How To Make Time For Everything

Let's be honest, if I followed you around all day and watched everything that you do, what would I see? Would I see a fully productive person accomplishing their goals day in and day out? Or would it show me how distracted or unaligned you are with the life that you ultimately want to create here? Because the uncomfortable truth is this, you always have time for what you think matters. So if your goals keep getting pushed back, what does that actually say about you and where your priorities are? So today, I'm going to give you six different strategies to make you extremely productive and how to make time for everything. And most of these are not anything that you've really ever heard of when it comes down to productivity. So I want to actually dive in and teach you each one of these six. So let's dive into it. So number one is that the number one real productivity killer is open loops. And so let me explain what this is. This one's really big. An open loop is anything that you haven't closed out yet. So it is a conversation that you're thinking that you need to have, but you're avoiding. It is a task that you got halfway through, but you keep postponing it. It is a decision that you know you need to make, but you've been delaying it and you just haven't made that decision yet. It's a message that is in your text that you haven't responded to or an email that you saw in the notification popped up from your boss and you know you need to respond to it, but you haven't done it yet. Or it's a goal that you said that you would start soon, but you haven't even started yet. You have to understand that your brain hates open loops. So what does it do? When you have an open loop, it keeps them running in the background constantly. So every open loop that you have in your brain is consuming just a little bit of energy from you because your brain has these open loops that it wants to close, but you just keep opening up more tabs. Your brain is like a massive hypercomputer, right? But you have 75 open tabs on that computer, and it's like leaving the tabs open but doing nothing. Even though you're doing nothing, nothing productive is being done, energy is being consumed by all 75 of those tabs that's running in the computer. Not time is being wasted, energy is being wasted. And so this is why you can feel exhausted even when you didn't do much. This is why you can feel like you don't have enough energy to be as productive as you want to throughout the day. It's because you're carrying with you 14 mental tabs that are open, eight things that you should do, six things that are unresolved decisions, three goals that you haven't committed to. So you don't necessarily need better time management, you need a better loop management. And so what you want to do is you want to wake up in the morning and write down all of the mental tab list, everything that is unfinished. Write down everything that is unfinished, every single little teeny tiny thing. And then here's what you want to do with each one of them. You want to decide which ones you need to eliminate, and you need to eliminate the things that don't matter, just close that tab out. You need to schedule what does matter, you need to decide what you're not doing and what you are doing, and then you need to decide what you're delegating. You need to basically close out all of those tabs so that the supercomputer of your brain can have all of that energy back, and you will naturally find that you have more energy and bandwidth if you do that. So that's the first thing, and we will be right back. Hey, I want to interrupt today's episode to tell you about my sponsor. It is me, myself. If you didn't know, I obviously have some coaching programs outside of the podcast to help you learn and grow and become a better version of yourself, step-by-step programs and processes to help you become better in your life and create the life that you want. If you want to learn more about it, you can go to www.coachwithrob.com. Once again, www.coachwithrob.com. Check it out, and let's get back to the episode. The second thing that you need to understand is that making time means deleting something else. So you don't just find time. You don't go searching outside and find time in a bush. You're not like, oh my gosh, I found 30 minutes in the rose bush, right? No, you delete something else to create space for the thing that you want to create time for. So if you want 30 minutes to read, or you want an hour to work out, or you want 20 minutes to meditate, or you want two hours for deep focus to build your dream, you must remove something. One of my first mentors used to always say, if you're saying yes to something, you're saying no to something else. Same exact thing where if you're saying yes to this, like to 20 minutes of reading, you're deleting something else from your schedule. And so the uncomfortable truth is that most people are not out of time. They just don't have the courage to delete things from their schedule. And so next time you get hit with an Instagram ad on this new, fancy, beautiful planner, it has highlighters that it comes with and colors that you can put inside of your planner. You don't need a fancy planner. You need a new, ruthless filter of saying yes to something, saying no to some things, and deleting everything that you don't need so that you can put some yeses in there. And so you've got to ask yourself, when you look at your schedule, you look at your calendar, you look at what meetings you're showing up to, whatever it might be, or meetings that you're scheduling, you gotta ask yourself, does this move my life forward? Does this align with who I want to become? Or is this just like some comfortable distraction that's in my schedule? Every yes that you have in your schedule costs you something else. So you've got to be really intentional with your yeses. The most productive people that I know, the seriously productive people are the best, literally ruthlessly amazing at saying no to anything that doesn't move their life forward. So that's number two. Number three is I want you to focus your energy over your time. And so most time management advice ignores this, that energy is more important than time. When you're exhausted, everything feels more difficult. Everything feels harder to do. Everything takes longer to accomplish. But when you feel energized, you move faster, you focus deeper, you waste less time. So instead of asking like, how do I manage my time better? Maybe you should start asking yourself, how do I manage my energy better? And so you got to start thinking about what time you go to bed, what time you wake up, what you're eating throughout the day, how much coffee you're drinking. All of these things are giving you energy or taking energy from you. And then what I want you to do is something that I've said many times this podcast, is for one week, from the moment that you wake up to the moment that you go to bed, you're going to have a 60-minute timer that you just keep repeating every 60 minutes for an entire day, every day for an entire week. And you track every single hour of the day. And what you do is when that alarm goes off, you rate your energy for the last hour on a scale of 1 to 10. And you're going to start to notice some patterns in the way that you feel depending on what time of day it is, what it is that you ate. And then after one week, you're going to have a really good idea of patterns of the way that you feel when you have the most energy, when you have the least energy, and you can start planning your days accordingly based off of the energy that you typically have at that time. So for me, I've this many times before, for my working schedule, from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m., it's a little bit slower for me. My brain's still kind of waking up, but my brain is in a more creative state. I have found that if I go straight into business in the morning, my creative brain kind of turns off. And so for me, I've got to be very creative. I create a lot of podcast episodes. I create a lot of content on the internet. And so that's my creative time from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. From 11 to 2 p.m., that's when I have found that I have the most energy. That's the time when my brain's clicking, my body's clicking. That's usually when I want to record podcast episodes. That's when I want to create content for social media. That's when I want to do my Zoom coaching calls for my programs that I run. I have multiple programs on Mindset. Then I also have programs where I train people on how to grow their coaching businesses online. So my Zoom calls are based in those times because I want to give them the most energy that I possibly can during those times. And then from about 2 to 5 are like my other business calls, Zoom calls that I have to have with different people on my team. I don't have as much energy because I'm not cranking as much as I am from 11 to 2. I still have some energy. I'm still pretty good, but I don't need as much brain power when I'm on those Zoom calls because I'm running some of them, other people are running, and they just need my input. And so I plan my day based off of how I know my energy is throughout the day. So that's number three. Number four, and I've said this many times in the podcast before, the three critical tasks rule. I've been saying this for years. Every day, all you really need is to choose three things that will make that day successful. Not 27, not 12, three things. And what you want to do is try to finish those three highest priority tasks every single day. If you finish those three, you won the day. That is a successful day. Anything else after that, that's extra. The reason why this works is because it removes overwhelm and it forces you to prioritize what is most important. It builds momentum when you cross that first thing off and it's a big thing. You know, it's like eating that frog. If you've ever heard that phrase, like you eat the frog for the day, you've crossed that big thing off your list. That builds momentum for your day. It eliminates decision fatigue because you've only got three things that you really need to focus on. See, most people feel behind because they waste time throughout the day on non-productive things on their to-do list. They're trying to check off as many things on their to-do list versus checking off the most important things on their to-do list. I call that busy, not productive, which is why you can have a day where you're working and working, you're cranking hours and hours and hours, and six o'clock hits and you got a lot of stuff done, but you feel like you've got nothing done. It's because you've been checking random things off your to-do list instead of the most important things off your to-do list. I remember reading an article one time that said Jeff Bezos only makes three decisions a day. That's his rule. But they're like big decisions. You are the most productive in a day where you check off not the most things, but the biggest things off your to-do list. Focus on the biggest levers that you can pull today. That's number four. Number five is don't just batch your tasks. Batching your tasks is very important, but batch your brain as well. Let me explain what I mean by this. You've probably heard about batching tasks. For instance, when I sit down to plan podcast episodes, I plan multiple at a time. When I sit down to record podcast episodes, I record multiple at a time. This is my second one that I have recorded one right after another today. But here's a deeper level as to why this is important. You want to batch what I call identity states. You don't want to switch between deep work, and then email, and social media, and then creative work, and then back to email, and then back to deep work, and then back to creative work, and then phone calls, and then admin tasks, and all that stuff. Every switch costs energy, and it requires you to switch a different part of your brain. If I'm being creative, and then I have to switch to sending an email, and then I have to go back to creative, those are different parts of my brain. If I'm going to be creative, I'm not going to have creative time, and then I'm going to have a Zoom call for business in the middle of it, and then go back to creative time because those are two separate sides of my brain. Every time that I switch, I'm going to get a little bit of a cognitive drop. You have to basically decide who you're going to be in these time blocks. Instead of just like, hey, I have a deep work block, which I recommend that you have at least a two-hour deep work block, you're also telling yourself, I am extremely focused on one thing for the next two hours. You're basically telling yourself who you're going to be. Maybe you have a creative block for the next three hours, and you say to yourself, now is my creative time. I'm turning on my creative brain. You're basically telling yourself what you want, and you're focusing on just being that way. It's hard to switch from being this type of person, this type of person, this type of person. We all play many different roles. I play podcaster, and I'm playing podcaster right now, but I also have 45 people in my company, so I'm also CEO. I don't want to switch between those things multiple times a day. I just want to go, hey, now I'm in podcast mode. I'm going to do all my podcast stuff, and then I will switch later on to being the CEO of a company. If you have an admin block, it's like I'm turning on my business brain now. If you have a communication block where you're going to be leading people, I'm focusing on leading for the next hour. So you're trying to basically tell yourself and click into the cognitive mode that you need your brain to be in. Your brain isn't built for constant shifting. It works so much better when you batch your tasks, but then with batching those tasks, you say to yourself and decide who you're going to be for the next 90 minutes. Who do I need to show up as? When I get done with work, I don't want to show up as podcaster or CEO when I go downstairs and hang out with my son and my wife. We all play different roles. You've got to decide what role you're going to play for the next hour or two hours. Who are you going to be in those moments, and how are you going to show up? That's number five. Number six is this. This is important for a lot of people. Decide once. This is a big one. There's a sneaky time drain that a lot of people get hung up on that I see. It's re-deciding and making many decisions on the same thing every single day. Like I said, Jeff Bezos, one of the richest men in the world, has one of the biggest businesses in the entire world, makes three decisions a day, three big decisions. You're out there making 473 decisions a day. Am I going to work out today? Well, let me see. What should I eat today? What should I wear today? Should I wake up early or should I sleep in? Should I start my project or should I do that tomorrow? You want to make fewer decisions, which makes fewer daily negotiations with yourself. The idea that you want to set your mind through is decide once. Instead of like, am I going to work out today? I work out every day, Monday through Thursday. Boom, decided once. Don't have to think about it. I don't get on social media between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m. One decision, or I turn my phone off the moment I walk in the door at night. I write my book from 7 a.m. to 8 a.m. every morning. I don't take calls after 7 p.m. You just make the decision, and you have a standard that you set to, and you don't have to make a decision again. Then you remove all this internal debate, and it frees so much time, and it frees so much cognitive load because you don't realize. If you were to track how many teeny tiny decisions that you make every single day, it's probably hundreds. But if you pay attention to how many decisions that you make every single day, but they're the same decision, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, and you're having to remake it, just make one decision. I do this from this time to this time. I do this on this day. I do this. This is what I eat. This is how I eat, whatever it might be. You need to just decide once, and then go with it. Too many people are flip-floppers. Flip-flopping. Should I do it? I don't know. I did this yesterday. I don't know if I should do it. Just make a decision. The word decision, it comes from the Greek root word dikaderi, which means to cut off. You're cutting off all other options. I've made this decision. This is the decision I'm going with. I don't need to think about it again. Once I make a decision, I do not go back on that decision because indecision is extremely exhausting, and the more exhausted that you are, the less productive you're going to be. I want you to think about this time management from not about more of squeezing more stuff into your day. It's about eliminating more stuff, but it's also about aligning your day with who you want to become. It's about aligning your day with what type of life you're trying to build. You want those to feel aligned because when they feel aligned, you don't feel behind anymore. You don't feel rushed anymore. You don't feel scattered. You don't question yourself if you're making the right or wrong decision. You start feeling intentional and making intentional decisions, and being intentional turns into being powerful, and that's how you command your life.