TES 049 - Using Rituals to Maximize Your Productivity

Hey there, real quick before we jump into the episode, listen, if your earnings treadmill hasn't set you free yet, running faster won't either. Listen, hustle without principles just going to burn you out. So here's what I want for you. I want you to join me for my money machine experience live. It is three free trainings. Deep dive into how to escape the treadmill and build a money machine that actually works for you. All right, grab your spot here by going to moneymachinelive.com and I'll see you in the free training. Hey there. I'm Mel Abraham, the author of the number one best selling book the Entrepreneur's Solution and the founder of Business Breakthrough Academy where we teach you how to design a business and create a life, a life of financial freedom and peace of mind. And welcome back to this episode of the Entrepreneur Solution show. And in this episode I want to talk about the topic of productivity. And.

It'S one of the topics that I think comes up tremendously often, especially with entrepreneurs and the people that I work with. And it's a question that comes up repeatedly. So after this brief introduction, we'll get a chance to talk about what I call the productivity ritualizer. It's the rituals that I do daily, and actually not just me, other entrepreneurs, successful entrepreneurs do daily that start to drive their productivity up. And so, and there's the tool, the productivity ritualizer that you can download. If you want to download it now, go to melabraham.com 049 and you'll be able to get that download. If not, if you're not at your computer, you happen to be running around doing whatever, driving. Just do it safely. But do me a favor, you can text me mylegacy one word mylegacy to 38470. I'll make sure that I send you the download link so you have that. And I'll see you right after this brief introduction and we'll talk about productivity. See you soon. Bye.

Welcome to the Entrepreneur's Solution where highly successful entrepreneur Mel Abraham becomes your entrepreneurial mentor. Here, Mel reveals his business building strategies and even gets a chance to answer your questions. Mel Abraham, a CPA by education, but an entrepreneur by exhilaration and a true believer in the entrepreneurial way of life. It's through entrepreneurship that we create community, support society and live our dreams brand new. It's where possibility meets reality again and you can have the life and lifestyle you want. One of freedom and peace of mind. Welcome to this episode of the Entrepreneur's Solution where It's time for you to be bold, dream big, and live life your way.

Hey there. Welcome back. I'm Mel Abraham. And welcome back to this episode of the Entrepreneur's Solution show. And in this episode, as I said, we're going to talk a bit about productivity. We want to talk about it because I think that this is one of the keys that will drive your success and that is mastering your productivity. They talk about time management. The fact of the matter is you can't manage time. Time is time. It goes, you got 24 hours in a day, you got 60 minutes in an hour, and you got 60 seconds in a minute. That's it. We can't manage it. It's a matter of how productive we are with it. And that's really, really the key. You know, when you look at these ultra, ultra wealthy people, Warren Buffett or Bill Gates, I mean, we are all equally as wealthy with the time that we have in a day. The question is, what are we doing with it? How productive are we? How are we leveraging it? And so one of the things, and there's a whole host of people that focus on this concept of productivity. So what I want to do is answer a question that kind of came up in one of my mentoring sessions, my one on one mentoring sessions that I do with my top level clients. And it also came up in one of my recent events, my live event, Thoughtpreneur Academy, where we were talking about productivity. What were my rituals, what were the things that I would do on a daily basis that allowed me to be as productive as I am? Many of you know that I travel a lot during the year. I travel well over 100,000 miles each and every year. I've got two point, I don't know, three miles, two and a half million miles on United Airlines. It's kind of crazy, but I do. The question is, how do I stay productive while at the same time having a meaningful relationship with my beautiful wife and a meaningful relationship with my son and the rest of my family and keep multiple businesses and multiple business endeavors going and doing the lives, events and doing all these things. And the key is productivity. The key is some of these rituals that I go through each and every day to make sure that I'm on track and in doing that. So I wanted to give you kind of my routine. It'll give you an idea of how I kind of work through the day and it's actually really how I work through the morning and the evening. It's how I set up the next day. In the evening and how I set up the day in the morning and what I start to do first. And so effectively, as many of you know, there's always a framework with the things that I do. And everything I do is. It's what I call the 10 time zone ritual. There's 10 time zones that I'm looking at 5 in the morning, 5 in the evening, or in the afternoon when I'm shutting things down. And these are them. The first time zone when I first wake up in the morning, that to me is my creative time. This is the time that I feel most creative. It's typically when I do most of my writing, it's typically when I will do a lot of my recording, it's typically when I'll do a lot of my reading. And when I talk about reading, it's not about reading my emails, it's about doing research, it's about reading books, it's about reading other things that will expand my thought process, that will expand my mind, that will expand my horizons and do that. So that's my creative time in the morning. It's one of the first things I do. Now some people will do something different in the morning, but the question is, when are you most creative? And I find that I'm most creative in the morning time. Now that might mean if you have to be at a job for some reason, you got to be at a job at say 8:30 or 8:00 clock in the morning. That might mean that you have to get up at 5am and there's plenty of times that I'm up at 5am, my wife may still be sleeping and I'm down in the office doing some of that. And it's a peaceful time. Not because she's sleeping, but it's a peaceful time. Everyone's sleeping typically. And I get a lot done from say 5 or 530 in the morning till 7 or 730 in the morning that I get a chance to create and create my events, create some of my training, create some of my posts and some of all that. So the very first thing that I do is allow that clean mind from right when I wake up, that clean mind to go into a creative space.

The next thing that I do is exercise time. And so what I'll do is from there I'll usually spend a little time when my wife wakes up, we'll spend some time in the morning, we'll talk a little bit about the day, we'll have a really light, light breakfast, maybe a piece of toast and something and I'm going to go off to the gym, or I'm going to go for a run on the beach, or I'm going to do something, something to energize my body, to vibrate my body, to get vibrancy back into, into my body and wake it up. So I'm going to do cardio, I'm going to do lifting. Typically I'm at the gym six days a week and I try to do it also when I'm traveling. I travel with exercise stuff and I'll go to the gym typically when I'm traveling also. And actually it's more important when you're traveling to keep yourself on that process.

So I will go to the gym and typically be at the gym somewhere between an hour, an hour and a half, 45 minutes on the short side, if need be. But typically that's what I'll do. So the first couple of blocks of time in the morning for me are focused on creation and my sustenance, my energy levels. And that then allows me that when I'm done with my exercise time to think about my team, to look at my team and say, do they.

If we're working on a project, do they have what they need from me to carry on in their day?

Do they know that I'm there for them so they feel supported in their day? So one of the first things that I'm going to do here is I'm going to search. And my wife actually taught me to do this because she does it. She manages a large team and has done so for you. She's incredible with teamwork and that type of stuff. And so one of the things that does is really.

Go through emails, go through texts that may have come in that are strictly from team members, not the outside stuff, the stuff that is driving the things that you're working on that is going to hold them, that you become the choke point, you become the person that's holding them up if they don't get an answer. So we get all that stuff out of the way and give them that team time. So if there's a conversation that needs to be had, if there's an email that needs to be sent, if there's a document that they need, if there's a response that needs to have happened, I do that right away so I can release them and they can go about their day and they're not stressed out waiting for me and checking their watch, going, checking their email, I want them to be productive, just like I want to be productive. So I Give that time to them. After I'm done with taking care of the creative and exercise time, then the next piece is strategy time. This is kind of revisiting where I'm going for the day, for the year, for the quarter. If you know me, you know that I work in 13 week sprints, 90 day increments. So what's this 90 day plan? Where am I in the plan? What strategies do I have in place? Are they working? And I'll just revisit the strategy and look at the big picture part of the big picture part of the strategy, and then ask myself, and look at what are the things, the key things that I need to get done today.

To make it a win. And this actually doesn't take a lot of time because I do a lot of that stuff the night before, looking at the day ahead, and then I start to tackle the day. Now, overarching all of this is hydration and proper nutrition. So in here, I'm going to make sure that I'm hydrated, drinking a lot of water during the day, a lot of water during the day, and making sure that I'm feeding myself regularly throughout the day, and feeding me good food, natural foods that are not highly processed foods if possible. And sometimes I do shakes and that type of stuff to allow me to go through that. Then I do what I call the MIF time. The MIF time. Now I turn around and I turn myself towards the tasks of the day. I start with the most important first. That's what MIF stands for, most important first. And I start working down. Now, that also may also mean the hardest first. And a lot of times we try to pick around the hardest thing, but it's that hardest thing that's the Jenga block that releases everything. So I'm going to ask you to do either the most important or the hardest first. It's the one thing that's going to move the needle the farthest and you know what it is.

So that's my morning routine. And then I take that through the day. So creative time in the morning, exercise time, team time, strategy time, and then myth time. So I get towards the end of the day and I go through the day that way. There's times that I'll block off, I'll shut off. For instance, I'm in the middle of recording right now. My phone's completely off. Notifications on the computers are off, emails are off. So I shut things down to allow me to be as productive as possible in the time blocks that I've allocated for it. So I'm not answering anything, I'm not doing anything other than what I'm doing. I want to be here with you right now as I'm filming this. So I get through the day of doing the task and it comes down to shutting down. So that's my morning. And when I do the morning like that, I try to focus on not to exceed 90 minute chunks. And some of you heard me say that I'll use an alarm for 30, 60 or 90 minute chunks. There's number of studies out there that show that.

There'S a precipitous decline in your productivity, in your focus, in your attention when you cross the 90 minute line. And so I try to do, do things in that 90 minute zone. You'll even see that those of you that have attended my events, I do things in 90 minute chunks at the event. I want you to get up. I need to get up. I need to get up on a regular basis and I get outside, I get some fresh air, I get some movement in my body, I open up my mind, I open up my eyes, I focus. If I'm looking at the computer, I want to focus long distance. I'm going to get some water in me, I'm going to get some food and I'm going to going to take me 5, 10 minutes maybe of that time. But then I come back, but I'm rejuvenated and ready to go. So not to exceed 90 minute chunks. And then I'll get through the day working through all of the most important first and get through the day until the afternoon where I start back into what I call review time. And so in the afternoon I have a ritual, just the same five time time zone ritual in the afternoon that I walk through, which is to understand what happened during the day and to also set up the next day to make it more productive. So the first part of it is, is this review time where I'm looking at the day and saying, all right, what are the things that I can check off my list that I got done, what are the projects that I got done, how much of the process is completed, what were the wins that came into place? And so I'm going to review what's happened and review anything that's come in from the team, anything that's come in from, from key clients or customers and any strategy issues that come into play. So I'm going to do that at the end of each day. Then I have what's called the wins time. This is to allow me to acknowledge the kinds of things that have happened during the day. The little wins, the little things. Remember I said a lot of people don't celebrate the wins. I want to celebrate the wins. They may be my wins, they may be my team's win. And so one of the things that I'll do is I'll document some of the wins for the day. At the end of the day, there's a couple reasons to do that. At the end of the day, if you've had a rough day and you get a chance to document the wins, one, you start to feel a bit better about the things that came about. Once I'm done with the wins time, I go to the gratitude time. What I mean, gratitude time is who are the people? What I'm trying to do is.

In fact, some of you may have seen the recent episode about the gratitude game plan. I want to try and make gratitude a daily act, a daily activity, a daily action. So in gratitude time, I want to just reflect again on who, what.

Are the things that I'm grateful for? When you start to look at that is really understanding what am I grateful for and who am I grateful for. Now, part of this is also to acknowledge the team. So this is the time where if the team did an extraordinary job or a team member did an extraordinary job, I'm going to turn around and acknowledge them and send them a quick email or pick up the phone or those of you that are close to me know that I do a lot of audio and video messages. So I'll just record a video message that will turn around and say, say, hey, just want to let you know that you did a great job on that and I appreciate the things that you're doing. Then to just do that at the end of the day because we don't know how their day was gone and maybe they've had a rough day too. And all of a sudden they get this voicemail or this voice message or this video message or a text or something saying, I appreciate you. Huge, huge difference maker in their life. So I go through gratitude time and then I get to plan time. And when we talk about plan time, I talk about www, which is not world wide web. It's about planning for the next day. So I want to plan the next day and say, what are the three things that I need to get done? If I got them done, the next day would make the next day an absolute win. So I want to plan the wins for the next day. I want to plan the what's for the next day. What Are the things, the MIFs, the most important firsts I need to get done the next day in order for that to happen. And then the third is the who's. Who are the people I need to connect with? Who are the people that I need to really kind of connect with in order to drive things forward, to move things forward.

In the next 24 hours. So then by the end of the night, when I put this plan in place, I know what it's going to take to have a great day. I know what I need to do to make it a great day, and I know who I need to be in contact with to make it a great day. So when I get up in the morning, I get through my creative time, exercise time, I can connect with my team, my strategy time takes very little time. And now I'm right onto the tasks, working off the plan that happened. And the other thing that this does for me is, is it clears my mind. It clears my mind space because it allows me then to sleep easy, to be present when my wife comes home or if I have friends or we have functions to go to. Because the next piece is what I call unplugged time. At some point you want to unplug and completely unplug. That means that you're not doing work until 9, 10 o' clock at night. Unless that's what the intent is. The point is that when you decide to unplug plug, you're completely unplugged and you're not working off of someone else's agenda. You're not working off of someone else's calendar or someone else's priority list. You're working off of yours. And these folks that maybe don't understand it and think that you're on call.

It'S your challenge and it's your responsibility to train them that that's not the way you live your life and that here's how you work and here's how they work with you. And granted, I have let go of clients that didn't understand that because they didn't fit lifestyle. Remember, my perspective is that there's no such thing as work life balance. There's simply life. So every choice we make is a life decision. It's a life choice. And every decision we make is affecting lives of others and ourselves and the people that are around us. So I'm going to make those choices based upon the lifestyle impact it's going to have. We move forward. And believe it or not, when you explain some of these things to your clients, your customers and Your team, they respect you and they respect it and many of them will adopt it into their own lives. Now granted, emergencies happen and I understand that. And you change things and you do deal with things appropriately on a case. But what I don't want to do is have them think that they're always in a constant state of emergency. So I hope you understand that. So here's the deal. You've got what I call 10 times on the 10 time zone ritual. I do five of them in the morning, five in the afternoon. I work from a 90 in 90 minute chunks for the most part to work from that. And so this is a ritual. I invite you to adopt it in your life to try it out, try it out for 90 days, try it out for that 13 week sprint. See how it works for you to sit back and say, I got this dialed in in the morning, I got this dialed in in the afternoon. And I have a plan. I have a framework in place to really start to build my productivity and to focus things in. And so you start to deal with it differently and then tweak it to fit your needs.

As you move forward. But in the meantime, do me a favor. Download the Time Zone ritualizer. You can get that from melabraham.com session049 melabraham.com session0 49 download it, use it, use it, use it, abuse it, keep using it. Because I guarantee you it's going to change the dynamics of your productivity as you move forward. And as always, if you haven't subscribed yet, subscribe. Join the community, join the group. I mean we have a lot of fun, we have a lot of stuff that's going on. There's some incredible people here doing some incredible things. Love to have you a part of that journey. And while you're at it, invite your friends along. Let's share this with a friend. Let's share the information with a friend. Let's give them the tools of successful people. Let's give them the tools of building entrepreneurial journeys and businesses that are going to allow them to live their dreams. And it'll give me an opportunity to coach them and mentor them through some of these programs like I am with you and again. So download the ritualizer again if you need it. Melabraham.com session049 if you're not at your computer, just text me, text mylegacy1word mylegacy1word to 38470 and I'll make sure that I send you the download link in response to that text as we move forward. And if you have a question or if you have a challenge or something you're dealing with, reach out to me. Reach out to me. Go to askmailnow.com Leave me a message, leave me your question, leave me the challenge, leave me the obstacle, leave me whatever it is. And let me see if I can help you on one of the upcoming episodes of the Entrepreneur Solution show until we get a chance to see each other again. May your vision be grand, your journey epic, and your legacy significant. Now go out there, make it a productive day, and best of luck and I look forward to hearing about your journey. Cheers. Bye.

We hope you enjoyed this episode. Make sure you subscribe so you get access to all of Mel's business and success tips. And if you like this episode, share it with a friend. If you have a specific business or success question, you can ask it at www.askmelnow.com. remember, it's all about being bold, dreaming big, and living life your way because the world needs you. Until the next episod May your vision be grand, your journey epic, and your legacy significant.

And that's it for this episode of Building youg Money Machine, where we help you learn how to master your money, eliminate financial stress, and live a life of choice. If you found this valuable or helpful to you, here's what I'd love for you to do. If you do me a favor, go to Apple, Apple Podcast or wherever you're listening to this podcast and rate and review the show. It helps us tremendously to keep us at the top of the list so we can continue to get this information and this message out to people. Because I truly believe that financial freedom is your birthright and I want to help each and every one of you claim it. Thanks so much.