Dan Martell - March 07, 2023


5 Steps to Be More Productive

Topics
block time easily
Hosted by
Dan Martell
🚨TRIGGER WARNING🚨 Here's how I plan my life 📆

Episode Stats


Length

11 minutes

Words per minute

198.95

Word count

2,235

Sentence count

37


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

If you want to learn the secrets behind how I'm able to run two eight-figure companies as the CEO and stop my day at 5pm so I could be present with my kids and on top of that train for Ironman and just stay active and be somebody that shows up for their friends and goes on date nights with his wife, I want to share with you some productivity strategies. These are not hacks, these are literally different ways to think about manufacturing time and designing your calendar that nobody's ever taught you in business.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 If you want to learn the secrets behind how I'm able to run two eight-figure companies as the CEO
00:00:05.220 and stop my day at 5 p.m. so I could be present with my kids and on top of that train for Ironman
00:00:11.960 and just stay active and be somebody that shows up for their friends and go on date nights with
00:00:17.580 my wife I want to share with you some productivity strategies okay they're not even hacks they're
00:00:23.740 literally different ways to think about manufacturing time and designing your calendar
00:00:29.620 and looking at your week that nobody's ever taught you in business because it's taken me
00:00:35.620 literally 25 years of iterating and iterating and iterating to understand the way I think about my
00:00:41.940 energy and my time and leverage so that you can take this information and apply it to your business
00:00:47.820 today. Let's get into it. The number one thing, if you got to look at my life that you would
00:00:54.580 notice is completely different for most people it's by design not by default here's what I mean
00:00:59.840 by that I literally am intentional of not only my day my week my month but my year and I'll even
00:01:09.100 look at like the next 10 years and figure out where am I going and how do I backfill this because I
00:01:14.940 learned a long time ago I don't know if you've ever heard of the big rock analogy but if you take a
00:01:20.140 container and you start filling it up with the little things, the sand, you put all the water
00:01:26.080 in there that, you know, you might need. This is like the day to day, the got a second meetings,
00:01:30.740 the pulling on your time. And then you try to put, you know, the pebbles in there, the smaller type
00:01:35.240 projects. And then eventually you have like all these big rock type things, these meaningful things
00:01:39.740 you want to accomplish in your life and get healthy and be a better relationship and grow your
00:01:43.860 business. There's just not enough room in that container. The sequence of the stuff and how you
00:01:49.400 put it in matters tremendously if you take that same container and instead by design start with
00:01:56.240 the big rocks then sprinkle in the pebbles then the sand you fill it all in and then finally the
00:02:03.300 water the the serendipitous moments throughout your week in your day that's where you can literally
00:02:09.920 get it all put in the same container doing it in the reverse way doesn't work so that's why
00:02:15.160 when people see that I'm able to accomplish so much
00:02:18.940 with my time, it's because it is so designed.
00:02:22.800 It is so intentional that I don't just let life happen
00:02:27.720 to me, I go out and I create my outcomes by design.
00:02:32.820 The second most important thing that I do
00:02:35.400 to get things done is I package up the details.
00:02:39.760 Here's what I mean by that.
00:02:41.020 You know, it's kind of like when I go on my snowboard trip,
00:02:42.960 I bought this snowboard bag that is so cool because it will fit not only my board and
00:02:49.240 my boots and all my equipment, it even has a place for all my clothes, my gloves, my
00:02:55.260 multiple goggles, and my lodge slippers.
00:02:58.520 Everything I need to go on my trip is packaged up into this snowboard bag.
00:03:02.940 Why is that important?
00:03:04.300 Because I can sit down and get packed up and know that there's one place where everything
00:03:11.080 i need for my trip is gonna be in this special bag not in two or three bags not all over the place
00:03:17.240 literally one bag and then when i show up to go on my trip easy peasy i don't forget anything i show
00:03:23.320 up i got my gear and i have a great time that's how i look at my life i've literally taken every
00:03:29.400 project everything i need to get done and i use my calendar to package up the details everything
00:03:35.640 all the context that i need for a conversation in my calendar to do an activity in my calendar
00:03:41.880 it is all in the calendar some of you guys like okay what if somebody invites you to a meeting
00:03:47.240 and you show up but you have like stuff that you know you need to look at before that meeting or
00:03:51.800 in that meeting what i do is i create a separate calendar invite that's called notes for the
00:03:57.160 meeting for example like today i did a bunch of podcast interviews for my book promotion and in
00:04:04.040 the calendar next to it i had notes and it was all the information around the interviewer the
00:04:10.680 questions they sent me ahead of time that was in my inbox um any specific context that i need to
00:04:16.120 know about the podcast you know uh reminders of like letting people know when the release dates
00:04:21.480 etc it was all in there and why is that valuable is it allows me to go from meeting to meeting to
00:04:27.560 meeting to activity to literally live my life if i've got to go run errands all the errands that i
00:04:32.600 need to execute are in the calendar they're not in a separate document they're not in my inbox
00:04:37.720 they're not written down on some piece of paper i literally package up all the details to get
00:04:42.120 things done in one place it's in my calendar in that calendar spot with all the information so
00:04:47.720 that i can't forget it it makes it easy and allows me to just move very quick through my day number
00:04:53.160 three is block time easily one of the most important things that you need to be doing
00:04:57.560 in your day to get more done and here's a quick exercise to prove to you how important it is to
00:05:03.320 not only block similar tasks uh that you're working on but batch them together so like
00:05:08.760 when i do anything from you know interviews for team members that i'm hiring or onboarding training
00:05:14.440 or one-on-one meetings or coaching calls or whatever it is that i'm doing looking at deals
00:05:19.000 in my life i'm batching them together because i know that the headspace the context that i built
00:05:23.880 and the energy that I'm bringing to that batch of work
00:05:27.000 needs to be similar.
00:05:28.740 Here's a great exercise to explain to you how this works.
00:05:32.160 If I asked you to recite the alphabet,
00:05:35.900 A, B, C, D, E, F, D, you can go all the way to the end
00:05:37.920 and then ask you to recite one to 26, okay?
00:05:41.080 So one, two, three, four, five, six, back to back.
00:05:43.600 Most people would do it fairly quickly
00:05:45.500 in about 25 seconds to 30 seconds
00:05:48.420 where they could do the whole alphabet
00:05:49.800 and they could do one to 26, okay?
00:05:52.160 now if i ask you instead to go a one b two and kind of follow that sequence all the way till the
00:06:01.840 end until you're like z 26 most people on average will take three to four times more time a minute
00:06:09.520 two minutes to accomplish the same task so this is just proof that when you think you're multitasking
00:06:16.000 When you think it's okay to like schedule an interview
00:06:19.360 with an employee to a leadership team meeting
00:06:22.260 to outlining some videos for your social media
00:06:25.800 to having a conversation with your partner
00:06:29.380 about something in your home,
00:06:30.960 like that's actually not efficient.
00:06:33.860 It takes more mental cognitive overhead
00:06:36.400 to manage that different stuff.
00:06:38.260 And the truth is people think they can multitask
00:06:40.080 and they just can't.
00:06:41.020 It is way better to batch and block time your work
00:06:44.120 to execute, to move through that as fast as humanly possible
00:06:47.280 so that you can keep your mind primed on the activity at hand
00:06:50.840 and not get distracted by a bunch of different things
00:06:53.300 thinking that you're being more productive
00:06:54.920 because multitasking does not work.
00:06:57.640 Number four is theming your days.
00:06:59.540 It's very important because this is how our mind works
00:07:02.120 to have places for things that come into our lives.
00:07:06.260 And what I like to do is theme my days.
00:07:08.580 For example, Friday is a money day.
00:07:10.460 money day means anything around you know meeting with my finance team to my wealth management team
00:07:17.840 to um doing any type of financial analysis or reporting or whatever those happen on friday
00:07:24.560 because that way when people come to me with like challenges or questions i don't like put that on
00:07:30.980 tuesday or wednesday or thursday i put them on friday because there's a lot of um overhead to
00:07:36.920 kind of being in the headspace of like focusing on numbers for me i don't know about you but like i
00:07:41.640 have pretty serious adhd i've done two videos on this probably some of my most popular videos on
00:07:47.080 like how it's a superpower and how i deal with it without medication and i need to use theme days
00:07:53.400 to essentially prime and focus on a bunch of activities very similar to batching and block
00:07:59.400 time but i use the theme days a lot of my clients that i coach that have multiple business they do
00:08:04.360 the same thing with their companies they'll do monday wednesday friday is one company and then
00:08:09.000 tuesdays and thursdays is maybe the new upstart right because it has less time in the week and
00:08:13.080 then that way they can build a rhythm they can build momentum they can take requests on their
00:08:17.480 time and sort them into the specific times of the week those theme days so that they can focus on
00:08:23.800 that stuff and they know hey this is when i'm going to do that this one i'm going to do it
00:08:27.080 the ability to know when requests come to you and where it goes in your calendar to keep it clean
00:08:31.720 and focus theming days will make sure that you don't accidentally fill up your week with just
00:08:37.080 one type of activity which takes the steam and the momentum you're building on another project
00:08:41.400 and it gets lost because you keep punting it forward to a week from now two weeks from now
00:08:45.960 a month from now and then by the time you get back to it and you're like oh we've lost so much
00:08:50.280 momentum and it's just like flywheel that has to be started all over again because you aren't using
00:08:55.720 theme days in your week number five is fill it weekly so the way i do my planning is sunday
00:09:01.640 nights usually eight o'clock before i go to bed because i go to bed fairly early because i wake
00:09:05.720 up early i will sit down and look at my week look at my goals look at my projects and any open spots
00:09:12.760 i'm going to allocate it it's either creative work it's meetings i need to get requested etc
00:09:17.640 now i have the privilege of having executive assistant that supports me in all this but the
00:09:21.480 idea is i want to stress test my week on sunday to see if it aligns with the goals and the outcomes
00:09:27.640 and the the quarterly kind of projects that i want to accomplish in that period because if not i got
00:09:33.480 to retweak it but the way i think about it it's kind of like ag1 have you heard of athletic greens
00:09:39.320 like if i do this i have everything i need to be successful in my week i fill it once and then i
00:09:46.440 execute just like ag1 has all the minerals and vitamins and everything you literally need for
00:09:51.400 the day so i work out in the morning i have my protein shake i throw a scoop of ag1 and i know
00:09:56.200 i got my green juice i got all the stuff that i need for the day and i can move it forward if you
00:10:00.600 fill your calendar weekly sunday then you'll know that it's full of all the big rocks the initiative
00:10:07.000 the projects the things that you need to execute to achieve your goals and you won't be trying to
00:10:11.720 to do catch-up work on Saturday or Sunday morning
00:10:14.260 because you didn't create space
00:10:16.180 and you filled it with stuff that didn't matter.
00:10:18.140 So be sure to plan on Sundays to fill your week
00:10:21.100 so that it's all in there,
00:10:22.640 just like a powerful green juice.
00:10:24.740 Being productive requires intentionality,
00:10:27.560 design by default, block time,
00:10:29.960 focusing on filling your week
00:10:31.340 and putting all that into a package.
00:10:33.340 And it's why I wrote this book called Buy Back Your Time.
00:10:36.500 If you're interested, click the link below
00:10:38.080 to go grab a copy for yourself, download the audio book.
00:10:40.680 I read the book myself and I added bonus chapters
00:10:43.400 because I wanted to create the book
00:10:46.600 that unpacks not only how to be more productive,
00:10:49.640 but how to actually scale and grow your time
00:10:53.220 because there's only four ways to create leverage.
00:10:55.360 I cover them in the book and I teach you the buyback loop.
00:10:58.060 So anytime you hit an upper ceiling,
00:11:00.040 I give you the strategy to overcome
00:11:01.960 and bust through that roadblock
00:11:04.120 for you to find your next level of outcomes and productivity.
00:11:07.700 So be sure to click the link to go buy a copy for yourself
00:11:10.240 or somebody you care about
00:11:11.220 and I hope this finds you awesome
00:11:12.940 and I'll see you next week.