How to Deal with Pseudo Productivity and Not Getting Any Real Work Done

Hey, it's Mark Podolski, the land geek with your favorite niche real estate website, thelang.com and on this week's roundtable, do you ever find yourself overwhelmed with work and then you're done with your workday and you feel like you didn't get anything done? That is going to be our topic for today, pseudo productivity. We have almost all the usual suspects for this week's roundtable. We've got Landon. AI Harris. Landon, the aquatic investor. How are you?

Well, Mark, how about you?

Yeah, good to see you. I'm, you know. Pulse still normal, Respiration's fine. Can't complain. Teria putting in the reps. Harris, are you loving the heat? Your first.

Wow. Scottsdale summer, it was 114two days ago. So that. That was an experience.

But it's 80 in the pool.

It is, yeah. The pool's like 85. It's perfect.

Yeah. Yeah. Now you start buying bags of ice. That's always fun. Yeah. Last but not least, I love it when you call me Big Papa.

Tate.

Litchfield Tate. How are you doing?

Well, happy to be on.

Yeah, we're all desert people. We're all living in the desert now. True. Yeah. So this is a topic. So I'm. I'm not done with the book, but I'm really enjoying the book. And this is our tip of the week, by the way, so we're just skipping right to. The tip of the week is Cal Newport's book, Slow Productivity. And in the book, he talks about the challenges of knowledge work. And if you're listening to this podcast, you're most likely a knowledge worker and how the nature of work has changed. And so if you're on teams, if you're on slack, if you're checking email, you are finding it most likely challenging to get any real work done. If you're on frequent meetings, you're probably finding it very challenging to get real work done. If you're the CEO of your land business and you're communicating all day long with. With your team and you're having meetings, you're probably having a hard time getting real work done. And so Cal Newport describes this obsession with checking email or frequent meetings, multitasking slack messages. Like, constant communication as pseudo productivity. Like, it feels good. Like, it feels like we're doing something, but it doesn't really get the real things done, the important work done. It's like everything seems urgent. Nothing important is getting done. And so if you're struggling with that, we're going to roundtable it and see some Ways to fix it. So why don't we start with Landon? Landon. AI Harris. Have you ever felt the sting of pseudo productivity? And if so, what was your, your pseudo productivity thing that you were doing and how did you go about solving it?

Yeah, so I guess if I think about it, I mean, I fall into this at least a few times a week. I think about, yeah, just working through or talking to back and forth on Slack with some things. And I found that I have a list of things that I need to do and it's, it's piling up and I, I realized like I had to go back and just do my checklist. And so really what I'm doing currently is I've got a. Just in my, my notepad, I've got a list of to do things and I got to check them off. And so what I'm trying to do now is put kind of a deadline to some of these things. Some of them are urgent, they kind of need to be handled, but some things don't. And so I just keep pushing it down the road and I find myself working through, communicating with, you know, whoever needs, whoever's on the team. I need to discuss whatever. So look, you know, the way I'm solving that right now is just my to do list in my notepad and I have to go through it every day and just kind of check and check it off and make sure I get it done.

So.

So it's really all I've got with that.

I love it. I love it. So. And so your pseudo productivity has been mainly checking email or Slack?

Yeah.

So I'll be honest, like, so my email stays, you know, I stay pretty connected with the email and so yeah, I'll go through, you know, go through all the emails I've got and need to be like you and just hire somebody. Just get that up on my plate. But you know, right now, yeah, it's just stuck in emails and stuck in mundane task. They're not, they're not that important. But you know, you get to the end of the day, you go, what did I do? I didn't do anything. I've got 10 things to do and they really need to be at time. So yeah, that's kind of where I'm at.

Yeah. Yeah. See, it's, you know, it's, it's a good discussion to have because if you're running a land business, there's so many tasks and there's so many things to, to work on at any given point and then it's easy to Sort of hide in the things that feel good to do, but don't really move your business forward. Like mailing and marketing. Right. Or creating templates for your team to have these processes for mailing and marketing and, and doing all that. So it's, I think, I think, I think it's just. It's just that the time, the sour times, like, it's just. It's really difficult to do. And I think if I know I'm guilty of it, I'll talk about it, you know, soon. But Teria, putting in the reps. What's. What is your. Unburden yourself with your pseudo practice activity.

I'm just gonna feel like this is a good therapy session.

Yeah. What have you done to fix it?

Mine would be a lot of incomplete. So I'll start this and I'll be on the computer. I'm working on it. Oh, yeah, I have to do this. I'll jump to that and I'll start working on that and I'll. And so I'm busy. But I have a lot of disjointed, half done stuff that at the end of the day I have to go back and figure out what's the priority here, what has to be done now. So for me, I have started like Landon, I have a task list, but now I've prioritized that and anything that comes up that's not life or death to stick with, you know, what I'm doing, Because I would love to stop doing something for work and go do something for pleasure. Like I'm just gonna go play on AI for 30 minutes or an hour or, you know, I would love to do that. But it then just bottlenecks the rest of my day and my night. So my pseudo productivity was just being busy without actually completing a lot of things. And so now I prioritize and then I'll stick with it. Even if my brain says, but you should do that, I'll stick with that. Nope, let's just knock it out, get it over with. Then I can move on to the next task. So just systematically completing things as opposed to.

Yeah, yeah. Okay, fantastic. And so do you have some type of strategy then? Like, Landon has a checklist or the to do list. What. What is.

What is your strategy to do list? But it resets every day because our schedules are different every day. So I have, I have a to do list. I have non negotiable. Right. So I'm not giving up my gym time. I'm not giving up, you know, this. I'm not Giving up that and then everything else has to kind of fit around that. That.

Right, Right. Okay. Is. It. Is. Is part of your non negotiables walking hand in hand with Landon and having him read French poetry?

Not if I'm not outside in Scottsdale. No, sir. Maybe we'll go back to that in October.

What. What about. What about date night? How about. Or how about, you know, because you work together, after a certain time, let's not talk about land.

Oh, 100. We'll. We'll agree upon a shutdown time. And so once that happens, we're. We're done. We. We come out of our offices and we hang out and we have date night at least twice a week.

Twice a week. Okay. Yep. Awesome. Awesome. All right, big papa. You got three kids.

I was gonna say he has a lot more to deal.

You got a lot going on. You got a big life. You're running a big business.

Yeah.

How do you. How do you manage it all, man?

I mean, for me, the key has always been, like, time blocking.

Okay.

I've found, like most people, that if I don't set a time limit on how long I can dedicate to a task, I'll spend all day on that task. So, you know, like, I have this podcast, time blocked. There is a certain amount of time I will spend on this podcast. We go over that time limit. You know, there's implications for the rest of the day. So I'm very structured in the sense that when I work, it's deep work, but when I'm not working, I'm. I'm. I might be thinking about work, but I'm not checking my email when I'm on my bike ride.

Right.

That's not a good thing to do. Like, Teria, she's not checking her voxer or Slack in the gym.

Right.

And so I think you have to set those boundaries because we do live in a digital world where technically I'm available 247 and there's time. Like, even on Slack, I have my Slack notifications end at a certain time of each day.

Yeah.

Because otherwise I'm a slave. And I think if we look back at what the land business affords, it's a certain lifestyle. And the minute my lifestyle becomes something I don't want it to be, I. I run into that question of, am I doing this for other reasons? You know, did I. Am I creating the lifestyle that I want? And for me, that lifestyle focus is really, really, you know, priority in my business. And so I want to have a lifestyle that allows Me to be the husband and dad and. And person I want to be, and that's out of whack. Then, you know, I can reevaluate, right?

No, no, absolutely. So, so your big strategy then to get out of pseudo productivity and do you ever get into pseudo productivity is time blocking, I think.

Yeah, that's my big block. I mean, that's my big strategy. It's worked for years. It's worked since I was in. In school and college. Yeah. I think it's easy to fall into this, especially if you got new hires or new team members who want to get up to speed with things. I mean, reoccurring meetings, it's. You attend a lot of these meetings and you get down and you're like, what the heck was I there for? Right. Like, yeah, I didn't need to be here for this. Like, you don't need me. I could have responded my 2 cents via Vox or. You know, meetings are very formal and sometimes it's better if just call me.

Right.

Like, call me, call me private. Let's have a conversation. Be way quicker doing that. And I don't know, I think you got to have a schedule. And I am running a business and a company, and so there's this level of professionalism that needs to go along with that. But at the same point, I don't enjoy meetings. Yeah, well, I don't want to do them. Right. Like, no way. No, thank you.

So.

And that meeting better add value. That's. That's the way I look at things, is if it's not adding value, maybe not in the short term, but in the long term, fine. I'll put up with it.

Right.

The minute it stops being productive, I got other things to do, you know?

No. 100%. I think there's an art to running a good meeting.

Yeah, for sure.

And preparing for that meeting, having everyone else prepared for that meeting. It actually takes work to do a good meeting. And I've experienced both and I've led both where I've had terror. I've been a terrible leader of meetings and more organized, hopefully getting better at them. But for me, it's. It's been a thing. It's been a constant battle because I am a dopamine junkie. And so I like checking email and I like checking Slack. You love it, right?

I love it. It's such a guilty pleasure. Like, why would I like to check something that makes me have to work?

No.

I don't know. You know what I'm. I'll tell you. I'M really bad at checking. Yeah, like down payment links.

Yeah, yeah, that's a dopamine hit.

Did we get like, if I see the team has sent out a bunch of down payment links, I'm in there, I'm like in geek page.

Yeah. Yep.

Yeah.

And then if I don't see them, I like that. Yeah. If they're not successful, then I'm messaging the team and I'm like, hey, what happened to this link?

You know.

That to me is bad.

Yeah, yeah. But, but still it's not productive. That sale's going to happen whether or not you check it or not.

I know.

And, and it's happened, Mark. Exactly. It feels good.

It does.

It feels good. It's so. It's so hard to, to really train the brain and, and do that dopamine detox. It, it takes quite a bit of time. I mean it's, in a way, it's like, it's like detoxing from a drug. And so I've I've still. Okay, so I've done all these things. Like right now, if you look at my phone, it's on black and white. Like it's as boring as it can be. So the phone's boring. Now I have an executive assistant who checks email, who manages my calendar, who so essentially handles a lot of the, the, the tasks. The, the that I. They're not going to be deep work tasks. And even still that's happening, I will still occasionally have to check email. It's the craziest thing. I don't have to and I still will do it like a drug addict. Now slack has been the next thing on my list where team communication has been a thing and I want to be responsive. And yet now I'm realizing that to be responsive, I'm being pseudo productive. So now I'm implementing a new thing called office hours. So just like a professor during this time to this time, because it used to be in the day, like we'd all work in an office together and you just walk over the person's desk and you get some stuff done and you kind of talk and they get done right then and there. Hey, would you mind and you could get done. Tate. I don't know if you realize this realizes there's actually a place where people used to go. No, it's called an office building. It was like people would congregate and they're like a water cooler. Yeah, I know it's not for you.

You have to like go somewhere and like.

Yeah.

Every day breathe the same Put on actual clothes.

Whoa.

Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to send you a link. There's a. This movie called Office Space. I think it's like in the. You, you know, kind of tell you everything you need to know. No, no, it's not black and white and white, but it's not in your fancy HD either. Like, it's going to be terrible for you. It's, you know, I'm.

Give it five minutes, some grainy video.

Yeah, but, but anyways, like, so now I'm going to try this and be more productive. But I think, I think Tate and land and Tree are right. Like, it's, it's all about setting good boundaries. It's about having a system, a to do list, a checklist, time blocking and then sticking to that, that system. Of course. We want to be flexible. Right? I mean, I'll tell you what I think is cool is, you know, the house could be burning down and Tate won't know because he's on his bike ride. Like, I'd, I'd like to get to the that but here's that type of freedom because you're calling it out.

Don't call me when it's on fire. Call me when it's burnt down. I got no skills. Like, I'm not gonna go in there and put out a fire. Like, end up getting myself taken out too. So call me when the damage is, when the fire's out and then we'll figure out how to move forward. But like, yeah, yeah, you gotta have those boundaries.

Yeah, no, it's true. And I mean, even, even our relationships are like double the amount of time that like our parents spent because we're just constantly available or constantly approachable. And I mean, something could be happening in like when I was a kid, my mom couldn't just call my dad. He was, he wasn't to be. He wasn't available until he got home. And now it's not like that. And I think in a lot of ways it's, it's amazing. In a lot, a lot of ways it's, it's, it's not. And I think you've gotta, you gotta find out these strategies, like when is the productive time for you. You've gotta, you know, have those non negotiables. Like Terea said, like, I'm gonna work out, I'm gonna take care of myself, I'm gonna journal, I'm gonna, you know, take care of my spirituality. I'm going to do these things first and then I'm going to be good for other people. And I'll be productive. I'm, you know, Tate's going to do his bike ride before he gets on a meeting he does not want to go on. Then he's going to be in a better meeting participant. His head will be in a better place, even if it's a terrible meeting, because he, he did that, he took care of himself. And so I think that it's, it's an interesting topic because knowledge workers, I think, are so easily burnt out today because there's so many ways to communicate and there's so many ways to avoid the real work that actually is important. And so hopefully this is a good reminder for those of you running your land business to, to have those strategies and, and implement them. And if you are listening to this, you're like, yeah, me too. Yeah, tomorrow is a new day. Reset, refocus, reprioritize and, and try a different strategy and see if it works and, and try to make it a habit. So, yeah, hopefully this, this was helpful, but now we're at that point in the podcast where, again, I'm just going to reiterate the tip of the week. Before I do that, just a little quick shout out for our sponsor, which is flight School. Learn how the next 16 weeks can transform your life. Start earning income passively without renters, rehabs, renovations, or rodents. We want to get you to the point where you've solved not just your money problems, but your time problems so you can be like Landon and Teria and Tate and live your best lives doing what you want to do, when you want to do it, where you want to do it. So learn more. Go to landgeek.comtraining going to get you where you want to go faster, farther, more safely, more efficiently. So lang.com training learn more. And again, the tip of the week was Slow Productivity by Cal Newport, and I'm a big Cal Newport fan. Deep Work was also a great book as well. And every time I read his books, I try to implement the strategies. It works for a while and then I fall off the wagon and it's terrible. But look, it's a work in progress. All right, Tree, are we good?

We are all good.

Landon, are we good?

We're good. Mark Tate.

Yep, all good.

All right. I want to thank the listeners, remind you that the only way we're going to get everyone back on the round table is if you do three little favors. Follow rate Review the podcast, send a screenshot of that review, Support the Land Geek.com and to send you for free. Assigned Copy of Dirt Rich. But if you don't want Dirt Rich, just do it anyways. It really helps us get better guests. So selfishly, do it for yourself. All right, we ready to do this? 1, 2, 3. Let's let freedom.

Freedom.

All right. Awesome. Awesome. So I know it's. It's Tuesday that we're recording this, but last week, does anyone have a favorite deal they want to talk about? Like, it's immediately going to log in. Log in here. Right? They've been pretty.

Pretty basic and steady for us.

We got a notification of a down payment, so we just get the notifications, and yay. We just, you know, But I don't know. I guess I'm not involved.

All right, is there. Is there anything you're seeing in any change in the land business?

I was seeing kind of a dip in our leads. Leads, yeah. But in the business overall, it's been steady. Land prices are still kind of creeping up, but steady.

I think one thing I've noticed, a little bit needing a little mail a little bit more. Just need to keep that male moving. I think people kind of stop. They get a little frustrated, and it's like, just keep mailing. It comes back, didn't come back next week. It come back next month. Couple months later, it keeps going. We get mail for two years later, it. It just keeps going.

Yeah, it's so much about consistency. Yeah, you got. You got one?

Yeah, I got a good one. I had to look it up. I. I wanted to make sure I had the numbers right. We actually bought a property back from a customer recently. So the guy called us up, said, hey, look, I'm about to make my final payment on this property, wondering if you could help me sell it. I said, no, unfortunately, we can't do that for you. But how much are you looking to sell it for?

So.

Well, I listed a realtor at this price. I said, okay, well, the realtor is going to take X. How does a check today for. I think the number. The number was $9,000 sound? He's, like, lower than I wanted. I go, yeah, but I'm gonna resell it. And that's. I gotta make some money. You bought it off us for six, so, you know, not bad. He said, all right, fine.

Cut the check.

So we did. For those tech people out there to keep things clean, what we did is we. We issued him the deed.

Right?

Right. So it actually went into his name, and then we had him deed it back to us, and then we issued payment.

Right.

So it just kept things a little Cleaner for our bookkeeping. So we bought it, paid $9,000 for it, threw it back on the market once we got the recorded deed and issued payment, and we actually sold it within two days. And we sold it and made a really good return on it. So even at $9,000, I mean, that's the thing with these properties is I am excited when. Whenever we get to issue a deed, I genuinely am happy for our customers. But a part of me is a little sad, too, because that property is something I care. It's like a loved one leaving the nest. It's like, oh, bye.

Yes, I agree. Yeah.

So to get this one back and then resell it and make, you know, quite a bit. Bit of money on it, it. It's exciting. And our customer who bought it from us, you know, he would have liked more for it, but he was happy. Honestly, he was happy. He was like, hey, cool. Made. Made three grand. That's not a bad deal.

No, it's not a bad deal. It's. It's not a bad deal at all. I mean, think about, like, if you bought jewelry, like Landon, if you buy trio jewelry, and she's like, I'm tired of this diamond. Let's go back to the jeweler, right? The jeweler is not going to give you a great deal on that.

Because.

They got to make money.

They do.

It's just, you know, it's not show friends, it's show business.

That's correct.

But they. But they made money, Tate. Yeah, they made money. Yes, absolutely.

So he did hit the easy button, too. We got to acknowledge that he could have made had he gone through the process that is, you know, normal for somebody in his position to get a property soldier. And you got to remember, this lot is still in an area where there's not a lot going on. There really isn't. So he made some money. He's happy. I don't know what he's going to do, but he's like, hey, call me again when you got another deal that we could work out like this. I'm like, I. Yeah, I don't know.

Yeah, fantastic.

I mean, that's the thing is you're not in the land business. It's hard to sell a piece of land, and you've got a big life. It's like, you got to choose your hard. I mean, yeah, I could sell my, you know, used electronics, but it's so much easier just to, you know, give it to back to Apple and get a couple hundred bucks.

Right.

And not get that last dollar because I value my time more than my money. Yeah, right. But if I were, you know, set up to do it, for sure I would. I would get the highest price, so. All right, well, I'm glad I asked the question.

Yeah, it's a cool story.

That is a great story.

All right, well, all of you, stay cool. Drink, stay hydrated. I don't know what time you're waking up in the morning to go on those bike rides, but.

Yeah, three in the morning.

Yeah.

5Ish. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

It looks like high noon out here. At 4:50 in the morning, the sun is up. It's already about 80, so. Yeah, you gotta get out.

Do you jump in the shower after the bike ride and the kids, like, all jump in? Dad's home.

Yeah. Either that or lately I've been getting in the pool. Just. Just feels good. Just feels good.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Well, I'll have to send you guys some bags of ice because come July, the pool is not refreshing anymore.

We'll.

We'll.

We go to Alaska next week, so we'll be gone for about 10 days. We will get a little cool there.

Are you doing the cruise?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Oh, my gosh. It's gonna be.

We'll cool off a little bit next week, and then we come back.

Right, and then it's gonna be light the whole time, right?

Yeah. We got an interior room.

We got an interior room for that. Normally we get a balcony. Now I'm like, nope, none of that interior. I need dark.

Yeah, yeah. One of my favorite things is now I sleep with that sleep mask because it's, you know, it's bright. It's like, right at 5 in the morning.

Yeah.

4:50, the sun is up here.

He's coming through the blackout curtains.

Yeah, yeah. As Mike Zano would say, it's a game changer. Yeah. You need those blackout curtains, Dave, do you do blackout curtains?

No, I don't. I. I've tried the face of mask and all that stuff. I don't like it. I don't like stuff on my face. I don't do the earplug thing. I just. I just go to sleep, man.

I just.

I'm tired.

Yeah, yeah.

He does not need.

Yeah.

If you tell me it's bedtime. If you tell me, hey, Tate, it's night. Night time. It's like, I. All right, if you say so. I can go to sleep with the lights on, man. It doesn't bother me, like. Yeah, but I'm up early. I'm an early riser. Like I said. I. I try to beat the heat a little bit, so I don't really care if I'd prefer if the sun was up at 4am like, that's good to me because I rise with it. So.

Yeah, that's awesome.

Circadian rhythm going.

Yeah.

Don't mess with it either. Right. I follow the same schedule every day, like weekends. I'm consistent in that.

That's so good. It's really, actually really healthy.

Yeah.

I try to get outside first thing when I wake up and get that sun.

I don't check my phone before I leave in the morning. Like, I'm set my. I'm setting my ways a little bit.

So good.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Sweet.

That's awesome. All right, thanks, everybody. See you guys.

See ya. Bye. Thanks for listening to the Art of Passive Income podcast. Are you ready to learn how you can start building a passive income without renters, rehabs, renovations, or rodents? Schedule a free consultation@thelandgeek.com training. Let freedom ring.