Episode 229: Maximizing Your Time with Laura Vanderkam

Today's episode, we're gonna talk about getting less busy and getting more done. Mm. That's right.

Oh.

Ooh. Ugh. Yeah. It's Prop First Podcast, and I'm your host, Mike Michalowicz. That's a throw to you, Kels.

No, it's not.

Oh, geez. I'm your. Do I.

Do you really?

Do you have to ruin every episode, Kelsey? Sure, blame me. I'm your host, Mike Michalowicz, and I'm on a mission to eradicate entrepreneurial poverty. That's what you wanted me to say first, right? And let me tell you a little bit about this mission. So many businesses are short of money, therefore, the entrepreneur is struggling. So many businesses are demanding all your time, and you have none left. All those things are putting you in an impoverished state. We're here to fix that. You happy now?

Yes.

Beautiful. And who are you?

My name is Kelsey Ayers, and I'm.

Your co host and my little sister. Yeah, someone said you're my little sister.

Because you pick on me like, one.

No, you pick on me more, I think. And you, my friends, you are listening to the Profit First Podcast, a show dedicated to eradicating entrepreneurial poverty and interviewing some of the coolest guests of all time and answering your questions that come in. Do we have questions today?

We sure do.

Good.

And you can find us on iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn Radio, Google Play, or any podcast or anywhere but profit first podcast dot com. And leave us a comment, and please rate us. And if you send us a screenshot of your rating, send it to me. Kelseykemikalowitz.com we will send you a copy of Profit First.

Yeah, exactly. And, yeah, we're so. We're totally bribing people. Yeah, I didn't realize the importance of reviews and ratings. And, like, we had a call with Ramona Rice, and she's like, oh, my God, like, why aren't you asking me for it? So, total bribery. But here's the deal. We were asking for an honest rating review. Like, if you think we suck, just put it up there.

Yeah.

And we'll still send you a book, and then you can tear it up and say, this book sucks, and you can get totally angry. No, no. Also, one other little offer we have going on. If you go to mikemotorbike.com or mikemcalos.com goes the same site, we have a free copy of Surge waiting for you too. That's one of my books. Totally, totally free. All right, cows, before we get into our guests and all These other fancy, schmancy things. I do have a little bit of an icebreaker question. Ooh, what is it you always get asked, like, who's your favorite celebrity? And stuff? All right, so I'm gonna ask you the flip of that. Which celebrity do you dislike or despise or have a bone to pick with?

I feel like any celebrity that sort of does nothing. Like a Kim Kardashian who's famous for nothing.

Yeah.

I mean, it just. It doesn't really make sense to me. I don't. I don't like the idea of just being a public figure for the sake of being a public figure and not really doing anything with it.

But she's kind of like a model. I mean, I don't know if she's, like, a professional model and, like, you don't see her on these magazines showing clothes off and stuff. Maybe she is, but isn't that, like, what a model does? Like, Christie Brinkley or some famous model of the past? They weren't really. Well, she actually did.

Yeah. But I feel like she got. She became famous and then got modeling jobs.

Gotcha. Okay.

Or because she's from a famous family.

You know, so ask me the same question.

Yeah. Who is your.

Oh, I know. Give me that question. I know the question. I. Just setting you up. Carly Simon.

No, it's a lie.

Yeah. And, Jeremy, do you know why? Why? So I. Yeah, grab the mic there. So I. I wrote the pumpkin plan. I dedicated the book to her, and so it's. It's right behind you, Kelsey. But if you open the dedication, it says, dear Carly Simon. You probably think this book is about you, don't you? Don't you? That was the big joke. I then mailed the book to Carly Simon, and it came back with a big rejected stamp on it because, like, she has a shop out on Long Island.

Yeah.

Or. Or maybe it's in Martha's Vineyard or something like that. She's a shop out there. So I was like, oh, I'll just send it to her shop. Rejected.

What does that mean, though? Does it just.

They wouldn't accept it in their mail. They wouldn't accept it. They wouldn't accept mail from me. It was very personal. It was very personal to me.

He's so offensive.

Right? Carly Simon. I loved her too. I love. I think Carly Simon's so vain.

No, no, I know. Don't spread lies.

No, she's not. I'm just. I got offended. All right, do we have a listener mail or listener channel?

Yeah, we do this one Comes from Francisco Meza. He says, I have implemented profit first in my business. It took away the financial stress. Thanks. My accountant told me everything was okay, but I just didn't feel that way because I didn't really know where my money was allocated. What I needed was a cash management system. Profit first system in front of my accounting. Now my nerves are calmed.

Nerves calmed. Mission accomplished. Entrepreneurial poverty eradicated. Yay. That's awesome. Good job, Francisco. And he sent us your. Your shout outs and thanks and stuff. You hear your name on the podcast?

Yeah.

Also, I want to thank our corporate partners to make the show a reality. Thanks to nextiva and Receipt Bank. Love them both. We saw Receipt bank just last week.

I know, that's great.

Cass here. And nextiva couldn't come, but Yaniv sent his best to us by sending Squishies Jeremy right behind you. That. Oh, Squishies. Yeah. That's the next he Squish. Take one home with you. All right. Her name is Laura Vanderkam, and she is the author of several time management and productivity books, including off the Clock, her most recent release that came out on May 29th. I know how she does it. What the most successful people do before breakfast. I've heard that that book actually was wildly popular. And 168 hours. She's the co host of the podcast Best of Both Worlds. And her work has appeared in publications including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and Fortune. And she lives outside Philly with her husband and four kids, actually. Your way, Jbone. And blogs@lauravandercam.com, which we'll have in the show notes. With no further ado, I'd like to welcome to our show, Laura.

Welcome, Laura.

Welcome to the show.

Yeah, thanks for having me.

The crowd's going crazy.

I was wondering what.

Hey, how's the weather down in Philadelphia? We had some of this wacky storm come through with tornadoes and stuff. Did you all get down south?

My house was shaking last night. Really shaky.

Well, we've had beautiful weather today. There was a thunderstorm that came through last night, but nothing too bad.

Tornado threats and stuff. So talking about tornadoes, I can't find a link here. I want to talk about off the clock. The funny thing is more people. Your subtitles feel less busy while getting more done, but it seems like people are in this mentality of, no, you gotta hustle, you gotta grind, you have to work harder, and you're kind of spitting in the face of that.

Well, I'm not saying nobody needs to Work hard, hard work is all about, you know, what it takes to build a business. But I do think that this devotion to the busy narrative, like, you know, by showing that I have packed every minute of every day, I must indicate to people how important I am. I think that has a lot of holes in it, and we need to examine that narrative and see if maybe there's a calmer way to live.

Yeah, well, why is that narrative. Why is that becoming so popular, that busy equals you're important?

Well, I think it follows the first part of it is very logical. I mean, you know, very important people do have a lot of demands for their time, right? People want things from them, they want to meet them, they want to do business with them. But it doesn't then logically follow that those very important people also must pack every minute of the day. And in fact, many of the most successful people I've ever studied have a surprising amount of white space on their schedules. And this is because they understand, well, first stuff comes up, like, you don't necessarily know on Monday, everything that will happen on Thursday. So if you pack every minute of Thursday, you've got a problem if big things happen on Thursday that you need to deal with. But they also know that open space invites opportunities. I mean, if something wonderful comes up, you want to be able to seize that opportunity. Or even sort of more daily stuff. You're having a conversation with somebody you haven't talked to for a while, and they raise a really interesting point that you hadn't thought about something that has to do with your business. You want to pursue that and think about it some more. Well, if you have open space, you can do that. But if you're, you know, racing off to a new thing every 10 minutes, well, then it's a little bit harder to do that.

So how do you make that open space a reality?

Well, a couple things you can do. I mean, I know you guys are big into this, but you want to be careful of what you say. Yes to every. Everybody in the world is happy to take your time if you're willing to give it, but you might want to be a little bit more judicious with that. I always tell people, you know, what happens is it's hard to say no. And the further something is in the future, the more it feels like you're assigning it to a completely different person. Yes, we're thinking like, oh, yeah, February, I won't be busy at all. I don't have anything in February. Like, February, me could totally do this. But Come February, you're going to be the exact same person you are now. You're going to be just as busy, only now you also have this other commitment that you were lukewarm about in October stacked onto the pile.

So.

So you definitely want to not just say no because, I mean, say yes, because it's in the future. It's probably a better idea to ask yourself when you're asked to do something in the future, if you do it tomorrow, because the opportunity costs tomorrow are very clear to you. You know exactly who you'll be tomorrow. You know what you have on the agenda for tomorrow. You know what's weighing on you. So you'd be saying yes or no in light of that. Whereas February, it's less clear.

Clear.

So if you would be willing to do it tomorrow, or you'd be willing to cancel things, or you try to move stuff around to say yes, then you'll be just as excited in the future. But if you would say, absolutely not, no way would I ever do this tomorrow. You should probably say no for the future too, because come February, you're going to be like, oh, darn, why did I say yes to that? Why did I do this to myself? So, yeah, be careful.

So is that the simple prioritization method or is there other things to consider about yes or no, if I should do.

Besides, would you do it tomorrow?

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah. I mean, I. I think it's. We also tend not to. When people ask us to do things, the first question is often like, am I free at that time? It's not, is this the right thing for me to be doing? And, you know, different people have different ways to think about it. I like, you know, sort of a 1 to 10 point scale. Some people talk about that. Like if it's a 9 or a 10, like, great. But don't say yes to a 6 just because you're free. Because a 7, 8, 9 or 10 could come up and then you won't have space for it because you've got this other thing.

Okay, so tell me. A little bit off the clock. I haven't had the opportunity to read the book yet, so shame on me. Typically, I read them before a podcast. I just didn't say yes to it because I didn't. I'm kidding, I'm kidding. That was horrible. I didn't. I just haven't read it yet. So in the book, do you walk us through the process of allocating time and bifurcating what's important and what's not? Or is it More management tips. Can you just kind of give us a sense for what we'll discover when we read it?

Well, off the Clock is really about the question of how people with full lives can still feel relaxed about their time, still feel like time is abundant, where that time is more of this rich tapestry as opposed to a slick linoleum floor that just seems to be constantly getting away from you. So I like stories about time and I like strategies for time, but I also like data. All my books look at the real question of how people spend their hours. And so for off the clock, I recruited 900 people with full time work schedules and families to track their time for a day. And I also asked them questions about how they felt about their time. So I could get lots of, you know, 1 to 7 point scale on 13 questions of time perception, so I could figure out who were the people who felt like time was abundant and who are the people who felt stressed and starved for time. And again, these are all sort of equivalently busy people. Like, they're all working full time, they all have families. But what is the difference, what is the difference in the schedules between the people who feel relaxed about time and the people who feel stressed for time? Starved for time? So really, just looking at that one day in March of 2017 and seeing.

What I could come up with, what did you find was the biggest differentiator? What makes people feel stressed that they don't have enough time and yet continue to pack stuff in? What's triggering that behavior?

Well, I think there's a couple things that's going on. It's not about not putting things into our time. It says we want to have things that are fun and good and meaningful and enjoyable and have less of the things that aren't. And so I found that people who felt like time was abundant were more likely to spend time with friends and family, whereas people with low time perception scores spent more of their leisure time watching TV or on social media. So it turns out that interacting with people in person feels like you're creating time for many reasons, partly fun and energizing, but also life is all about the stories we tell ourselves. And if you're the kind of person who can get together with extended family on a Monday night, which is, I track the Monday for people's schedules or can go to salsa dancing lessons on a Monday night, or you know, take your family to a movie on a Monday night, like you can't tell yourself you have no time. And so once you walk around without that story of oh, I'm so busy, I have no time. Well, all sorts of stuff opens up. You start to feel a lot more in control of your time. So I found that people with high time perception scores were likely to have spent time with friends and family. They often did sort of little adventures in their day because the kind of person who can go for a trip to a playground with their family after dinner, again, feel like they have more time, and then they were careful not to interrupt themselves. I found that the people with the highest time perception scores check their phones about half as frequently as the people with the lowest time perception scores.

That's fascinating.

Yeah, well, what often happens is people have time that they could use for, I don't know, deep thinking or really having a great conversation or reading a good book or doing a hobby or any of these things in their personal and professional lives. Instead, you wind up picking up your phone and checking it every five minutes. And I don't know about you, it seldom improves my mood to check my phone every five minutes. And so choosing not to do that opens up all kinds of time.

Yeah. I think the interesting thing, if you check your phone every five minutes, the time in between, you're really not concentrating or listening or participating, you're thinking about, I always should check my phone. You're actually pushing off the urge for your maximum five minutes. And then you check your phone again.

Right. Plus, you're not just checking for five minutes, you're checking it. You see an email you need to respond to, you respond to the email or you get trapped in social media.

You contemplate, like, oh, that person mean that? And you're thinking, so you're not listening. I found, Laura, that there's. At least for myself, I either have immersive activities or passive activities. Immersive is where I'm with friends and kibitzing about something. And passive is like watching. What's so funny about that? You never heard the word kibits?

Yeah.

You know what it means, I'm guessing.

It's like bullshitting the time away.

It is. Exactly. Exactly. Oh, very good.

Commitzing.

Yeah, Kibitzing. So there's this immersive time, but there's also this passive time, like, well, I'll throw in a football game or something, or just watch something. I'll enjoy it. But time flies by much more quickly. I've noticed when it's passive, where I'm not actively participating, but where it's immersive, time seems to move more slowly. Is that consistent with what you've been sharing?

Well, I think time perception can be very different for different activities. I do know that the immersive activities tend to be much more memorable.

Yeah.

It turns out that our perception of how much time we have or how long a period of time was, is shaped by how many memories we have of that given unit of time. So that's why the first day of vacation often seems very long. Like if you're traveling somewhere exotic, your brain has no idea what it's going to need to know in the future. So it's kind of remembering all of it. And that makes the time seem very long. Whereas most people like driving to work two days ago, you have no memory of driving to work two days ago because it was the same thing you've done a thousand. And so your brain has no reason to hold on to that. And so it just doesn't. And so when you have a lot of that sameness that stacks up, you can have a lot of time kind of disappear into these memories, sinkholes. So the effort, what I call the effortful fun, or you just call it the immersive fun, tends to stick in the brain more. And we wind up with trouble of this because when you get to your leisure time, you've been working really hard. Like the idea of then putting work into your leisure time often seems very counterintuitive to people. Like, I really don't want my fund to take work. But the result of that is that we tend to spend our leisure time in the most effortless ways possible, which is putting on the tv, scrolling around online. And there's nothing wrong with doing some of that. It's just we don't want to over invest in those things and under invest in the immersive fund, like the dinner party or doing the hobby, singing with a choir, whatever it is, things like that, because those are the things that are more memorable. Whereas an evening spent on social media is gone as if it didn't exist.

Yeah. So one thing I thought was fascinating is sometimes the same activity can perceivably be different lengths of time. So you have a long commute to work, Kelsey? An hour and a half or something?

Yeah, usually like an hour and 15 with traffic. A lot of times it's an hour and a half.

Is there times when it takes the same amount of physical time, but the perceptive time is different? Yeah, and I've experienced that too. Laura, what triggers that?

Well, it's kind of how much you're enjoying it. They say time flies when you're having fun. So if you're listening To a great podcast, for instance, in the car, that can make the time go much more pleasantly, and so it doesn't seem to drag as long. Or if you're listening to a great audio book or if you're commuting with a friend that you're enjoying spending some time with, that hour seems fine. You don't mind being stuck in traffic if you're having a great time talking with your friends, curiously enough. So time flies when you're having fun is how the phrase goes. But the brain actually perceives that when time has seemed to move fast, then we must have been having fun. There was this fascinating study I just read that they manipulated people's perception of time. I think they moved the hands on the clock forward or something like that, so people felt like more time had passed than actually had. And when they did that, people rated various activities as being more pleasurable that they had just done than when that didn't happen. So, you know, time flies when you're having fun. And if time flew, then you must have been having fun even if you really weren't.

I wonder if some. Jeremy, can you create some algorithm for us that when people listen to this podcast, like, they listen to it for 40 minutes, but we have it look like it played for an hour and a half.

Absolutely.

They're like, this is the most amazing podcast ever.

Oh, my God, is this a thing? I hate traffic, so I would rather drive the same distance or. I'm sorry, I would rather be driving for the same amount of time in circles or around.

Oh, yeah.

To get from point A to point B than to sit in traffic for that amount of time.

Because you can zone out when you're not in traffic. And so, like, you can let your mind wander or focus on the book that you're listening to. When you're in traffic, it's the worst because you have to be on guard.

Yeah, that's a good point. Laura, what do you think about that? The perception of time and being static in traffic versus movement? I wonder how it translates to business, too.

Well, I think that progress in general is motivational. There have been some studies on this, that people are happiest when they feel like they're making steady progress towards something. And so that's pretty hard to feel like you're making steady progress towards something when you're just sitting there in a traffic jam, seemingly not going anywhere. But one of the things I found with time and studying how people spent their time is that one of the ways people could increase their sense of time Abundance and feel more relaxed about time is doing whatever they could to move minutes out of this negative category. So there's certain times of the day, I always advocate that people track their time. I track my time. I like to see where it goes. But if you do that, noting when you're most unhappy and when you're in a more neutral category and when you're feeling good. Because if you can move minutes out of the unhappy category through whatever way you can, that can totally change your perception of how much time you have. Sometimes it's about using money to get yourself minutes back. Sometimes it's about changing your schedule to get yourself minutes back. Or sometimes it's about doing something during this unpleasant time to make it better. So that would be listening to the podcast or audiobook, but the other categories, I mean, maybe you could shift your work hours, so commute at a time when there's less traffic, or try to get out of the commute sometimes by working from home, if that's possible in your line of work. Or maybe it's that you move closer to work, make a big investment of upfront time or expense there to move, but then you earn it back every single day when it's only 10 minutes to get to work as opposed to an hour.

Okay, so I know you already shared some tips on time management. I want to extract as much as I can so the listeners show they want to drive profitability in their business. They want to get more things done with less time. Do you have some other specific tips you can share with us to pull that off?

Well, one of the things I found in my time diary study is that people turn out to be a good use of time, that the people with the most abundant perspective on time were more likely to invest in those relationships that were important to them. So I know it's often easy to be like, oh yeah, well, I'll go talk to that employee about this thing I know is bothering her. After I've cleaned out my inbox or after I've dealt with these various fires, then I'll go talk about this. What new projects you can have this other employee take on, but that's really the backwards way to do it. You want to invest in the relationships first because that's what's on going, going to make you feel like you have more time, make the business run better. So that was something I found. But I think it's also just this general sense of intentionality about time. Time keeps passing whether or not you think about where it's going. And so it is very easy to spend time mindlessly and in a very reactive way. And there's certain elements of running a business that you're always going to need to be somewhat reactive. Clients coming to you with stu, or employees coming to you with stuff that you have to deal with. But if you let your entire life be those things, you will never make progress for anything else. And so the people who sort of handled time the best were more intentional about it. I mean, they could tell you what they'd done with their time. They had an easier time filling out the time diary because they knew what they had done with their time, they were aware of it. And that can be both prospective and retrospective. So looking forward, saying, what am I going to do tomorrow? What's important for me to focus on this week? You know, what do we have coming up this quarter? What do we have coming up this year? And then doing it in a reflective way too. So at the end of the day or the end of the week, whatever, looking back over the period of time and saying, well, what did we like, what did we not like? What worked, what didn't work, what can we change and do better next time?

You know, one thing you shared in the pre interview, which was kind of mind blowing, is that you've been tracking your personal time for over three years now. I believe every day. And you said there's value to it now, not everyone has to be that diligent. But you believe there's value in tracking time. So I want to know about that. But I want to know, why do you track your time for three consecutive years and continue to do it?

Well, I find it interesting. I mean, it may not be interesting to anyone else. It's a bit of a navel gazing sort of exercise. But I kind of like the fact that I know where every half hour of my time has gone for the past three and a half years. I can't be telling myself, where did the time go? Well, actually I know exactly where the time went and that's really made me feel like I have more time. I feel more sense of calm and abundance about my time because I know exactly where it went. But nobody needs to track their time for three and a half years. This is not something I'm going to force on anyone here. But I do think that tracking your time for a week will give you a good perspective on where the time goes. It is so easy to tell ourselves stories about time, one of the common ones for entrepreneurs. I'm working around the clock, I'm working Constantly on my business, I have no time for anything else. Well, is that true? I don't know. I mean, we can tell ourselves all sorts of things. I had one young man tell me he was working 180 hours a week at a startup, which is pretty funny if you actually multiply 24 times 7 that there's only 168 hours in a week. He's telling himself the story, oh, I'm working so much, working so much. He's apparently generating 12 more hours than a week actually. So we tell stories about how many hours we're working. We may say, oh, I never sleep well except when you do. Or like I have no free time whatsoever. And then it's like, you can tell me what happened in the last episode of Big Bang Theory. Well, it's not, you know, it's not the gotcha sort of thing. It's just that like if you don't notice that you have free time, you tell yourself, oh, this never happens. And then you spend your time in some way that's right in front of you because you haven't thought about it because you haven't owned the fact that there is leisure time in your life. And if you own that fact, then you can say, well, what would I like to do with it? I mean, maybe it's not as much free time as you want. I mean, I would totally buy that, but it's still probably some you guys, I mean, Jeremy.

Yeah, Laura? What do you use to track your time? Is there a program that you suggest or recommend or just a method?

Yeah, I just use a spreadsheet. It's Excel, not too fancy. If any of your listeners want to come to my website, you can download a template. But it's just a spreadsheet with the days of the week along the top, Monday through Sunday, and then half hour blocks along the left hand side going from 5am to 4.30am So 336 cells representing a 168 hour week. And the reason I like spreadsheets is they give you a good visual picture of the whole week. I mean I can sort of see if the things have been more crowded or more relaxed, like if I'm sleeping in a disjointed fashion or if it's in a kind of more regular fashion. You know, it shows me how much time some people like to color code their spreadsheets and then you can see how much time you're working and where the work is occurring and how interrupted it is. And if there's a good block of family time, all these things. There are apps. There are plenty of time tracking apps out there. And one of the easiest ways to find an app that might work for you is if you are, for instance, using apps to track employee time, for instance, their clocking hours or whatever, you might be able to repurpose that for your own time tracking. Just, you know, call it different projects. Exercise is a project. Volunteering is a project. Time with family is a project. Sleep is a project, you know, so there's plenty of apps like that. So some people prefer that method.

And do you track it, like, as you're going along, or is it the end of the day you do a recap?

I tend to check in about three times a day on a day where I have ready access to the computer, where my spreadsheet is. So workdays would be like three times a day, you know, only about a minute each time. So it takes me about three minutes a day to track my time. So it's really not that big or disruptive a thing. Like, it's like brushing my teeth. You know, I spend probably three minutes a day brushing my teeth as well. And I don't sit there and lament how, you know, big an imposition this is on my life to track my. To brush my teeth every single day. So, yeah, I can definitely recount the day at the end of the day. I've done this long enough now that I can pretty much put together 24 hours with a reasonable amount of accuracy. And, you know, if you want to check if you could do this for yourself, try just thinking about what have you done since yesterday when you woke up? And my guess is you'll probably get about 80% of it. And that's pretty good. You know, if you know 80% of how you spent your time, you're in a good shape. And so you can see that it's not really that difficult a thing to do. And then the payoff, though, is that you have this real sense of accountability for your time and also knowing where your free time might be, and then you can use that free time.

I know you were working with a lot of people researching this for off the clock. Did you find any epiphanies or any common revelations that people had after they start tracking their time? Like, oh, my God, do I send a lot of time on email? Or Jeremy porn, You know, something like that?

Or like, a week brushing your teeth?

I spent 10 hours a day brushing my teeth. Like, do you find that some people are like, oh, my gosh, I can't believe how much time I spend doing X.

There are some pretty typical findings. One is that most people work less than they think. It's just that work sort of occupies this big space in the brain because you think about it a lot, you worry about it, you plan out your work time in a way people don't with their non work time. And so when you plan things out and are intentional about it, it makes it seem bigger. But you can do this for your free time too. You can be intentional about your free time. Most people are interested to see that there is free time. Again, it's not as much as they want, but it's seldom zero. I don't think I've ever seen a time log where it's actually zero. Parents are often pleasantly surprised at how much time they are spending with their kids. Really?

That's nice.

Yeah. This is one of those stories that we often tell ourselves. Like, oh, you know, I'm working so hard and therefore I never see my kids. But the kids are around a lot. And so, you know, you might be seeing them in the morning before you go to work. Especially young kids wake up pretty early. And yet this time often doesn't register as real time that's really there. But it could be, you know, if your kid is up at 5:30 in the morning and you know, you start work around eight, that's like two and a half hours. And you're not gonna spend all of it on high quality stuff. You could certainly do some stuff together during that time. So sometimes it's just about seeing that it's there and that it can be used.

Is there a direct correlation between time, time management and profitability?

You know, it's hard to say for any given person that it's incredibly straightforward. The studies that have been done on this sort of thing are always like, well, we're going to track people's time at like a call center and see how many calls they answer in a certain amount of time. And then, you know, manipulate various variables. Like if we put in a plant, are they happier? You know, if they're allowed to control X, Y or Z, are they happier? The answer is often yes, they are. So that's great, but I don't know that that translates into different sorts of work that are less kind of routine. That said, I would be hard pressed to find a business owner who hasn't sat there and thought about if they put in the time to think about, well, what is the most important thing for me to be spending my time on? What really Drives profit in my business. What drives the growth of my business and how can I spend more time on that and less time on other things and actually thinks about it and puts it in their schedule and holds themself accountable to it. It is hard to see how your business wouldn't grow often. There's low hanging fruit on there.

What's the first step people should take to improving their time management?

So I really recommend tracking your time. It's a simple thing to do. You don't have to invest money in it. Like I said, it's just a few minutes a day. But it gives you a very good sense of what your life looks like. If you see that you get very distracted all afternoon and you kind of do the same thing over and over again because you're having trouble focusing, well, that's a good sign that you need a break. You need this building breaks into your afternoon. Maybe it's that you do a different kind of work or talk to employees or get outside and go for a walk. But do something like that and you can then focus the rest of the afternoon. Simply being aware of these things in your schedule is often the first step to fixing them.

Awesome. Awesome. All right, Laura, we gotta rock and roll. But before we let you go, I want to learn where people can get off the clock. Where's the best place to buy it? And also you have so many great books out there where they can discover your other books too.

Yeah, well, you can find it at any bookstore, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Indie Bound, any of your independent bookstores. But come visit my website, which is lauravanderkam.com and you can find out about my other books. I've heard from a lot of entrepreneurs that they find 168 hours helpful. That's my first book on time management and it's kind of written from a perspective of me being a lifelong, on my own kind of person, free agent. So I think that entrepreneurs are often drawn to that message.

I first heard of you, I thought it was an article though, what the most successful people do before breakfast. I thought I discovered as like an article was that first an article before it became a book?

It was an article before it became a book. But that was such a clickable title, it turned out that I had to do something else with it.

Yeah, I remember that. And that's where I first learned about you and I've read most of your books. Now I still have to read off the Clock as everyone knows, but I'm going to be reading that next. Laura, thank you so much for joining us today.

Thank you, Laura.

Thank you for having me.

All right, Kelsey, here's what we're gonna do.

What are we gonna do?

We're gonna have you stop mocking me constantly. That's like. That's what I think we should do. We should have the let's Not Mock Mike show starring Kelsey. You're not as giddy as usual. Usually you're a little more giddy. I feel a little bit of like there's a tinge of. I don't know what it is. You're a little off.

I don't know what it is either. Maybe it's later in the day.

Maybe it's later in the day. It's freezing in this room.

That's really cold.

Cold maybe because you're blanketed up.

Yeah, I know. It's like you're a mummy or something.

Yeah.

I've never seen.

Are you not cold? Is it just me?

He's wearing, like, a T shirt and shorts.

It feels great.

I think it feels comfortable. But over there, you look. You look like a mummy. You're quiet. You're angry.

I'm not angry at all.

You're not angry. There's. So. Do you sense it, Jeremy? Yeah. Yeah.

It's anger. It's anger.

Is it anger? You should just underlying anger. I never knew. I didn't think.

I'm angry right now.

Is that how you get angry? Yeah, you turn into. You turned into Elmo.

Muppet.

A Muppet. Yeah. It says, you are so always effervescent. Is that the right word?

Are you sure it's effervescent? Is it not effervescent?

So this morning, jbo, we have our morning huddle, and there's. If you win the shout out awards, meaning you're recognized by your colleagues the most, you get to spin this wheel with these different categories of what you win. And she won the compliment circle where everyone has to go around and compliment her. I get the final compliment to Kelsey. I say, I don't know the word, but I think it's that you're effervescent. And she was. That. She does that in my face. She starts laughing, but she doesn't. When she really laughs, she goes in my face and she goes, you sure it's epervescent?

Wait, first I was like, are you actually. Are you saying epervescent? Is that what you're saying?

And I didn't. I said, yes. She goes, it's effervescent. And she laughed me out of the room. Did you really think it was effervescent. My entire life I thought it was effervescent. I've never. What's wrong with that? There's no way.

You'Ve been saying, like, epervescent. Like, Alka Seltzer is epervescent.

I think it says it on the package.

Does it really? Does it really? I never. I didn't even.

What seltzer are you drinking right now? Is that epervescent?

It's effervescent. It's the effervescence of black cherry. It says. I just thought it was effervescent. Is there ever. Is there ever a word you thought was something different? Yeah, Remember Aaron, we were talking about, oh, we had to get this done from the get go? And she always thought it was from a gecko. A gecko? She's like, yeah, we have to get the gecko. We have to get this done from the gecko. And we're like, did you say gecko? Like this, the lizard thing? She's like, yeah, from the get go.

Do you remember what you said the other day?

What I said?

Yeah. Do you remember?

No. What?

It's, like, looking really, like, agrocious in here.

Oh, yeah. I was saying atrocious and aggressive.

Gross, I think.

I think aggressive and atrocious. And I said agrocious. What was it?

But you were, like, really serious.

Well, that. I caught myself.

No, you didn't.

I didn't. Well, I was hoping you guys didn't hear it, maybe. I know that's not a word you just say.

A grocious. And you said, fuck you.

I did. Because you catch me so quickly, I don't even get halfway through the word.

For 10 years, I thought it was nip it in the butt.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Instead of.

But that would make sense.

It does. And sometimes I still catch myself because.

It gives me a sense of effervescence. All right, so here's the deal.

I think it's a gross.

First, punch me, Kelsey. Right.

Okay.

Thank you. All right, so what we're gonna do is thank our corporate partners for making the show a reality. Then we'll recap what we learned from Laura, and then we'll answer listener mail.

No farting, please.

That was not farting. That was my lips. That wasn't. Oh, I didn't even intend to make a fart sound. I was just. You know what I'm saying? If I went, okay, that would be a fart.

Nip it in the butt, please.

All right. That butt has been nipped. All right, so thank you to nextiva. We haven't set you up with nextiva yet, have we?

No, I am, yeah.

Oh, you are.

It's just not working because of the move and everything.

Oh, you do have one for your home?

Yeah.

Gosh. We are on top of this. So set up your. Your virtual network of employees, colleagues, anywhere or you have in your office or a combo. We actually have a simul ring. So you have it at your house and here. Right. So it's a super easy to connect. When Kelsey works from home. Well, she works home from once a week now. Yeah, we just connect over the phone. And I can just dial extension here. And it rings. There is this. It's just a super cool phone system and super affordable. It's super amazing. It's Next Diva and. And Receipt Bank. I interviewed them on stage. Yeah, you see that? Caston was up on stage. Do you see Lawrence from qx? He got all nervous.

No, I didn't see.

His face was turning red as we're interviewing him. But he had one of the best interviews. But cast and had the second best interview from Receipt bank and Receipt Bank. I don't know how many receipts you carry around, but we're wearing shorts like that. You can't pack any much more stuff in your pockets.

Now. Remember the mini wallet?

The mini wallet.

Baby wallet.

Yeah. Well, try to put receipts in there. It just overflows. What you can do is have Receipt Bank. Oh, look at that thing. You can scan in all the receipts packed in that mini wallet right into your phone. And you don't have to carry receipts around anymore. So Receipt bank does that for you. All right, Check out our corporate partners. We'll have links in our show notes about them. Now let's talk about what we learned today. What you learned today.

Okay.

I was actually in Melody there. All right, go.

So first, I love how she says, think about time as a rich tapestry instead of a slick linoleum floral. That was kind of a good imagery.

Yes, it was very good.

And I also really loved thinking about, you know, time in February as time tomorrow. Like, plan it the same exact way. So if you don't feel enthusiastic about it tomorrow, don't prioritize it in the February because you're the same person.

Yeah. So that was exactly what I was gonna say too. Would you do it tomorrow? That was my big star. What a great filter.

Yeah.

Basically, careful what you say yes to. And was there anything else on this page? People. Oh, and prioritize people. I thought that was actually fascinating when she was saying, you Know, it's our propensity. Maybe a conflict with someone is, I'll take care of email first. I'll talk to them later. But think about the time that's chewing away in your mind for yourself and for that person.

Yeah.

Nip it in the butt, as you would say.

Yeah, Jeremy. I also really love when she said, like, if you go through your tasks and when you do a time log and associate what emotion you put with those tasks and then move the minutes from the ones that you don't have good emotion towards to the ones that you do. I love that because I feel like a lot of times in the morning, particularly if I, like, don't feel like exercising or dancing or whatever, and I'll be like, oh, I just gotta get ready.

Yeah.

But I'll always say those minutes give me so much joy that it feeds you the rest of my day. It's worth it. It's worth those minutes.

That's super cool. For my accountability, I once read, what would your best friend say? Like, say. Say you didn't want to work out or do something that day. What was your best friend say to you? If they're being candid, your best friend would say, you gotta work out. Your best friend would say, whatever. And then the person said, realize you are your own best friend. And so now I always say that, like, this morning, I did not want to work out at all.

And like, whoa, hey, best friend.

Hey, best friend. Get hit the gym. And I'm like, son of a bitch. Are you gonna be their best friend? Yeah, I'll be with you every step.

Of the way, best friend.

I'll be there every step of the way. So I went to the gym.

I told you. You're looking svelte. When we went.

Do you think so?

The post office.

Yeah. Yeah. The funny thing about aging is you gotta work out more and more to. To keep anything together. I feel. I'm actually feeling like I'm getting older. My mind doesn't feel that way, and I think no one's mind does, but your body starts to get a little more decrepit.

I hate that. Like, I hate waking up in the morning and, like, my feet hurt now, you know?

You know, Be interesting. Study the productivity levels from people that.

Work out regularly much higher. I bet you.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But we'd have to ask. We'll have Laura back about that. All right. Did we get email today?

Yeah, we did.

One second. Why is it I've got mail pattern baldness? That's not. Yeah. All like this show the humor was not on this show. There was no humor. It was just dead. Everything was dead. I say a joke is a silence. You guys responded with silence.

I think that's a reflection of you, not us.

It probably is, right? It was not funny today.

So this one comes from Lawrence Mauga.

I'm sorry, repeat that again.

Lawrence Moga.

Where'd you get the L from? Because it's. It's M A U G A. Malga. Yeah, Malga.

I didn't say malga. I just tried to pronunciate.

Pronunciated. The good thing is you laugh at your own mispronunciations.

So what did you try to pronunciate, Lawrence Mauga? I have been sticking to the profit first structure for almost three months, and he loves it and coming into the first quarter. But I've been drawing the percents from the money that hits the accounts. However, we sometimes use a credit facility to cover the expenses. Do I distribute the same percentages of the borrowed money that hits the accounts?

Okay, Lawrence. And anyone that's borrowing money, how do you allocate borrowed money? Borrowed money is never allocated. That's the one big thing with profit first that people get confused on most is they say, well, I borrowed from, you know, XYZ Bank. I got a $10,000 loan. I'll put that in as income and then allocate to these different accounts. The thing is, it's not income, it's a loan. And it's used to cover expenses. So take that money and put in your operating expenses and pay from operating expenses that loan money. The other thing is, as you accumulate profit, then the profit distributions, the vast majority of it goes back to pay that loan. At the end of the day, if you keep on borrowing money to sustain your business, there's an issue with the business. So the profit first mantra is to eradicate debt to be debt free. And if you continue to accumulate debt or you're not eradicating your debt, there's a fundamental problem with the business we need to fix. Hope that answers your question, Lawrence. Okay, did. Was that everything?

Dude, that's everything. Dude.

Let me hit the music.

But don't forget to leave us a rating and send us a picture. Send me Kelseykemcalowitz.com and I'll send you Private first.

Yeah, so you send a picture of the rating and you can get Private first or. Or Clockwork, right? Or Pumpkin Plan even. Is that cool? Is that cool? Do you think we can get Penguin to send them or are they gonna be difficult about this because they've been pretty good for years.

I don't think they want to send them.

Okay, well, you know what?

But we'll send them.

We'll send them. And if. If they're not, you know, I'm gonna get on the phone with them and have it out with them.

You tell them, Mike, they've done it.

For five or six years. How long have I been with them? Oh, I love Penguin. Except for this little nuance. They gotta send the books out, but no matter what, we will get it to you.

Yes.

Okay. Okay. I sound bitchy. That's what I. I just sound bitchy.

So you're the angry one today.

I'm the angry one. Is it so funny? I've been placed on you guys? I'm like, oh, you're your small wallet. Oh, all you.

We're the ones not laughing at your joke.

Total projection. I'm happy we brought a rap to that.

Subscribe on YouTube.

Subscribe on YouTube.

Oh, it's the time to subscribe on YouTube because we're here.

Yeah. And you can see this on video. So what's the channel on YouTube? Mike Michalowicz.

Yeah.

All right, so go to the Mike Michalowicz channel. You guys see this on video. You can see my anger building, my face getting red. You can also subscribe on itunes. Stitcher. Did you already share that?

Yeah.

Okay, you can do that. You can get your free copy of Surge by going to mikemotorbike.com you can raise some reviews. And the last thing is this. Listen, you need to drive profitability in your business. We all do. Right. We all need to maximize our profitability. The question is, what's the source for it? Well, there's a book out there called Profit first, and there's an organization out there that will walk you through it. Yes. We have accountants, bookkeepers, and coaches that can guide you through profitability. They're called Profit First Professionals. So as your last action for the day, go to profitfirstprofessionals.com, click on Find One, and we will hook you up. All right, I gotta get some of this angry out of me. I'm out of here.

Yeah. Yeah. Oh, hell, no.

Oh, we're gonna start fading.

You didn't do the other one.

What did I do? Do it.

Oh, do it.

That's right. That's what I needed.

Yeah.

Do it. Do it.

Come on, man.

Do it.

Come on.

Do it.

Now I feel better. Okay, now we can stay down.