Make Your Minutes Count | Discover Urgent Productivity Secrets

Hello, Believe Nation! Today I'm going to talk about 7 tips to get more stuff done during the day. It's one of the most common requests I get from entrepreneurs is, "How do I manage my day? How do I manage my time? I've got so much stuff that I need to do. How do I get it all done in the day?" And I get it. Like, entrepreneurship is one of the hardest things you're ever going to do in your life. You're doing everything from being the janitor to the CEO of the business. And so today I'm gonna share the 7 things that I do to get more done during my day that hopefully can help you and your business as well. Number 1 is create a schedule. I find it super helpful to have a schedule. I live and die by my Google Calendar, which tells me exactly what I need to do every single day. And putting the most important things on the schedule first. So the big things that need to get done, schedule them in. And what I try to do with my schedule as well is chunk similar tasks together. I used to be the guy who prided myself on answering email really quickly, right? And being the guy who's like, you send me an email and right away you get a response. Now, I barely check on email. We'll talk about that later on in this video. But making sure that you are doing the big things because so many people focus on doing the small, immediate things, putting out the fires, that they have zero time left to spend on the big things to help them grow their business. So I put those in chunks in my schedule every single week. And the idea with chunking is, anything that you do multiple times per day, do once per day. Anything you do multiple times per week, do once per week, and so on. So for example, making videos. I do videos once a week, right? Jason is here, we're filming together, it's a Wednesday afternoon, and we'll do all the videos for the YouTube channel for the week today. And then I'll send them off to Christina and the team and they'll edit them together and we'll have videos for the week. It's so much easier to do it this way because I'm in video mode, we got the camera set up, the lights set up, the microphone set up, I got here, right? And so it's so much easier to do one after another after another after another. I'm in the zone, I'm in the mode, I'm in video talking zone, right? So it's easier to keep that going from one video to the next. Where if I did one video every single day, there'd be so much backlog, there'd be so much time wasted in the setup and the takedown, and just the switching cost and emotional cost for me to jump from one thing to another, that it's not very productive. So batch similar tasks together. Anything you do more than once per week, do it once per week together. Anything you do multiple times per day, do once per day together. You'll be way more productive. And schedule it in. Number 2 is work in 90-minute chunks. I find this super helpful for me. I will book off 90 minutes to do one specific task. That's all the time I have for that task. And so if I'm looking at, for example, on Monday I'll have a 90-minute chunk of working on promoting my book. Anything that has to do with promoting my book, whether it's reviewing agreements or setting up interviews or sending out emails or responding to inquiries, whatever it is, I have that 90 minutes to be able to do it every Monday afternoon. And it makes sure that I'm focused. Because if you know you have all day to do something, you're not gonna be working as hard as you can. You could find more time to be able to be more productive when you have a firm timeline on something. And so giving yourself a timeline, I find 90 minutes is a good amount of time to get into something. Some people use the Pomodoro Technique, which I think is 15 or 20 or 25 minutes, whatever works for you. I find that just as I'm ramping up, it takes me 15 to 20 minutes just to ramp up into something, and a little bit more time to get into it, and then 90 is just enough time to be super focused, super hardcore, ready to go before I need a few minutes break to move on to something else. And so experiment what works for you, but I found that 90-minute chunks of working on one thing, dedicated task, I have to get it done, and I'm not touching it till next week, so I gotta make sure I get it done, I'm gonna get done today in this time slot really helps me stay productive. So number 3 is set deadlines. And that ties into my last point. Whatever it is that you wanna get done, when you have a deadline set for yourself, whether it's within this 90-minute chunk, or whether it's by the end of the week, or whether it's by the end of the month, whatever it is, when you set a deadline for something, you're much more likely to follow through and finish it. And you know what I'm talking about. There's been tons of things that, there is no deadline, you know, and you just let it float from one week to the next week to the next week to the next month and continues on. And so if a client is breathing down your throat and say, "We need to have this done by this day," then you're gonna work extra hard. But if it's you yourself setting deadlines for yourself, you know, you often don't do it and you let it lapse. It's for all those people who are the last-minute crammers before an exam comes up in school or university, right? You see all those people cramming last minute 'cause they didn't plan for it. But that deadline forces them to get it done on time. Where if you don't set deadlines for yourself, or deadlines that actually mean something, i.e., have somebody else involved in it, commit to somebody that you're gonna get it done for that time, something with real teeth, then you're much more likely to follow through. Where if you don't set it, you're just gonna let things lag on, lag on, lag on, and your to-do list just grows out of control. So set deadlines. Number 4 is build a team. And as my company has grown, we have what, 16, 17 people in my business right now. In TDS, we have around 10 people plus 45, 50 helpers who are involved in the business. As you grow your company, your role, your specific impact gets smaller and smaller and smaller because the collective of what everybody brings is way more than what you bring, right? And so at the start, you're doing everything. You're, you're answering phones, you're doing customer service, you're coding, you're creating the product, you're delivering it, you're supporting it afterwards, you're doing everything. But if you really want to build something up, you really want to leverage your time, it's figuring out what are you among the best in the world at, or what can you be among the best in the world at, and then everything else you want to give to somebody else. And so one of the easiest places that people gain time back is with accounting, right? Almost no entrepreneur likes accounting, and so giving the bookkeeping and accounting over to somebody else frees up your time to go do something else. And it doesn't have to be full-time. The first guy I hired was for 1 hour a day to do database work, and he was able to do it faster and better than I could because I wasn't that great at it. And so he freed up an hour and a half to 2 hours of my time every single day to focus on building the business and doing something bigger. And so you may not have budget to hire somebody full-time right now, but you don't need to, right? Think about what helps in your business. Like, you got to figure out what works, find something that works. And when it works, then you got to figure out, how do I expand it? And when you're expanding, there's a lot of tasks in there that you shouldn't be doing, and you won't be able to grow and expand as quickly because you doing everything is not going to be the answer. And so finding the people to offload the crap that you don't want to deal with, that they love dealing with, by the way, right? There's some people who love accounting. Great, give it to them. Let them shine here because you're off doing something amazing climbing that mountain over there. So building a team allows you to get way more leverage out of your time and other people's time to reach the goals that you're after. Number 5 is no phones. This is maybe a controversial one. I don't have a phone. I don't have a cell phone. I use a phone, but it's more of a tablet. I don't have a cell number. I don't have a data package. There's no landline to be able to reach me at. I know in the extreme of most of the world in that respect, but I think at least not having a phone number published, at least having time blocked off where there's no phone, is important. I see a phone number as other people's agenda for my time, because what happens when somebody calls, right? You look at it, you may answer it. If you answer it, you're guaranteed going to be derailed from whatever else you're doing, right? If I'm spending 90 minutes to focus on my book marketing, and you call me and chew up 15 minutes of it, that's a big deal for me, 'cause I've just lost 15 minutes. But more than that 15 minutes, I've lost the switching cost, because to get back in the zone of where I was before is gonna take me another half an hour. And so now you've taken up 45 minutes of my time, which is half of my time for promoting my book every single week. And so if you value your schedule, if you value your time, if you feel like the work you're doing is important, then you can't afford to have these interruptions. A phone is important, it's a way to communicate. I will call people, right? And when I set up phone calls, it's always I'm calling that person 'cause I'm gonna be on time because if somebody is 10 minutes late in calling me, that 10 minutes is not gonna be productive. You're just checking social media or, you know, whatever it is. You're not actually gonna be productive. So I am always gonna be calling you and we have a set half-hour time to talk about things. But having an incoming number, I am not a fan of. Now, it may be important for your business. We have one for Toronto Dance Salsa. People call, but it doesn't go to me. I'm working on much bigger things. If you are everything in your company, then you might need to have that, but it's something that you quickly want to be able to give to somebody else to free up your time and make sure that people aren't calling you or texting you or, you know, interrupting your day because your time needs to be valuable. If you don't set boundaries and protect your time, people are going to walk all over you and you'll feel like you have no time to do the things that you want to do. And so it may mean that you miss out on some things. I've missed out on some important media opportunities or important, like, last-minute rush things. But I don't want to be in the last-minute rush business. I want to run a no-crisis business. I don't want to be reactionary, constantly putting out fires all over the place. I want to focus on building a business. I wanna focus on doing the big things and I'm willing to lose small projects that are rushed, last minute, and probably not the greatest clients because I'm going after something much, much, much bigger. My time is valuable. I respect my time. You need to start respecting yours if you want other people to respect yours as well. And so no phone is one way that I do it. Number 6 is no email. This might be a little less controversial, but I used to be, again, the guy that I said I prided myself in responding quickly to emails. Email. It got to the point though where it was overwhelming, where I had so much email coming in that I was just responding to emails all day and I wasn't actually getting any work done. I'm sure you guys can relate where your inbox just keeps filling up, filling up, filling up, and you could spend your whole day just answering email and then never actually jumping in on something. Or you spend 10 minutes working on a project and then an email comes in and you're back to answering that, and you jump back into that big project and you forgot where you were, and you spend 15 minutes trying to figure out where you were again, another email comes in, and just in this cycle of not getting anything meaningful or important done all day long. And that sucked as an entrepreneur who was trying to build something amazing. And so what I ended up doing was I went to a model of answering emails twice a day in chunks, 90-minute chunks, and then I cut that down to once a day, again in 90-minute chunks. I had 90-minute chunk to check all my email. Where I'm at now is I have a morning segment where I'll check the the email from important people. Uh, it'll be my family, my team, media that I've dealt with before, or important partners or clients. And everybody else goes to a general folder. And the general folder I'll check when I have time. There is no 90-minute chunk, there is no chunk of time in my week where I'm checking the general inbox. It'll be when I'm in a lineup trying to buy something, when I'm walking to Toronto Dance Salsa, whenever I have extra time, I'll just load it up and I'll answer email and I'll be offline because I'm not connected to data or Wi-Fi anywhere. And so that's— that means sometimes I may not get back to somebody for 5, 6 days. Sometimes that happens. And so, yes, I will lose business as a result, right, of being slow. But that time I'm using to focus on bigger things and I get much more leverage and much greater impact by being able to go out and spend my time, those 90-minute chunks, on something big and powerful instead of answering everybody's email instantly. There's a big value difference. So I'd rather spend my time where there's high value. And again, this could be a situation where if you have a lot of email coming in and it's from customers and you want to provide great service, that's something that you, as soon as possible, give off to somebody else. I have multiple people on my team who answer email for me. I have GT, who deals with all of our authors. I have Sandra, who sets up all of my meetings with people, and they are much more responsive than I am By bringing them on board, back to the point above of building a team, by bringing them on board, I'm able to free up my time to be able to go out and do the important things. And again, that person can be part-time to start, doesn't have to be a full-time job. And number 7, as cliché as it sounds, is do what you love. If you want to be productive, you're going to be way more productive in doing the things that you actually like doing, right? If you look at your list and there's a bunch of crap on there that you don't wanna do, and you leave it to the next day, and leave it to the next day, and that to-do list grows out of control. If you look at that huge to-do list, how many of the things on there are things you actually look forward to doing? Probably not that many. And that's kinda wrong, right? If your to-do list every day is a bunch of crap that you hate doing, you don't look forward to doing, then something should probably change in your business. The more you're doing work that you love doing, the more productive you're gonna be, not just feel, be. You're gonna get way more stuff done, and you guys know it, when you're in the zone, when you're feeling it, you're able to get way more done because you just love doing it. You love the process, you love the work. Where if you're forcing yourself to do it because somebody told you to do it, your accountant told you to do it, the government told you to do it, a customer told you to do it, the more that happens, the less productive you're gonna be, and the less quality work you're gonna actually output. And so, not every day is amazing, and all day long you're just doing amazing things, You know, you have to be a little realistic about that too. But the more you go into work and you look at this piling up to-do list of crap, then you're not going to have a lot of success. Where you want to look at the 80/20 rule, where you're spending as much time possible doing the CEO stuff, the big picture stuff, the stuff that you could be best in the world at, and eliminate, automate, or delegate the rest away as soon as possible so you could focus on the things that are most important to your company. So those are my 7 tips on how to get more stuff done during the day. I'd love to know what you guys think. What was your favorite one? Let me know in the comments below. Also, did I miss something? Is there an 8, 9, 10 that you want to add to the list? Leave it in the comments. I'm looking forward to hearing what you guys have to say. Thank you guys so much for watching. Continue to believe, or whatever your one word is, and I'll see you soon.