A productivity guide on time-blocking and managing distractions. The speaker shares strategies from entrepreneurs on how to protect focused work periods from email and phone interruptions to get more done.
Two 60-minute time blocks followed by a 30-minute time block, with 50 minutes focused and 10 minutes to change state within each 60-minute block.
About once a day, around 4–5 PM.
At least six hours devoted to the six most important tasks each day.
All right, let's get into personal productivity. Make appointments for everything. Time blocking is monumentally important when we're talking about personal productivity. You have to master time block if you want to achieve your goals most of your day. Again, we already talked about it is proactive versus reactive. There's all these studies on multitasking and it really is a myth, your ability to multitask. Studies have proved consistently that there's no such thing as far as getting more done with multitasking and laser focus. The only way to get real work done. And by real work, I mean stuff, you know, activities, projects that are moving your business forward, just versus just doing the same thing over and over and over again. You know, when I mentioned 60, 60, 30, I learned that from Eben Pagan. I don't know if I call him an Internet marketer. He's an entrepreneur. He owns five businesses that have sales over 100 million. And he taught me a concept and it's really helpful. Your body and your brain can only focus for so long. So he has a concept called 60, 60, 30, which you have two 60 minute time blocks followed by a 30 minute time block. And, and within the 60 minute time blocks you have 50 minutes of intense focused activity followed by something where you just change your state. So either you can go for a quick walk, you could do some jumping jacks, you can do some other sort of state physiology type work, and then you get back into another hour time block for 50 on and 10 off and then a longer 30 minutes where you're doing something different than a pure out focus time block. Maybe you're checking email or responding to deal stuff, you're calling back some clients. Maybe while you're doing that, you're doing it outside on your patio or you go for a walk around your office while you're returning phone calls or whatnot. You have to work within your ability to focus at maximum productivity. So as you carve out these time blocks in your day, think about the 60, 60, 30 and how you can work it into your schedule. Email and cell phone access. If you have an admin, I would really encourage you to hand over your cell phone and your email to your admin. This, this thing that I'm holding right here, my iPhone. There's nothing productive about it. And I guess that's, that's Dan Kennedy, you know, influence on me, but your ability to design the kind of business you want and then execute on that vision, there's nothing in this iPhone that's going to help you get there, right? So, so Think about that. Yeah, there are times where you need to jump on and, and a deal is. You're working a deal and so email is important or whatnot, or you're getting calls from a client or those sorts of things. Of course, you know, that's important stuff. But your ability to design a business and life, that's truly extraordinary. This, this thing here, this iPhone is going to limit your ability to truly achieve that vision for yourself. So at the very least, you have to time block. You can't start your day by opening up your email and letting all those emails direct how your day goes. So the first thing is getting out your daily planner. You dominate your day and carving out at least six hours for those six most important tasks. Email really shouldn't come, you know, hopefully you can have an admin check your email. I check email about once a day, about 4 to 5pm Every day I check my email. This was a huge sort of breakthrough for me when I realized that email, there's just nothing on email that really is going to advance my life any at all. And I'm in a different position than many of you. But just think about how you can get email off of your plate and get your cell phone away from you, especially when you're working on those six important tasks that take roughly six hours. And so that's plenty of time for other stuff, two to three hours for other things in your top six for the day. If you have a listing appointment or two listing appointments, those are definitely part of your top six. Right? It's not six hours, excluding client appointments, if you're still in production. So anyway, I hope that's helpful for you.
