Transcription
If you're like most business owners, you probably have an endless to-do list, 1,000 different things fighting for your focus, and you're sitting there thinking, "Where on earth am I going to find the time to do all of this?"
That used to be me as well, until I built a simple system which made me so productive that it feels like cheating and has allowed me to grow my business in around 4 hours a day. So, in this video, I'm going to show you that system, how to build it so that you can become so productive that it feels illegal and how you can use it to scale your business faster.
So, first I'm going to show you the most important thing for when it comes to productivity. Because if you think about it, every single business owner has the same 24 hours in the day. So, why are some super productive while others aren't? Well, think about someone who has no energy, has a crap environment, can't focus, can't prioritize, and has no structure for their time. How much do you think they get done? Well, [ __ ] all because they're chaotic. So, they get nothing important done, which it means the business just sort of posts and stays where it is. And that's how most business owners act every single day.
So if you want to be productive so that you can focus on what matters and scale your business in less time, then you need to turn the chaos in your life into order because order allows predictability. And with predictability, you can choose to spend your time in a better way. Now, let me show you the system for doing that. There's five steps. Let's start with step one.
And this step is so damn important because guess what? You can't make more time. You have 24 hours a day. That is it. But you can make each hour worth more. Most business owners are sitting there with an F1 car on the track, but the fuel tank is empty, so they just walk around the bloody track. This step is how you put fuel in that beast.
So the way you make every hour worth more is by maximizing your energy because if you feel like [ __ ] you're not going to get much done. So this is incredibly important. Stick with me. Okay.
Now, with energy, there's obviously a million, a billion different things you can do. Like literally, and I'm a bit of a tester. I love to find weird obscure things like sun in my balls to really take my energy to the next level. I am joking. I live in Northern Ireland. I'm not even sure I've seen the sun before. But really, having high energy doesn't need to be complex. Okay? There's only a few areas that actually matter. One of them you'll never thought of before, and you have to treat each of them like a pyramid. Okay? Most people try to jump to the super niche optimization hacks that might not even work like sunning your balls instead of just getting the foundations dialed in.
So, I'm going to give you the foundations, the bottom row of the pyramid that is absolutely essential for each area so that you can literally finish this video and do all of these things today and have better energy tomorrow.
So, the first area is sleep. Sleep is the most important thing that you can do for feeling on top of the world. Now there's two non-negotiables with this and that is consistency. So your sleep is controlled by your circadian rhythm. It wants to be in a rhythm which means it needs a consistent beat. It needs consistency, right? So have the same wake time and sleep time every single day. Even on the weekends, yes, even on the weekends because otherwise what you'll do is you'll mess up your circadian rhythm and struggle to sleep at the right time on Sunday night. And then you'll feel racked on Monday morning cuz you'll struggle to get up and that'll carry on throughout the week and you'll feel tired. you'll get nothing done. The business won't grow. Okay. The best way to achieve this is this consistency is not only to have an alarm for waking up, but also have an alarm for when you need to go to bed. Okay.
Now, the other obvious non-negotiable here is duration. If you get 78 hours of sleep, that is really all you need. Okay. Every other hack you can do for optimizing sleep is noise without these. Okay.
Now, some quick wins you can use to improve sleep on top of those can be, you know, getting morning sunlight within 30 to 60 minutes of waking up and consuming zero caffeine after say 1 p.m. because caffeine has a roughly 6hour halfife. That can vary depending on what study you read, but obviously it does go without saying that if you have a young child like a small one, a baby, I forgot the name for a baby there. And there's not much you can do here, okay? Your sleep is going to be crap. So, you will just have to deal with it. Apologies, I can't help you there.
So energy is funny. Okay, if you want more of it, you have to use more of it. So the next area is exercise. Now actually acutely you might feel a bit tired after it, especially after a heavy leg day. So you might just want to, you know, adjust your daily schedule. So you don't do much important or hard work for about an hour after training. Like if I do legs, I'm [ __ ] for about an hour. I can't do anything. I just have to lie there and question everything I've ever done in my entire life. But in the long run, by exercising, you get more energy. You can keep it simple, okay? You just do something. I don't really care what exercise you do. I am a bit biased. I'm a British weightlifting champion. Soft plug. I think everyone should lift weights, but just do something every single day, even if it is as simple as getting some steps in.
Now, the next area is nutrition. So, again, do keep this simple. You want to eat primarily like 90% plus good whole clean foods. Eat a lot of protein. Drink a lot of water. Otherwise, with nutrition, the main thing for energy and productivity is say in the morning and at lunchtime, really try to limit your carbs because what happens most of the time is you eat a high carb lunch full of breads and whatever else, then come 2 p.m. you're done. Okay? You've no energy. You've just crashed because you eat the carbs, your blood sugar spikes, then it crashes. Okay? So, really just avoid or massively limit carbs until the evening because otherwise your entire afternoon is going to be a complete write-off. Okay? And you'll get nothing done.
Now the next area is actually around the things that you hold in your mind because see every single decision and plan and problem that sits in your head unsolved. That's an open loop. Each open loop uses energy and the more you have open the less energy you have for everything else. So you want to close them so that you can free up your mental bandwidth and energy. Now depending on the open loop you're holding. You can either close the loop by dealing with the thing you know taking action solving it or you can just take it out of your head and onto paper so that you can deal with it later and your mind doesn't have to hold it giving you more energy.
Now, let me show you step two of the system. And this can easily double or even triple your productivity by tomorrow. And I'm not joking.
So, a few years back, I was spending basically all my time in the house. That's the glory of an online business. And I was getting loads done, but I thought I should probably, you know, get out a bit more. So, I decided to go and work in co-working spaces. But after a few weeks, I realized I was getting way less done. Like a crazy amount less. And I couldn't actually figure out why until the next day I was sitting in a co-working space and every 5 minutes somebody would be trying to, you know, like network with me, which is just complete [ __ ] Or worse, the worst thing someone can do in public, start an obnoxiously loud conversation with somebody else. And so I was always getting distracted. And as my distraction went up, my productivity went down. And it was all because I went from my hyperoptimized environment to a well a [ __ ] environment.
So see, the easiest way to change behavior immediately is to change your environment. And it doesn't have to be drastic, okay? Like you don't need to move to a cabin in the woods, even though sometimes it can be really tempting, but all you need to do is have a dedicated space for work. And ideally, nobody else is in the room either. It's just you. And you optimize it for focus and productivity. So that means you never take your phone into that room. You leave it in another room. Don't just put it face down or keep it in your pocket because that doesn't work. Seriously, think about it. So install the app Opal. That's what I recommend. You can use any other app locker. Then set it up to block apps and websites during specific blocks of time in which you will be working. Then put your phone in another room. And I know you've heard all of this before, but guess what? Have you done it? No. Then you need to hear it again. Trust me, we're all addicted to this device. We pick it up without thinking. So just put it in another room so you can't pick it up.
As a business owner, one of the biggest distractions isn't just your phone. It can also be your team. So firstly, you need systems so that you your team don't have to keep coming to you and they don't rely on you. In which case, click the link in the description below to work with me and I will help you build those systems. But you also need to make it clear to them, okay, during these times, say 8:00 p.m., 8:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m., whatever they are for you, I'm unavailable. Make it clear, set your boundaries and stick to them because when has a quick question from your team ever been a quick question? Never. And if anyone can just walk in and interrupt you, then how can you ever expect to be more productive?
Okay, now let me show you step three, which is how you can get every single task done in half the time.
So when I was running my ghost writing agency a few years back, I would do outreach to get clients, which meant I would wait to hear back from certain prospects and one of the things I would do is, you know, I'd be working super hard on a certain task. Then I'd check my emails or my DMs and respond any messages. Then I would go back to working on that task. And you know, I thought I was being smart. In fact, I started off not even realizing I was doing it, which is something I see all the time with my clients. We don't realize how often we switch tasks. See, multitasking doesn't exist. Like you can't actually do two tasks at once, but what you can do is called task switching and just go back and forth between two or three things. But the problem is every switch that you do leaves what's called attention residue where part of your mind stays stuck on that last task which means you can never fully focus or enter flow on any task. So you end up wasting a ton of time and doing the work to a lower quality. Okay, which is never good.
So the human brain actually has a superpower. It's called flow. It's that state where you get so entrenched in the in something that you forget you're even doing it and you get in the zone and you fly through the task and time sort of disappears and you do amazing work. But the problem is it takes about you know 20 minutes or so really depending on you and the task to get into that flow state and those 20 minutes can be uncomfortable which is why we end up picking up our phone or we switch to another task to get out of that discomfort and then when you go back to the original task you still have to go through 20 minutes of discomfort again. You can't cheat the system. Okay. But if you push through it and you get into that super deep focused state, the work is really enjoyable. Okay. And you're the most productive that you can be and you can quite literally do a task that normally takes you 1 hour in 30 to 45 minutes, if not faster.
So, how do you get into flow? Well, you want to do a few things. You want to work on one task at a time with a clear goal outcome so that you you don't work on the proposal. That is way too vague. Instead, you want to finish the first draft of the proposal. Okay? And in that work block, that is all you do. You just work on that one singular task. Now, each work block should be between 60 and 120 minutes. And if you want to be hyper specific, 90 minutes is best as it lines up with your body's natural uh alertness cycles or trading rhythms where after 90 minutes, your focus or energy naturally dips at which point you want to take a break for about 15 minutes, then get back into your next work block.
Now, as a business owner, you'll be all too familiar with working on a task and then you get that thought, "Fuck, I need to email X person back." And what most people do then is they jump to their emails and they come out of flow. Okay? You don't want to do that. Instead, you just want to write it down and you can then deal with it later after the work block. This way, you don't forget it, but you stay focused on the work that matters.
Now, with focus, you can also take supplements. It's entirely up to you. You do not have to. Like, quite literally, you do not have to. I personally use nicotine, gum, and caffeine. You can use whatever you want. You also, again, you don't need to use anything if you want to. But when you combine these focus steps with the optimized environment and the high energy, done your productivity is going to go through the bloody roof. It's going to be insane how much you get done.
However, in business, something you have to realize is that not everything is actually worth working on. So, let me show you step four so you know what is actually worth you spending your time on.
And the best way to do this is to imagine two people. Person A does 30 tasks that don't move the needle. Person B does three tasks that do move the needle. Who was more productive? Seriously, who was it? Who made more progress? Sure, person A technically got more things done. They did 30 things, but none of those things mattered. So, they were just busy. Person B, on the other hand, did less things, but they were productive because the fewer things that they did, all of them were important. Every single one of them created progress. See, productivity is quite literally defined as the effectiveness of effort. It is how much you get out for what you put in. And most business owners run around like person A doing everything but moving nowhere. Instead, you need to be like person B, ruthless with what you do, with what you spend your time on. So your time is only spent on what matters, which if you follow the bra principle is only about 20% of the tasks that you do.
Now when it comes to prioritizing, what you have to realize is that you cannot prioritize without a goal. Because prioritization is you saying that this thing is more important than this thing, but more important for what? You need the goal to act as a filter. You see, so first you need to define your goal. Doesn't matter what it is as long as it's specific and tangible and something you actually want to achieve. Then you look at all the tasks that you do in your business and you figure out which one to three will actually move you toward your goal. Because I can promise you that there are only one to three things that do. For example, if your goal is to scale your business to whatever number, well, that means you need more sales. And how you'll get more sales is either you'll fix a bottleneck in your sales process. So, if you do sales calls and have a 10% close rate, you'll fix that and get your team better at sales. So, you can close at 30% and therefore get free sales from 10 calls rather than one sale from 10 calls, that's one thing, okay? Or if you don't have a bottleneck in your sales system to get more sales, you're going to need to get more leads. Which means you'll need to do more or better marketing, which if you run ads for marketing, then you need to run more or better ads. Okay? You don't need to do 10 different things. The more things you do, the more you split your focus and the less likely you are to achieve anything. Okay? doing less but doing better is always the better choice.
So you have your goal and then you figure out based on data if you have it in your business the one to three things that you need to do to achieve that goal and then every single day you schedule those one to three things to be done in deep focus blocks which we just discussed early in the day because that's how you prioritize right you figure out what is most important for moving you toward your goals. Then you do that before everything else because it is more important than everything else. And with that you cannot be afraid to say no. This is the thing about business and prioritization. You have to say no to potentially good things so that you can focus and go all in on what matters. It is going to sting a bit sometimes, but that's really how you know that you're doing it right. And the trap that most business owners fall into here is spending all their time on things that are urgent. Firefighting while the important but not urgent work gets put to the side and told I'll do that tomorrow and it ends up never getting done. That's the last you ever hear about it. But there is a quote here which is bloody brilliant. Urgent things are rarely important and important things are rarely urgent. So really you need to just dive into what matters. The one to three tasks that will move you towards your goals.
Now sometimes those tasks will be recurring tasks like creating content or new ads or whatever things you do every day or every week. But potentially one of those tasks is a one-off task. It could be part of a bigger strategic action. Basically that's what we call in the MOS a project. So if you're fixing a bottleneck that is crucial for fixing your problem and achieving your goal. but it is a one-off task. So, when you're prioritizing, you need to consider those one-off tasks because they are crucially important. But obviously, as business owners, we get a million ideas and a million things we want to implement and all the rest. And it's hard to know when to do what and what to prioritize. So, if you want the free tool and training on how to organize and sort these one-off tasks and strategic actions so that you know when to work on what and when to prioritize it, I'll leave a link in the description below. Check that out.
But, let me show you step five. And this is how you guarantee that you can find the time for everything that you have to do.
So imagine you had 1,000 things to do, right? What would be the best way to handle that? What would you do? Would you just wing it or would you be best to make a plan and figure out when you'll do what? Well, it's obviously it's making the plan, right? Because all a schedule or a plan is is you predetermining how you'll spend your time so you can spend it in a better way. And as a human, we are hardwired for the path of least resistance. So if you have to make a decision in the moment around what to work on, it's so much harder to choose the more difficult but important task and you're so much more likely to default to distraction and you know useless crap. But by planning, you get to separate yourself from the discomfort and choose more objectively what you'll work on and when.
And this is even more true if you're busy. If you want your schedule to actually maximize your productivity, then there is a certain way to do it. Firstly, you need to plan your day the night before. Okay? So write down everything in your personal life and business that you have to do tomorrow. Then schedule it. This will do two things, right? So firstly, it'll separate you from the work and allow you to make a better plan for your day. And secondly, it means tomorrow you don't have to waste time or mental bandwidth making the plan. You just follow it. And honestly, I would recommend doing this on paper. I've worked with hundreds of business owners at this point, and all of them follow their schedule and use it way more when they do it on paper than on computer. Trust me, it just works. I've literally scheduled every day of my life for the past 5 years in one of these pocket notebooks. It's amazing. It works.
Secondly, you want to make sure that you schedule your important work first. So remember, your priorities are more important than everything else. Therefore, you need to do them before everything else. The longer you leave it to do them, the less likely you are to do them because your energy and focus will fall throughout the day and something is way more likely to come up and ruin your schedule. So, just do them first, okay? Get them done and dusted. Plus, you'll feel fantastic and you'll not have to worry about them in the back of your mind all day, which, you know, really eats at you. So, you can do other things like theming your days and planning some buffer time into your schedule as well to help improve your schedule. But the main thing is that you plan your day the night before and that you schedule in order of priority and then of course stick to the damn schedule, which unfortunately there is no hack for that. Okay? See, so many people complain that schedules don't work, but then they don't stick to the schedule. So of course it doesn't work. Like the job of a schedule is not to make you to stick to it. The job of the schedule is to you predetermining your time. Sticking to the schedule is not a schedule issue. It is a you issue. Okay?
Quite simply, a schedule is how you create freedom. Like if you want to work 4 hours a day and keep your business growing, then you schedule 4 hours of work. And if you have 8 hours of work to do, you then have to choose 4 hours of work to delegate. And you delegate those four hours. And the schedule will show you what to delegate. and all of a sudden the business is still running but you're only working 4 hours a day. So by being productive not only can you get more done in less time but you can work less and scale faster because you'll do better work in less time but you'll also because of the nature of being productive you have better control over your time but also what you focus on so you can do the work that actually grows your business.
Now obviously a large part of this is sticking to your schedule and business can make sticking to a schedule hard. Okay, it can feel like it's impossible to stick to or to work less or to be productive, but it's only because your business relies entirely on you and not on systems. So, if you want to build systems so your business doesn't rely on you and you can work less but scale faster, click the video on screen now. I will show you exactly how to do.