Brain-Friendly Way to Manage Your Time! ⏰

Today, as Faye mentioned, the community is all about time blocking. This is a strategy that I use and have used for at least 15 solid years. And really what it's based on, how many of you do some kind of time blocking already? The idea here is where you batch certain tasks that are similar together. And what that allows you to do is Save time, save energy, make less mistakes because you're not multitasking or you're not going from one task and going to another, which burns up a lot of, you know, blood glucose and uses a lot of energy. Like you have too many tabs open. Many of you know how I generally look at Duke for me based on my chronotype. And that was one of the questions we could talk about that also as well. And I can't always do this because life happens, family happens, work happens. But to the best of my ability, I try to do this. Ability, I try to create in the morning, consume in the afternoon, and clear at night. And so in the morning, I have 2 books coming. So I write in the morning before I touch my phone, before I do anything. I plan out lesson plans like what we're doing today. I plan that out in the morning. I put together outlines for courses, podcasts I create. In the afternoon, I consume, which is when I listen to other people's podcasts. I do my own research. I do my reading also as well. And then in the night, where I'm clearing— I'm sorry, I am creating, drawing information out of my mind in the morning, consuming, bringing it in. And at night, I just want to clear it by journaling, by talking about my day with my wife, by planning out my day. The next day, the night before, so I could just kind of release it. I just want to clear. I do yoga nidra. I've been doing that. Huberman calls it, it's non-sleep deep rest, right? Huge way of integrating what you learned that day. And also, you know, the benefits of having good parasympathetic restoration. So time blocking can be approached many different ways. I want to give you a few of them. Uh, Faye helped me to create an acronym called BLOCK. So this one is going to be— I have a number of notes here, so I'm going to refer to them. I encourage you to take notes, and I encourage you to set up a time for tomorrow, uh, during your time block to review your notes if you can. Because remember, when you hear something once, you forget it, most of it, within 2 days. 80%, the forgetting curve. And how you keep that from declining is doing some kind of review. And as a matter of, since we're talking about productivity and performance around time, I schedule my reviews. And it seems like, like, wow, do I schedule? I absolutely do not. I feel like, you know how Jocko says discipline equals freedom, right? Meaning that if you can't get yourself to do something, then you're the opposite of free, right? But discipline gives you freedom. I see the same way as structure. I like to put structure or Guardrails around things, and then I feel more free in that space. Right? Because I have clarity, and clarity for me trumps everything almost in my life. In fact, like I mentioned in earlier live call, you know, for me, it's about 2025. For me, is simplify to amplify. I'm really in reduction. I'm looking to spend less time traveling, you know, less time spending, you know, with certain people, less reduction. certain, you know, junk foods or whatever, binge watching. I'm looking to reduce. Sometimes when you subtract, you multiply. And that's the principle I subscribe to. You subtract, you get rid of certain influences, individuals, ideas, whatever, ingredients. And then all of a sudden you can multiply. Makes sense, right? All right. So BLOCK is the acronym. And I'll go through it. This is basically a brain-friendly way of time blocking. You don't have to do all this. My goal is to give you some suggestions, and ultimately you are the expert. So whatever makes sense to you, schedule the time to use it. And you know this, you've heard me say it. I think your number one productivity performance tool that you have is your calendar. You could calendar parent-teacher meetings or business work meetings or dentist appointments, but are you scheduling your self-care? Are you scheduling your study time? Are you scheduling your review time? Are you scheduling your implementation time? Like when you learn something, are you scheduling when you're going to actually execute on it? Okay, so the B stands for brain type. So this is the code. And this is a big part. And I say this through repetition because once you start looking at the world through the limitless model or through the 4 different brain animal types, it just gives you a sense more power to influence your environment because you know more, so you could act more in a very personalized way. Um, uh, you know, I just like my— I've always wanted to figure out how do we learn so we can learn better? How does our brain work so we could work our brain? It's kind of meta. Um, thank you. Yeah, you can find your chronotype. We had Dr. Michael Bruce talking about chronotypes. Your time type based on your physiology. If you're an early bird or you're a night owl, in his case, he also has animals that he uses. You could take that quiz. It's in the chat right now. Or if you're watching this replay, which most of you, many of you are, we'll put it in the review in the replay. All right. So B stands for brain-based planning. This is your code, C-O-D-E. C is cheetah. O is owl. D are dolphins. E are your elephants. This concept aligns with the research that we've done suggesting that personalized learning styles and strategies can enhance your efficiency and your retention by accommodating your individual differences. Right. And I pull from neuroscience, personality types, a lot of different psychologies. But this is all around your neurocognitive functioning. So what do I recommend? Go to mybrainanimal.com. Most of you have, and see what your dominant brain animal is, right? There are other ones there. There's a brain dominance instrument that's online. There's Myers-Briggs type indicators. There's, you know, but once you know more about yourself, you could plan your tasks according to your cognitive strengths, just like the chronotypes is one assessment. So it always starts with self-awareness and know thyself, right? For example, analytical tasks, you might want to do that during your peak cognitive times. Your creative tasks, when you're more relaxed, because when you're more relaxed, you're going to be more creative, because stress can inhibit creativity, problem solving, good decision making, right? Because you're in fight or flight, it holds you hostage from your creative Functionality of your brain, your executive functioning, and so on. So that's the B, brain-based, your code, if you will. The L in BLOCK is leverage. And what I mean by leverage, so time might be limited, even focus to a point is limited, but leverage is limitless. And I'm always looking for opportunities of leverage. And specifically for leverage, the L, I'm looking to leverage energy. This is a big topic for me. It's a big part of a portion of a book that's coming out around brain energy and mental vitality. But understanding and leveraging your circadian rhythms, as an example, we've had coaching around that. It's really, it's almost a must-have for maximizing productivity. I don't know how anybody Is productive unless they understand their energy levels throughout the day. So according to Dr. Michael Breus, right, when you're talking about chronotypes, it's chronobiology. I feel like it's a more accurate term, chronobiology. Different times of the day are optimal for different types of activities due to things like the fluctuations in your hormones and your energy levels and so on, because your physiology is going to affect your psychology. So, so what does that mean? It's like you could take those assessments, take ours, take Dr. Michael Breus's and so on, schedule demanding tasks like, let's say, strategic planning, if that's a role or critical analysis for when you're most alert. Typically for most people, it seems to skew during the morning, but it's not for everybody because there are definitely some night owls. And you reserve low energy periods for the less demanding tasks. That just kind of makes sense. You know, even I start my day with also a workout, but that's when I have strong energy because I feel like if I worked out when I'm low energy or I read when I'm low energy, I wouldn't get the return. I will still work out when I have low energy or I didn't get a good night's sleep. I'll still read, but it won't be as effective. So really the overriding first principle that I have is While we're talking about time, it's not time management, it's about mind management. It's about priority management. Remember, the most important thing is to keep the most important thing the most important thing. And I like to schedule the important tasks around the times when I have the most energy. There's a great book called Eat the Frog, which talks about doing the most difficult thing first on your list. But that doesn't always hold for everybody because sometimes in the morning people are lethargic and they won't be able to finish that important thing. Some of you are night owls, could appreciate that. And you like to work when people are sleeping, when there's no disturbances, when you're most alert. And that, again, this is why I like personalized learning and performance over just, you know, general advice. If you enjoy quick conversations like this, then I'm inviting you right now to join our Kwik Success Program. We're meeting live every single month where we can communicate directly. I share something that I've never taught before in any program or book. And you could ask me questions live every month and be part of an incredible community of lifelong learners. Also, part of this program is our unique book club, where each month I pick a book that has affected my life for us to read together and then have an incredible conversation with the awesome author. We have a live discussion. You could ask your burning questions. What other book club allows you to do that? That means you're guaranteed to read at least 12 amazing, life-changing brain-changing books. There are many other bonuses as well. Just go to kwiksuccess.com to check everything out, and I hope to see you live very soon. The O, uh, so the L is leverage energy. The O is organize. So, you know, when you organize your environment, you have clarity of thought, right? Because your external world is a reflection of your internal world, and we have a way of organizing time inside our nervous system. Right. Like, how do you know what was in the past? How do you, you know, you asked to imagine the future. How do you know that is the future? You have an unconscious or maybe some of you have conscious way of organizing tasks. And so the O is organization where you're organizing tasks intentionally using what we're talking about, batching and time blocking, because it reduces cognitive load. It reduces the cognitive drag that you have throughout the day. If you feel like you're just kind of pulling yourself, you know, trying to cross a finish line or push yourself, if you will. It can be very challenging as opposed to when you know how your brain works. You could work your brain, including the time that you're working your brain around specific tasks. So what do I mean by organization? You could batch similar tasks. You're organizing it. In other words, it's called chunking. So it reduces in psychology what they call context switching, right? If you're going from emails and then all of a sudden you're on physically meeting individuals and you're going back to writing. There's a lot of context switching. That's the problem with a lot of social media because you could flip through 1,000 different contexts, not just the content, right, of whatever crypto or politics, whatever it is, it's the context that it's sending inside your brain in terms of how it relates to you. And that could be very exhausting, right? And that's why a lot of people could benefit From some time off. You might have seen a recent study that, you know, getting off internet for 2 weeks has a way of just actually rebooting your brain in a way. It's back to its factory settings, just 2 weeks. Not everyone has that luxury. I personally don't at this time. So what do you— what's the strategy here? You batch or chunk similar tasks together to minimize the switching costs. And the energetic costs and time blocking periods to focus intensely on one project. For a lot of people, it's 90 minutes, right? For some people, it's the Pomodoro technique, 25 minutes. 90 minutes allows me to do deep work. So I really, I have this tomato timer. So I set it, I could set it anywhere from, you know, up to 25 minutes upwards of, you know, 90 minutes, which is sometimes useful. And then I'll focus on that. I'm very analog, so I don't use it digital because sometimes I use my digital devices. Then I'm on it and I get, it makes it easy to do other things, right? To be distracted. All right. What letter are we up to? O is organize. The C is create. And what I'm going to ask you to create, and this was kind of a forced acronym because, you know, just, but it helped me to be able to remember it. You want to create rituals, right? You know the mantra. First you create your habits, then your habits create you. And specifically, I would build— you think like you have rituals for the things that are important, but do you have focus rituals? So like a Pomodoro technique would be an example of a focus ritual. It's something that you could create in terms of a routine for yourself. And that's very low-hanging fruit that you'd be able to do more things with. So it helps you to maintain high levels of concentration. And for me, it prevents mental fatigue, burnout, if you will, you know, this cognitive burnout that people feel. So setting clear, for example, if you're having a focus ritual, your focus ritual might be setting clear tech boundaries, right? You're only going to use it and there are certain apps and guardrails that keep you from accessing certain of your apps. My trainer, Every other year takes a year off social media, right? Even though he has got a thriving, you know, he's got a very strong practice and it's a way for him to connect with his community and get new clients. He always January first, this like this happens to be off digital, you know, and and it and I notice because I see him, you know, five days a week. You know, I start my we train at eight o'clock every morning. It it just he's he's a different person. You know, and he's a great person, but he's just even more, more present. You could tell it really shows up. So the C is create focused rituals. A strategy could be the Pomodoro technique, which is 25 minutes of work followed by a 5-minute brain break to do whatever, to stretch, to be able to move. I have a rebounder in my office, so that's something that I do while I do some deep breathing. But it helps you to maintain your energy levels, your focus, and then you can incorporate brain breaks to sustain those energies. Right? And there, there you can employ app blockers, or you can set your devices. I think the most important function on there is like airplane mode, or at the very least, do not disturb. But these would be focus rituals, right? Pomodoro technique, do not disturb, airplane mode. This is all a way— it's a ritual, it's a routine that you could build in to be able to tap into more of your focus and your energy. All right, and then finally the K is, is keep. And what you're keeping is, is really what works. And that's the basis, right? It's everything. You know, I don't think— and I— and take this with a grain of salt— I don't think anybody— it's rare to find somebody who's 100% right, and it's rare to find somebody who's 100% wrong. So you could always learn something. And what I'm looking for when I feel like I have this curiosity that everyone could teach me something. I like to take ideas that make sense, and also people give me an example, or they give me a warning of what not to do, right? And then I just, uh, I integrate it and I test it and see if it works, and I keep what works. So how many of you familiar with this Japanese philosophy called, uh, called Kaizen? You know Kaizen? Uh, Tony Robbins built, uh, something Was inspired, uh, kanai, right? Constant and never-ending improvement. That's what kaizen is. It's this philosophy of continuous improvement. And how do you get it? Through regular feedback, regular reviews, adjusting to ensure— in this case, we're talking about time, time management system. It's evolving with your, your changing needs. It's evolving with your changing circumstances. So it's a Japanese concept, kaizen, K-A-I-Z-E-N, which emphasizes small continual improvements rather than trying to go for large sporadic changes, right? Because consistency is everything when it comes to productivity. So how can you apply if the K starts to keep what works, you know, this idea of kaizen? How can you apply it? You could create a you could create a weekly review of your productivity, right? What worked? What didn't? And what can be improved? I mean, these are the conversations I like to have at meals even. Like, what did you learn today? What are you grateful for today? What worked? What didn't work? What do you want to stop? What do you want to start? What do you want to do less of? What do you want to do more of? If we spent time together, you know that I'm not. Super big on small talk. But, you know, because I just feel like time is limited. I might not, you know, when are you going to see this person again? And I just really want to, you know, get to the essence of what's lighting people up and how I could be supportive of them. So you could apply kaizen by implementing small changes in your routines that make them more effective over time. I appreciate it. These calls For me also, it's a way of creating accountability, getting regular feedback, connecting with individuals. That would be an example of that, of doing that. So you could apply Kaizen by implementing these small changes in your routine, get feedback to see what's working, and then you just adjust them and evolve them. The mind is the ultimate adaptation machine. This is the gift that you have that other species don't have in abundance like we do. Right? So that's block.