How to Manage Your Time and Get More Done. EP #299 - Den Lennie

Why do some people get so much done in a day and you feel sometimes like you can't get what you plan to get done done? Today I'm going to talk about how to get more done and manage your time more effectively. We all have the same 24 hours in a day, but why is it some people seem super effective and manage the time really well and you struggle to get things done well? Today I want to show you how to get more done with some productivity hacks and tips and tricks I've picked up and implemented in my video video business that I think will help you get more done in less time if you're new to this channel. I have been in video production for almost 30 years working across a broad range of genres for clients like Duran Duran, Cristiano Ronaldo, Robbie Williams and Sony. So please make sure and subscribe if you haven't already. And let's get on with this video. Being busy is not the same thing as being productive. So this is what I want to kick things off. Okay, it's easy to be busy filling your day and diary with stuff, but if it's not strategically focused, then busy tasks are actually just a waste of time. Productivity is focusing on the outcomes that you want to achieve in your business, not the process of how you get there. I'm going to recommend that you start really protecting your time and being hyper vigilant to who you let into your calendar, into your phone and into your message inbox. The first thing I recommend is turn off all automatic alerts on your phone, on the computer, anything that can bing, beep, whirr, purr or otherwise that interrupts your flow is actually going to take you way off course much more than you might think. When you get interrupted, it takes 20 minutes to regain focus back to the level you were at when you were in deep flow. So by protecting your time and not allowing people to disturb you, you can get more done in less time. Now, a tool I used for a while was called a Pomodoro timer and this basically allows you to work in 25 minute blocks with a five minute break. And you can get apps like this on the App store. But essentially what it is, it's a focus timer. That means for 25 minutes, no alerts, nothing can go off and all you do is focus on one task. If you don't fiercely protect your time from interruptions, alerts and any incoming agenda from someone else, then you're going to find yourself in a position where you're always going to be responding and playing catch up to other people's to do lists. That feeling we have when we're in flow is the state you want to get into when you're being hyper productive, especially on business tasks that aren't always the sexiest or the most fun. As creators, we can put too much emphasis on how we feel about a task or a situation. What that will mean is we'll often avoid tasks that we don't feel like doing. But some tasks just need focus and grit and a determination to get them done because they're good for your business outcomes. Take for example, reaching out to 20 new contacts a day on LinkedIn. There will be a lot of emotion that will come up for you and you probably won't want to do this, but the fact is, if you reach out to 100 people a week on LinkedIn and every week for months, you're going to start building up some really good opportunities. So focus on the outcome, which is the building the opportunities, building your network, and just do it anyway. No overthinking required. Willpower is like a battery. Your day starts with lots of energy, and as the day goes on, your willpower depletes like a battery depletes when it's being used. So being aware of the most optimal time to work on high value tasks is really important for productivity. So my suggestion is to get up early, do the most important tasks of the day first, and leave the less important tasks for later in the day when you have less energy and less willpower. There's a reason why professional athletes get up at 4am to start training. It's because they have the most energy and they want to get more done. Now, athletes don't especially enjoy getting getting up at 4am, but they do it because they recognize that the repetition and the energy that goes into doing the same thing consistently will achieve the outcome they want come race day. Athletes focus on the outcome and even though they're training six days a week for multiple hours in the middle of the night, they do it anyway. If you want to train your business to become an elite athlete, you have to be willing to do things consistently because it's good for the outcomes of your business. And even if you don't want to do them, you do them anyway. I want to shift slightly now to some practical tips on how to manage your diary better and something I call time blocking. Time blocking is when you set up your weekly calendar with blocks of time to achieve certain outcomes on certain days. Now, before you start saying, oh yeah, Dennis, okay, you sit in an office all day. I understand what it's like to be on the road and so your time blocking can have flexibility in it and your calendar should always have some white space. The essence of a default diary is that you achieve certain tasks on certain days. So for example, a Monday for me is always content day. It's prepping content for publishing and recording new content for the next week. That means my calendar is not open under any circumstances on a Monday to anything outside of me producing content and publishing content. I know that if I put that full day into producing and publishing content, I will have enough content for the entire week ahead so I don't have to think about it again. Tuesday is my coaching day where I run my coaching calls and I allow time for clients to liaise with me about their coaching challenges. Wednesdays are learning days for me. Wednesday mornings I have blocked out in my calendar for me to spend time in educating myself, participating in the mastermind groups I'm a member of, and learning more about business so I can spend time decanting that knowledge to my clients. Thursdays are always days for sales and marketing and Friday mornings I assign to my jazz band that I'm in and also to any other sales activity that I might have happening that week. I also my calendar on a Saturday morning for sales, so I have blocks of time throughout the week where I do certain things and there's plenty of free time for me to do things I enjoy outside of work as well. By having a default diary and being religious with it, I know exactly what I'm doing on any given day and my calendar openings are only open at certain times, which means I'm protecting my time so I can focus on high value tasks and I only let others into my world when I decide. Now it might seem like quite a hardcore approach, but I've had more success in my business doing this than when I made myself available 24 7. And if you're brave enough to do this, have a voicemail that says do not leave a message. I will not listen to it. If you want to contact me, send me a text message or send me an email. I train people in how to communicate with me on my terms, not their terms. One of my favorite things is thinking time and I can't take credit for it. Thinking time is actually something I learned from in this book by Keith J. Cunningham called the Road Less Stupid. Thinking time is spending 20 minutes a day sitting in a chair with a notebook with one question and spending 20 to 30 minutes thinking about all the possible outcomes for that question. What this does is it has you consider lots of different options before choosing the best course of action. Now, in his book the Road Less Stupid, Keith talks about thinking time and how if you could reverse three financial decisions in your life, how would that look now? The chances are you'd be a lot wealthier and a lot richer. And his argument is that we don't spend enough time thinking about decisions before rushing into them. By creating thinking time in our business, you begin to spend more time strategically considering the downsides and as well as the upsides to every decision you make in your business. It's been an absolute game changer for me. Now it does take some discipline. But when you think about a problem you've got in your business and you spend time actively thinking about it, you'll be amazed at how you make better decisions and your business will be more successful. If you'd like some more guidance on how to be more productive, then I have a free training I'm giving away in my community, how to Scale a Video Business. This is a completely free community where we have training and community discussions around how you can scale your video business. And in this training I share practical tips on how you can be more productive. So if you'd like a copy of that, just click on the link below or up on the screen and you can join that community for free.

You've been listening to the Video Business Accelerator Podcast with your host Dan Lenny. If you are a video business owner who is tired of going it alone and would benefit from mentorship, support and weekly accountability, then mouse over to www.videobusinessaccelerator.com to learn more about how the accelerator program can help you today. Don't forget to subscribe and rate the show over on itunes, and we'd really appreciate you taking a few minutes to leave a.