Einstein Time

All right, welcome to another episode, episode four of the Big Leap. Hi, Kay.

Hey, Mike. Being here with you again, yeah, it's great.

And this episode is Einstein Time. It's how to double your productivity in half the time. Something that both you and I are big fans of, which is how are you going to get more stuff done in a shorter period of time? And also do it consciously.

I'd love to hear your perspective on how. Really, you've got an opening story about getting out of your victim relationship with time first.

Yeah, my brother once told me the story about something when I was a kid that I'd forgotten about. When I was in the first grade, for Christmas, I got a wristwatch, and I was just obsessed with this wristwatch. And he said one day that I spent about five minutes down by the Western Union clock, which was the reference point for what time it was, trying to get my watch just set right square on that time. So I've been concerned with time for a long time, and I went to an extreme, to the point of trying to manage my time and everything like that. And there's tons of different time management programs and things like that, and I tried them all, but I've gone to something much more simpler over the past 20 or 30 years that I call Einstein Time. And again, you have to come from the inside out, because most people have what I call a victim relationship with time. They think time is their energy, their enemy, or there's not enough of it, or sometimes if you're bored, there's too much of it. So any complaint you have about time and is trying to get something controlled that's not actually within your power to control. And so the more you work on trying to control your time, the worse the problem gets. And what I always tell people is there's no way to have enough time to do all the things that you don't really want to do anyway.

Yeah, that's great. That's so great. Well, my relationship with time has changed dramatically. I'll tell you.

One specific thing that's happened, and then also a trap that I found myself in for years. So my trap was the typical entrepreneur time, which is I prioritized other people's stuff unconsciously before my own. So reacting and responding to texts and emails, because I thought, well, if I don't do this, then then this will happen. And so I became someone else's slave and I got stuck in minutia. And the best example of that is if you're the kind of person who brings your mobile phone to dinner. And you ever look at it, you're a slave. There's no question about that.

Yeah. And I tell people flat out now, being in a hurry is a sign of mental illness.

That you're rushing the moment. You're out in front of the moment, so look out what's going to happen. One of the things that was so important for me was getting out of that victim relationship with time. The way I spoke of time, I realized that I was always casting myself as the victim. I would say, oh, I've got to run now, I don't have time to do that, or.

I don't have time to do this, or I've got.

I would ask somebody, do you have time for such and such? But it was coming from a place of, there's a scarcity of time. And so Einstein, time goes the other direction. Einstein had this great image of the theory of relativity. He said that a minute sitting on a hot stove feels like an hour, and an hour with your beloved feels like a minute. It goes by like a minute. So what's the difference there? Well, when you're sitting on a hot stove, you're contracting away from your experience. You're trying to get away from where you are. And of course, that never works. But what it does is makes time sticky and sludgy. The more you're trying to escape from your current experience, the more you're creating time as a kind of a binding thing in your life rather than a liberating thing. So on the other hand, when you're with your beloved, the reason an hour goes by like a minute is because you're completely open in your cells to experiencing everything that you can possibly experience. And so you're. You're wide open. And because of that, time disappears. And so what we need to do is harness that insight. And here's where to start. The simple place to start. Start monitoring every time you speak from the victim position regarding time. So every time you say, I don't have time for that right now, or oh, I wish I had time for that, I was with a person the other day that was asking me about a book I've written and I was talking about it, and. And then he said afterwards, oh, boy, I wish I had time to write a book, you know? So he's put himself in a victim position with regard to time. Like there's not enough of it. So to me, that's a step down a very slippery slope down to where every moment of life becomes a threat rather than an open possibility. Because if you cast yourself in a whole victim relationship with regard to a huge phenomenon like time.

You.

You're probably going to be casting yourself as a victim in other aspects of your life, like your relationship life. And so what I stopped doing was speaking as a victim. And that's what I really would love people to put a focus on first. So every time you say something like, I don't have time for that, switch it to, I'm not willing to make time for that right now. That puts you in the ownership position of time and in life. I've found that anytime you can get into the ownership position position, the better off you are.

That is really, really powerful. I hadn't thought of it quite like that that strongly. I'm not willing to. I say that, but it also.

Holds true with relationships. I'm not willing to invest that time in a relationship with you. Now, it doesn't have to come across that way, but that's effectively what's going.

On, what you're saying.

Yeah, and that is.

Comes from a place of power.

Another, a more positive one is that a lot of people come up to me and they say, I know you're busy, I know you're very busy, but. But would you. And I always stop them at that very point. And I say, I just want to let you know I am absolutely not very busy. If I were very busy, I would consider that a terrible way to live. But I'm willing to make some time for us to have this conversation, or I'm not willing to. So that's being in the ownership position. And if you think about it, wouldn't you rather be a producer than a consumer of time? And so when people ask me, am I too busy? I say no, because I'm where time comes from. We all are where time comes from. We just haven't. Most of us haven't claimed that space yet. So good.

That's so good. So what I'd like to do with you is get into some tactical strategies for doubling productivity in half the time. And I'll. I'll begin while you think about one. And this is something that I've been doing for several years, but I've gotten a lot better. And it has to do with matching up your zone of genius or as, and with your outcomes, goals, and what it is you want to manifest or if you want to create luck. And so for me, I know that power and wealth and satisfaction and the best relationships come as a result of the investments I make in myself.

To be as conscious as possible. And also in other people and being committed to deep, meaningful, transformational experiences. So that mindset alone gets me away from thinking shallow and having shallow relationships because I'm not interested in them. It's one of the reasons I've completely cut myself off from social media. For example, I pay someone to do social media for me and I only monitor when something important comes up.

And I look at news. For example, I don't consume any news except for pure entertainment. Okay, different mindset, but with people, that's where I invest the most. Now historically, if I were communicating with people, it would be with email. That's always been the standard, but I found email is just time consuming. I don't really enjoy it. There's nothing fun about it. My zone of genius is very video and audio. So now when I meet someone, for example, and someone says, hey, do you have a business card? I'll say, no, I don't have a business card. I haven't carried them in years. Instead, I'm going to take a picture of you and me and I'm going to text it to you. So I'd go do a selfie, boop. And then I send it right away. And I've got little shortcuts, keyboard shortcuts with my name and my email, and then little follow up quotes. So all I have to do is type in two letters. Like if someone wants to schedule an appointment with me, it's two letters. I type S, one sends it right away. Then what I will do is when I return from a trip, I'll be in my studio here or even with my phone. I'll make short little videos that are meaningful and deep and relevant to our conversation. So there's the context is meaningful, the message is meaningful, and the outcome is meaningful as well. And that's how I start the conversation. And my and without exception, most people say, wow, that's the first time someone's ever done that. I should do that too. Should they should all over themselves. But no one else is doing it. So it creates this deep, meaningful connection. And then if that is a business conversation, I only do my conversations now with Zoom or QuickTime Video.

No more phone calls because I want to make sure that they're 100% engaged. Right? So I want to own your ears and your eyes and you're busy.

I have found exactly the same thing. I do everything on video now myself. And I really think that it opens up so many more possibilities, especially for observation, as I love to do, of body language. Because one of my great mentors, Sir William Osler, one of the great diagnosticians of all time, said that if you listen and watch carefully, your client will not only tell you what the problem is, but how it must be treated. And so I listened for the. And watch for the solutions that I see coming through a person, not just for where the problems are, because their body will always be broadcasting the solution at the same time.

Okay, I want to go down the rabbit hole a little bit. Can you give me a little example of that? Because I think this would be. For anyone who's watching this will find it fascinating and listening as well. So. And then let's resume back to where we were.

But, okay, let me give an example. Sitting in the Dell computer boardroom, mammoth table, about 50ft long. And I'm sitting in there some years ago with their number two guy, a fellow named Mort. And so as I was talking to him and he was telling me about some of the issues that they had going on, I noticed that he kept touching his chest, and I noticed that his breathing was a little labored. And so as we sat there.

So my thinking is, okay, his body is telling me a problem and also the solution at the same time. So when he finished talking a little bit, I called his attention to. I said, you keep kind of signaling your body. And he said, oh, what do you mean? And so I drew a little picture. I said, the human body has three big emotions that cause most of us trouble. Fear, anger, and sadness. And I said, they each have a special place in the body. We've talked about this before, but, you know, here's where you feel a lot of your sadness. And in your belly is where you feel a lot of your fear. And up in your jaws and shoulders is where you feel a lot of your anger. And so I kind of just sketched out this little picture, and it made a lot of sense to him. And I said, just looking at where you touch it, said, I think you have some sadness that is present there. And he said, that's very interesting because he just gotten some feedback from his executives, the ones that worked under him, that they got freaked out when he would explode in anger sometimes. And he didn't consider it a big deal because he grew up in a family where they screamed at each other.

Probably Italian family.

Yeah, think it was a Jewish family from Brooklyn, but it could have been easily my family, too, because they were Southern Methodists, but they were pretty noisy bunch, too, especially around mealtime. But anyway.

The big point was that he realized that when he got angry at people, he was Often actually sad or disappointed, but he had never communicated that to them. And so I showed him just a simple way of communicating, like, oh, I feel disappointed in that or I feel sad about that, you know, rather than just banging on the table and being angry all the time. And so I. It was really wonderful too because folks like Mort and Michael Dell and Kevin Rollins, who was the president down there at the time, I mean, these guys are so open to learning, you know, it's just brilliant how quick they get things because Mort, even though he was nearing retirement age, he jumped up and went to his next meeting. And in a little while I was coaching somebody else and Mort comes running back in the door and says, hey, I'm explaining what you explained to me to these other executives. Can I have that piece of paper that you drew those feelings on, like it was the Magna Carta or something. And so I handed him the picture piece of paper and he ran out of the room because he was busily explaining it. That's, to me, that kind of turn on a dime learning. I really respect that, Love it.

So let's keep on going down the rabbit hole of time. Efficiency tactics and ways to accelerate getting stuff done. And I'm going to do one more.

I got a big one that I use, but yes, okay, okay, I'll give.

You one more and then let's go back and forth. So another one that I use. I'm a drawer and I'm also a kinesthetic learner. So this took me a long time to figure out how my brain works, which is, and I believe your wife Katie is also a kinesthetic. Which if you're generally an auditory, visual or a kinesthetic. I am completely incapable of learning in a classroom environment. Like I'm asleep or I'm in charge. Two modes. And so when I do meetings and I work with people, for example, I, I stand in front of a whiteboard and I draw. And now I've learned that the best thing I can do is draw on those gigantic post its. So when I do something I call vision day with a client, they come down to our beach and I start pulling stuff out of them and drawing and writing it. And then pretty soon all the walls are just covered in notes and notes and then we stack them in order and then create a story from that. It's how we compose a book or a play or a sales presentation or whatever it needs to be. And getting back to how I create efficiency, that's how I open up my day as well. First thing I do is I walk over to a whiteboard and I draw and I write down all the stuff that I know I need to do along with my intention for the day. So I always tie it back. And this is where I think the biggest accelerator comes down to is what feeling or emotion do you want to experience most today and most of the time in your life? And I know on a large scale what I've learned after working with thousands of business leaders is clarity and confidence are two of the biggies. Clarity, confidence and courage.

But then on a daily basis it might be something a little more specific to life for now, the.

Sense of security for example, or whatever that is. Or it could be really specific towards a task and an outcome. With that I write that down and that becomes the main focus. But I know if I get my emotions aligned first and then I look at the, the stuff, the list, it's easy for me to pick the things on the list that are going to get and create that emotion or that feeling first. And, and then I drive my actions based upon that. And I find that I can eliminate the vast majority of of checklist to do items because most of them are meaningless anyway or they're something someone else wants that is not going to benefit you in the long run at all. It may have a short benefit, but what's the big one that you've got?

Well, the big one for me I think really on the surface doesn't have anything, doesn't have anything to do with time. But what it has to do with is seeing that relationship issues are one of the things that often eats up the most amount of time. Yeah, because like, well, here's the specific piece of advice which is what I do if I've got some difficult conversation. I call them sweaty 10 minute conversations. I haven't found a problem yet that couldn't be solved in a sweaty 10 minute conversation. And so if I have a sweaty conversation, I do my best to do that first so that it's not hanging over me the rest of the day like I did one at 7am Just a couple of days ago. And so most people would consider that too.

Early. But I get up early, I'm you know, usually by 4:30 or 5 at the latest. And so by 6 or 7 o' clock I'm ready.

I call that hate o'. Clock.

Well for me, those first five or six hours of the day or juicy creative time, that's when I do all my writing.

I think I've written 43 books now, but always between the hours of say 5am and 8am, something like that. After 8am I can write a good memo, but that's about it. But the important thing is to get your sweaty conversation out of the way as soon as possible because if you don't, your mind is time sharing with that while you're trying to do other things. And when I used to do on site consulting, my opening bid was always the same. I said, I want you to think up the biggest problem you have and I want to solve that one first. Because if we can do that, then the other things can fall out from there. But if we're not looking at that, then, you know, what's the point? So I also, I used to keep a more detailed to do list now, I mean then. But now I tend to make it much more minimalist. You know, I don't write out very many details. It might be talk to Eddie.

Send the proofs back to the publisher, you know, something broad like that. And if I have some sweaty conversation, I definitely prioritize that first.

Interesting. So yeah, mine is, well, you see it on the, on the door. So for anyone who, well you can't see it here, but I've got some action items and those came from, you know, I don't know to do's from maybe a week ago or so. I've got other pages for that. The only other thing that I do now is I have a document. It's a Google Doc that I share with my assistant and at the top of it I always put my action items for the week and I bulletize them and then I assign as many as I can to her. So I'm left doing conversational, relationship driven, huge forward focused mission things. So for example, in preparing for our podcast, truth be told, we recorded four episodes at once. You know, we, for us, our time efficiency is record four in one day. And as of now, we're going to get them done in roughly three hours and some change, which is pretty darn good.

And you know, batch behavior is super powerful. But in this particular case, the way I produced as much as possible as I bulleted, I created an audio. So again I create a couple audio or bullets rather, and then I narrate. I find now that I write by narrating and I turn everything into a performance. I found the closer to theater it is, the more interesting it is for the audience. It keeps me invested and intrigued and I get to practice it as a performance which then I can check out the cadence and the timing and how it feels. And so even in Preparation for this. I spent a chunk of time yesterday really meditating on what it would be like to be here with you today and to find our groove. And it always takes. Like in this particular case, we're starting a brand new podcast, so we had to get in sync with each other. It's been a while since we performed on audio or video together. I don't know how long it's been, but a long time. And it invariably would take a few episodes. But I believe practicing theater of mind.

Accelerates the Einstein time experience. And so even in my dreams, I create an intention before I go to bed. And I let my dreams solve problems when I make I can. I've learned how to make my dreams about a problem that needs to be solved. And I don't wake up tired from it. I feel refreshed and ready to go. And it seems like that subconscious clarity carries forth in the day. And it took a little bit of time to do that, but now I think going to bed with intentions makes a big difference.

I totally agree. I meditate early in the morning and later on in the afternoon. And I think one of the main things that I do, it's like my mind before is the same. Like my body is before and after a shower, you know, that after meditation, I have that kind of clear, sparkly, clean feeling in my mind. And that gets me into the day with that state of pure consciousness to start with.

Great. All right, so from here, are there any other stories or techniques you can think of that you are using right now to double your productivity in half the time? And how else does this manifest?

So answer that question first. I have a sub question to go along with it.

Well, the real simple answer to that question is that at this stage of my life, I only do things that I love to do. And I've been heading in that direction for 30 years. But over the past 20 years or so, I've become kind of a zealot about that. And so people frequently ask me to do things that I tune in and I realize, wow, that's not really in my genius, or that's not really something I want to do. And I think that's really an important thing to focus in on what you really, really love to do.

If you do that. You know, I haven't. Even though I do things that would make me look from the outside busy, I have never felt in a hurry in 20 years. And I don't plan to, you know, just because I noticed the early warning signs of that and I fend it off, you know? Oh, okay. I realize I'm doing something I don't really want to do. Let me get my focus back on what I most love to do.

Okay, so talk a little bit about your warning signs and what they are. I'm curious because I. I'll give you a few of mine. And you just triggered a thought that I want to spend a little, little time on.

One warning sign is a slightly off center feeling in my body. And I don't know a better way to describe it. It's just like things aren't quite feeling a flow. It's an absence of flow. See, as I'm sitting here right now, I feel this delicious streaming energy moving up and down my body. And if I stopped feeling that, I want to find out why did I? Was it something I said or something I heard? What was it that stopped that flow? And so I want to make sure we all know how to use our bodies as a barometer of exactly whether we're on the right path or not in life. So that kind of screechy, blood breaks, squealing feeling I can feel in my body when I'm not in my genius. Another one is that when I'm not in my genius, when I'm not doing what I most love to do, I often have awkward interactions with other people that don't feel settled or they don't feel complete somehow. And I've trained myself to realize that sense of incompletion with some. With a person, if possible, is something I want to get handled right away, you know, so I've actually chased people down the street and said, hey, wait a minute. I didn't feel quite complete about what we were just talking about. And I didn't realize that until we had separated. So I want to catch those things as soon as possible. Great.

So I know one of the things that I realized as you were describing, this.

I look for is.

You talked about being incomplete or part of that. What were you talking about right before that?

That. That sense of. Of going away from a conversation where I didn't quite feel centered or that off center kind of feeling.

Yeah, no, honestly, it escaped me right now, but it had to do with.

Hey, I'm supposed to be the old guy.

Yeah, yeah, I know. I can't believe it.

I'm supposed to be the one that gets spaced out.

Yeah, it's all right. Well, I will just say I don't remember where I was gonna go. I thought I had it and. But it ultimately had to do with the sense of efficiency and connection, which is what I seek and search for right now. And to do as much of that.

And set it up, I set up success. So it's, it's preparation. That's what it was now. So what I do is I get clear on what my expectations, my intentions are. I find a couple of bullet points, I let my subconscious.

Provide solutions. So again, I dream solve and then when I'm with someone, because again, my. One of my techniques for getting the most done is through performance and co creation. So I set up a situation so I can co create as fast as possible. Even when I write, I oftentimes have someone on the other side that I perform in front of. I have a muse. So I've found that having a muse present holds me to a higher standard, creates a performance opportunity. And I'm very, very time conscious as well. And the last part of this had to do with.

And this is the big bullet that I forgot just a moment ago. And it came back to me which was anytime I'm operating from a fear or scarcity modality and my very deep, I believe an epigenetic program is running out of money. That's very deep. Three generations deep. Ish. And it haunted me for most of my life. And I had to come to terms with A, I've never gone hungry.

B, I've never really been in a place where I got so scarce I didn't have a way out. I always innovated or created my way out of a challenge, a financial challenge. And.

The biggest problems I've made came from compromising myself and doing something that didn't feel right for money to solve something, or saying, oh, I can't afford to lose this. And the moment that energy shifts. So there's this tipping point that is directly related to my relationship with time is money. And to me, money is nothing more than stored time.

Right.

It's like it's, it's a way to avoid the fear of being without. You know, that's the, that at least at its fundamental level. And so once I see that, what I look for now is it's sort of like this little tick tock clock. It's sort of like, okay, if I'm feeling pressure driven by fear, I know there's a potential of making a compromise that I'll regret later. And those things stack. It's sort of like stacked problems. So stacked compromises create massive time problems later on. So it took me a little while to describe that, but hopefully it came out with some level of clarity.

Yeah, that's really a key shift, though, because I can see how you've leveraged that in a lot of ways. Like, you get more done than just about anybody I know. Yeah. You really put out a tremendous amount of stuff and seemingly while maintaining a centered state of being while you do it. And I find that a great, you know, that's a great gift to be able to pass along through people, through these conversations that we have.

Yeah, I, of course, I don't have a relative sense of that personally. You know, it's like, other than I think I'll definitely get better now, and I feel more comfortable and confident sharing that.

And I think that's an area of your genius. Yeah. I really want to encourage you to really share that more. Yeah.

Well, it's a great place to do it podcast. Yeah, for sure.

I got a lot of other the time hacks that I use too, that I want to talk about at some point, but they're more smaller kind of things. But the big thing I really want to really implore everybody to do as quickly as possible, get out of the victim relationship with time. Stop complaining about the lack of it or stop complaining about too much of it. Get your focus on what you most love to do. And time eliminates a problem. It's no longer a problem.

Beautiful. Beautiful. Well, I. I agree. So I think we've got some big takeaway ways from this one. Besides the relationship you have with time, if you can use some of the hacks that we shared, which is using your unconscious time, because this was.

Something that I have learned through meditation and a little bit of plant medicine work.

Specifically psilocybin is.

You really realize how time is an illusion that is trapped because you exist in a physical body, right?

Yes.

And as soon as the ego disappears in your sense of self, so does time. And I believe it is possible to live inside an eternity, inside a blink or a moment when you stop existing in the flesh. And so that might be another conversation we can have in another place. But getting back to one of the core themes from previous episodes, this notion of wondering. I think wonder is a gateway to living in a timeless state.

I agree. And I think wonder is also a tool that's just as important as a compass to steer your way around the heavens. You know that if you learn to wonder your way through life, anytime you come to a place where a choice needs to be made or a decision or something like that, wonder is a direct pathway to the most creative aspect of ourselves. Einstein, in one of his notebooks talked about wondering about something for 27 years every day until he finally figured it out. Wow, that's some powerful, committed wondering.

Yeah, for sure. Now that's. That is really powerful. So why don't we leave this episode with wonder and I have an ask for you, the listener and the viewer, which is head to itunes. Rate Review Share this with one person you know who can benefit from the conversations that Gay and I are having with you know that other episodes that we've got coming up include we're going to be talking about money and more time hacks, more relationship strategies. And of course, we'll talk more about the Big Leap experience, which you can learn more about that@bigleapexperience.com but gay, what do you have?

I have three words. Breathe, move, love. And they're on the wristband that we give to people at seminars and they'll get you through any situation. Every situation is life in life is improved by breathing, moving and loving.

All right, well, this is another episode, episode number four of Big Leap. This is Mike Koenigs and Gay Hendricks. Thanks for listening and watching.