Valuing Your Time and the Short & Long Productivity System

The Small business show episode 349 for Wednesday, October 13, 2021. Greetings folks and welcome to your weekly dose of small businessing here at businessshow Co. That's right, we are the show by, for and about small business owners. And we like action. So we turn small business to a verb. Sponsors for this episode include banknovo.com SBS where you can get your free business banking account in just 10 minutes and netsuite.comsbs no matter how big your business grows, NetSuite is the one of a kind financing program that you want to go check out. And they've got special financing available too. We'll talk more about those details a little bit later in the episode. For now, Small businessing here in Durham, New Hampshire, I'm Dave Hamilton and here.

In Lafayette, California, I'm Shannon Jean. How are you man?

I'm good. Did I overdo it with the small business thing on the intro today?

No, I'm a huge fan of that. I use it all the time. I always envision that on a T shirt someday that explaining why it's a verb. Small business is a verb, right?

Yeah.

Then you could tell. Oh yeah. It's because you have to take so much action. And I love it.

It's great. I love when I see the ideas that we have come up with being used by other people. And I don't mean I love it because I get credit for it. I just love when these things start to make it into the society because a lot of times we don't get credit because it wasn't us that influenced them. But I came across, there was a company we were talking with about just doing some ads with them or whatever and they happened to send me their corporate culture document or something. And there was a phrase in there, I don't have it in front of me, so I am paraphrasing but you'll understand why it jumped out to me is and this was like a 12 page document. I don't know why I started reading it, but I got to about page four. Like there was some good stuff in there which we'll probably mind and talk about here on the show. But like on page three or something they said we don't, we're never busy here we are productive. And I was like, oh, look at that. Like that I've been singing those, those praises for like two years now trying to replace the word busy with productive in my vocabulary. It was like I'm glad to see other people in the world and I'm Certain that they did not get it from me or even from someone.

Oh, I don't know. You never know.

You never know.

It could start here now. It's in the lexicon.

It's in the lexicon. But it was like I assuming they didn't get it from us. I still love it. I, in fact I probably love it even more because it means more people are thinking about just being productive. This whole culture of I must be doing something with my time all the time is not good. It's not healthy.

Yeah. And that's not a small business owner mentality, right?

No, you gotta be efficient. Yeah.

Efficient. Get as much done in the least amount of time, least amount of effort. I'm reading it's a book called the People's Tycoon. It's a biography of Henry Ford.

Okay.

And they talk about this it extensively. They measured everything about how many. They called a man minutes. How many man minutes is it going to take to do this and do that? And you know, and they came up with the assembly line process to save, you know, tremendous amount of time. And then they had to figure out the, the limiting factor was the, the people doing the work and how do we make it more efficient without turning into some mind numbing monotonous thing all day. So it's a fascinating.

Yeah, yeah, you mentioned that last week in the episode too. Yeah, yeah, great, great book.

And, and talks a lot about their successes and failures of how they tried to manage the people and everything. So.

And we've been talking, we were talking about, I mean our, our. One of the things we're going to talk about in this episode is managing time. I mean we're already talking about it. We had it on the list. And you mentioned Henry Ford. I. When we started talking about this, I thought of Henry Rollins. So the different Henry's.

I like him.

Yeah. He, he. There is a quote attributed to him and I firmly believe he came up with it. And, and it is. There is no such thing as spare time, no such thing as free time, no such thing as downtime. All you got is lifetime. Go. Yeah, yeah, that's great. Right.

All of those times are. Have their, their value. Right. But yeah, it is true. Time is, I mean I have it in my notes here. You know, it's the greatest gift we've been given.

Right? Yep.

And it's irreplaceable and it's priceless. So you really need to value it. I'm excited to talk about time in a couple of different aspects today. How to value your Time so you're not stuck doing certain things and when it's time to delegate. And also something I've been thinking more and more about long and short term systems that are helping me stay motivated and be successful.

Interesting. Okay, so I'm interested in because, you know, I love systems. We love systems here. Yep. I'm, I'm curious to hear how you differentiate between long and short term systems. I, yeah, this is fascinating to me. I spent. The value of time is something that I have been obsessing over. Especially just earlier today I was telling you I needed to talk to the folks at British Airways about a plane ticket that my daughter has. Right. And the problem is not the problem. The scenario is that I don't fly British Airways. I think I've flown them once and it was through a code share with American Airlines. I don't have any status on, on British Airways. I actually do have one world status because of Americans. So I would get, you know, things if I were flying on, on British Airways. But when I call them, I don't have a special number and my number isn't in their system to be prioritized. And So I waited 40 minutes to talk to a human today for them only to tell me, no, sir, we can't do what you want. That would require us bending the rules. I, I have a feeling if I was of higher status that this rule was not a hard and fast rule, they would have bent it. Right. Like I, I've been through these kinds of things before with airlines where I do have status and it, it makes a difference. Right. You get a different level of customer service. You get people who are given more autonomy to solve problems for customers when you are, you know, someone with status with an airline. Yeah. And so, you know, about 20 minutes into my hold time, I, you know, I was doing things, but I wasn't being as productive as I could be because I didn't want to start some big project and then have to get derailed. So I was doing little things which I suppose are also valuable if they need to get done. But I thought, you know, I wonder what it would cost. Like can I go get a British Airways credit card? And the first year is free, you know, and that earns me some, you know, non zero level of status with British Airways. And then I can call the gold number instead of the blue number and you know, get the right person. That's actually going to solve my problem for me. That was actually how I was thinking and that's what led me to suggest this Topic for the show for today because it's like, I know that's sort of a crazy thing to say to most people. I knew you would appreciate it and I, and I know most of you listening would appreciate that sort of, that. It's, it's a little bit, it sounds a little bit extreme but it's really not. We as entrepreneurs and people who are small businessing every day we have to look for all of those shortcuts to get us what we need when we need it so that we can maximize the time, our lifetime doing other things.

Oh yeah, I mean like the credit card example, getting that card. That's a great way to beat the system if you will beat the system.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And, and we, we did a whole show on credit cards and affinity points and all that kind of stuff. Highly recommended. It's one of the secrets to living a charmed life. Especially as business owners. We have lots of methods to use those cards to benefit you personal life in a non tax or a tax advantaged tax. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Pre tax lifestyle.

So yeah, yeah. They do have a British Airways Chase has their Visa signature card but it doesn't look like it gets me points after I spend some money with them and this, that and the other thing. But I don't think it gets me up to the next level. It might, but it wasn't obvious that it did. So I didn't, I didn't do that. I might still. I tried them on Twitter after the guy on the phone told me he couldn't do what I wanted to do. Well, the Twitter people never know. No, I've had good luck customer service wise and I probably should have started there but I was being impatient. I'm like, oh, if I talk to somebody I can just charm them into it. It turns out, no, not today.

That's funny. That's great. Very good. Well, good. Yeah, I'm excited to, to dig into this time thing. I think it's definitely worth our efforts.

I agree, I agree. The, the next thing that I want to do though, speaking of time, is tell you about our sponsors who can help save you lots of things, including time. If that works for you, Mr. Shannon. Jean.

Yeah, let's do it.

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Yeah. So you know, when you brought up this concept, you know, I asked a couple Questions, you know, like, when is your time more valuable than the task you're working on? Right. We talked about $20 an hour work versus thousand dollars an hour work. Right?

Yeah.

And then I also think of it like, okay, when do you decide to delegate or cut bait and move on to something else? You know, and so we all agree, oh, our time is valuable, but how do you measure it? You know, how do you know? And it brought me back. The first thing I recalled is when, remember we interviewed Gary Von Meyer from Tech Defenders, like episode two, and he made a comment that's really stuck with me is, you know, and it's simple. I'll paraphrase. It was like, when someone else can do my job 85% as good as I can, it's time for me to turn it over to them. Yeah, I thought that that was a great rubric to use as you're okay, can somebody else do this job? Am I trying to build up this, you know, whatever, change the customer service department and implement the two tokens, you know, method of customer service. Well, once people have, are almost there, you should be able to step out and step aside.

Right? Yeah. That's a brilliant thing. It's so hard to do. But when he said, when he explained that to us, it was like a light bulb went off. It's like, of course he's right. He's right. I hate that he's right because it's so simple. But why, why can't I just integrate that into my life?

It's hard to recognize it yourself. So I was thinking one of the ways that you can implement it is to ask someone else to monitor it. Someone that you work with or another employee, a colleague appears like, hey, when you kind of get the sense that, that this person is 80, 85% there, please point it out to me so I can. Maybe you might have to dial down your ego a little bit and let that person take over. Even though it's not going to be perfect or not going to be perfectly the way you would like it.

Yeah, yeah. Ego gets in the way of that a lot.

It does.

And, and you know, I, I, I like the idea of using one's ego as a tool because it is super valuable at times, especially when you're starting your small business. You need to believe that what you're doing is going to work when everybody else is telling you that you are crazy and wrong and, you know, all of that stuff. And so you definitely need some of that ego. But it can hurt when you've grown A little bit. And you know that you're the best one to do the job because you're the only one who's ever done the job and it's working. Right. I mean, you have. You have all kinds of data to support your ego's desire to prove yourself. Right. You know, and there's a lot of that tied up in this. And. But applying that 85% rule takes some of that away, because you can look at it. It allows you to be someone who's working on your business as opposed to in your business. Like it is. That mindset shift. Right there is the key. And I think if you need your ego to be tied into something, it could be into making this smart decision to no longer have doing this job so you can do other jobs, Right? Yeah. And you can reframe that for yourself. But, yeah, it's a great little mind shift. I loved it.

Yeah. So. And on the figuring out how to value your time, I think for. For me, one of the most important things is planning. Planning my time is. Is really important to keep me from just kind of meandering around from one task to the next or one emergency to the next.

Right.

So if I want to get the most out of my day, planning in and blocking out time, I'm a big fan of time blocks and to allow you to focus on certain things. And I'm going to dig into this long and short system that I've come up with in a little bit. But, you know, start your day or start the next day as you're thinking about it, think about what you're trying to achieve. Right. And it's different for all of us and. And manage your time around that system to achieve what you want, and then you're going to fail at it and just adjust and work on it and then come back and try it again and just fail and adjust as you go along, Right?

Yep. Yeah. Failing. Yeah, that's the way it works.

Yeah. And then I think also the Henry Rollins quote, which I really like, but I think it's okay to leave time for unplanned things and make sure you give. Like walking around and talking to your employees or your customers or suppliers, whoever it is that you're going to connect with it, it will help your business. So don't plan yourself into just, you know.

Yeah. Henry Rollins is a. Is an intense dude. Like, it's a great quote, but you have to contextualize it that it's coming from this. Like, if you heard Henry say that to you, you would receive it the right way. That is not a quote. I would say. I'm not that kind of person. Right.

Yeah. It has. It has a lot of truth.

It has truth in it, but it is not universally true. Yeah.

Yeah.

And I agree with that.

Yeah. That wasting time, letting your mind.

Call it muse time. Yeah.

Boy, it can really help to get your brain thinking a little differently and looking sideways at some of the. Maybe some of the problems you're trying to solve. Really, really important. And I think that we can all benefit from doing that a little bit more. Another way that valuing your time is to let others know that your time is valuable and just don't be a doormat for everybody else's time. Right. Stop saying yes all the time. I mean, I love the power of yes, but the power of no is equally or maybe more powerful. Right. We've done a couple episodes way back. Episode 169, the Power of Saying no. Episode 121, Learning to say no. Really good. I listened to them again for this show when we were talking about managing time.

Yeah.

Very powerful messages about how to say no and how that changes other people's perspective of what they can dump on you.

In other words, it's hard as a. As a business owner, you know, especially when you're starting out, you say yes because you need cash. Right. So if somebody says, I want you to do this, you say, great. Like, that's. That's the best thing. Awesome. I get to trade whatever I'm doing my time, our businesses, resources, my resources, whatever that might be for cash flow. Awesome. That gets things rolling. But yeah, saying you have to be careful not to. I liked your term to be a doormat for everyone else. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You know, and then I mentioned time blocks. That really helps for me to limit the distractions and to keep. Especially for tasks I need to, you know, deeply focus on trying to ignore everything during these times. If you're going to block. And you could use that. What was that palmetto method where you set the thing for 20 minutes?

Pomodoro method.

Pomodoro method.

Yeah.

You get one of those little timers. And that works for some people. Turn on. I mean, the number one thing, turn off notifications on your phone so they're not bugging you while you need to focus on other things.

Yeah. I said something to someone trying to explain this concept the other day, and what I said was, and I'm going to pair. I'm going to quote myself, because it was. It was great. And I can't Rephrase it. When I moved email from a push scenario to a pull scenario, my life changed. Oh yeah, because why do I need to be interrupted because you sent me an email? The benefit of email is that it is asynchronous, meaning you and I don't have to communicate at exactly the same time. And if I need to go check my email, guess what? I have the. I totally am capable. I have all these devices that surround me, all of which have email on them. I can see my email anytime I want, pretty much anywhere I want. I do not need to have it telling me when one comes in. And it is so much better for me. Yeah, yeah.

And, and there's apps like you use Sane Docs and stuff to help you manage that. For me, just turning off notifications so I don't look down and see that crazy red number, you know, pulling me check, check, check. You know, really changed my life. And I highly encourage you turn those things off. You can always turn it back on temporarily if you're waiting for some critical email or whatever it is, but try to keep them off. And that's for me, trying to forget this 24, 7 on call lifestyle. I always say kill your phone. And I'm kind of working on this concept in my head on this phone. Free Fridays, where I could be without my phone all of Friday for 24 hours. It'd be an interesting experiment. I'll take a hit, my business will take a hit a little bit. My personal life might as well. But if I let everybody know that I'm not going to have it, then maybe it might be just the best day of the week. I don't know. I'm experimenting with, I just started talking about it and it's brewing this concept. So you'll probably hear more about it.

Interesting. Yeah, I've experimented with it. We had, we made it a short term, in short term, you know, 18 month experiment change with one of the businesses here with Backbeat, where we moved it to essentially a four day a week business. We took off Wednesdays, not Fridays because we found that Fridays are days when lots of activity happens in business. So it was like, okay, great. But having that day off in the middle of, of, you know, a break if, I mean it's great if you got to go to the dentist, but it's also just great to be able to breathe for a day and then, you know, and then come back. It, it will work with the right people. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Luckily I only have you.

You have yourself. Well, I, you may not Be the right person, though, because that's true. What we learned was, people, you need to have the discipline to do your. To, to be driven to do all the work that needs to be done in those four days, as opposed to five. Spreading it out over five. So you're pacing that you had. You know, you need to be more efficient. And I don't mean to say you need to go from 8 hours to 10 hours a day or something like that, but. Yeah, right. But also, I still want to work.

I still want to work.

Right, but also you have to be able to take that day off. And that was the part I had trouble with. And we found that over time, we all had trouble with that. It was like, oh, well, you know, I had some extra things. So I use some of my time on Wednesday to do this, that and the other thing. It's like, okay, wait a minute. Like the whole. Yeah, this is a failed experiment. It's fine. Yeah, we tried. Yeah, it was interesting. Yeah, that's right. But like, when I had my consulting business, there was a period of time after I'd sold my interest in the larger business and just retained some clients. I worked Monday, Tuesday, Thursday for probably 14 months, right up until we started Mac Observer. And then I stayed working Monday, Tuesday, Thursday on the consulting thing and started Mac observer on Wednesdays and Fridays. And that was great because I was only working when I was at other people's houses or job sites or whatever fixing their computers, so there was no work to do at home. So that made that, that, you know, day off thing super easy to do because it was like, well, if you don't. If I don't have a call booked, I'm not going to a call. It's not going to happen. You know. So. Yeah, it was interesting. Yeah.

Yeah. So a couple, my last few comments on this, you know, valuing your time is, one is setting limits with others. You know, before you go into a meeting, mention how long it's going to last. Okay, we're going to. We're meeting for 20 minutes and then stick to it. Or 30 minutes, 15 minutes, whatever it is. Or have the meeting in the hallway, whatever it is. Set time limits for people when you're working with them.

Time limits and no chairs. I'm a big fan of no chairs in person meetings.

The hallway is a great place for a meeting in one of my things and kind of the doormat thing. Don't let others abuse your time. You know, set a time window for people that are late and you could mention it and get the word out that, oh, hey, Shannon, only waits five minutes or 10 minutes, 15, whatever you're comfortable with. And then I leave or I schedule something else. And if someone shows up late, I'm sorry, I'm into my next thing.

Don't I gotta do my next thing. Yeah.

Other people control your time. And, you know, the fascinating thing about some of these things is when the word gets out like, oh, I have this time limit. We're setting all this. I'm being productive. I have these things going on these days. I only wait 10 minutes. There becomes a perception that you're a person that has a ton of stuff going on, even if it's not true.

Sure.

And what happens is what I found is there people put less demands on your time because they know you are be very productive.

Yes. They see you as busy as busy. No, they see it.

And I've noticed that where even if I have time, some be like, oh, yeah, I was going to ask you to do this, but I know you got. You have tons of projects going on. And I used to be like, oh, no. And then I'd wind up doing something I really didn't want to do. So now I just like, oh, yeah, I have a lot going on. And it allows you to pick and choose the things you want to be involved in. It's a. Shifts the framework of time and puts you back in control of your own time.

So this is a lot like saying no, though, because it's not as easy as you make it sound.

But you're doing it subtly.

Right.

You're not saying no. The perception of people around you based on your actions.

I know, I get it. But the thing is you will. People will naturally bring you less opportunities. Now, that's true. So that's the no. Right? It's the pre no, because you're not even getting the opportunity to say no to it. Other people are deciding not to bring it to you. However, if you have sort of created your own Persona, if you will, and people know, oh, this would be a great thing to have Shannon involved in, then they may do that pre filtering for you.

And only everybody who knows me.

Yeah.

Knows I always want to hear about opportunities.

Exactly.

Because I let them in all the time. So you. By picking and choosing. No one's asking me to help them move.

Nobody's. You're not driving anybody to the airport, are you?

No, I'm not. I'll go. Hey, I'll get you. I'll get you an Uber.

Yeah, I got. I got you covered.

I can't take it. Take two and a half hours and, you know, whatever to go to. But, you know, of course, my family and, you know, close friends, it's all different. But I'm just saying, as an example.

Yeah.

Is that you're in charge of your time. You're in charge of how you frame it to everybody else on the outside. And it just, by setting these limits and, you know, you're not being a jerk about it. You're just kind of subtly dropping little hints. And it really, it really works.

It really, you know, why we need to, we need to. This is. I'm not gonna share the entire conversation we have before the show, but this sort of reminds me of, of we have a cultural issue. Like what you just said there. Like, if I, you know, if I was one of your friends, I am, but if I live local. And I said, hey, man, you know, can you drive me to the airport? And. And you simply said, you know, can you drive me to the airport on Tuesday? And you were like, dude, I can't take two and a half hours on Tuesday to do that. But you know what? I'll get you an Uber. Like, like that. That solves my problem in exactly the way I asked for it. I don't want to drive myself to the airport. And for whatever reason, I don't want to get myself an Uber. Right. Like, I've communicated that by asking you to drive me.

Yeah.

And then you say, careful, you don't.

You don't want to come off as a jerk about it.

But why would you. But that's what I'm saying is, is if, if you offer, well, dude, I'll get you an Uber. Like, that could easily be construed as, you know, I'm, I'm lording the, My ability to pay for an Uber over you. And that's not at all it. And I feel like we need to fix that in our society. Like, why would that be? Like, you just solved my problem for me. That's.

Well, and the way I would phrase it is I usually would say something not like, everybody's asking me to drive to the airport.

No, I know, but it's.

But yeah, I would say, hey, I can't take you to the airport on Tuesday. I've got a call scheduled at 3:00'. Clock. I can't shift to. I can't move that. Do you need help? Do you want me to help? Do you want me to get you an Uber? I ask it as a question.

That's much better.

And then give Them the opportunity to say, oh, no, it's the same with people. I would like to see. I would say, hey, I've got a couple of million points on JetBlue or whatever. Can I get you some points and fly you and your, your spouse out so we could spend the weekend together? I ask as a question, I don't say, come on, man, I'm going to fly out. You know, like I'm some kind of big wig.

No, and I.

How you present it.

I think you're right presenting it that way. Also presenting is, you know, with the Uber thing, like, oh, you know, I've got a corporate deal with Uber. I, I can, I can get it pretty cheap. You know, let me, let me just do that. Would you like me to do that?

Credits or something like that? Something, whatever it is.

Right.

How you present it.

You know, I like that idea. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, yeah, because I've done that for people before where I've, you know, I've said I'm going to use points to do this and it's like, no, actually it's not worth points. Those flights are way cheaper than the points are worth. So I'm going to write the check. Yeah, I'm going to save my points. Yeah, it's fine.

There's all kinds of ways, how you phrase it, to do a nice thing for a person without making feel indebted to you.

You don't want them to. Right. There's no indebtedness. It's just I don't want to spend two and a half hours driving back and forth to the airport. That's right.

Yeah, that's true.

I want to help, but not like that.

Yeah, that's right. That's right.

Yeah. I want to define how I'm helping you. Tell me your problem, don't tell me how to solve it. I will. If you want me to solve it. Let me solve it my way. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's interesting.

All right, so before we wrap up today, I want to talk about this, this system I've been working on and we may come up with. Well, I'm sure I'll come up with more details over time. We could do an entire episode, but I just want to put it out there.

Yeah, you said short term versus long term systems and so.

Yeah, yeah, that's right. And we recently did a show about ADHD and small business owners and stuff. We did a couple of shows actually.

Right, yeah.

And one of the things that we talked about and then one of the things we talked about that therapist was tricks and tools to make your day, you know, work better. And, and I just listened to a, a podcast that focused podcast that we talked, that you talked about last week. You recommended it, Dave. Yeah, and one of the, they just had, they had a, a guy on that was talking about, he got diagnosed as ADHD, not until he was like 36 years old. And there's this, I guess there's this concept that, I don't know, Mark Twain came up with about if you have to eat the frog, which is like, do the work you don't want to do. If you have to eat the frog, do it first thing in the morning, get it done so your day can be better.

Right?

But that doesn't work for people like me or ADHD people in this guy's case, that he was explaining. And I'm like, well, I'm the same way. Yeah, I don't want to eat the frog all at once. I lose it. I'm looking for a dopamine hit of something I can get done faster before I tackle, you know, eating the frog. Right. So one of the tricks that I use is to make, to make my day more productive and more and more enjoyable is something I'm coming up with. And I got to come up with a better tagline for it. But this long and short term system that I'm working on. And so what I do is I plan my day with a mixture of long and short term tasks and projects, right? So I always think about my day, what do I have going on tomorrow? But you know, I'm thinking about my evening or first thing over coffee. I start, okay, what can I, what can I do? What am I doing today? The short term tasks that I complete gives me that immediate sense of accomplishment, that dopamine hit that checklist that I know I can put on my to did list. If you don't know what a to did list is, go to BusinessShow Co and search for it and, and you can thank me later. So short term things are things I can get done today, maybe within the next hour, something I can finish and move on from. And in my case, a lot of that is wrapped up around selling things, selling online, right? So if I want to get 20 new products listing listed done, I can do that. I can knock it out and I'll feel, oh, I was productive for the last hour or whatever. But what typically happens is about halfway through this short term task, I start to get bored with it because I'm not a fan of repetition I get.

A bit of work. That's the grunt work. The short term tasks are usually the grunt work that needs to get done. And you haven't decided to delegate? I didn't want to say it's not worth delegating.

Yeah, that's right. At this stage of my life, I'm like, I don't want to delegate this. I'm just going to deal with it myself. And so I start to get a little bit bored. And what I watched happen over time is it's super easy for me to get distracted. Right. Then jump online, read the news, check something else, and magically I lose track of time.

Oh, yeah, right.

And I just like, boom. All of a sudden an hour's gone, I'm like, dang, I didn't get those 20 things done. That was my short term thing. So what I do now and what I've been doing for, you know, maybe the last six months or so is when I start to get distracted and feeling like I've had enough, I jump into a long term task that I'm working on over time.

Really?

Yeah. Like for me, like I'm working on a second edition of the Poshmark Unlocked book, updated for 2021, 2022, all that kind of stuff. And I need to make progress on that each day. But it's hard because it's long, long term. Right. But I need to get it published by the end of the year. So as my short term things start to kind of drag and grind out, I jump into that for a while until I start to get bored of that and I go, I'm going to jump back and sell some stuff because then I can make some money, you know, and it'll kind of reward me in that way.

Right, right.

And this also, I use the same system when it comes to thinking about revenue. You know, I'm just kind of a fiend about this revenue stack. And, you know, my short term work delivers cash to me every single day. Longer term projects takes months or maybe years to complete. Right. But hopefully they deliver larger amounts of cash once they're completed. Like, I sell books every day. A book that took me a year to write generates revenue now for me every single day. Right. Whether I sell one copy or a hundred, something's coming in.

Something's coming in. Okay.

Yeah.

All right. So this thing is fascinating to me. You might not be surprised to learn that I suffer exactly the same type of thing. Right. Where I get the short term stuff done and then I get into wander mode. Now for me, sometimes Wander mode brings me to, you know, a larger project that I need to get done that I've sort of been pushing off. But it might be, you know, a techy thing that I need to, you know, for macgeek gab, I need to keep learning stuff. And so it's like, oh, you know what I got to do is I gotta. I gotta do some research. I gotta set up this whole new router system that's going to take me an hour and a half. You know what? Now's a perfect time. I'm in add mode anyway. This is a perfect thing to consume my attention while, you know, while I'm in this mode. Yeah, but you are in like, you have a list and. Oh yeah. And you are. You are guiding yourself towards the things that you might not even want to do first thing. Right. Like I, for me, setting up a lot of them. That's what I'm saying. Like for me, setting up, setting up a router, you know, diving into my stuff synology and learning some new Docker container or whatever like that. Once I'm doing it, that's super fun for me. It doesn't pay off right away. It often takes me away from the things that do pay off right away. But it's valuable for my talent stack for that particular aspect of my job. Right. It's good to have. It's just like the payoff is not in dollars right away. It's many steps removed from the dollars. But I enjoy it.

However.

You'Re talking about doing things that you don't necessarily enjoy until you've started doing them. Maybe that's the right way to say it. I bet you're like me.

Writing for me and working on the book is great, but the hard part is getting me started. And so I put all these things on my quartet and if you don't know what a quartet is, go have.

One right in front of me.

Go to businessshow.com and search for. I'm sure we've done.

Oh yeah, we have. In fact, you didn't have to search for what's on your to did list. If you just go to BusinessShow Co and look at episode 349. I've put links to all of these things in the show notes already. So you, you.

Yeah, perfect.

We've saved you the work. Yeah, for sure.

So Mike, so when I'm. I'm looking at the screen and I kind of look down, I get start to get a little distracted. I have a part of my quartet is the short term Things I've got to work on that I either put on the, you know, day before or, you know, put on today. But there's always on the right side is my long term projects. And it's like, okay, I have to write every day. That's just, that's just a rule at my, in my office. I have to. And so I just jump over there and work in them now. You know, it's a work in progress. I still futz around and, you know, waste time, but quote, you know, kind of. But I get distracted as well. But I look down enough at my quartet to go, oh, you know what, I could just work on this thing or I've got to do this. Oh, I got to build this thing on my website. Or I've got to do this for. Maybe it's not a business thing at all. I'm involved in a new nonprofit and I told them I'd help to build this manual. So maybe I got to jump into Google Docs and work on that. And you know, so having that guide.

That'S great, that helps me a lot. Okay, so you use your quartet different than the way I use my quartet. And I'm going to explain to all of you what a quartet is. But I believe magic, that there is the quartet litmus test, that we are going to like, coin this phrase here on the small business show. I've given these quartets to a lot of people, and the people who are productive humans immediately integrate them into their lives in some way. Now, you use yours vastly differently than I use mine. That's okay. It doesn't matter that we don't use them the same way. But you use yours. I've given them to other people who have. You know, it's like it sits there, it collects dust. It's never used. If you ask them what kind, because I want to ask you this question. What kind of pens do you use with it? Because, you know, that's a, that's a really interesting thing. They're like, oh, I don't know. I just have the one that came with it. It's like, no, you don't. You're not using it. You're lying to me. Yeah. Yes.

Those pens are crap.

That's right. Yeah, but that's fine. So like, that there is the quartet litmus test and, and the people that are productive. I mean, I probably could predict this from the get go. I don't need to send them to the people that I don't think are going to use them. But I try with Everyone. The quartet is an on desk whiteboard. They come in different shapes and sizes. The one I really like is one that is basically the size of a large keyboard and sits between your keyboard and your computer. And so you can just write on it. It's glass, so you can wipe it clean and keep going. I have one right in front of me here. It is the reason that I no longer interrupt guests when they're talking on interviews, because when I have a thought that I want to ask them a question, I just write it on the thing. Yep. It's great. And I have another one downstairs in my office that I use completely differently than the one here in the studio. Like it. The two. If I swap the two of them, I'd be totally lost because I have things that, like, sort of live on them, as I'm sure you do. My. My wife wound up getting one that's like on an easel. It's like an 8 and a half by 11 size on her desk. She prefers that, but she uses it like crazy for all the work that she does. And then she's like, oh, yeah, I can't.

She uses Made by the quartet.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's all the same company. It's just not the same form factor as what you and I have. Yeah, yeah. It's fantastic. I have found that the ultra fine markers, dry erase markers are the way to go with this Quartet thing. I don't know. What do you use for yours? Is that right?

Same thing. I use the Mr. Pen, they're called. Or.

Okay.

You know, they work. They were great. You got to have the ultra fine because you can get a bunch of stuff on there.

Yeah.

You know, and I do like. You do, too. I write little notes and comments and that kind of thing, but having it in front of you is. It's just a game changer. This. This device, and I don't know where I stumbled on it.

Dry erase markers. Okay, so this solves my problem because I've been using the Expo ones. Expo.

They suck.

They suck. Okay. Mr.

Pen is good. Link bro is another brand that's really good.

All right.

And they're. You can get them on Amazon.

Yeah, no, I'm finding them here. I'm gonna put links in the show notes to them because after I. After I buy them, obviously.

I had no idea. Quartet makes these giant ones, too.

Yeah.

The key is it's glass. It's not that white thing that you can't erase after a while. It's. It comes off perfect every time.

And Wait, what did you say the other brand was? There's Mr. Link, bro.

L I n K B R O Link. Yeah.

Okay. All right.

Those up on Amazon?

Yeah, yeah, I'll find them. Yeah, for sure. Yeah.

If you use. So we. We would love to hear about your productivity hacks, your time tricks that you come up with and, you know, let us know feedback@businessshow.co. what kind of system works the best for you that we can share here. We'd love to hear from you.

Yeah.

Like I said, these are all things that I fail at all the time. Time. But I adjust and I keep going and then I fail less. The next day, you fail less.

And that's the success. You know what? That's it. Failing less than yesterday. That's your success, and that's how you get. That's how you get to true success. So, yeah, there you go. That's right. Yeah, I like it.

All right, man, good talking.

Yeah, this was a good one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Thank you. All right, thanks for listening, folks. Make sure that you go check out our sponsors, banknobo.com SBS netsuite.com SBS and go to businessshow.com and sign up so that you get all the show notes with all these links right in your box. Keep living that charmed life. See you next week.