7 Habits To Make You More Productive

Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor Podcast. I'm your host, Rob Dial. Today we're going to be talking about 7 Habits to make you more productive. And so really what it comes down to is we all have 24 hours in a day. How can we make sure that with every bit of input, we get the most output out of it? Because I don't know about you. I've had days before where I'm working, I'm working, I'm working, I'm working, I'm working. And I get to the end of the day, I'm like, oh, my God, I did so much. I'm so tired. But I don't feel like I got shit done. You ever been in that situation? The reason why is because you're being busy, but you're not being productive. And so really what it comes down to is we need to get really good with our time management. We need to get really good with our productivity to make sure that for every minute of input that we put into getting something done, we get the most amount of output from that. And so let's talk about it. The first tip that I'll give you, and this is really important psychologically, is to start with small wins first thing in the morning. Reason why is because action creates action. And when you start to get momentum on your side, it's easier to follow through with more momentum. This, I will be fully honest with you. I used to call bullshit on. And then I started doing it, and I realized it helps me out a lot. And so I used to think that it was so stupid to make my bed because I didn't spend any time in my bed except for when I was sleeping. And I'm just. I don't spend any time in my room. I'm always gone, or I'm at the office or I'm working or I'm somewhere else. So what's the point of making my bed? Really didn't mean anything to me. And then I heard from Marines and I've heard from successful people the importance of having this small win, of making your bed, of doing something that you didn't want to do and cleaning up your space and finishing the act of sleeping. And so started doing it. And I started noticing it felt like I had a little teeny, tiny bit of momentum on my side. So I had this little bit of momentum, and it started to carry through the rest of my days. And so really what it comes down to is how can you start with small wins in the morning? The first Win that you can have in the morning, even before making your bed is getting out of bed when your alarm clock goes off. That right there, if you don't go back to bed is a win. If you go back to bed, it's kind of a fail. You start the day off in the wrong foot. So the alarm goes off, you get out. Boom, that's a win. You make your bed even if you don't want to. Boom, that's a win. And so small wins get motion in the right direction. One of the fundamental laws of physics is that an object that an object in motion tends to stay in motion. And this principle applies to your productivity as well. When you start your day with a proactive feeling and really feeling on your front foot as if you have forward motion versus being on your back foot, you even if it's really small, it sets positive momentum towards the rest of your day. So completing one simple easy task or two small wins before you even brush your teeth leads to a little bit momentum on your side and a little bit more to be able to take action, because action creates action. So it's kind of like the domino effect. You knock over the first couple dominoes, it makes it a little bit easier to knock over the next couple dominoes. On the opposite side of that, if action creates more action, that also means that inaction creates more inaction. So procrastination causes more procrastination. Sleeping in causes more problems later on down the road. Not making your bed causes more problems later on down the road. You have to just really start to switch your mindset to have a get shit done attitude. Don't ever say I don't have time. Figure it out. If it's important to you, you will find a way and get it done. If it's not important to you, you'll make excuses. So really, first thing, start with small wins. Get that positive momentum on your side. Second thing, if you really want to start to be more productive with what you're doing, is learn when you can. So I have time in the morning where I do read about 30, 45 minutes. Sometimes it's an hour, depending on how much time I have in the morning. But learn as much as you can. But there's so many pockets of downtime. And if you can't see me and you're just listening to me, I'm saying I have quotation marks to downtime that can be turned into learning time. So for me, I love to listen and learn while I'm in the shower. I could just be Sitting there in silence. Or I could be learning as well. While I'm doing that, I could be listening to audiobooks. There's so many times where I'm traveling, I'm going from one place to another. I'm driving from my house to the office, it takes about 12 to 13 minutes. And I'm driving from the office back to my house, it takes about 12 to 13 minutes if I take that. And instead of listening to music, which I love listening to music, if I'm like, you know what I'm gonna learn this time, that's 26 minutes. Let's say, let's just make it easy. The Math, easy. That's 25 minutes of learning round trip, okay? Over the course of three days, that's a couple hours that really I'm learning and I'm using my quote unquote downtime to actually get better. So there's traveling, there's showering, there's brushing your teeth, there's the Dr. The driving, there's a plane flight. If you have a three hour plane flight, you could just listen to music if you wanted to. And that's completely your prerogative, but. Or you could say, you know what, I'm gonna use this plane flight to make myself better. I have to get on a plane and go to LA tomorrow. And so for me, I'm already thinking, what can I learn in that three and a half hour plane flight so that when I land in la, I'm a better person than when I took off in Austin. Hey, if you're loving this episode, do me a real quick favor. Give us a like down below for the YouTube algorithm. And if you don't wanna miss any more episodes, make sure you hit that subscribe button so that every time we pop up, you'll know that a new episode has come out. Learn when you can. There's so many pockets of downtime when I'm literally. The way my house is set up is perfect. We have a big open concept. And when I'm sitting there and I'm making eggs in the morning, I can see into the living room and I can see my tv. And so every morning I usually put on some sort of video on YouTube that is helping me learn. So in those 20 minutes of making eggs and then eating them, I'm learning. There's so many pockets of downtime and pocke of silence that we can learn use to learn to get better. So how can you learn around everything that you're currently doing? Not making space for it, but in changing your Schedule around. But just how can you put more learning into your day to make you better? So that's number two. Number three, you know this one. If you've been listening to this podcast for a long time, I say I feel like I'm a broken fricking record when it comes to the Pomodoro technique. I just say it over and over and over again because it works so damn well. And it is something that has absolutely changed my life. It's so damn good that I actually put it into my book. There's an entire section where I talk about the Pomodoro technique. And really what it comes down to is 25 minutes and 25 minutes of working on one thing and one thing only, and five minutes off. There is a whole lot, and this is in my book, but there's a whole lot of psychological reasons why this works so well. There's a whole lot of neurobiological reasons of why this works so well. I don't need to dive into it in today's episode. You can buy the book, you can listen to other episodes where I talk about the Pomodoro technique. But really what it comes down to is you find one thing to work on and you give yourself 25 minutes to work on it. And you only, only can do that thing for 25 minutes and then you take five minutes off. Let's say that you're creating a big presentation though, for something that you have to do at work tomorrow and you know it's going to take you longer than 25 minutes. Well, then what you're trying to do is work that for 25 minutes, take 5 minutes off, continue working on it for 25 minutes, take 5 minutes OFF and then continue working on it until it is done. 25 minutes on, 5 minutes off. 25 minutes on, 5 minutes OFF until that presentation is completed. But really there's a lot of reasons why it works so well. But in your five minutes off, one of the biggest keys that I can't leave out that you need to do is not look at your phone. Don't look at your phone. Okay? And the reason why I don't want you to look at your phone is because of the fact that your brain is highly focused when you're getting work done. And when you're looking at your phone, your brain and your eyes are in what's called convergence. So it's a vergence eye movement and it doesn't allow your brain to get off of focusing and so there's no rest. The same way that when you work out really hard after each set, you need 30 seconds, 60 seconds, a minute, two minutes off, whatever it might be. It's the same thing where it's like it's a set and then it's a break, and it's a set and it's a break. And so what you want to do is either close your eyes for five minutes and just exist and simply be there, or go outside, go for a walk, stare off into the distance, give your brain a little bit of a break. So that's tip number three is the Pomodoro technique. Tip number four is something I've never heard anybody else say. It's just something that I did with myself and is to start energy planning. So I've noticed this in myself, is that the most important thing, one of the most important things throughout my day is my energy. And I notice that at different points in the day I have a lot more energy, and at different points of the day, I have a lot less energy. And so really what it comes down to is knowing when your energy is at its highest, knowing when your energy is at its lowest, and then working from there. And so for me, like, I know how my energy works after years of going through this, and I plan my entire day based off of how I know I'm going to feel majority of the time in those hours. And so for me, I wake up, I have my morning routine, I go through it, I do my workouts, and then until 10am it is me time and it is creativity. And I try to figure out how to be more creative, whether that's creating stuff for Instagram, creating podcast episodes and starting to have ideas around podcast episodes and just throw in ideas down and seeing what comes up, whatever it might be. It's things for my business where it's just I allow myself to be creative until 10am because I feel like my brain is creative at that time. That's just me, that's just anecdotal. So you have to really figure out what works for you. From 10am to 1pm is when I start planning and scripting podcast episodes and planning out what it's going to look like. And I do my research for hours and try to figure out and find as many psychological studies to prove what we're teaching here to show that we're not just throwing shit at the wall. Like this is actually fact that we're basing this off of. That's from 10am to 1pm that's when my brain tends to be the Most focused from 1pm to 4pm is my recording, is my coaching, and is my creating time. Like so right now it is 3:03pm in Austin, Texas. This is my recording time I got here at 1pm today. And so from 1pm to 4pm is my planning. I'm sorry, is my recording and my coaching and my creating podcast episodes, creating content time. And then from 4 to 6pm is where my energy starts to dip. So that's me finishing up the smaller tasks that need to be done for the day. Me finishing up needs to be done. So like, as soon as we get done here, I have to hop onto a zoom call with my executive team to see what we got going on for the day and kind of button up the day and then make sure that we're good for tomorrow. And so I plan my day based off of where I know my energy typically is, because I've been following myself and my energy for years now. And I plan my entire day based off of that. And so can you start planning out your energy so you can get things done the way that you want it to? My business partner, he gets a second win from like 10pm to 8pm I'm already asleep. I'm sorry, 10pm to 12am so for those two hours he gets a second win and he gets a lot of work done. He plans for that. I'm asleep by that time, so I'm not. And so it's really about knowing yourself and when you feel like you have the most energy, when you have the most energy to get things done, when you're the most creative, when you're the most productive and plan your day around that, that's number four. Number five is to have a cutoff time. And the reason why is because people work better with boundaries. Knowing there's a definitive time where you have to get stuff done makes you more focused and more efficient. It also ensures that you have time to recharge, which is essential for really long term sustained productivity. And so have a cutoff time. Like for me, like I said, 6pm 90% of the time, I'm completely done. Now. Last night I had to break those boundaries just simply because I had somebody interview me on their podcast at 7pm I had to do it. It was just the way that it was. It just worked out in the timeframe that we had based off my schedule. Cause I'm traveling starting tomorrow. And so it just had to be done. But that's fine. But knowing that there's a boundary and there's a time when Things have to be done. Like, for instance, I'm leaving tomorrow to go to la. I have to have a lot of stuff done this week. And so knowing that there's a cutoff time has given me a little bit ext pressure of making sure that I get things done. And so when you know that you only have until 6pm to get something done, it gives you a little bit more pressure to get things done and to make sure you get it done the way that you need to. So it's kind of like, I don't know if you used to be like me. Like, I hated school and I hated studying and I would always wait until like the night before and I would just cram and I would get as much information into my head as I could. The reason why was because there was a cutoff time and I got way more productive the night before than I was the two weeks before knowing that my test is going to be coming up. And so try to have some sort of cutoff time. This is something that I got from, from the book, the one thing that Gary Keller wrote. And Gary Keller's a multi billionaire. So I figured, hey, if a multi billionaire says it's a tip to being more productive, maybe I should take it. And so it's definitely helped me out. So that's number five. Number six is to prepare the night before. And so one of the things I found with a lot of people is they wake up and they go straight into reaction mode. And that's not the way to really be productive and to start actually getting on the front foot and starting to move forward in the direction that you want. And so at the night before, give yourself five minutes, get out a journal and look back on how today was for you. How was today? What did you do? Well, what could you improve upon? And then what you do after you look back on today is you look forward on tomorrow. And you prepare each morning. You visualize your day. You prepare of what you want your day to look like. And so instead of just going to bed, waking up, and being in reaction mode, you wake up and you already know what you have for today. You already know because you planned it the night before. If you know that you want to go for a run in the morning, well, instead of just like making yourself wake up and then get ready, why don't you prepare the night before? How can you prepare as much as possible? You know, if you want to wake up in the morning and go for a run, but you know you have to have a cup of coffee before you go for a run. Well, let's start to plan ahead. Let's start to think ahead of this and say, okay, well, I could go ahead and I could go on Amazon. I could buy a coffee maker that's on a timer, I could put all the grains inside of it, and it automatically turns on at 5:45, because I know I'm going to be up by 6. And then what I do is I know I'm going to go for a run. So when I go to bed, next to where I brush my teeth and the counter that's there, I'm going to put my running shoes, I'm going to put my socks, I'm going to put my underwear, I'm going to put my running shorts, I'm going to put my running shirt. I want to make sure that my iPhone is charged or my Apple watch is charged, my AirPods are charged so that I can be ready and I don't even have to think in the morning. How much better would that be if. If you wanted to go for a run, how much less resistance would you have to going for a run and making it easier on yourself? If you woke up in the morning, you had all of your clothes laid out, you brushed your teeth, and by the time that you walked into your kitchen, there was already a pot of coffee that was waiting for you. It's just so much less resistance. It's so many less things that you have to think about. And so really what it comes down to is, number six is how can you prepare the night before to set yourself up for success tomorrow? And that's really what it comes down to. And number seven, some of you guys are gonna hate me for this. Do a digital detox now. There's different levels of digital detox. It could be for a couple hours or it could be for a few days. If you think you don't have enough time, throw your phone in a drawer and don't look at it for as long as possible. Don't look at it for two days. Delete Instagram, delete Facebook, delete TikTok, delete everything that takes your time. And you're going to find you have so much more time in the day that you thought that you did. You're just wasting a lot of your time on different digital devices and different social medias. For me, just so you guys know, I have two separate phones. This is something I just implement over the past couple of months. My personal phone does not have any social media app. It does not have Facebook. It does not have Instagram. It does not have TikTok. It does not have any of that stuff. It doesn't have Reddit. It doesn't have anything that could, could potentially steal my energy away on my work phone, which I keep in my office, charged at all points of time in the exact same place. That's where I post from social media. That's where I, you know, if you see me on, on Instagram, if you see me on reels, that's where it's, it's getting posted from that phone. But I only go to that phone when I need to post, when I need to get work done, whatever it might be. What's crazy about it, my screen time over the past two months has gone down 50%, which means I'm spending 50% less time on my phone, which means I'm spending 50% more time with myself, with my wife, in my business, and focusing on things that need to be done. And so what does a digital detox look like for you? It could be that you delete all social media apps for the next 30 days and just see how it is. It could be that you do the same thing I did. Not everybody has the means to buy two phones. But if you want to try it out, and you do try it out, see if it helps you out, maybe you have a business phone, maybe you have a personal phone. So I know that when I leave and my wife and I go to dinner and she goes to the bathroom, I can't pick up my phone and go on Instagram. I just have to sit there and simply enjoy life. Oh, damn it. Look at that. I have to just simply be and look at the surroundings and exist as a human. So it could be like that if you want it to, or it could be that you just turn off all of your notifications. You know, if you have a ping from your phone or your computer and you're highly focused, research indicates it can take up to 23 minutes to fully regain the conscious, the, the concentration that you had before the distraction. So maybe your digital detox is turning off all of your notifications. I don't get any notifications from any text messages, from any social media, from my email, none of those things. The only way that my phone lights up is if I get a phone call. That's it. And so maybe you do something like that. Maybe you decide that you're gonna, you're gonna have certain designated tech free times throughout your day when you know that you need to get your deep work done, you need to be really focused. Maybe what you do is you take have tech free times throughout your day. When you do your energy planning, you say, from this time to this time, from 1 to 3 is when I know I'm the most focused and that's when I'm gonna do my deep work and I'm gonna start writing my book or I'm gonna do whatever it is you need to do. Then maybe your phone has to be in a completely different drawer away from you, so you can't even see it. And so what you wanna do is allocate specific times in your day where you're entirely offline. And if you work for someone else and they're like, you can't do that, explain to them how it's gonna help you be more productive and just start to figure out how you can disconnect yourself from this constant feeling like you need to get things done on social media and where you need to be seeing what everyone else is doing in their life. You always have to be fully connected. Not only will it boost your productivity, but it's really going to help your mental health and wellbeing as well. And so that is really the seven different steps, the seven different habits to create to start being more productive. Because once again, you don't get more than 24 hours in a day. All that really matters is what you do with every single hour in your day. So that's what I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, please do me a favor, go ahead and share it on your Instagram stories and tag me obdialjr. R O B D I A L J R. I love when I see you guys sharing it all over the place. And I start to see you guys, some people are like, hey, I'm on a walk and I'm listening to Rob. And sometimes people are at the gym and they're listening to me, and sometimes you're, you know, it's pictures of them and taking a picture of their car, playing their car, listening to me. So if you would go ahead and do that and share it, it would help us get the message out there and also be able to let me see what you guys are doing and get a little bit more connection with you. And with that, I'm going to leave you the same way I leave you every single episode. Make it your mission to make someone else's day better. I appreciate you and I hope that you have an amazing day.