Micro Class - Getting Stuff Done 101: How to Reach Your Potential by Crushing it Day In and Day Out
17 Dec 2025 · 13 min
A short podcast micro-class by Brian Johnson outlining a Getting Stuff Done 101 course (≈90 minutes) that teaches practical productivity habits and systems. Johnson previews ~11 core ideas including goal-setting/targets, energy (not time) management, systems and routines (time blocking, bookending days), success lists, chunking work, creating ‘masterpiece days,’ attention control, and continual experimentation; he closes with a membership sign-up pitch.
Chapters
You're listening to Optimize with Bryan Johnson. More wisdom in less time. Hey guys, this is Brian and I am sitting here preparing for our next class in my little membership dealio. Getting stuff done 101. How to reach your potential by crushing it day in and day out. Really excited about the class, preparing for it. It's next week. I'll put a link to sign up. If you are not yet a member, you'll get instant access to a ton of stuff 200 and I don't know how many notes at this point, 30 or 40. Our prior classes on confidence 101 habits 101 plus this class plus a ton of stuff going forward, 10 bucks a month. K cancel anytime, yada yada yada. For now let's take a quick look at the 10, 11, 12 big ideas we're going to cover. I'll spend a few minutes just giving a quick overview and hopefully you enjoy and hopefully we'll connect in more depth next week. All right, so first we're going to kick off the class Getting stuff done 101 with a little goodness recap. So. So we have a ton of content in the membership section. Prior classes that I've taught, including the Original Optimal Living 101 class where I talked about action. So I'm going to quickly recap some of the basic fundamentals of getting stuff done. Things like you gotta things that take less than two minutes, you gotta do them one touch, I'm done. Get your inbox to 0 8020. Principle, willpower, stuff like that. Not gonna go into a ton of detail because I do that in other places, but we'll look at that quickly. We'll also look at some great ideas from Confidence 101 and Habits 101 that apply to this domain. Things like acting as if having self efficacy huge. You got to believe you can do this stuff now it needs to get done. A willingness to make mistakes, stuff like that. So then we will look at these 10 big ideas. First big idea getting stuff done 101. It's pretty obvious. What do you want? We want to get the right stuff done 101. And that requires us to know what we want. We talk a lot about targets. The Greeks said we need to have targets. They called the word target in Greek is telos. They tell us that we are teleological beings. We need to have an aim, otherwise we're aimless. So we want to get the right stuff done. We also need to plant our priorities deeply. A lot of times people wonder why they don't get stuff done and they think something's wrong with their discipline or their approach. And there's obviously a lot of ways to optimize that, but oftentimes they just don't have a clear goal. You got to have a really, really clear goal and target and outcome in mind in order to get stuff done, period. So we'll talk about that. It's obvious, but it's big, or perhaps not so obvious. Second big idea. We're going to focus on the fact that this is all about energy management, not time management. It's energy management, the power of full engagement. Tony Schwartz and Jim Lohr talk about that a lot. We're going to come back to our fundamentals. Exercise, nutrition, rest. I'm going to keep on talking about that because it's the cornerstone of everything. We're going to talk about the fact that we need to oscillate our energy. Periods of being on and periods of being off. On, off, on, off. You can't be on all the time. Can't be off all the time, obviously. So we want to modulate that that's what everything in nature follows that pattern. We're going to talk about that. We're going to talk about the importance of rest on a micro level, a mid level and a macro level. We're also going to talk about stress in the upside of stress and managing our energy via that. I'm reading Kelly McGonigall's new book today and as we speak, and I'm going to integrate some of those ideas, which are awesome, into this class. In that section now, the third big idea. Systems. System. System. System. Systems. Once you know what you want, you got to figure out how to get it and you got to build systems on how to get it. Scott Adams has a great line. He says goals are for losers. Why? Because what we really want to focus on are the systems, the process to achieve the goals, the not an obsession on just the goals themselves. We're going to talk about that. We're going to talk about all the ways to create systems. I've had a lot of requests to share what I do. How do I produce what I produce on a consistent basis? Well, it's all about systems. I love systems. We'll talk about mine and share some ideas on how you can improve it. A bunch of other things there I won't go into right now. The fourth big idea and a key part of our system is to bookend your days. You have more control over your AM and your pm. First thing in the morning, last thing at night than almost anything else in your day. You got to control those. That's how you set up masterpiece days, which we're going to talk about down here. So we'll talk about the importance of that in the fact that we want to be creative in the morning versus reactive. Same exact letters, very different experience. You want to get stuff done, you got to be in creative mode as often as possible rather than constantly in reactive mode. Now, one way to do that is via time blocking. Time blocking, huge idea. We want to create an environment where we have no distractions, as in none. No iPhone, no email, no phone connection. Ideally earplugs in if you can do it. Just get focused. Gary Keller, who created Keller Williams and wrote the One Thing, describes time blocking as the number one power tool. Great blog out there on maker mode versus manager mode. We'll talk about that. But time blocking, we want to create nice large chunks of time for you to get stuff done. It's a huge part of my practice and I'm excited to share how I do that, etc. And how you can do it. So then the sixth big idea, success lists versus to do list. This is another Gary Keller idea. A lot of us start the day and we have a to do list. And in the process, we get a lot done, but we don't get anything really important done. Not effective. We want to create success lists. That's one, two, maybe three things that we're going to get done that you equal success. It's huge. Throw away your to do list. Create a success list. We'll talk about how Peter Drucker talks about the fact that there is nothing more inefficient than efficiently doing that which never should have been done. To paraphrase him, don't do things that you don't need to do, period. And then we'll talk about Alan Cohen's idea of precrastinating. There's procrastinating, then there's precrastinating. Where you're doing stuff before then they need to get done. It's a funny idea. We also want to talk about this stop doing list. You have things that you're doing that are destroying your productivity potentially. We want to identify those things and basically say what needs to go. The addictions, the unhelpful habits, et cetera. Warren Buffet describes this in a slightly different context, but he says the difference between successful people, very successful people, is that very successful people say no to almost everything. Very successful people have a long not going to do it. List. Now he was talking about projects and business opportunities, etc. But we want to look at that in the context of the things you're doing in your life that are getting in the way of you doing great work. I'd offer this is, if not the biggest idea it's tied for. First, eliminating the things that take our energy is a huge practice. We'll talk about that. I've got a little thing that I love that I come back to often. Stephen Covey's Quadrant four versus Quadrant two. And then the eighth idea we're going to look at is the fact that we want to chunk our work down to bite sized pieces. We want to launch into the work, deal with any procrastination and we want to finish small chunks, get into the work and finish. Have a habit of tiny little thing. You get going and you finish every single time. We'll talk about this in the context of telephone poles and not stressing ourselves out with an iceberg of pain, but getting to the next milestone. Next milestone, next milestone, next milestone. Bunch of cool stuff we'll talk about there. And then the ninth big idea is creating masterpiece days. This is kind of the cornerstone of the backbone of our systems is to identify, well, what's a great day look like for you? If you had a magic wand and you could wave that wand and create a masterpiece day to achieve your targets, what would that day look like? Take the time and map that out. That's your number one goal, is executing a masterpiece day after a masterpiece day after a masterpiece day. You do that and you are going to get a ton of great stuff done and you will reach your potential by crushing it day in and day out. So we'll talk about what I do and give some ideas on how you can do it. Tracking your time is a little tool we'll talk about and how important that can be. Then the 10th big idea here is your attention. At the end of the day, your attention is your number one asset. You talked to positive psychologists, interviewed Sonia Lyubomirski, asked her what's the number one thing she said, your attention. People who have control over their attention are happy and guess what? They get a ton done. If you can't put your mind where you want, when you want, you're going to have a tough time getting a ton of stuff done. So the first rule here is we need to quit shredding our attention. Quit having your drip of whatever drug you want to describe it as, to your iPhone, your text messages, online, time. That's shredding your attention. We want to stop doing that. We want to learn how to focus our energy that requires attunement to our attention. We'll talk about some more ideas on how to do that. That's our tenth big idea. And then the eleventh is to experiment. Experiment. Experiment forever. We don't want a fixed mindset here. None of this is either got it figured out or you don't. We want to have a growth mindset. We want to get a little bit better day in and day out in the process. Over the long run, we will get a ton of stuff done and actualize our potential and enjoy the process. So there you go. Super quick look at this class. It'll be about a 90 minute class. I usually go long on the Q and A, but I'm giddy. Can't wait to share. Hope you enjoyed this quick look and I hope to to have the opportunity to share more. All right, have another awesome day. See ya. Hi, this is Brian. I hope you enjoyed that micro class. If so, I think you'll enjoy everything else we offer at BrianJohnson me. Two basic things one our free newsletter. It's called the Optimizer. Over 50,000 people start their day with it and they tell us it's pretty awesome. And 2 our optimal living Membership program. This is where I put all my best stuff. 10 bucks a month for a ton of wisdom. Two primary things in there philosopher's notes plus optimal living 101 classes when you sign up, you'll get instant access to 250 philosopher's notes, which are basically six page PDFs and 20 minute MP3s where I capture my favorite big ideas from great books. The PNTV episodes are kind of a mini version of all that goodness. You'll also get instant access to all my Optimal Living classes. This is where I take all the ideas we cover in the Philosopher's Notes and boil it down to the most practical stuff you can apply today. Classes include Confidence 101, Getting Stuff Done 101, Relationships 101, Habits 101, etc. You'll also get access to what we call micro classes that I think you'll love. We aim to astonish and we're blessed to have thousands of members telling us we're helping them change their lives and that this is the best 10 bucks they invest in themselves every month. Go to BrianJohnson ME membership to learn more. Thanks for your support and have an awesome day.










