Dan Martell - September 17, 2018


How To Avoid Entrepreneurial Burnout Using These Four Tools

Topics
chunking and sequencing work
Hosted by
Dan Martell
Mentioned
David Allen
How To Create a Successful Scorecard For Your SaaS Startup How To Deal With Business Competition As a Startup

Episode Stats


Length

9 minutes

Words per minute

208.88

Word count

2,017

Sentence count

95

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged

Toxicity

1

sentences flagged


Summary

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

In this episode, Dan Martell shares a simple strategy to deal with overwhelm in your business and life. This strategy is gonna be transformational and help you understand where the overwhelm is coming from and how you can deal with it in a quick and clear, simple way.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
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 Hey there, Dan Martell here,
00:00:01 serial entrepreneur, investor, and creator of SaaS Academy.
00:00:03 And in this video, I'm gonna share a strategy
00:00:05 to help you recover from overwhelm in your work or life.
00:00:10 This strategy is gonna be transformational.
00:00:12 It's gonna help you understand
00:00:14 where the overwhelm's coming from
00:00:15 and how to deal with it in a quick and clear, simple way.
00:00:19 And be sure to stay to the end
00:00:20 where I'm gonna share with you a framework
00:00:22 called The Perfect Week, where I not only talk about
00:00:25 the seven pillars of success that I measure every week on,
00:00:28 but also the ingredients that you wanna put into your life
00:00:31 and how to structure those in a seven-day window.
00:00:47 So recently I was working with somebody on my team
00:00:50 and it was pretty evident
00:00:52 that they were a little overwhelmed.
00:00:54 And I mean, the truth is,
00:00:55 I always keep my team members at 105%.
00:00:58 That's kind of like this beautiful place where there's no
00:01:01 slack in the system, they're pushing, they're growing and I'm
00:01:04 coaching them to success and they didn't say anything and
00:01:08 that's usually the challenge is, you know, really incredible
00:01:12 team members are just doing and they're not saying if they're
00:01:15 overwhelmed or things are crazy or they won't have time to get
00:01:19 something done but that only hurts you in the long run.
00:01:21 So I prompted, I said, look, do you have more things that you
00:01:24 know how to handle right now?"
00:01:25 And she said, absolutely.
00:01:26 I said, well, here's what we're gonna do.
00:01:27 We're gonna schedule 45 minutes tomorrow.
00:01:29 We're gonna do a process that I've used to really help me deal
00:01:33 with the overwhelm because if you're a charging type A driven
00:01:38 entrepreneur, then there's a very good chance that you have way
00:01:41 too many balls in the air and you're trying to juggle them or
00:01:43 the plates are spinning and you're like worried they're all
00:01:45 gonna come crashing down.
00:01:46 You're not sleeping at night.
00:01:48 It's holding you back from hitting your goals and you're
00:01:51 probably stressing everybody else around you in the process.
00:01:55 So I want to share with you four steps, very unique,
00:01:58 you've never heard before, to help you get really clear
00:02:01 about how to deal with this overwhelm
00:02:03 and build a process to get things done.
00:02:05 Number one, you need to dump it.
00:02:07 Take it all inside your mind,
00:02:09 put it on paper in front of you.
00:02:12 So this is true, I did a video not too long ago
00:02:14 on not sleeping at night and what you need to do,
00:02:16 but literally what I do is I take printer paper
00:02:20 And I sit down, I learned this from David Allen.
00:02:22 I went to a seminar back in 2006 in New York City,
00:02:26 Getting Things Done, the creator of GTD.
00:02:28 And that's his strategy, he just dumps it all.
00:02:30 And that's where I got it, where you just write
00:02:32 all the projects that are on your to-do list,
00:02:34 personal, professional, put them on a piece of paper
00:02:36 and just keep stacking them.
00:02:38 Go grab everything that's outstanding.
00:02:40 Maybe you forgot to renew your license.
00:02:42 You gotta grab that notification in the mail
00:02:44 or you forgot to, a ton of stuff.
00:02:47 If you're an entrepreneur, your trunk in your car
00:02:49 probably full, your personal life isn't too healthy and
00:02:54 there's a ton of like home things that are just not getting
00:02:57 any attention so you wanna just get the whole thing in one
00:03:00 spot so you wanna dump it, put it in place so that you have
00:03:03 the clear master list of everything that might be
00:03:05 overwhelming you to deal with.
00:03:08 Number two from that list we're gonna use the four D's.
00:03:12 The four D's are very straightforward.
00:03:14 Number one we wanna delete.
00:03:16 There are things that you haven't made a decision on that
00:03:19 you just need to say no to, okay?
00:03:21 You just gotta delete them.
00:03:22 You like got an opportunity or somebody asked you to do
00:03:25 something or something came in the mail or whatever it is,
00:03:27 you need to grab it, you gotta rip it up, 0.54
00:03:28 you gotta throw it in the garbage.
00:03:29 So number one is delete.
00:03:30 Two, you need to delegate.
00:03:32 There's so many things that you do on a daily basis.
00:03:35 If you're an entrepreneur and you're making money and you've
00:03:37 got some level of profit, you need to start reinvesting to
00:03:40 buy back your time.
00:03:42 So delegating could be asking for a favor.
00:03:44 You could like call a friend and be like, hey, I know you're
00:03:47 incredible at managing events.
00:03:49 I could really use your help with this thing I'm working on.
00:03:51 So delegate to people you trust.
00:03:53 Delegate to people that care for you because they want to
00:03:55 support you and help you and then if there's nobody else in
00:03:58 those buckets then you want to pay and you want to hire
00:04:01 people and this is where a virtual assistant comes into
00:04:03 play to delegate some of the work.
00:04:06 Number three D out of the four D's is you want to defer.
00:04:09 There's a lot of stuff that's on your list that you just want
00:04:12 to push off.
00:04:13 They need to go in the someday maybe list.
00:04:15 They need to go into the year-end review list.
00:04:18 They need to go into the Q3 planning list,
00:04:21 but they're not a now thing.
00:04:22 You've tracked it.
00:04:24 You can put it in that bucket, in that folder,
00:04:26 whatever you want to use.
00:04:27 You can use Evernote, you can use Google Docs.
00:04:28 It doesn't matter the tool, it's the process.
00:04:31 And then that way you know your mind.
00:04:33 If you, you know, schedule it in your calendar
00:04:35 and put it there, you'll get to it at some point.
00:04:38 So that's three, and then four is you just gotta do, okay?
00:04:41 You need to take the things and say,
00:04:43 This is finally the list that I need to execute against.
00:04:46 This is my to-do list, this is the list that's got everything
00:04:48 that's been overwhelming me and I'm gonna take a shot at it.
00:04:52 Number three is chunk, okay?
00:04:54 If you have your master list, things you're gonna do,
00:04:57 then you need to start looking at the task and activities
00:05:01 underneath these key projects and start chunking them
00:05:03 together and the reason why, if you've ever heard of batching
00:05:07 work, it's way more efficient.
00:05:09 So one of the no-brainer stuff is probably a calls list.
00:05:12 If you don't have a calls list you should create one
00:05:13 because in this list of to-dos there are people that you need
00:05:17 to call to move these things forward and just taking them
00:05:20 and adding it to the calls list.
00:05:21 Or things that need to be done kind of like creative work.
00:05:25 Maybe it's writing.
00:05:26 Maybe it's filling out forms.
00:05:28 Maybe it's reviewing projects.
00:05:30 Whatever it is you want to start chunking like type of
00:05:33 activity together because your brain when it gets into that
00:05:37 zone of flow you're more likely to crank through a batch
00:05:42 outcome of work than if you're context switching
00:05:45 all the time.
00:05:46 So one of the things is once I've got this and I say,
00:05:47 okay, well these kind of look similar so I'm gonna put those
00:05:49 over here, put these over there and this over there and I kind
00:05:53 of start seeing these patterns for chunking and grouping stuff
00:05:56 together, that's gonna allow me to take action and be way more
00:05:59 effective than if I just kind of, most people do a priority list
00:06:03 and dah, dah, dah, that's not the way we wanna do it yet.
00:06:06 First we wanna chunk and group things together so that we can
00:06:09 get a good understanding of what kind of head space and
00:06:12 resources we're gonna need to attack those specific projects. 0.93
00:06:16 Four, we wanna sequence the work.
00:06:19 This is where the prioritization comes into play.
00:06:21 Too often, we're taking a to-do list and we're starting to
00:06:24 prioritize it.
00:06:24 First, we wanna chunk it.
00:06:26 Once we've got it that way, then we wanna sequence and say,
00:06:29 okay, here's my goals for the week and for the quarter.
00:06:32 These are the projects that need to get done to actually hit
00:06:35 those goals, so these are priorities.
00:06:37 And then for me, when I sequence,
00:06:39 not only do I prioritize, I block time them.
00:06:41 I put them into my calendar.
00:06:43 I take the list, I type it in the description
00:06:46 of the calendar entry, and I'll block
00:06:48 typically 50 minute block times.
00:06:51 You can do 30 minute Pomodoros,
00:06:53 you can do whatever you want, but the big idea
00:06:55 is to grab a 60 minute chunk of time in your calendar,
00:06:58 ideally in the morning, because that's usually
00:07:00 when we get the big rocks done,
00:07:01 and just block it in there and put all the details.
00:07:03 This is the key, put all the details
00:07:05 into the description of your calendar invites so that when
00:07:07 it prompts you and it says, hey, you gotta go do this work,
00:07:10 everything is in line and ready to go and then you just fill
00:07:14 out your calendar.
00:07:15 When you can take your to-do list, chunk things together
00:07:19 and sequence them into your calendar using block time and
00:07:22 actually putting it in there and that's what I love about
00:07:25 linkability, linking to emails, linking to Google Docs,
00:07:28 linking to project files online in the calendar entry so that
00:07:31 when I get into that headspace I can just click and open up all
00:07:34 the tabs and I know this is the work that I need to process.
00:07:36 It's like ridiculously efficient and the big idea at the end
00:07:41 of doing these four steps is that there won't be any
00:07:44 outstanding items that you're worried you're gonna forget
00:07:47 about or it's gonna fall through the cracks.
00:07:48 You've processed everything.
00:07:50 You've been super efficient on it.
00:07:51 You've deleted, you've delegated, you've done it.
00:07:53 You deferred it and then now you're actually doing your best
00:07:57 work and focus on the outcomes that are gonna move your
00:07:59 dream forward.
00:08:00 So quick recap, number one, dump it out of your mind.
00:08:03 two, use the four D's, delete, delegate, defer,
00:08:07 and do to process the list.
00:08:09 Once you have the master do list, chunk it together,
00:08:12 group it into like activities and from that you want to
00:08:16 prioritize or sequence, number four, sequence those items
00:08:20 together so that you can get the work done in batch mode and
00:08:23 block it into your calendar.
00:08:25 As I mentioned at the beginning of this video,
00:08:27 I want to share with you my perfect week worksheet.
00:08:30 It's a strategy that I've been using to manage my week and
00:08:33 really designed my life.
00:08:34 So I start off with the seven pillars and these are the seven
00:08:37 areas of my life that I measure myself on a one to ten every
00:08:40 week in a spreadsheet so I've got the wheel of success with
00:08:43 those listed for you below so you can click the link and
00:08:46 download that and included in there is the perfect week
00:08:48 worksheet where you list all the ingredients that would make an
00:08:52 incredible work week for you including the personal and the
00:08:55 professional stuff and then you lock it in your calendar.
00:08:58 Here's what most people realize in doing that exercise they have
00:09:01 way more free time in their week than they think and it is a
00:09:05 very powerful exercise especially if you just finished
00:09:08 doing the sequencing and you've got these block times of
00:09:10 schedule, you can put that in your calendar so that you know
00:09:13 on a weekly basis if those things get done you're gonna feel
00:09:16 super productive and high output.
00:09:19 So if you like this video be sure to click the like button.
00:09:22 I'd highly encourage you to subscribe to my channel and also
00:09:25 share this video with somebody you care about that you think I
00:09:27 can serve.
00:09:28 As per usual, I want to challenge you to live a bigger life
00:09:31 and a bigger business and I'll see you next Monday.
00:09:34 Yeah, yeah, don't.
00:09:37 Is this the right spot?
00:09:38 Yeah.