ROBIN SHARMA'S SECRETS to UNSTOPPABLE Productivity!

Hey, Believe Nation, it's Evan. My one word is believe, and I believe in you, and I want to see that thing you've got inside of you come out and have a big impact on the world. I started the Mentor Me series to hang out with people who've done more than us, and hopefully we can learn from them the way they think, their mindsets, their beliefs, to help us be the best version of ourselves. So today we're going to learn from Robin Sharma and some of his productivity tips. Mentor me, Robin. Rule number 2 is my personal favorite, and I'd love to know which one you guys like the best. And as always, guys, as you're watching, if you hear something that really resonates with you, please leave it down in the comments below. Put quotes around it so other people can be inspired as well. And when you write it down, it's much more likely to stick with yourself too. Enjoy.

The way you begin each day sets up the way you live each day. I mean, the Spartan warriors said it so well: Sweat more in training, bleed less in war. And if you want to be literally undefeatable in business, literally unstoppable in life, you really want to dial in your morning routine. And so you want to do things like starting the day sweating because that releases BDNF, brain-derived neurotrophic factor, that repairs brain cells from stress. You want to sweat because that's going to increase your metabolic rate, which is going to give you energy, and we live in a world where energy is even more valuable than intelligence. You want to, in your morning routine, take the time to write in a journal so you actually can detect your values, reconnect with your goals each day, get to know yourself even more because awareness is the beginning of transformation. Transformation. And you want to get your morning routine right, so you take some time at the front end of your day to learn. Because as you learn more, you know you're going to achieve more. And as you understand better, you can achieve larger. Your environment is so important. And if you look at B performers or C producers, they really don't pay a lot of attention to their environment. And so they get very distracted. There's lots of noises, their phones are going off, maybe there's news in the background, maybe there's messy environments all around them, maybe there's toxic people. What I'm suggesting to you as the second piece of technology to really 100 times your productivity is this: install environments of tight bubbles of total focus. The way I run my work life, on certain days, I am very hard to reach, and I challenge you with great love and respect, be very hard to reach during key times of your week. I mean, I see a lot of people, and it's not judging them, it's just observing them. Every time their phone rings, they check it. Or they have, you know, these loud notifications. So they're constantly being distracted. And we know what the research says. The research says we spend 2.1 hours a day in distraction. We spend, and it takes 21 minutes to refocus your focus after you've been distracted. So if you are being distracted by notifications, checking your phone, checking your Twitter feed, checking your Facebook feed, looking on Instagram, checking all the different platforms, that is going to destroy your focus. So the second piece of technology is create these tight bubbles of total focus. And the way I do it is I have certain days that I label as creative days. And on those creative days, I actually go device-free. And on those days, I'm very hard to find. And on those days, I'm in total solitude. And on those days, I go to certain places, I call them my Menlo Labs, just like Edison had his Menlo Lab. And these places are very minimalist, and there's no one there, and that's where I do my best work. So install these tight bubbles of total focus and create these Menlo Labs where you're sort of, you're completely distraction-free. And then you will find your brain will drop from the beta state into the alpha state, where you will do your best work and get your best ideas. All ideas don't work unless you do the work. And some of the best work you can do is getting really good at creating a one-page plan. Have your big five, the five things that need to happen this year for this to be your best year yet, on a one-page plan. Your top 5 values, put them on that same plan. Your top 5 sub-goals sequenced into each quarter of this year on that one-page plan. And every morning while your competition or the rest of the world is asleep, get up at 5 AM. I'll teach you how to do that in future videos. But look at your one-page plan. Spend 20 minutes on that so it becomes a brain tattoo, a burning obsession, so it alights you with inspiration. So you go out in the world and you understand that clarity is power and you so intimately know what has to happen during this day, this week, this month, this quarter, this year to get you closer to your mountaintop. Because the ordinary— the hours that ordinary people waste, extraordinary people do. Because they're not bored like most people. Most people need to medicate themselves with too much TV, too much Facebook, too much video, too much chitchat, too much busyness because they don't know their goals, because they don't have a one-page plan, because they don't have a one-page schedule. I mean, I've got my schedule for every 7 days. Almost everything I need to do goes on it. And you might say, Robin, well, that's a very rigid way to live. No, it's a very free way to live because then I have the power to live life on my own terms. I feel inspired. I'm not wasting each day. I'm leveraging each day. The myth of the harder I work, the more productive I will be has been debunked by the science. If you study human performance, here's what they've realized, and Jim Lehrer and Tony Schwartz have done some great work in this field, but here's what the science says: optimal performance and productivity happens in 90-minute cycles. So what am I saying? Work for 90 minutes and then take a break to recover, then work for another 90 minutes and then go for a walk, and then work for another 90 minutes and then take a drink of water and then work for another 90 minutes and maybe take a nap or read something interesting that's not related to what you were doing. What will that do? It will keep your mind focused on the work at hand. It will increase your energy because energy is like a well. You deplete it, you need to fill up the well again, and it will really keep you at your productive best and also keep you inspired rather than getting burned out. Pick a product, pick a position, pick a something to focus on and then have the business discipline to really focus on that one thing and do it brilliantly. Even personally, more and more I think, you know, ultimately build your personal life around 5 things and that's it. And build your business or your team around 5 key opportunities and say no to everything else. And that's the secret of mastery. If you look at the The true masters, they basically were good at one thing. They didn't try to be great at everything. I just finished my Monday morning meeting with my team and we went over what I call my 8 priorities. And this is for this year, the whole organization, all our energy, all our resource, all our focus is really around the 8 things that are on this page right now. And any other opportunities that come in, we pretty much say no to it. Any other speaking opportunities that come in, if they're not aligned with, you know, the tours that we have on the schedule for this year, we say no to it. And that brings up another key point, which is most businesses run into trouble not because of too many good opportunities, but because they— excuse me, not because they didn't have enough good opportunities, but because of too many good opportunities. So they were going here and there and everywhere, and they got really busy being busy, so they couldn't focus on those 5 key things, or on that one big opportunity. Focus, focus, focus. A key thing to building a great brand, building a great business, and building a world-class life. The next piece of technology that will help you create exponential productivity in your work life so you truly impact the world around you is choose your peer group really, really well. There's a lot of excellent science coming out and a lot of excellent research coming out that says the number one way to improve your behavior is to surround yourself with a peer group or social circle of people who are also playing at the level you want to be playing at. So if you want to be a high performer in terms of your productivity, populate your life with high performers. Now here's the science behind it. In the brain, we have something called the mirror neuron system of the brain, and it dates back to thousands of years ago when we were living on the savanna. And this mirror neuron neuron system allowed us to model the behavior of the dominant people in the tribe. So if someone figured out a tool or figured out fire or a better way to survive, subconsciously this system in the brain allowed us to model the behavior. And I think this is pretty fascinating information. Now here we are in the modern world and what happens? Subconsciously we are modeling the behavior of the people people we spend most of our time with. And so, if you are around victims, you will start behaving like a victim. If you are around people who are mediocre performers, you will subconsciously start behaving like them. If you're around people who gossip, who are not A-players, who do not produce very much, you will subconsciously, because of the mirror neuron system in the brain, start performing like them. Why else is it important to surround yourself with a peer set or a social orbit of A-players? Emotional contagion. And that's a scientific phenomenon that simply says we pick up on the emotions of the people that are around us. And so if you are around a social circle of people who are inspired, people who want to do great work, people who want to be ultra-productive, people who want to be innovative, people who are relentlessly optimizing their work, their thinking, their creativity, just being around them will allow you to adopt their energy and their ways of being. Stress is not your enemy. There's another myth which is, oh, stress diminishes my energy, stress makes me unproductive, stress makes me tired. Stress is actually a very valuable tool. It's a force that pushes you past your comfort zone and extends and grows your capability intellectually. When you're pushed against a tough problem, or a deadline, it increases your mental capability. Physically, when you are pushed beyond your physical comfort zone, whether it's through running more or lifting more weights or doing more physically, that will actually grow your capability. But here's the key: stress is not the enemy. A lack of refueling and renewing and recovery against the stress you face every day at work is really what depletes your resources and causes you to lose your productivity, to lose your momentum, to lose your motivation, to lose your energy. Here's what I'm suggesting: every day, find some time to recover and renew against stress. Some ideas: your workout. One of the best things you can do, 1 hour a day to work out, push yourself, renew yourself through energy. Another simple idea: meditation. Meditation has got It's nothing new agey, it's nothing soft. There's a ton of scientific data that will show you to renew your energy and your mental focus so you are at your productive best, meditation is a great way to do that. Another simple tip to recover is to shift gears. So, if you were working on a piece of creative work, pick up something, maybe some light reading for 10 or 15 minutes, something that makes you feel a bit relaxed. it will give you that recovery. And then the final tip that is really, really important, go for a walk. You know, just go walk around the block so you reset your mindset so you come back even more energized.

Thank you guys so much for watching. I hope you enjoyed. I'd love to know what did you take from this video? What was the single most important message that you are going to immediately apply somehow to your life or to your business? Leave it down in the comments below. I look forward to hearing what you have to say. I also want to give a quick shout out to Beau Hawkins from 4 Minute Masters. Beau, thank you so much for picking up a copy of my book, Your One Word, and doing the review on your YouTube channel. I really, really, really appreciate it, and I'm so glad you enjoyed the book. Hey guys, today we're gonna be talking about Evan Carmichael's Your One Word: The Powerful Secret to Creating a Business and a Life That Matters. Thank you guys so much for watching. I believe in you. I hope you continue to believe in yourself and whatever your one word is. Much love. I'll see you soon.