3 Productivity Tips That Changed My Life

I'm a huge fan of working less and living more and earning as much money as possible in the least amount of hours. And I actually used to coach people on productivity and performance before I started teaching the online business stuff due to people asking me about my online business and how I ran things. But it's still a big piece of what I actually work on with people because working less is really the goal. I don't want for myself and I don't want for you to be even pursuing work that you love, but working ridiculous amounts of hours. I'm a fan of working under 20 hours per week or 30 hours per week, part-time hours to earn a full-time income. That's why I'm big on creating systems, passive income, and that kind of stuff. Today we're going to take a bit of a different approach from talking about online business and growing your online business, even though this stuff is still going to help you with your online business. We're not going to talk about the business stuff. We're going to talk about you. And I'm going to share with you 3 of the biggest productivity tips or hacks or secrets or habits, whatever you want to call them, that have dramatically changed my life. Now, I could talk about productivity all day. Like I said, I used to coach it, but these are 3 that I felt kind of called to share with you today. And what's awesome about these 3 productivity tips is that you can actually use these today. They are very actionable. Literally, you can go through, listen to this episode, watch this episode, and implement these simple systems. There's just 2 simple systems. One is a more kind of mindset to get into, but they're going to be fast action for you. So Without further ado, let's dive into 3 productivity tips that have dramatically changed my life. Welcome to episode number 14 of the Profit Your Knowledge podcast. I'm your host, James Allen, here to help you turn your knowledge, passions, and skills into an online business so you can be your own boss, make a difference in the world, and ultimately build a life of freedom. Today we're talking about productivity. Like I said, it's a little bit of a different topic than what I'm normally talking about. If you go onto my YouTube channel, I actually have videos of when I was teaching productivity and performance and all that. That's a story for a different time. When I made the switch, you can actually listen to the first episode of the podcast, which is about like imposter syndrome and online business. If you're on YouTube or listening to the podcast, episode number 1 of this. But productivity has a sweet spot in my heart because it's really, it really has changed my life. And these 3 things are going to be super actionable for you. It's going to be awesome. So we're going to dive straight in. Before we get into the productivity tactics, like I said in the beginning, I am a huge fan of working less and earning more income on the side. And one of the best ways to do that is to create systems in our life, not just personal systems, but mostly for our business. And if you're really interested in teaching things that you know, that you love, that you're good at or skills that you have developed over the years. You want to turn that into an online business that can run for itself. It can run by itself and make money literally while you sleep and create passive income. I wrote out the entire method that I have learned from my mentors who have 7-figure passive income businesses, and I'm getting there. I'm not at 7 figures yet, but I do create passive income in my life, and it's due to this system. And the cool thing is that the longer you stay in the game and doing this, the more that your income will grow and the less hours you'll be able to work or have to put into growing that income. And eventually you'll get to a point where it just runs by itself and you're able to create passive income, or as I like to call it, effortless income. Uh, so I again wrote out this entire guide. It's really short, it's actionable. It's just a PDF that you can pick up and it'll walk you through the entire process. But again, it's actionable. It tells you what to do first, second, third, fourth, fifth, um, 5 steps to get paid sharing what you know, sharing your knowledge, your passion, your skills online. If you're interested in that and you want to learn how to create more passive income by helping people, then definitely check out the guide. To pick up the guide, just go to profityourknowledge.com/guide, or there is a link in the description as well. So that's the ultimate productivity tip right there is to download the guide so you can create passive income in your life and create systems that work for you while you're not working. That is productivity right there. But let's dive into 3 of the best productivity tips. Um, 3 of the big ones that I wanted to share with you today. I could, I have tons of different productivity tips and practices and stuff, but these 3 are 3 of the biggest. Number 1 is called the focusing question. So I learned this from a guy named Gary Keller in his book, The One Thing. Highly recommend. It's one of my favorite books on productivity. And this is something that I live by. Religiously in various areas of my life when it comes to business, but also when it comes to like health and my relationships as well. The focusing question in the book, The One Thing, it simply states, what is the one thing I could do that would make everything else easier or unnecessary? What's the one thing that you can do that would make everything else easier or unnecessary? So think about the goal that you have inside of your mind. Um, you know, let's say that it's getting in better shape. If you think, okay, I have a goal of getting in the best shape of my life, wherever you're at right now, what is the one thing that you could do in terms of your health that would make everything else easier or unnecessary? What's the one thing that you could really focus on that would just basically have a domino effect and knock over all the other obstacles that you have? Take time with the question and think about it. Here, let me give you a personal example. I teach online business and the business model that I teach, which is like what I show you in the 5-step guide to create this passive income model, because I'm not directly talking with people, what I have to do and what you would need to do if you want to pursue this type of business model, especially I think if you're just an online business, you should pursue this specific thing anyway. But my one thing after using this question was to learn copywriting. I talk about this all the time and I have videos and stuff where I talk about it on my YouTube channel, podcast episodes, etc. But copywriting is that one thing that makes everything else easier or totally unnecessary, because copywriting is the emails that you have. It's persuasive writing. It's, it's the, the copy or the writing on your website that speaks to your customer, to their pains, to their desires, to their obstacles and barriers that they have inside of their mind that's stopping them from getting what they really want. Ultimately, it's the automated email sequence. It's the sales page that you have that sells your product for you. 24/7, 365, never ask for days off. Like, that is copywriting. So I knew, okay, if I learn copywriting, that's going to make everything else easier or totally unnecessary. So how can you apply this question to your life? What is the one thing I could do that would make everything else easier or unnecessary? To get a better understanding of this, this is what the one question that the entire book, The One Thing, is really built around. So go on Audible, order it, Amazon, your local bookstore, whatever you want to do. Pick up The One Thing by Gary Keller. Great book. So that's number 1, the focusing question. Number 2 is I like to use alarms to inspire focus. Now I learned this principle, uh, or got a lot of influence from it by a guy named Eric Partaker. He has a book called The Three Alarms. He calls it The Three Alarms because he has a really simple system productivity, personal development kind of system that I really liked. I heard it on a podcast episode with him, but, uh, he calls it the 3 alarms because there are 3 major areas of our life. We have health, wealth, and relationships. You know, you can consider finances in there too as a 4th area, but really that goes under wealth. So it depends on where you're at. If you work a job right now, or maybe you were an online business owner, Could be different depending on your situation of where you're at. But yeah, those are the 3 alarms. So we want to do— and the theory behind this is to create 1 alarm for each one of those 3 areas, hence the 3 alarms. And what we do is we create a name that's going to resonate when this alarm goes off. There's a name there that's going to resonate with you, and it basically allows you to put on a new identity for whatever it is that you're focusing on at this time. Then what we like to do, or what I like to do, is pick 3 character traits that represent that new identity. Let me explain this in my own life. If I pull up my phone, I have an iPhone, so I don't think it's any different. You can name your alarms in your phone basically, but this is really helpful if you have a solid routine already put into place. Using these 3 alarms. So for me, for example, I wake up at 5:20, my wake-up alarm goes off and it just says wake up, but I wake up and then I get ready and I go to the gym. I like to do CrossFit. I'm competitive. We like to be competitive in the CrossFit gym and to push ourselves. And I have friends there and we compete against each other. Um, so I have an alarm that goes off at 5:50 AM. I wake up at 5:20, get my stuff together, go to the gym. Usually you're at the gym around 5:40, you know, 5:30. You hang out my car for a minute and I'll get ready and go in at 5:50 AM. An alarm goes off, which is 10 minutes before my class at 6, and the alarm says pro athlete. And there's a little colon and it says competitive, disciplined, focused. And I set it for every weekday. Competitive, disciplined, focused. So when that alarm goes off, Sometimes I forget about it and the alarm goes off. I'm like, oh, okay. But what it does is it helps me get in the mindset of I'm going to be competitive with myself and with my friends. Um, I'm going to be disciplined because I keep showing up and I'm going to be focused on what I'm doing in the workout, uh, the movements that I'm doing, making sure I have good form. Um, just focused, you know, just pure focus because that's what you need in CrossFit. So those are the 3 things that really resonate with me. That's my health. Alarm. Then I also have one for Star Coach. I have more than 3, by the way. You don't have to do 3, but at least have 3. At least have one for health, wealth, and then relationships. My, uh, I have one called Star Coach, and this is when I'm going to be coaching somebody, when I have a client or maybe a new prospect that I'm going to be on the phone with, talking with. It goes off 10 minutes before the call and it says Star Coach colon deep listener, present, resourceful. So when that comes up, I like to stop every time one of these alarms goes off, whether it's whichever one, and I just think, okay, deep listener, present, resourceful. What does that mean? What does it mean to be a deep listener? And I explain to myself what it means to be a deep listener for me. And then I like to say present. What does it mean to be present? It means listening to this person. Being in the moment, focusing on them, and then resourceful. What does that mean? Well, it means coming up with whatever they need to succeed that I can help them with. That's what it means. Okay, so STAR coach, deep listener, present, resourceful. Those are mine. You can come up with your own. Um, I have another one that's a STAR student, and that's if I'm learning from someone, like sitting on a call with one of my coaches, and it says STAR student, early, prepared, ask questions. Okay. And what's cool about these alarms too, in like your phone, is that you can actually go into the settings and you can set it up to go off whenever you're, whatever kind of fits your schedule. So let's say that you had a coaching call with a mentor of yours every Tuesday at noon, we'll say set an alarm for 11:50 that always goes off so you can get in the right kind of mindset and put on the identity of being a star student. If that's what resonates with you. This is probably my favorite one. It's my relationship one. I like to do this at the end of my workday before my girlfriend gets home. So it goes off and it's like, okay, I'm done with work now. I'm going to be the boyfriend. Okay, now I'm going to be the dad. You can even say I'm not a dad right now, but I have this alarm that goes off depending on the day. I kind of set it in the beginning of the day, kind of set my alarms up for whatever that day has in store for me. but my boyfriend relationship alarm says rockstar boyfriend with a colon, present, playful, and loving. Rockstar boyfriend, present, playful, loving. And again, I stop and I think, what does it mean to be present? It means to be there with her, to pay attention to her, um, to be playful, to like joke around, to banter with each other, to tickle, you know, whatever it is. And then, uh, loving, just to be loving. Okay. So what are at least 3 alarms, one for health, wealth, and relationships that you could create for yourself. And when are they going to go off? I'd recommend to open up your phone and you can even pause this, this episode and just kind of play with it. All right. But hopefully those gave you a good example of what I mean when I use alarms to inspire focus. Most people, it's like different than most productivity advice where they say you should like eliminate all alarms and notifications, which I recommend you should eliminate All notifications. Um, but using these alarms is super helpful. Okay. So set it to your schedule. Uh, if you don't have that consistent of a schedule, then set it to whatever the day is, like the night before. Um, I like to do it. I like to run through my alarms, set them all so I can just set and forget it for the day and it's going off. Okay. So that's number 2. Number 1 was a focusing question. 2 is using alarms to inspire my focus, to get me in the right mindset. And then number 3 is organizing my Apple Notes. I use Apple Notes. You can use Evernote, you can use Google Drive, which I also use. Um, again, I have a lot of different productivity principles that I can talk about, but using Apple Notes has been so, so helpful, mostly for like personal stuff, not so much in the business stuff. For the business stuff, it's more for capturing ideas. But, um, I have a video actually that I'll put in the description and that walks you through it. It's a video I made a while back where I do like screen shares and I show you exactly what I mean and how I've set up my Apple Notes. It's one of my most popular videos, so I'd recommend to check that one out. It's like 4 minutes. And then, uh, yeah, basically what I do is I create folders for personal and then work or business. I call it business because it's business for me, but if you just work in a job, you can just call it work. Um, and it could be for things related to your work, anything related to work you put inside that folder. And what's cool is inside Apple Notes or any note section you have, you can create folders within the folder. To kind of separate the main categories of business or of your personal stuff. But like I said, I mostly use it for personal. And if you— I also have one for like my band, One-Armed Joey. You can check us out online, but I just call it OAJ. Anything that's like BPMs, you know, all that kind of stuff I put inside for One-Armed Joey. But I have stuff for like dating relationships. I have a folder, dating relationships. Dreams and ideas, which mostly goes in my business section. And then, um, health and fitness. It's one of my most popular ones. Uh, like groceries is one. So I have a note where literally anytime that I'm going to go grocery shopping, I just type into the search bar groceries because that's the name of the folder. And then it pops up groceries and I click on that and then I have little check marks where I can write out. All the different groceries that I need for the day or the week, whatever it is. And then I go out and I make sure I get everything taken care of. That's like super simple. But I even have— I have like recipes that I have saved inside of here. Also just stuff for like vehicle information. Like if I took my car into the shop and I brought it in and ended up getting that like a bunch of work done on it or something happened, then I can write out like basically notes from whatever the mechanic told me so that I don't forget. Because people are like, oh, what'd you get worked on? Or if I went to a different place and they asked me what happened, then I can literally just type in car information, pulls it up. If I type into the search bar, it pulls it up. And then I can look inside and see like past history of what I've had done on my car. It's also great to do that because if you're going to sell the car, then you can pull up all that information. It's stored into one place and super easy to access. All right. So that's the kind of stuff that I like to use inside of this. Another like super cool thing that I like to do, I'm pretty proud of this. I came up with it, but I have one called Weekly Fun Meal Count. So what I like to do is I like to eat healthy. I like to eat natural whole foods 80 to 90% of the time. And when I eat something like pizza or I have like pizza and beers with friends or eat a burger or something, not the healthiest meal. but I still like to eat it. I like to give myself that leeway. So what I did was I created weekly fun meal count and, uh, just has a little bit of text like your whole foods are your savings account. The check marks are your withdrawal. So I have 3 check marks. What I do essentially is allow myself 3 fun meals as I like to call them throughout the week. But other than that, I eat natural whole foods for everything else that I eat. Okay, so I could go off on a whole tangent about that. But that's something I like to do. So anytime I sit down, it's like, I'm gonna have pizza and beers with the friends. I just open up my phone, go to weekly fun meal count at some point, and then I just hit the check mark. It's like, okay, I've had one of my fun meals for the week. If you really want to get serious, you could do only one, or you could do two for the entire week. Okay, and you can spread them out however you want. You can do it all in a day. You could do it three days in a row. You can separate it throughout the entire week. It's kind of up to you. All right, but that's what I like to do. The real, like, actionable stuff, enough about me and my stuff. Um, the actionable stuff for you is to really open up your folder document or your notes document. Again, I use Apple Notes and then, uh, create folders. There's a little button that literally has a folder icon. You click on that. Now you have a folder. Name your folders the main categories of your life. Okay. So like personal, that's one folder. It's a big folder, but inside of personal, I have subfolders like health and fitness. So anything related to health and fitness goes inside of the health and fitness folder under personal. And then the biggest thing is to name your documents by keywords that you're going to remember. Okay, so fun meal count. For me, I do that weekly fun meal count. I can just type in meal and then in the search function on like the main, like right when I opened up my Apple Notes, basically type into the search function meal and then anything that comes up with the word meal in it is going to be there, which is like two different ones. I have a couple, like Paleo Meals was one that I have from a while back of different recipes that are paleo. So yeah, name your key, name your documents, things that you're just gonna remember, like groceries, for example. I just type in groceries as soon as I open my Notes app. I don't have to dig through all the folders. Type in groceries into the search function. Search functions are so, they're so functional and sophisticated nowadays that literally any keyword, you just have to make sure that it's a keyword you remember. You type that in, it's going to pop up. And you can also use Siri. You can just say, hey Siri, um, look this up or create a new note for me. And then she'll do it if you have an iPhone anyway. All right. So that's what I recommend. Again, there's a link in the description for a video that I did where I walk you through exactly what I do and actually show you it's on YouTube. Um, but yeah, those are the 3 big things. I, again, I still use time blocking. I do a lot of different productivity things, but the focusing question, uh, using alarms to inspire focus for you. I think those, those three, the health, wealth, and relationships, uh, the focusing question, by the way, was what's the one thing I could do that would make everything else easier or unnecessary? Then we have the three alarms and then using your Apple Notes to just basically do the remembering for you. You can also use a tool like Evernote. Like I said, you have to pay for it, but it's not a lot. It's like $10, $15 a month or something. and if you use it, it's totally worth it. But bottom line, Apple Notes for me just makes sense. It's free and it's super easy. Uh, it takes a little bit of time to just kind of set it up, but once you do, it's, it's so, it's so easy. Okay. But these are 3 of the biggest productivity tips that have really changed my life. I hope that this was helpful for you. If, uh, any one of these really stood out for you, let me know down in the comments on YouTube, or you can leave a review on the podcast. But if you're on YouTube, just let me know down in the comments which one really stood out to you. Did you have any aha moments or key takeaways from this? And if you are really serious about like being more productive, working less hours while earning income online, maybe you're working in a job right now and you're thinking about starting something. You want to just kind of get out of your job and at least make money on the side. Then definitely check out my 5-step guide. It's an action plan, really. But if you run through it, download it, Check it out. There's some video links inside of there as well that can give you a bit more of a deep dive of what I'm talking about. But it's super actionable. It's really short and it's going to teach you how to create a system in your life that creates passive income so that you can literally make passive income helping people, making a difference in the world. And eventually you'll be at a point where you can literally just leave your job and you can be your own boss. Or if you're already a sophisticated person in terms of like business and stuff, you're already more established, but you're thinking like, how do I actually create more passive income? Make my business run while I'm hands-off, then this is a great resource for you. It's a great guide. It's going to give you the action steps. Okay. My treat to you. It's my gift. Just go to ProfitYourKnowledge.com/guide, or there's also a link in the description. Keep it easy for you. All right. Please share this if it was helpful for you. Let me know in the comments or leave a review of what the biggest takeaway for you was. And yeah, like, comment, all that kind of stuff. It really just helps me grow. But that's all I got for you. Use these 3 productivity tips and hopefully they will change your life in the way that they have changed mine. See you in the next one.