there something we can delegate? Just, like, hand it to somebody else. It's still important. It's not your important thing. There's many things that are important, but it's not your important thing. And you know the difference. Lots of important things, but not your important thing. In my company, there's a million important things across all of our companies. There's so many important things, but they're not my important thing. And every time someone tries to make my important thing, I have to tell them, that's not my important thing. And they're offended and I go, I'm sorry, not mine. So you got to be willing to hold the line there about what your important thing is. And really delegate it. If we can just do these three. Three simple things. I'll have some more this afternoon, but I think you get the idea. If we can do these things, then and only then, I'll get to more this afternoon of these ideas. But then you and I can talk about what are we going to add. But I'm not going to add anything ever. This is why people love working with me. I'm not going to add anything to your life. Okay, I thought that was funny, but I'm not. I'm going to work with you. You're going to be like, he didn't ask me to do tens of people's fear of working with a coach. The coach is going to ask me to do 70 more things. Actually, they're going to make sure you're going to do probably 59 less. That's the power. They're just going to help you kind of find what really matters at this stage for you and really work this. It's very rare that I add a bunch of new projects or priorities or initiatives for the company or for a person. They usually kind of got them. They just haven't doubled down on that area. That's important. What are their big initiatives? What really matters right now? Go focus deep. Work important work. That's what I mean by double down. It's like, that's the important thing. You're gonna do that thing. You're gonna make that thing great. Delete everything else, delegate everything else. And then we can think about things to add. But this is about it. And see, when you think about this, doesn't this. When you know this rule, when you know these rules, doesn't it feel more possible to look at something. So many slides like this, like, none of this. You want to be assertive in your life. Do this when you get home. What is assertiveness, Brendan? What does this mean? Do this, get around. People who are constantly talking about these things. That peer group will change your life. When you're around, people are moving. Let me go, Let me go. Let me go. Tell the person, right, Take them. Say, get moving. Oh, no, you're on day three. Grab them. Shake him. Say, get moving. Yeah, let's get moving. All human beings, what we really desire, once we get past safety and sustenance, are these four aspirations. We want a greater sense of aliveness. That might mean presence, consciousness, awareness, vibrancy, passion, enthusiasm. We all want more of that. Some people call it adventure. Some people call it just the spice of life or joie de vivre, whatever it is. We want a sense of aliveness. The second aspiration we talked about was deep connections. That means your relationships. At the end of our lives, it's the relationships that matter so much to us. And we know from research that the deeper relationships you have, the longer we live. Third, meaningful pursuits. Some people get this through creating, some people get this through service. But I'm here to tell you the important phrase here is meaningful pursuits. You have to pursue something. We all want to get better, to become more, to be a better leader, A parent servant role model. That sense each day that we have something to do that matters. Growth Day. World's number one system for achieving it. We know from research. To improve your life long term, you got to try track your habits. You need a mindset journal. You got to have a goal setting system. You need deep dive education, you need coaching. You got to have ongoing conversations with other people about your personal and your professional goals. Our goal for you is to help you make self improvement a way of life by giving you things that give you the guidance, the inspiration, the drive and the motivation to continue becoming more and more successful, health, healthy and happy in your life. Every day is a great day to grow. We say that every day in growth day. Let's make this day the day you begin that journey.










