A Super Simple Productivity Hack That Won't Cost You $315,000!

Have you ever wondered why some people get a lot of things done and others seem to get nothing done? Sometimes we even have days ourselves where a lot of good things happen. And then other days it seems like nothing goes Right. I'm Dr. Robert Rome. Today we're going to be talking about a secret tip to help you have a successful day. And I hope that you'll listen because this is so simple that many people overlook it. And yet, if you will learn to practice this, put this methodology, I'm going to teach it to you today. Put this methodology into practice. You are going to see two things happen. Number one, your productivity level is going to go up and number two, your stress level is going to go down. What if I could give you a pill? And every day of your life, you took the pill in the morning and you had an incredibly productive day and you had little to no stress in your day. I know. I can see you smiling right now thinking, yeah, I take that pill every morning because having a day full of productivity without a lot of stress in it would be awesome. Well, there's a methodology that you can employ. There's a methodology you can use that will help you have a successful day.

Welcome to becoming wiser with Dr. Robert A. Rome, author and world renowned public speaker, as he shares stories and involving his experiences and lessons learned in a good, spirited, positive and fun way. Here's Dr. Robert A. Rome.

So I'm going to explain it to you and then I'm going to tell you how this all came about. I wish this could be original with me. What I'm sharing with you is over 100 years old. As a matter of fact, I'm giving you today, absolutely free, a $315,000 gift. I'll explain as we go. You heard me right. I'm getting ready to give you a $315,000 gift. That's what the value of this particular Wise Sage podcast is all about. See? Learning to be a wise Sage. Learning to be a wise person requires learning how to play the game of life. Well. Life's a game. If you play well and you follow the rules and you do good things, you'll have a great life. But if you decide you're just going to be the, the Lone Ranger of life and do everything your own way, and you don't need anybody, don't want to cooperate with anybody, and don't want to work with anybody, you can. You feel free to do that. But see how well that works for you. You see, all of us are better than one of Us. And the truth of the matter is learning specific things that we can do will help all of us to go better. So here we go. Here's the. Here's the secret tip. And then I'll tell you a story. Whatever you have to do in a day, write it down. Get you a piece of. I know, I know, I know. I can hear you now. Well, I don't have a pen. I don't have a piece of paper. Okay, I'll bend over backwards and go with you to say, okay. You can put them on your phone, you can put it on your iPad, you can put it on your computer. But there's just something about using the senses of touch and. And you see it and you almost feel it as you're writing down. And you look at it and you can see it and say it out loud. You can hear it. It's just powerful. So you make a list of things that you need to do in a day. Some people even make the list the night before. I think that's okay. But sometimes when I have made the list the night before, I go to bed thinking about things too much. I like to get up early in the morning, I'll make my list of everything I have to do. Now, if it's something that's on my schedule that I had to write down the night before, that's okay. But you're trying to start your day by getting everything on a piece of paper or everything written down or everything on your tablet or on your phone so you can see it right before your eyes. Okay? Then the next thing, and here's the key, number the items. What is the number one thing that you want to get done? Then that gets number one. Then what's the second most important thing? Number two. Then what's the third most important thing? Number three? Here's what you're going to find. If you have 10 things on your list and you get number two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, and 10 done, but you don't get number one done. At the end of the day, you're going to feel frustrated. You're going to feel like this just wasn't a good day. I don't know why. I just didn't seem like everything worked out like I wanted to. It's because you didn't get the most important thing done. However, if you get number one done and it takes you all day long to get number one done, and you don't even get to 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, you are going to feel Elated because you got the most important thing done. I have a little sign that says, when W I n what's important now. When you stop and think about what's important now, you know why people fail. They don't know how to do the next right thing. They, they, they can talk about it, but, well, now what am I supposed to do? Ah, that's where the rubber meets the road. So the methodology is as simple as write everything down. And again. I know, I know, I know. I get this from people. They just kind of roll their eyes at me. I'm telling you how to be a wise sage. Get you a piece of paper and a pen. If you don't like it and you want to use a phone, or if you want to use a tablet or an iPad or or a computer, that's up to you. I'm just telling you by writing it down and looking at it and touching it and feeling it and seeing the pen, put ink on the paper and your eyes look at it. It almost gives you the freedom, after you do a brain dump and you put everything that's in your brain or on your list on a piece of paper. Now you can kind of see the big picture, the big idea. Now you go to number it. What's the number one thing you want to do that gets number one? What's the second number? Then what's the third? What's the fourth? You know why I'm so excited? They had about five or six things I wanted to get done. I did. I only got about three of them done. But I got number one, number two, and number three done. I can get number four, five and six. Maybe later today, but if not, it's not a big deal. This has been a successful day. I am at peace with myself and the universe because I got the most important things done. What's important now, they have been accomplished this day. So you number them, then you start with number one, and you stay with it until you get it finished. There might be a slight exception that you have to wait for someone to return a call or you have to go somewhere to pick something up. But number one is your focus. Then number two, then number three, and you stay with it until you get them finished. Now, I told you I'd give you a story. Where did this come about? In 1918, Charles Schwab was one of the richest men in the world. Schwab was the president of Bethlehem Steel Corporation. It was the largest shipbuilder and the second largest steel producer in America at the time. The Famous inventor Thomas Edison once referred to Charles Schwab as the master hustler. He was constantly seeking an edge over his competition. Schwab was a really sharp mind, and he was always looking for ways to improve. He was looking for ways to do things better. He was looking, get this. He was looking for a way to know how to play life, to play the game of life successfully. Anyway, in 1918, in his quest to increase his efficiency of his team, as well as to discover better ways to get things done, Charles Schwab arranged a meeting with a highly respected president productivity consultant, whose name was Ivy Lee. I V Y L E E. Now, you may be driving right now, or you may be listening to this. You can look all this stuff up. I'm fascinated by this. Ivy Lee was a productivity consultant. He was a time manager. He spent his life looking for ways to be more productive, looking for his ways, looking for ways to be more efficient. After all, folks, the truth of the matter is, whether you're the President of the United States or a dog catcher, we all have the same amount of time, 24 hours in a day. And it's how we use our time that will either make or break our business and our success factor. Anyway, Lee was a successful businessman in his own right. He was widely remembered as a pioneer in the field of productivity or time management in public relations. This is. This is back in the early 1900s, over a hundred years ago. Wow. It just excites me to hear that there are giants than we are standing on their shoulders today who have learned to do things better and play the game of life more successfully. Anyway, Charles Schwab brought Ivy Lee into his office and said one thing. Show me a way to get more things done.

Well, Ivy Lee said, well, give me 15 minutes with each of your executives.

Schwab looked at him and said, how much is going to cost me? Ivy Lee said, nothing, unless it works. And then after three months, you send me a check for whatever you feel it's worth. I hope you're listening to this. This is so powerful. I am so sure that what I'm telling you will work and will be helpful to your managers. You don't. I'm not even going to charge you anything. But in three months, if you have noticed a difference in what's taking place in your business, will you just write me a check and send it to me? You know, folks, I've had some really great experiences in my life. Some of you know, I helped put together. I was the team consultant for the Arizona Diamondbacks hired in 1996. I worked with them for the next six years. They put a team out on the field in 1997-9899-2000-2001, they won the World Series. Now, they paid me well for the work I did with them, but I learned a good lesson. I should have said.

I should have said, I'll do it for free, but when you win the World series, I want 10% of the team payroll. Let's see, what's the, what's 10% of a hundred million? Well, unfortunately for me, I just was paid for my services. But this, it's the kind of thing that if you're so sure that what you're doing is going to work, why not offer your services for free and then they can pay you later on? Well, anyway, that's what Ivy Lee said to Charles Schwab. He said, well, you just pay me whatever you think it's worth. So during the 15 minute meeting with each executive, Ivy Lee explained, here's the way to do your daily routine if you want to achieve peak productivity. Number one, at the end of each day, write down the six most important things you need to accomplish tomorrow. Now, don't write down more than six. Now again, this gets back into. Write them down at the end of the day while they're still on your mind, because you're going to enter into that world of accomplishing them tomorrow. Now, I have found for me, I have a little flexibility here. And I want you to hear, I'm not giving you commands, I'm giving you suggestions. I have found if I make my list at night, I can't sleep. I start mulling over my list. Now, I may jot a few things down on my list, but I don't number it. I don't do anything to it at night unless I just put on a piece of paper. I have a Teflon memory, nothing sticks. So I'll put my thoughts on a piece of paper randomly. Just list them. But it's not yet numbered. It's not yet numbered. That's the key. So here, Ivy Lee suggested to the executives, write down the six most important things that you want to accomplish tomorrow, but don't write down more than six. So that's what they would do. And then the second thing, prioritize them in order of their true importance. In other words, number one is the most important, number two is the next most important, et cetera. Then when you arrive at work tomorrow, Lee told the executives, only concentrate and focus on the first task. Work until the first Task is finished before moving on to the second task. We call that heat seeking missile. Focus. And you will be surprised. Well, maybe you won't be surprised how everything in the world tries to distract you from accomplishing that number one task, that number one goal. It's comical to me sometimes. I'll see everything in the universe is trying to get me off task from finishing the one thing I want to get done. The dog ran away. Its roof's leaking. Somebody forgot their homework. They have a flat tire. It's no end to things that will distract you and pull on you. Just stay focused. Stay on the first task, the next step, the fourth step. Again, the first one. Write down the six things. The second thing, prioritize them, and number them. Number three. Stay with the first task until it's finished, then move on. Number four. Approach the rest of your list in the same fashion, meaning you go to number two, to number three, to number four, Number five. Number six. And at the end of the day, move any unfinished items to your new six tasks for the following day. You might have gotten two things done well. That's four that will roll over to the next day. You, you might have gotten five things done well. There's one that will roll over to the next day. I, I, I hope you're listening to this. I hope you. This is a $315,000 gift I'm giving you. I'll explain how that is in just a moment. So stay focused on your activities that you're doing one by one, and then roll them over if things don't get completed. But notice this, friend. You will have the best feeling in the world if you got the number one most important thing done. I have been doing this for years, for decades. This is the way you play the game of life successfully. This is comparison. This is what works well. If it works, keep doing it. And then number five, you repeat that process every working day. You just do that day in and day out. It's so simple, people overlook it. The strategy sounded simple. And Charles Schwab, of course, being the.

Brilliant mind that he was, he met with his executive team at Bethlehem Steel, and he said, okay, we're going to give it a try. I mean, I can almost, I can almost hear him saying, rolling his eyes like, this is, this is too easy. This is too simple. But we're going to give it a try. After three months, Schwab was so delighted with the progress of his company that he called Ivy Lee into his office and he wrote him a check. You ready for this? For $25,000 for one idea. $25,000. A $25,000 check written in 1918. You can check this up out. You can do the math. I had a brilliant friend of mine who's a rocket scientist do the math for me. $25,000 check in 1918 is the equivalent of $315,000 today.

How would you like someone to give you a $315,000 check and say, thanks, I appreciate what you said? Well, guess what?

That's my gift to you today. The Ivy Lee method of prioritizing your to do list seems stupidly simple. How could something this simple be worth so much? What. What makes it so effective? Why does that work? It works because it's simple enough to understand and practical enough to apply. It keeps you focused on one thing. You keep the main thing. The main thing. And when you get distracted, like you Surely will with 101 other interruptions, it'll keep bringing you back to the one thing that you need to get done. It forces you to make a focused decision. It. It focuses your thinking and brings in all of the laws and principles of the Law of Attraction things are attracted to helping you complete your goals and to fulfill the things that you're trying to do day by day. It keeps you from being frustrated. It keeps you from getting scattered. It keeps you from from all going all over the place, understanding that, wait a minute, I have one thing I want to do today and if I get this one thing done today, it's going to be a successful day. And you keep coming back to that.

Just is a methodology that causes you to get successful on steroids. The bottom line is real simple. You just do the most important thing first each day. It's the only productivity trick that you need. There are people who have learned to use this in all walks of life. Business, marriage, raising children, athletes, salespeople, teachers. Anyone who is trying to accomplish something will do it better if they simply follow the Ivy Lee method of Write down your ideas, prioritize them, have about six things on your list. Stay focused, get the job done. You'll be glad you did. So there you go, folks. $315,000 for one idea that in today's money will show you how to be better, more productive, less stressed out in everything that you do. I'm Dr. Robert Rohm, sharing these ideas, concepts and thoughts in our wise sage training on our podcast each time we meet. Hope today was helpful. I look forward to our next time together. Thank you so much.

For more information about this podcast, please visit www.becoming wiser.podcast.com.