How High Performers REALLY Live on 24 Hours a Day: 7 Skills You Need

What if I told you that success is not about finding more hours in your day? It's about mastering these seven skills most people overlook. I spent so much time in my career trying to figure out time management when reality, I can't manage time at all. What I can do is manage my energy to make the most of the time that I have. It was Arnold Bennett's book, How to Live in 24 Hours a Day, that helped me realize that it's not about working more hours. Actually, high performers are working less while achieving more. But what he says is you gotta stop living in the margins of life and be much more intentional. These are the seven skills of high performers that make the most of every day. Skill number one, awareness. If you don't like where you are right now, that's a great start. It's important to know what the state of the world is in this moment. Not better than it is, not worse. High performers are constantly trying to get an understanding of where we are now. Not just about being present, but measuring the present. What have we actually achieved? How much movement have we made? Where have we come from where we started? Something you might do to get hyper-focused on the state of the world right now and your schedule is do a time audit like a high performer. Look at all the things you're doing. Literally keep track of every minute to see if you can figure out where all of the moments of the day are falling to. Does it fit into an essential category, a growth category, or a waste category? Each of them could be a little good and a little bad. It depends on how you're doing with moderation. But if you really wanna know and be aware of the current state, you have to track it. If you want help doing a time audit in particular, come over to my Instagram, make sure you're following me and message me the word time audit. All in one word, I'm gonna send you a free exercise for you to try so that you can audit your time over a week and figure out where you can make the most of what's falling to things that don't really matter to you. Even when you find a little bit of waste time, it's not a bad thing if you enjoyed it, if it's something you wanted to do. But when you have too much waste time, not enough growth, not enough essential, then you can start to fix that problem. But it starts with awareness. High performers know where they are right now so they can figure out how to get where they're going. Once you try My Time Audit, don't just do it once and then toss it in a drawer. Make a difference on your schedule. Start saying no to things that don't matter to you and then make time to reassess the audit in three months from now. And again, in six, continue to get better, continue to eliminate things that don't matter, continue to add on where you wish you were spending your time. Skill number two, morning mastery. High performers know that your morning does not start at 8 a.m. It starts at 8 p.m. I know, you weren't expecting me to say that, were you? However you put yourself to bed the night before is going to indicate how successful you are at starting the day on your terms, having a morning that is yours, and being able to venture into the day's activities feeling like you could stand on your own two feet. Not stressed, not rushed, not falling to all of the requests of the rest of the world. To get that start, you have to set yourself up for success. So make sure you make that happen. What time do you need to go to sleep? Do you need to set a bedtime alarm? That's my favorite alarm, is the one that's like, sings you a lullaby. Do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do. I'm like, oh, my phone's telling me to go to bed. That's the best thing it's told me all day. When the time has come, go to sleep. And then set the alarm for the morning wake up call. Have the intention, how do you start? Movement, mindfulness, and mastery. Those are the three buckets of good morning, good life. If you fill something in each of these buckets, you will have started the day on your terms. Movement, do something to move the body. Wake up, get energy so you can spend it where you need it later. Mindfulness, center the mind, do some meditation, journaling, stream of consciousness, writing, even just a little bit of a book reading so that you're not diving into the world's events already. Start with what you think, how you feel in the present moment. And mastery, what do you care about spending more time on? What do you want to be better at? What are you trying to build? Do you want the side hustle? Do you want to be fluent in Italian? Do you want to play the piano? Do you want to play tennis? How are you getting your reps in? Spend some time on mastery and you will become a master. Just a little bit of mastery time in the morning can really set you on your way. The reason these three buckets are wide open for you is because otherwise how else would you start the day on your terms? Pick three events that energize you so that if you're like me and you're not a morning person, you're not ready to jump out of bed with bells on, that would be reasonable. But if you've got enough sleep and you actually have something to look forward to that's all yours, you give yourself a hot chance of it going better than if you were just doing some routine and somebody told you it's a really good idea. Who cares what they think? They're not living your life. Fill your three buckets and make them happen. Skill number three, decisiveness. Do you know where confidence comes from? Your ability to make good on the promises you've made yourself. Many promises come from the ability to be decisive. You want something, you know there's a clear step that you need to take in order for that thing to come closer to your world to be more likely to happen. You decide to make it happen and therefore it is inevitable. This is really the secret of most people's success. Everyone you look at on social media, on TV, on the street that look like a natural high performer have simply made a decision and then implemented the systems that would make it inevitable for them to become successful. I'll give you an example. I have a team that I work with. They hold me accountable to make sure I shoot videos. I have to shoot videos. So they make sure that I show up to this shoot by making sure I get a blowout today. But because I have to get a blowout today so that I will be more likely to be less stressed of doing my own hair to shoot some videos, I go to the gym before I get the blowout. Why? Because I wanna get the most mileage out of the blowout. So then what happened? I woke up at five o'clock, I had a moment to center myself and I then left on time to go and do the cardio that I wanted nothing to do with because I knew that my reward for this was that someone else was gonna do my hair. All of this is why I went to bed at a decent hour last night. The systems are in place for the benchmarks to get hit so that all of the deadlines happen. I went to the gym, I shot the content, I get to end the day with a couple of wins. Be decisive. It is half the battle. I am telling you, it is half the battle. And most people think that they're gonna make the wrong decision and so they don't make it. But what's awesome is when you make a decision and it's the wrong one, as long as you have the best of intentions and you're not doing anything illegal or endangering lives, then you made a decision that was the wrong one and then you get to learn from it. It's wild, called wisdom. And it's going to change your life. The best wisdom is what you get in your own life experience and you have to go through the hard stuff in order for it to make a difference in your mindset. So make the decision, see it through, measure the results. It's really that simple. I hated that. Cool, now we have data. You can't hate something you've never done before. You can't hate doing it until you've tried. You can't know it doesn't work unless you have real world experience. Decisiveness will help you win every day of your life. Just be the one who can make a decision and you will rise above. Skill number four, blocking. This is in reference to your schedule. If you want to make the most of every single day, you have to block other people's access to it by blocking the time you need to do for the things that matter the most. The more you fill up your time with the things that you actually want to happen, the more likely the stuff that doesn't matter doesn't even have room to interfere. The vacations I want to take, the time I need with my family, the moments I want for myself blocked out as far in advance as humanly possible because I am going to protect that time at all costs. Time at the gym, protected at all costs. Time with my family, protected at all costs. Time for myself to put my mask on first because I know how selfish I am and yet how necessary it is that I need to be able to be alone for a hot minute so that I can be better for everyone else in my life, protected at all costs. Get into the habit of time blocking and batching like tasks so that you're more efficient on your calendar and you will be winning far beyond so many people that you surround yourself with. They won't even know what you're doing. They'll be so confused. Like think of the Tasmanian devil. That's your new spirit animal except you actually stop, take a break, smell the roses every once in a while because you don't have to go at that speed all the time when you are efficient. By the way, we are very consistent here on the YouTube channel and I would love it if you could help us reach a goal of 500,000 YouTube subscribers. If you haven't clicked that button already, please do. Skill number five, movement. I spent so much of my life thinking that going to the gym was the bane of my existence but actually it was probably shortening my existence. Really, I have finally gotten to this point in my life, wisdom with age I guess, that I get so much energy on the days that I take care of my body. Moving your body means different things to different people. You don't have to do the same workout I do. You don't have to go to the same classes. You don't have to do the same weightlifting. You don't have to do any of that. You just have to do what it means to challenge your body a little bit to stay healthy and when you do, every time you do, that energy spend pays you back in so much of every other area of your life where you needed more energy to exert. When I work out, I spend so much energy during that hour but then I sit here on set and I am able to talk to you for hours and hours and hours. You don't even know I'm talking to you for hours because I batch a bunch of videos at one time but I am talking to you for hours and sometimes I stumble a little bit but because I'm able to keep going, it's because I did what I needed to do to fuel at the start. My clients in my group coaching program, Amy Landino's Inner Circle, are often surprised because one of the daily non-negotiables that we have is they need to work out. They need to move their body and it's funny because I'll often hear clients say, I'm losing weight in your business program and I'm like, wow, that's amazing that that's helping you do that. That was not the goal but if it helps, awesome. The main reason why I ask them to do that is they need to get out of their heads and stop stressing out and get energy from somewhere. The best place to do that is a moment when you can be with yourself, be present and challenge yourself, learn how to go through adversity that will also give you energy to apply in areas you actually wanna spend your time. What better deal could you possibly get? More energy for what you want with potentially a longer and healthier life in turn. Skill number six, learning. Who taught you how to learn? It's a question I ask myself a lot because I think I've had many different teachers in my life that have taught me different things but in general, I think I could've been a better student earlier in my life. Not based on the grades that I got but based on the interest level I had in content that I could've learned more about. I think I would've been more engaged as a child if I had a better understanding of how to learn. So today as an adult with that understanding, the thing that pays me back even more than going to the gym is being a student of life and choosing to learn how to learn by absorbing things I'm really excited about learning. When I say mastery in Good Morning, Good Life, I mean it. When I wanna get better at something, I choose to become a master in it and I go full speed ahead. That only comes from choosing to be a student forever and absorbing anything that makes me better at that craft. You can say you wanna be a master in something and not educate yourself on it and just think that because you care about it, that's enough and it won't be. The person who is more interested in learning from others' mistakes and failing forward and getting as much information into the data system as possible is gonna beat you. So have that skill of learning. Read 10 pages of a nonfiction book every single day. Every single day. It can be a book you are excited about. I don't care what it is, but it should be real practical stuff that you can use to make your life or your business better. And skill number seven, connection. We all have the same 24 hours in a day. The people who get the most frustrated by that are the ones who see high performers who somehow achieve far more with that period of time and think it's because they have more resources. You may not be wrong. Those resources come from connection. When you agree that you can make more out of 24 hours in a day if you activate others on your team, if you scale it up, now we're talking about making the most of a day. So this can be very simple like hiring people to be on your team. Now the hours I'm at work are not just the hours I'm at work. My whole team is at work during those hours. And now I've multiplied that time. But I could also have this conversation with one person. Instead, I'm having it with a camera and it's going to as many people as want to watch this. Now I've made the most of this conversation with a person by making it available at scale. Connecting with people is one of the fastest ways that you can make more with the time that you have by getting yourself more reach, more opportunities, more collaborations, more partnerships, and opening your mind to what that looks like. So start really simple and create a personal board of directors. You might already know what this looks like and you could just literally write it down. Personal board of directors. Who do I go to for business advice? Who do I go to for career advice? Who do I go for love advice? Who do I go to for spiritual advice? Just create it and start realizing do you have the right people in the seats that you need the most? This is why a business has a board of directors because they want to tap into talent that can help make them better. When you have a personal board of directors, you have more opportunities for direction and the best news is I could be on your personal board of directors because of the way that I connect with you here or if you join my coaching program, then you've activated me in a new way. If you DM me on Instagram the word coach, we can explore if that's a good option for you. Where do you need the most help, the most perspective, the most strategy? Who's on your personal board of directors? How can they help you see the light? Those are my essential skills for high performers who want to make the most out of a day. If you would like to watch my video of how to live in 24 hours a day, the original video that was inspired by this book, check that out and I'll see you there.