In this solo episode of the No Days Off podcast, host Brian Gubernick expands on a statement from his partner Ben: “Do not take a year to accomplish something that you can get done in 30 days.” He argues that many business owners stretch timelines because they spread their attention across too many tasks instead of going all‑in on the highest‑impact work. To illustrate a concrete solution, Brian recounts an interview with James Murphy, founder of LMNT (formerly Element), who implemented a “3‑1” working cadence: three weeks of intense, outcome‑driven sprint work followed by one week of rest, assessment, and planning. Brian explains how the sprint weeks demand blinders, ownership, and strict prioritization, while the rest week provides recovery and strategic clarity. He connects this model to the broader principle of focusing on the top 20 % of priorities, acknowledging the inevitable chaos and short‑term discomfort that come with such focus. Brian shares that he is currently testing the framework himself, noting early signs of accelerated progress despite some chaos. He ends with a reflective “focusing question” for listeners: identify areas where they are spending excessive time, and consider what systems, people, or frameworks (like the 3‑1 cadence) could compress those timelines.
Chapters
Thank you for joining me today. It's Brian Gubernick, and welcome to the No Days Off podcast, where we believe that every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. Last week, my partner Ben and I ran our metrics mastermind that we run every single quarter for 100+ top, top business owners around the nation. And during that mastermind, Ben actually made a statement that I think was pretty profound. I've heard him say it before, and he shared it with this group on one of our days, and he made a very specific statement. He said, "Do not take a year to accomplish something that you can in fact get done in 30 days." Do not take a year to accomplish something that you can get done in 30 days. Now, what was Ben really talking about? My takeaway or my thoughts around this. What Ben was referring to is that because we do not go all in, because we don't solve important problems sometimes, because we are super, super busy and our calendars get loaded and we become super efficient in our operations, but we don't become fully productive. We therefore lengthen the time it actually takes to get certain things done. In other words, we're treating a lot of things as equal as opposed to taking the most important things and going all in on them. And as a result, it may take a year to get something done that we can in fact knock out in a month. Now, when Ben was sharing that, it reminded me of, of an interview I was just reading. With the founder of LMNT, uh, hydration, or LMNT electrolytes. Many, many of you may be familiar with it. It's— I call it LMNT. Maybe it's called LMNT. I'm not quite sure, but it's, it's the letters L-M-N-T, and it's something I drink every single day. Side note, uh, for the electrolytes, for the salt, and I'm a big believer in it. I love the product. Well, the, the CEO of that company, his name's James Murphy. In the interview, he said that in early 2022, his company Element shifted from this traditional work structure that they were running to what he called a 3-1 working cadence. And the 3-1 represented 3 weeks of, of a sprint in which they do focused work with very clearly defined outcomes, and then 1 week to rest and assess. After those 3 weeks, during which they'd assess the impact of the outputs from the work they just did during the sprint, and then they'd plan for that next sprint. His thoughts were that they would improve the output by creating more space for critical rest that kind of counterbalanced the large demands of the work. Uh, he thought that he would create space to give structure for assessment and coordination of resources. And then lastly, thought they developed clarity of action towards the highest priority work, which is what I really want to emphasize here. So, so they rolled out this 3-1 framework so that they could get more out of their working time and more time for life outside of the office. Now, they were inspired by a number of tech companies that that have done things of this nature. And Element sells consumer products. They're not selling tech, but James had seen it work in the tech industry and thought this process of sprints is a very effective working system in software development. It could be an effective working system for his company as well. So, he comes up with this sprint focus and the execution of the 3 sprint weeks, just so we're clear, they're intended to be periods of deep, deep accomplishment on clearly articulated highest value driving tasks. In other words, fully focused, blinders on, nothing else matters but what was— what is defined to be the most important items. Internal and external communications are on, meetings are happening, projects are being worked on, but they're very specific to the intended accomplishments. So, it wasn't just a function of work long hours and work weekends, but it was to be more purposeful around it. And sure, longer hours went into it and weekends did occur, but ownership over an outcome also occurs. And this 3-1 created this kind of counterbalance that they were going for. Now, let's bring this back to what I was originally talking around. Ben made the statement, never spend a year on something that you can accomplish in 30 days. And I love that statement, and we've got to bring some tactic to it. How do we, how do we fix that problem if we're experiencing it? If we feel like we're working on things, but they're going way past how long they should take, an option would be running a 3-1, 3 sprint week, 1 rest week sort of framework or model or something similar to that where you go all in channel all resources, put blinders on, and don't do anything that's not aligned with the desired outcome. Now, this is easier said than done. I understand if you're part of the No Days Off Nation, sure, you're focused, you have goals, but you also are probably managing a lot of responsibilities, right? So you probably got a lot of things going on, and I totally understand that. The truth of the matter is though, if you want to be massively successful, you have to go all in on your 20%. And when you do that, things will fall by the wayside. There will be a slight degree of chaos. And that's the sacrifice, maybe not even slight degree, maybe a big degree of chaos, but that's the sacrifice you make for accomplishment in 30 days versus something taking a year. Now, in my experience, Sure, this may cause a lot of noise. And it's really hard to do, at least initially, until you see the benefit of the absolute focus I'm talking about in these 3 sprint weeks. In other words, you feel bad in the moment, but then when you accomplish the objective in a period that's maybe 11 months quicker than it would have been, you start to get okay with the chaos that you created, the things fallen by the wayside. So, the idea here is, and whether the 3-1 is right for you, the 3 sprint weeks, 1 rest week is right for you is up for you to determine. I do think we can all agree though that, again, just to circle back on where I started, I think a lot of us are spending months, damn near a year in some cases, doing things that we could accomplish in a few weeks or maybe 30 days or, or maybe 2 months. And we've got to do something about that. And the only way we could do that is eliminate distraction, get more focused. Hence me pitching you on this 3-week 3-1 framework, which in all transparency, I just started testing it out myself. I've run variations of this. I'm in the midst of a sprint right now and I'm experiencing significant progress in specific projects. I'm also experiencing some chaos. And so, I will assess how I feel after the 3 weeks and the accomplishments we had. But if, you know, if I'm basing it on some early indicators, I think this model can be really successful. This framework can be very successful. So the focusing question for you today: where in your world are you spending a heck of a lot more time than necessary to accomplish what you're aiming to accomplish? And assuming so, what tweaks must you make to move those— what you're deeming to be high-priority, you know, outputs or accomplishments How do you, how do you, you know, channel the resources, channel the energy, channel the focus to accomplish these things in a much shorter time frame? How do you go about doing it? Whether it's this framework or something else, I think that's your challenge. That's your focusing question. What changes must you make? What systems must you deploy? What, what people do you have to have rallied behind you and around you to go make this framework or something like it a reality? Something to think around. I think it could change, change the game for you. That's all I have for you today, the No Days Off Podcast. Thank you so much for listening, and remember, every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. So let's get after it.
