MBA2226 Why You Can’t Get Everything Done

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Hey oh. Welcome to the $1 RMBA Show. Powerful business lessons delivered every single day with our daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of Webinar Ninja, an independent software company I started with my co founder back in 2014. And in today's lesson you will learn why you can't get everything done. Do you ever end the day and feel like I wish I had a couple more hours. I still have a few things on my to do list. Do you end the week feeling the same way? The end the month, end the year? It just seems like you just can't get everything done. You may be wondering why is that? Why can't I get everything done? I'm productive. I don't waste my time. I'm focused. I'm off social media when I'm supposed to be working. I'm efficient. I don't take long breaks. And yet you still find yourself struggling to finish everything you need to do well. In today's lesson, I'm going to answer this question and the answer is going to surprise you. It sure surprised me when I discovered it. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. So today we're going to discuss the question why you can't get everything done? And here's the answer flat out, because it's impossible. I'm serious. We have believed a lie in our world of business and productivity that we can just get everything done no matter what. If we work hard enough, if we hustle hard enough, if we're productive, if we use the right to do lists and productivity hacks, we can get it all done. But it's actually impossible. You can't do everything. I know that sounds almost like ridiculous to say, but we believe it in the day to day. We believe we can do everything and we can have it all and we can get everything done and we can cross off everything on our to do list, we can cross off everything of our bucket list in our life, and it's simply not true. Here's the reality, here's the truth. There's an infinite amount of things you can do in your life. There's an infinite amount of things you can do in a day that you can actually choose to do. So to expect that you can get everything done is pretty crazy. This is why you have to accept the fact that it's okay, you won't get everything done. You have to accept the fact that there will always be something to do. Because we just agreed that there's an infinite amount of things that you can possibly do. So that's the first principle we need to understand. The second principle we have to understand is that work begets work. What does that mean? That means the more you do, the more you have to do. I'm going to just let that sit for a moment. The more you do, the more you have to do. So the more emails you reply to, the more emails you'll have. The more projects you pick up, the more work you have to do for those projects, the more you do of anything will beget more work. Now this in itself is not a bad thing, but you do have to recognize that the more things you do in your business, in your life, in anything, it will produce more things to do. Let me give you a very simple example. Outside of work, let's say you're going on a holiday. A holiday, right? It's time for fun and relaxation and doing nothing. But the mere fact of booking a holiday. Let's say you're going to France. Now that you've booked that trip to France, you just produced a whole set of things that you can do. A whole set of things that you're going to have to do. Now the basics, book a hotel, book transport, make reservations at restaurants, buy tickets to museums, do research on France and figure out where you're going. Where are the best things to see. Maybe buy a guidebook, read the guidebook, order an Uber to get to the airport. I can go on and on and on. So that one decision, that one action you took to book a holiday just produced a whole bunch of other things you have to do. So the more you do, the more there is to do. Now, you might be thinking, omar, what does this mean? Don't do anything. Don't expect to get anything done. Just sit and stare at the wall all day. How am I going to live? I'm ambitious, Omar. I don't have goals. I have hopes. And I'm here to tell you that's great. The point of today's lesson, today's episode, is to recognize reality. You have to accept the truth of the situation. And once you do, you won't be so hard on yourself when you don't get everything done. You won't be so upset with yourself when you get busy and overwhelmed, when you're taking on a lot of things, when you're trying new things, when you're challenging yourself and your business. The problem is that we hold ourselves to such a high standard. We think we're supposed to be at inbox zero constantly, that our to do lists get crossed off every single day, that we accomplish every single goal. Otherwise, we're losers. And that pain is worse than anything else. The pain of disappointing yourself. I'm here to tell you that you are trying to achieve an impossible goal. So stop doing that to yourself, okay? Recognize the fact that you can't do everything. It's impossible to get everything done in the world. And the more you work, the more work is produced. That means that you're going to actually put more on your plate. Not saying that's a horrible thing. Those are opportunities. But I'm saying it's the reality. And understand that it's going to even get harder to end the day with everything done. You see, I spent years trying to maximize my productivity. I've tried everything under the sun, from apps to methodologies to lists to the pomodoro techniques, all kinds of things. But much of what I learned that actually works is dealing with reality, dealing with what you have in front of you. And all you really can do is try your best every day. The problem is that most of we try our best and we still feel horrible because we don't get it done. And it's because of our expectations. We expect everything will get done. We expect to be super productive. We expect to finish our day at 3 o' clock and so we can relax and read a book when the reality is that that's just not going to happen. And being okay with that and being okay, that is also being okay with the results. Understanding we have to change our expectations. Now, much of what I'm sharing with you today I've learned over the years by reading many books. One in particular that really has shaped my productivity strategy and my understanding of time is a book called 4000 Weeks. I highly recommend it. I most definitely will do a must read episode at some point of that. It's titled 4000 Weeks because it just plainly lets you know, hey, Most people live 80 years and that's their lifespan and that's 4,000 weeks. We only have 4,000 weeks on this earth if we're lucky, if our life is not cut short for some reason. And here's the reality, by the way. All the time we have, every single day, is time that is really given to us. We're actually living on borrowed time. It's actually pretty incredible that we are on Earth. We are alive, we have survived, we have been born in this era where we're still alive at a certain age. We don't die at 25 or at childbirth, that we're able to recover and get cured from some pretty nasty diseases, that we don't die of starvation. We have so much going for us. So any time we have is actually a gift. You hear that all the time. It's a cliche, but it's true. Also, what I learned over the years is that we really overestimate how much we can get done in a day or even a week. But we underestimate what we can get done in a year or a decade. Human beings have a hard time thinking long term, thinking in terms of long periods of time. We have a good concept of how long a day is or even a week. But even that, it's hard for us to estimate what to put on our plate. But when it comes to long term goals, we don't realize we have a lot of time to get things done. But my advice is to start thinking about what's most important to you. You can't get everything done. So knowing that what are the things you actually want to get done, that you actually want to do, that you want to accomplish, that you want to focus on, that you want to prioritize, I want to share with you a story that's attributed to Warren Buffett. Warren Buffett was asked by his private plane pilot. Hey, Warren, how do I prioritize my life? What are things I should focus on? And Warren gave him this advice. He said, I want you to make a list of 25 things that are important to you in this life, right? For you personally. Is it health? Is it maybe a hobby of yours? Is it family? Is it adventure? Write down 25 things that are important to you in your life. He then said, write those things now in order. Reorder them in order of priority. The thing that you absolutely find the most important versus the least important out of the 25. Now, obviously you started out writing things that you like and enjoy, so this is going to be a little bit challenging, but order them in the order of priority for yourself. Warren's advice at that point was, okay, take the top five. And these are the five things that you're going to focus on. Spend your time, your money, your energy, your life, working on, doing, focusing on, prioritizing. Those are your five things for your life. Even if you spent like 10 years on one thing, and every 10 years you focus on a new thing, in 50 years, you would have kind of mastered the five things that are important to you or really have done some good things in those areas, whether it's relationships or wealth or one of your interests. Now, here's the key. Warren then says, the 20 that are remaining on the list, you took your top five. That means there's 20 left. Those 20 are not nice to have. They're not things that you kind of say, okay, if I have time, I'll do them. He says, no. Those 20 things become your biggest enemy. You have to actively avoid doing or focusing on those 20 things, because those things are what are going to distract you from working on the things that you chose. Those five top things. Why? Because you actually like those things. Those are things you want to do, but you have to actively say no. It's easy to say no to things you don't like, but the things you like and kind of interested in, those are the ones that kind of get us. And I love this philosophy because it allows you to just really get clear about what's important to you in your life and say no, and no is more important than yes in this world, Meaning you have to say no more than you have to say yes. If there's five things you only say yes to and 20 things, you say no, that means you're saying no a lot more. So you gotta get better at saying no.

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So we agree, you can't get everything done. We also agreed that we only have 4,000 weeks right to live. And for most of us, a lot of those weeks are gone. For me, half of them are gone. We also established the more we do, the more we have to do. And we also established how to set our priorities using Warren Buffett's model and actively saying no to the things that are not on those priorities. You can do the same in your business. So you know exactly what's important. And most people, they get overwhelmed. They feel disappointed in what they've gotten done in the day because they've worked on things that are just not a priority. So in your business, ask yourself, what is the most important things I have to do to be successful? Write 25 things and then have only the top five. Just like Warren Buffett, you know, write 25, order them in order of priority, and then the top five is what you work on. Everything else you say no. And what you'll find is those five things are money making activities, things that bring in sales, bring in customers, bring in leads, build your audience, improve your products and services. Those are the things that actually allow you to have a business. But unfortunately, we spend too much time on the things that don't matter. We get overwhelmed, we get busy, we get frustrated, we get disappointed. So to answer today's question, why can't you get everything done? Because simply, it's impossible to get everything done. You gotta choose what's important and make sure those things get done. At least the most important things. As long as the most important things get done, you should be happy. Now the real message is you should be only doing the things that are important. That way you don't feel overwhelmed so that you do finish work early so you do have time for yourself and your family. That the things that are not the top five priorities are not on your list. Actively going against them. Saying no. That's when you're in peak productivity, when you're working on the quality of what you work on versus the quantity. Thanks so much for listening to the $100 MBA Show. If you love what you hear, hit, subscribe or follow on your favorite podcast app. We're on every app out there. Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher Radio, Himalaya, Overcast. Just go ahead and hit follow right now so you don't miss an episode. Also, by hitting follow, you get exclusive access to over 2,200 business lessons in our archives. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. What we talked about today takes an incredible amount of discipline. But the funny thing about discipline is the more you do it, the easier it gets. The more you actually enjoy doing it. So bear with yourself. Right? Just hunker down in the beginning to stick to those priorities. Get a cadence, get in a rhythm. And in a couple of months it'll be second nature to you to say no to the things that just don't matter. Thanks so much for listening and I'll check you in Tomorrow's episode. Free out Friday. I'll see you then. Take care.

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