The 60/40 Rule For Managing Your Time

If you just show up and you're working through your calendar based on meetings other people put on there and you don't know what will move the needle for your week, you're not yet living a conscious life. The more you go, there's that block of time and that you teach yourself to do that. The more effective with time you are, the more time you have for freedom, for enjoyment, for fulfillment, for completion, whatever it is. The most successful people who also maintain their happiness and good relationships with other people clearly said that they spend 60% of their time on what we would call needle moving activities. And 40% of the time they're human, just like us. They gotta manage the kids, manage the house, answer the emails, do the DMs, return the voice messages, do stupid stuff that they feel like, I wish I didn't have to do this administrative stuff. That's life. They got to pay taxes just like you. I hope you're paying tax. So this is what you have to do. You have to go, oh, okay, I need to look at my week and make sure 60% of that week is really oriented towards activities that significantly move me forward towards my goals. And your goals might be a lifestyle goal, a revenue goal, a completion goal, a project you're trying to do. But this is what's important. 60%, this means, you know, we gotta have like three and a half days where you're really focused on moving things forward. Okay, 60% of your time. Now, for a lot of people that gets overwhelming, but, but I tell them, oh, it's so easy to do if you think about it on an eight hour type workday, you know, we don't actually need that much time. I basically need you to be incredibly effective and focused, maybe till around 1 o' clock each day. So if you start your workday, it's like, okay, I need to make sure the most important things that are happening are gonna happen this day. But 60% of your day is about that. So 60% of the day is really focused on the big things that move the career the most. 60% of the time on the big things that lead to progress or reward or fulfillment the most. I can't tell you what your needle moving activities should be, but you have to know what they are. And if you want to be high performing, 60% of your week goes to that. The other 40% is everything else you have to do. Everything else people put on your plate, the emails, the admin, the stuff, right? It just is real. But I really love that because a lot of people what they do with their time is they try to do 100, a hundred. They're trying to squeeze everything in, every single ounce, every single day. And they burn themselves over time. What high performers found, Instead of running 100, a hundred, they run 60, 40. And so, because there's some slack in the system, there's no burnout. And so over a period of time, you know, in any given week, you think this other person, they worked 120%. You only work 60. Yeah, but it's not about number of hours. It's about whether or not you are doing the needle movers enough. That makes sense. You can work 50 hours doing something, but if most of that's wasted time on things that have no quality of output, don't matter towards the goal or the result. Yeah, you wasted a lot of time. You worked a lot of time, but you wasted a lot of time. I want to make sure you're effective and efficient with your time. So the needle moving activities. So here's what you need to do. Every single week, you need to go, what would be the needle moving activities this week? Every week you need to know that if you're new to growth day, we teach this concept called Friday finishers. You go into your plan section, you create a checklist called Friday finishers. And these are the things you're going to complete by the end of the week and when. So, okay, I'm going to write that first chapter by the end of the week because that's a needle mover towards me fulfilling my dream of my next book. Right? You might say, oh, I'm gonna reach out. I'm gonna get 10 calls by the end of this week. Prospect calls. That close, great. That's moving the needle towards my sales goals. Whatever it is. You have to know that every week. If you just show up and you're working through your calendar based on meetings other people put on there, and you don't know what will move the needle for your week, you're not yet living a conscious life. You're in reaction mode, not creation conscious, build mode. Every week I need you to do that so we can summarize. How simple is this? Every morning I want you to look at your year before you begin each week. Most of us do this on Sunday, planning session. Maybe you do it early Monday morning, you go, okay, what would move the needle the most this week? And getting real clarity about that and those two touch points. Every day, looking at the big picture and every week, knowing your needle movers. Life change. Life change. Once you know Your needle movers, you block the time to do those, right? That's what you saw a bunch of people saying, brendan, I do your block time. Block time is I block out in the calendar, the major needle moving activities for me this week. And it's in the calendar. It's not like if I get to it when I do it, it's like, nope, there it is. And the more you go, there's that block of time and that you teach yourself to do that. The more effective with time you are, the more time you have for freedom, for enjoyment, for fulfillment, for completion, whatever it is. Okay? So that's so important. 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. You know from research to improve your life long term, you got to 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've 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, 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.