Dan Martell - How CEOs Schedule Their Day

00:00:00.240 This is what my schedule looks like as the CEO of a multi-million dollar company.

00:00:04.400 When I first started it was hectic. Then I had human alarm clocks. I had my first son Max and

00:00:09.360 then Noah. And all of a sudden now I couldn't stay up till two in the morning to get caught up.

00:00:14.560 What I want to share with you is how I've designed my life and my calendar

00:00:18.960 to be able to be the most effective CEO for the people that report to me.

00:00:25.040 The first thing is even though I have a morning routine and that kind of ramps up my body and

00:00:29.040 in my mind so that I can focus.

00:00:30.640 It's really about getting the big rocks moving forward.

00:00:33.460 Your first 90 minutes of your day,

00:00:35.480 minimum should be focused on your number one priority.

00:00:39.280 The one thing, the leading domino, if you got that done,

00:00:43.540 everything else in your life would get easier.

00:00:45.540 Typically it's stuff around fundraising,

00:00:47.700 business development, sales, marketing,

00:00:51.100 whatever area of your business is got a blockage right now,

00:00:54.740 you should wake up and should attack it violently.

00:00:57.260 90 minutes every day, but my morning is really left pretty much until noon for my creative work, 0.95

00:01:03.280 for my output. What I don't do is I don't sit there on my phone and start getting into my inbox

00:01:09.480 or looking at my WhatsApp. I get up, I execute. It's planned the night before. I know exactly what

00:01:14.140 I need to do to move the business forward. I don't get distracted by a bunch of demands on my time.

00:01:19.120 The second aspect about my calendar, if you looked at it, is that I don't have white space. I don't

00:01:23.100 have 15 minutes here. I don't have 30 minutes there. Everything is allocated. So my assistant

00:01:28.480 and I will sit down the week before and we'll look at the calendar. And if there is a 90 minute

00:01:33.180 block or a 30 minute window or 15 minutes in between meetings, we're always looking to fill

00:01:37.980 it and have different types of meetings that I'll do. So 15 minutes, great for a first time new

00:01:42.680 connection where I don't even know if this is somebody I have an opportunity to do any work

00:01:46.320 with, but I want to take the meeting. So usually a quick 15 minutes, 30 minutes are used for

00:01:51.060 business partners, leaders that report to me, people I want to invest in, coach them. And we

00:01:55.880 use those 30 minutes. Anything above that, I'm always asking myself, what projects could I

00:02:00.780 accelerate if I allocated that open time to a project that's on the next 90 minute window

00:02:06.800 of key boulders and rocks I got to push up the mountain. So I don't do lead time. See a lot of

00:02:12.260 people just allow themselves to have that space to like recover and do email. I block my email

00:02:17.220 time i block my social media time my personal time date nights spending time with my kids it's

00:02:22.340 all in there from the time i wake up at four in the morning till i pass out at nine o'clock at

00:02:26.740 night it is allocated so i never wonder if i'm getting behind on different parts of my life

00:02:32.100 because my whole life is designed into the day in the week if you looked at my calendar you would

00:02:36.820 see that my day is designed for energy so there's a reason why i do certain workouts in the morning

00:02:43.140 then i do my creative work then i usually have some kind of reset for lunch i get into meetings

00:02:48.660 calls collaborations external meetings and if i got to go look at projects or deals and then i

00:02:54.260 usually like to wind down before dinner with my kids because i want to make sure that i kind of

00:02:59.460 close down any open loops so i can be focused for the meal and usually every night it's either you

00:03:04.660 know going mountain biking with friends spending time with my wife date night we do group date

00:03:09.540 nights we'll go wake surf but essentially i use the day and the energy my natural internal kind of

00:03:15.700 feeling to be able to show up to do the type of work that makes the most sense based on the time

00:03:20.500 of day the other thing is batch work if there's certain types of work you should put them together

00:03:26.340 so if i'm shooting videos i'm gonna shoot a bunch of videos podcast interviews always batch work

00:03:31.860 because that mindset that creativity that focus makes a lot of sense and i'd much rather push

00:03:38.020 back on other people's calendars to meet mine than make exceptions and then i'm trying to

00:03:44.020 context switch most people realize there is no context switching for example if i asked you to

00:03:48.180 count from one to 26 as fast as you could most people do it in about five and a half seconds

00:03:53.860 spell out the alphabet a b c d f d all the way to the end most people do it in about four and

00:03:57.700 a half five seconds if i then ask you to go one a two b and context switch in between each one

00:04:05.220 most people lose track and just can't even finish if you do finish it takes you about

00:04:09.060 a minute to a minute and a half so we're talking 20 times more time multitasking that everybody

00:04:15.060 says oh i'm a great multitasker no you're not batching similar things together so that you

00:04:19.940 can go 30 minute intervals of just attacking something until it's done will get you huge

00:04:24.580 yield in your productivity and then finally net time so for me net time stands for no extra time

00:04:31.140 how do i accomplish things and do other stuff at the same time so for example most meetings

00:04:38.100 in person with people that are new that i've never met before we're doing them tuesday morning

00:04:42.340 at 6 30 a.m and we're hiking up a mountain why do i do that because i want to know that they're

00:04:47.380 serious that they really want to meet with me i do other things like do meetings with my team

00:04:52.100 on my internal road bike where i have a setup with my tv and my trainer i use zwift that way

00:04:57.300 I can be on a low cadence zone two bike ride for three hours and do three hours of internal

00:05:03.580 meetings to help the businesses move things forward. I love to also read while I'm in the

00:05:08.220 hot tub. So when I'm doing recovery or I'm kind of taking a mini break, I'm going to feed my mind.

00:05:14.020 See, some people, they like do these things as separate. Consuming past meetings. I can listen

00:05:18.820 to them on 2x speed while I'm running. When I'm traveling, I've paid people's plane ticket to come

00:05:24.280 travel with me so that while I'm in flight, I'm having conversations with people I've been meaning

00:05:29.060 to have. It's worth that investment to get that time to be more productive. And that concept you

00:05:34.680 should consider in all areas of your life. Where can you get more leverage out of the same unit of

00:05:39.660 time by doing more than one thing to move your life forward? Being a high-performing CEO requires

00:05:46.860 you to be intentional about your calendar by focusing on the major projects, by blocking out

00:05:53.800 your time and that's really why I wrote buy back your time is so that I could teach people ways

00:05:58.860 that I've been able to get incredible amount of output and at the same time take 12 weeks a year

00:06:05.420 off on vacation or travel and do things every month with my family or with my friends so if

00:06:11.640 you want to learn how I've done that be sure to check out my book buybackyourtime.com

00:06:15.460 click the link grab your copy I'll see you next week

Dan Martell - October 23, 2023

How CEOs Schedule Their Day

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