Discipline vs Distraction

Number four, daily block time. If your day is not blocked out for significant progress forward to ones of your projects or your goals, you're living a reactive life, and it's killing you. It's the oldest thing in the book of productivity. Discipline equals freedom. The more you are disciplined. Because look at this. Look at the alternative, okay? If you're not doing block time, here's what your day might look like. You have all these different slots of time, right? And you're just gonna plug in as you go through the day. You're gonna plug in, oh, I'll work some there, and I'll work some there, and then I'll try to cram stuff up right. At the end of the day, I'll try to cram that sucker in. Any crammers? Crammers. Crammers. Crammers. Okay, just checking. No judgment. No judgment. You're just not going as fast as you could. That's all. Crammers. I love crammers. Yeah, just like, because they're easy to.

Get, to move faster.

Because you do have that diligence of when there's a deadline and it's on, you can go. Which really serves you. But we got to take you from a crammer to a preparer to a high performer. And the way that we do that is to look at this and go, listen, if you keep leaving all these time slots to randomness, what happens is they start to get filled with the big D. Distraction. Some reason, it seems like this hit home for some people. I don't know why, how many recognize what I'm talking about here? So now you add up. Take this out. You might not be thinking too seriously about it, but let's say that's like a day. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 work hours. You didn't know I drew that on purpose. Now watch what happens. Let's scroll that down. Let's call it. That. Bless you. If you leave your time to. To randomness, you are stealing from your greatness. If you leave your time to randomness, you are stealing from your greatness. Bit by bit, hour by eight hour, day by day, week by week, month by month, quarter by quarter, year by year, and decade by decade. And it's the little things like this where you're like, oh, my gosh, I didn't get anything done. Because you've got all these random approaches to your day. And so for those who are like, but, Brenda, I'm a free spirit. I'm like, oh, God, I love free spirits. Me too. Let's go on a yoga retreat. I don't have any time. Oh, free spirit. No time for yoga retreat. Aw. You know why free spirit ain't got no time for real good retreat? Because they ain't got no discipline. If they had some discipline, free spirit would have time for some yoga retreat. So if you want more free time, you need more discipline time. It's so simple. I said, well, what if I learn to block time? And I did simple things like this? What if I said, let's see, let's call this just for ease. Let's go. 8, 9, 10, 11, 12. 1, 2, 3. Sorry. 4 and 5. What if I did this? And what if I asked what is the primary projects that have to happen this week and how can I build it so that my mornings are done in such a way that those primary big things, those things that must be created or done, that I block timeout and it's protected, meaning I just say, okay, block, block, block, block, block. And I let any randomness that has to come in, any randomness, if it has to come in, it can come in over here. But maybe I got this one blocked and I got that one blocked for keep up. Okay, I let those random things come in, and they're not necessarily distractions because I'm on my way, but maybe they're more incentive distractions there. Let's call it response time. Responses a little different, right? A distraction from a response. And so, well, guess what happens over a period of time as you draw this down, even if you do have time available, you get the idea you're just checked, check, check. You're just getting stuff done, and now you're not at the whim so much. So one of my big things is I just said, from now on, I don't do any reaction in the morning. My morning block time to create and do the necessary steps and big projects or priorities that must happen to move my life forward. My reaction, I'll do that later. So I'll reply to my email or I'll take voice messages, or I'll take meetings in the afternoon, not the morning. Now, some people, depending on what your career is or what you do, maybe you can't do that. Maybe you can't have your whole morning, but you can have your first two hours. You can have your first two hours. Next time you get that meeting invite, don't do it in the first two hours. Move it. A Fortune 50 CEO taught me this. He said, brennan, I do no calls until after lunch. I'm like, oh, my God, how Did you get away with, I'm the boss. Dang. Nice. Now, hey, look, if you're customer service, you got to get to work and you got to start responding. That's one thing. That's customer service. But if you're the owner, the small business owner or the leader, and you have the ability to either delegate or decide or let people wait on you, you do that, it's hugely important for you to get more block time. Because, listen, the more block time you have up front, the more freedom you gain on the back. More block time up front, more freedom on the back. More block time up front. So in other words, more scheduled time towards the things that matter, the more vacation time for you and your family. Now, you're not like, ah, I wish we could get vacation one day. You're like, oh, my God, what are we going to do with all this vacation? That's how you get ahead. Block time is everything. Everything. I meet people all the time. I'm going to write a book one day. Show me. Show. Show me the blocks of time that you're going to write the book. Otherwise, it's not even a wish. It's not a dream, it's not a goal, it's not a project. It's barely a scant hope. If it doesn't land on the scheduler, if it's not in the calendar, you just won't do it. What you'll do is you'll feel you'll fill all these blocks with the distractions, and all of a sudden, guess what? Your business is literally in the red. Your ability to celebrate, your ability to catch up, your ability to move forward, it's gone. So one of the easiest ways that I know a high performer is I say, come over here, open up your calendar, let me look at it. First thing I'll do when I'm coaching a big executive or an entrepreneur. Let me look at your calendar. Well, let me tell you. No, no. Give me the calendar. Well, no, no, no, don't. I don't want. You don't understand. I have this universe, right? I don't understand. I don't understand anything. So give me your calendar so I can understand. And I look at that calendar, and if it is not dang clear on their calendar what the activities, the projects and the tasks are that they are moving forward, then I know they're in a life of reaction and taking somebody from a life of reaction to the charge. Life is so easy. Master that calendar, man. I should be able to walk in your life. Look at your calendar.

Go, ooh.

This is clearly what she's building towards. This is clearly what he is developing in terms of competency. This is clearly what this person is all about. And after, in their life, there's all the things they're doing to learn, they're, there's the seminars they're enrolled in, the certifications, the masterminds, or just here's the books that they're reading. I schedule out the books that I'm gonna read. Otherwise I just gather a bunch of books, I put em on a shelf and they look nice. I schedule a book. This book done this week. This book done this week. This book done this week. If I don't do that, then I'm just awake. Then what happens is when I have some free time, I ask my friends, so like, what books are you reading? Oh, that sounds good. And I grabbed that book and I. And now I'm completely reactionary and ultimately a lemming. If the only books you read, the only things you respond to, the only things that you do, are issued to you by other people, then you're a follower, then you're conforming, then you're lacking that conscious drive that makes us feel so alive. When you are designing your day, designing your week, designing your life, you come back to life and you all deserve that. So turn to the person left, right, shake them and say, design your life.

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