Episode 057 - The Art Of Getting Stuff Done

Getting into the habit of saying, I can have that to you, you know, tomorrow, or, you know, by the end of the week, allows the ability to know you write it down, and then at the end of the day, you need to then schedule that for that time. But never commit the same day, and I still do it, and I don't know why I do it. I just feel that I want to overdeliver that way. Okay, so today we had a different episode lined up. We actually had a guest that booked in, um, it didn't show up. So we are going to keep on track. We're going to make sure that we are getting this done, and that's going to play into the theme. We've committed every Friday we are recording these podcasts, and even though things in your business may not go as planned, you still need to commit to getting shit done, right? Hopefully don't get in trouble for saying that, but it's a big movement online. GSD, you might see that acronym, and that's actually what it stands for— getting get shit done. And today we're gonna, we're gonna go through and talk about how, how we get our stuff done. And everybody's different. I don't think there's a consistent plan that's going to work for everyone, but you just got to figure out what works for you. And, and you have a ton of questions that was lined up for the guest, and you're going to fire some of them at me with it. But before we start, I have a question for you. Oh yeah, hey, do you have a system that works for you for getting stuff done.

Yeah, it definitely took a long time to learn, even like high school, college, those sorts of things, when I'd have my long list of assignments, never really figured out an efficient plan. It was always just trying out new things until I found what worked. And for me, it's, it's huge to have a checklist every single day. So I have my bigger checklist, my master to-do list of things that can be done in the next couple months, and then I pick 3 to 5 things off that day, and that really is the only thing that helps me stay on track. I'm often the type of person to get sidetracked. Different ideas, inspiration hits, email notifications, all that sorts of things. So sometimes muting those, those notifications or just even closing the tab until you're completed with one thing. Yeah, that's how I get my stuff done.

And I can't tell you the amount of productivity apps tools and processes I've tried over the years, from, you know, Post-it notes to actual apps on your phone to using to-do list items on the computer. And it really comes down to, I mean, for me, having that notebook on my desk, just pen, paper to write it in there. I know you're using Trello for yours, and while, you know, I, I love Trello and everything, What works for me is that paper list, um, that's there. And maybe just a book where, you know, you write your list of the things as they come to you that you want to do that day. And at the end of the day, whether you want to do it there in the morning, the next day, is look at that list and say, okay, what now needs to carry over to the next day, right? So when you come in in the morning, you have that list there. Um, and what I like about it is if I'm working on something or on the phone and something comes to me because I have an idea or I've been you know, informed that I have to do something, I quickly write it down. I don't have to switch the application, log in, find it, pull out your phone or whatever. It's right there. And that's what works for me. Mm-hmm.

Yeah, and speaking of that, like switching your tabs over or, you know, all these different tasks coming from different places, that's a big thing for me as well is to have a routine for how I, where I check, right? Because I'm not gonna go all the way to Trello to put a, checkbox for check my email, right? So every single morning, every single lunch, and every single day before I log off, I have my little routine. So, you know, the morning routine of checking my email, sorting it into different folders, and keeping the stuff that isn't addressed yet in my inbox. Then once I deal with it, moving it to the folder so I know it's completed and dealt with, right? So it's those sorts of things that are gonna be a little bit different for everyone, 'cause everyone has different preferences, but just making sure that you have something that you're used to and some sort of routine in place so that you don't have things slipping through the cracks here and there.

[Speaker] Yeah, it's definitely a habit to get into. You have to train yourself. So, you know, just starting out something easy like, you know, a book, you pick it up at the dollar store for a couple bucks, and that's just what that is for. And start writing it down, checking it off. I mean, there's stuff that's proven out there that, you know, the act of checking things off will kind of, you know, give you that good feeling and motivate you. And just making sure that you follow, follow that. And, you know, if you outgrow it, then let's look at a different system in place. But, you know, start small and go that way.

Yeah, and I was just gonna touch on that, actually, the fact that you can outgrow certain things that used to work for you before may not work for you now. You know, even transitioning as a student to a professional, you know, things change and you learn a lot of things along the way and your mindsets might change and your habits and your tasks. So I don't think it's a bad thing to necessarily always have your, your method of getting stuff done evolve with you. I think if anything, it's a good thing, right? Because some people, unlike you, Shaun, update their routines with technology. You know, some people just love the the good old-fashioned notebook.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. So you gotta create that blueprint that works for you. And the next thing is you gotta look at setting time goals, right? So while I have a list, you know, you got to avoid those distractions or, you know, other things coming in to compete for the time to get them done. So what I tend to do is, you know, let's say I've got a website project to work in or a campaign for a client, you know, I know I wanna do it this week, what I'll do is I'll look in my calendar and say, okay, well, Thursday morning from like 9 to 11, I'm going to time block that. So I'm going to actually put that appointment in there that I'm working on Client A's, you know, task. So I know when that time comes, that's what I'm working on. And nobody can automatically book into that time with our online scheduling or anything like that. I mean, it helps me get through that list versus just looking at this list and going, oh, this is what I have to get done, and having that overwhelm of when am I going to get it done, right? Your next step is commit to when you're going to get it done. And being okay if you either run over and you have to, you know, steal some time from another time. But if you run over, you can either reschedule another time to finish it, or you can move the task that's after that to another time and then continue on. Whatever works best for you.

Right. Yeah, and touching on distractions too, I think we can provide some really interesting insight based on our generational gap. Just touching on the fact that By the time I was old enough to be scheduling my days and making lists and having all the grown-up tasks that were necessary, I was used to the, the, you know, cell phone going off and email and text messages and social media. But I feel like you started as a professional before that was kind of the norm and before distractions were like so much more prevalent. So I'm interested to hear how you kind of transitioned into that constantly being connected and how you kind of managed to not get constantly distracted by it.

Well, fortunately, it was not an overnight change. It had a gradual move, but I mean, looking back to when I first started to now, I mean, there's a crapload of of distractions that are out there from emails coming in to phone, not phone so much these days. I mean, a phone doesn't ring all the time, but you're getting, you know, Facebook messages through Messenger, you're getting text messages. It's just the ability to prioritize or train yourself not to jump on them. And I can say I still haven't mastered that. And then there's also the, what I would probably say, the feel-good distraction where it's like, you know, there's certain things in your business that you like doing, uh, and there's things that you don't like doing. But the ones you don't like doing are, you know, maybe some tasks that are— that have to get done. And you set that time and you're going to kind of have that, that little like devil on your shoulder. It's going to be like, you should go do this, you should. And once you let yourself start to do it, you're going to like doing it and you're going to just kind of keep doing it and the other stuff doesn't get done. Done, right? So that's a huge distraction, is, is you're distracting yourself. Um, that's in there. So, you know, one of the things that I've kind of done in the business is, you know, our Fridays, we don't normally, aside from recording this podcast, have consults or things like that booked. You know, my Mondays through Thursdays, the days are super busy with calls, and I use this time to either get other things done that couldn't get done through the week or work on the business. Mm-hmm. Right, so we record, we edit the podcast. Today I was working on, you know, our new website launch and things like that. And really what that's what the Friday is for. It's, you know, it's more relaxed. It's not stressful and heading into the weekend. And, you know, that's a great time to get, get stuff done without distractions.

Yeah, and I think it can be really daunting for people who are not used to kind of taking an actual chunk out of every single week on a consistent basis to kind of take a step back from all the distractions and literally schedule in time to get stuff done. I think that can be daunting because it's, it's a little bit of a change from going, you know, 24/7 working with clients, especially if you're in a service industry. But I think that that can be the, the make-or-break, making sure that you have that extra time to make sure that you're getting stuff done and you're not overwhelmed.

And here's a little hack if you're in a in a business setting where you don't have like an admin person that's managing your schedule for you, you know, if you say, okay, well, like Tuesdays or Thursdays are days that I need to actually work on stuff, you know, there are tools, scheduling tools, where you can set that, you know, any new consults or meetings with clients that need to book in with you, you know, are only on Mondays, Wednesdays, or Fridays, or whatever those days that you're not, not working. And then get into the process that anybody says, hey, can I, can I you know, get some time with you, or can I book a meeting? Keep sending them to that link and send them to that link. And it's not that you're pushing them off, it's because you're using that technology to manage your time, right? So don't open your schedule up all week and then allow people to pick any time because suddenly you're working and you look up and then there's like a, a meeting I booked in for 3 hours from now, right? Because you didn't put that buffer in place. So that's what's going to help you is use the technology to avoid those distractions. I mean, we're on Macs, so you can do Do Not Disturb. Any notifications, any tones of notifications are going to be turned off for that time. And the new iOS 15 has that option now too, to kind of just put it in a focus mode so you don't get notified of things.

Yeah, and I think establishing that predictability in your schedule really can help you get stuff done because you know what to expect when, you know what you're supposed to be doing, um, when you're supposed to be doing it, when you're going to have time to be able to do it, and it just eliminates that stress and that guesswork, which really does help with productivity. And I do think it's important to touch on the difference between distractions and intentionally taking a break, because a lot of business owners— very determined people, very hardworking, very passionate about what they do— sometimes kind of assume that they have to be go, go, go 24/7, and that actually results in less productivity.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, I'm fortunate to work from home here in the office, and, you know, I could be in here in the morning and like every day be like, I could fill my day and work right to like midnight if I wanted to. But you end up getting this kind of like drain of this burnout, so to speak, and you just, you kind of lose that drive to want to do things. So You know, set that time to give yourself the okay to say, okay, you know what, I'm gonna go for 15, 20, 30 minutes, whatever, and do whatever I like. I just step away from it. There are times where I'm like, okay, I'm gonna mow the lawn for an hour, right? It's just stuff I need to get done, but it's pulling me away and it allows me to come back refreshed. And then you're more productive than if you try to stay through that hour.

Exactly.

Try to get stuff done.

Yeah, and it's, it's kind of that irony between people being like, "No, I don't have time for that. I don't have time for that. I don't have time. I have to get this done," but they end up just wasting hours and hours not being productive when if they had just taken that 15, 30, whatever hour break, they would have had it done much earlier, right?

Yeah, it's that whole cost of switching tasks if you're trying to do multiple things. So, so people perceive that multitasking is the way way to go, right? Like, like I can sit down and I can, you know, reply to emails, I can update client stuff, I can do social posts, and then, you know, or when a video is rendering, I can go and, and do something else. But then you get into that and then you, you're really just jumping back and forth, um, and you're not doing your best at it. So, you know, single focus is really— you're going to be more productive if you, you do task by task by task straight through. And I don't know who said it, but it was when I was studying Kanban boards, which is you know, it's everything's linear, like from what's up next and all this. And I had a huge whiteboard on the wall that I got from a local college they were throwing out, and I had Post-it notes. Um, and the whole study was that, that any human being can't think of more than 3 things at a time, right? So you can only have in your doing today like 3 things that you can mentally focus on, and once you complete one, you remove it, and then you can add another one to it. You don't say, "Okay, here are 5 things that I'm giving mental power to today." It may be 3, but 1 is the best. But 3, once you cross to 4, you just can't give it your best in there, which was kind of cool. And when I followed that, it worked.

Right.

Right? So—

Now, we've talked about the external distractions. So now I want to touch a little bit on the internal ones. So what I mean by that is you often refer to yourself as an idea person. You're just constantly coming up with new ideas. You're never not thinking of the next project or the next innovation or the next whatever it is that you want to be launching. So that can lead you to be pulled in a bunch of different directions. So how do you kind of manage that creativity side of your brain that can be going crazy at times? When, you know, you might have to be working on a more mundane task.

You need to have a place to put those. So whether you have a whiteboard in your office or a second book that's like your ideas book, but the moment they come to you, you need to get them out of your head and write them down. Because if you don't, you're going to keep like— they're going to keep festering up and you're going to start to try to develop them in your head because I'm like, if I don't do this, I'm going to forget it. So you put them down somewhere. But you also have a time where you can go back to them, right? So whether that's, oh, your Fridays or Sundays or whatever, but you have a time where it's like, okay, now I can go and pull from this grab bag of goodies and I can, can allow myself the privilege and the time to think, is this something I want to develop more into it? I mean, it's not time when you're doing other stuff. And I think that has been, you know, the best thing, um, you know, or you know, you see an article or you download something, but you don't have the time to read it. You put it somewhere and you're like, you know, this is my ideas stuff, that this is where I go and I want to read this, this content, right?

Yeah. And I mean, on top of that too, I've definitely come up with ideas and I've been doing something, so I've just been like, okay, I'll, you know, I'll deal with it later, like just try to get it out of my head. And if it doesn't just kind of manifest itself and I just end up being too distracted, Sometimes I'll forget it, so I think the writing down and just getting it out and then being able to refocus on what it was you were looking at is probably the best bet, because I can't tell you how many ideas I've just completely gone in that black hole in my brain.

And your best ideas are going to come when you're not expecting it, right? Shower, driving, on the toilet for most people, right? So you just got to give the ability to remember that and write it down. But there's also those things that need to get done that you absolutely you absolutely hate to do, you can't offload it, but it's part of it. And I'm actually looking at an article on this whole topic of getting stuff done, and one of the topics says eat the cockroach. And it says, you know, it says procrastinating is the main problem of not getting it done. You don't want to do it, you have to do it. So the thing is, the first part of the day, take the task you hate the most and do that first. Just eat that big ugly cockroach, get it out of the way, and then everything else will be better. Because if you don't, you're going to always do the fun stuff and that's always going to get pushed to the next day, to the next day, to the next day, because you don't want to do it, but you have to.

Yeah, definitely. Now something I want to touch on too was I don't think that the world or business owners are short of ideas. I certainly don't think that's the case. I think every business owner has a couple good ideas kind of brewing, but a lot of those, a lot of times those ideas are never surfaced. And so it's not so much the idea problem that people have trouble with, it's the steps and the actions that they take. So how do you think, like, what advice can you give to people to make the ideas kind of come to life and actually make a realistic plan to move forward with them?

I think you need to triage those ideas that you put in the list. And I think we've covered this before in another episode, just briefly, when we're talking about like listing out all the tasks that you do. But so you can use the exact same thing for ideas, is, is verify, is this idea something that is quick to cash, close to making a financial income for your business? And if it is, then maybe it's a higher score, right? So on a 1 to 3, so 3 being, you know, yes, this will make money, 2 being this has the potential to make money, and 1 being no, it's not going to make money. It's just something that I want to do, because you still need those kind of positive things. And then, you know, figure out, do I want to do the 3s first, and the 2s, and the 1s? But you just need to do, you know, figure out which one's more important. And it's not always about money, right? You do need those fun things that are there. So it's wherever you're at in your business, wherever you're at currently, maybe you just had a shit week, right? And you had, you know, some bad client experiences that went wrong and you're like, you know what, today I'm going to do something that I want to do. And then you pull from the fun bucket and you do it, right? Or you had an awesome week and you want to do that too. So it's going to be different for everyone.

All right. Now this is my last question.

Okay.

I want you to be real and raw with us. What do you think is the number one thing that gets in the way of your productivity? Right now?

Oh boy, what's the number one thing that gets in the way of productivity? Um, I think it's, it's, um, over, overcommitting yourself, right? And not having a realistic expectation of how long things are going to get done, right? I am, you know, very guilty of, you know, a client calling and saying, hey, and they say, you know, can you get this done? Yeah, I have that to you by the end of the day. Well, you should never say that because this day, the day you're in, is sealed, right? Yeah. There's nothing else because you would've planned it yesterday for today, right? Getting into the habit of saying, I can have that to you tomorrow or by the end of the week allows the ability to know you write it down and then at the end of the day, you need to then schedule that for that time. But never commit in the same day. And I still do it and I don't know why I do it. I just feel that I want overdeliver that way. And then you end up— something got bumped, right? So that's the biggest thing with this is, is the day you're in cannot have anything else put in it. You can't consciously commit to it. Emergencies will come up and maybe you have to do that there, but in most cases what I found is clients don't exactly expect you to give it to them in the same day, right? You're just putting that on yourself. It's your own kind of mindset that you think, "Oh, I need to give it to them today." Mm-hmm.

Definitely.

Right?

Yeah. I think for me, when I reflect on that question, it's probably— I think about the episode not too long ago, the cancer of the 2-minute task. So similar to what you said, when you get that email or that phone call and you know that it's just something quick that you can have done to them today, done for them today, So you just go ahead and do it, but, you know, when there's 5 of those, 10 of those, and they just keep coming in and you just keep doing it that second when you're in the middle of something, it can really get in the way of your productivity. And we've touched on it before too, creativity, you know, you're in marketing, you're in one client's world and then you have to switch out of it and get back in and it's not as easy as just kind of switching a a switch.

Yeah, and I mean, in closing too, if you've got a team, whether it be one other person or a team of 10, 50, or whatever, getting everybody to develop a system for them to know what they can do and identify the tasks and get them written down will allow you as a leader that may be delegating things to say, hey, you know, can you go and update this, or you forward an email, this client needs this. You know, they don't have to worry, does that person have a system to do it, right? They're going to know that they're going to receive it. They have a process to write it down. It's going to get done. Um, so, you know, delegating is one thing. They always says, you know, offload the stuff that you, you can't do or don't want to do. But if you're not confident the person you're giving to is going to follow through and get it done, you're still carrying that burden on your brain just every day. You're like, I wonder if they're going to get it done, or they get it done, or do I have to check in if it was done, and things like that, right? So as a team, come up with that, um, and never say here's our company system to do it. You don't push that system. It's like, here's our goals, here's how we want it, figure out a way that works for you.

Yeah, I was just gonna say the, probably the worst thing you can do is try to make somebody fit into the way that you organize and the way that you get stuff done, because it really is gonna be unique to every single person.

So yeah, for sure. So I guess in closing, just figure out a way just to get your shit done, and you'll have a better business, you'll be happier, and you can kind of go to sleep at night knowing that you've got that process in place.