Dan Martell - March 29, 2025


The Most Underrated Productivity Principles to Get More Done

Hosted by
Dan Martell
Mentioned
Albert Einstein David Allen Ben Hart
What do you think about university？ Standards are not what you communicate

Episode Stats


Length

10 minutes

Words per minute

225.71

Word count

2,309

Sentence count

78

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged


Summary

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

In this episode, I'm going to show you how you can be so productive and get so much done that it actually feels illegal. I'll do this by sharing 20 powerful principles that helped me unlock this illegal level of productivity in my time building 3 successful software companies, and today while building my AI Venture Studio. These principles haven't only worked for me, but for thousands of my clients that I've taught this to around the world. So they will work for you too.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
00:00:00.000 I'm going to show you how you can be so productive and get so much done that it actually feels
00:00:04.900 illegal. I'll do this by sharing 20 powerful principles that helped me unlock this illegal
00:00:09.860 level of productivity in my time building three successful software companies and today while
00:00:14.280 building my AI Venture Studio. These principles haven't only worked for me, but for thousands of
00:00:19.280 my clients that I've taught this to around the world. So they will work for you too. Starting
00:00:23.700 with principle number one, the 95-5 principle. Most people have heard of the 80-20 rule,
00:00:28.900 the Pareto principle, but you can actually take it to another level. It's essentially that 95%
00:00:34.200 of your results come from 5% of your work. So for yourself, you got to figure out what is the 5%
00:00:39.720 of the work you do that generates 95% of the value or the results in your life, which leads
00:00:45.360 us to principle number two, the definition of done. There's this quote by Albert Einstein,
00:00:49.780 a problem well-defined is a problem half solved. Most people don't have clarity around what they
00:00:55.200 need to get done. Understanding what your success criteria for completion looks like helps everybody
00:01:00.840 get clarity and that creates alignment to the outcome. Which leads us to principle number three,
00:01:05.980 the two-minute rule. In my early 20s, I read this incredible book called Getting Things Done by
00:01:10.480 David Allen and he had this simple two-minute rule. If you get a text message, reply to it right
00:01:15.200 away. If you get an email, reply right away. If you have a dish that needs to get clean, clean it
00:01:18.540 right away. Don't put something off. Some people spend more time managing their to-do list than
00:01:23.760 doing the thing on the list. Don't overthink it. Move with a sense of urgency, which leads to
00:01:28.460 principle number four, the domino effect. The way you want to think about life, it's like dominoes
00:01:33.020 and that first domino hits the second domino and the third domino. And if it's big enough,
00:01:37.540 important enough, the one thing, then it makes all the other dominoes easier. A simple example
00:01:42.680 is focusing on my breakfast and what I eat versus how hard I'm going to train at the gym. I can't
00:01:48.320 outwork out a bad diet. That's why food is always a leading domino to getting fit. Productivity
00:01:52.940 starts by choosing that one thing to focus on that makes everything else easier or unnecessary.
00:01:58.820 So before you get into the work, stop and say, what's the first thing that if I do makes everything
00:02:03.680 else work? Which leads us to principle number five, Parkinson's law. This one annoys me,
00:02:08.500 but I see it happen all the time. Work will expand to the time you give it. To get more
00:02:13.160 things done, be unreasonable with your timelines. Stop saying, can you get this to me by the end of
00:02:18.560 the week and start asking, how about Wednesday? What about Tuesday? By just pulling timelines
00:02:23.380 forward, you'll be way more productive, which leads to principle number six, the Pomodoro
00:02:27.460 technique. I have massive ADHD and I can't work unless I make it a game. So a Pomodoro
00:02:32.980 technique is breaking up your work into 25 minute intervals with a five minute break
00:02:37.360 or a reset. And then I put on headphones and I play either binaural beats or songs without
00:02:41.700 lyrics. And I focus for those 25 minutes. That makes me massively productive because
00:02:46.700 i can hyper focus which leads us to principle number seven don't repeat yourself if there's one
00:02:51.260 thing i hate doing is repeating myself so i have three steps that i do to make sure i never have
00:02:55.820 to do it the first is to systematize it to create a checklist a process an sop to get it done number
00:03:01.580 two is automate it so i can take people out of the process so then i don't have somebody i'm
00:03:05.740 dependent on that might be sick or on vacation to get it done and the third is to enhance it with ai
00:03:11.100 look at ways to automate it using ai and that way i never have to address it ever again which brings
00:03:16.140 brings us the principle number eight, connect to triggers. I believe if you want to be more
00:03:20.040 productive, then you have to connect your best practices, your habits to triggers in your life.
00:03:25.160 If you want to take creatine as a supplement every day, then put it next to your coffee,
00:03:28.700 because I guarantee you're not going to skip coffee. And if the creatine and the coffee are
00:03:31.720 next to each other, grab that scoop of creatine and put it in your body. By connecting something
00:03:35.540 I need to do to something I do every day, then I wire my brain to never forget, which leads us
00:03:41.040 to principle number nine, the carrot effect. Have something that you want to do on the backside of
00:03:46.080 doing something hard. And the cheat code is to actually tie it to people that'll also be affected
00:03:50.660 so that they support you because they know that if you accomplish one thing, then they all get to
00:03:54.960 benefit. When I was training for my Ironman, I put my family vacation on the backside of me training
00:03:59.740 because I knew the vacation was something that everybody else wanted, which meant that they
00:04:03.540 didn't ask me why I was skipping dessert or I was getting up early to train because they knew that
00:04:07.580 the Ironman was tied to their family vacation. Which leads us to principle number 10, the loss
00:04:12.560 aversion effect. You'll do more to avoid pain than to gain. That's why I'm a big fan of engineering
00:04:18.560 stakes or downside in you not doing something. If you have a goal of doing a certain amount of
00:04:23.920 revenue, if you don't hit it, there needs to be a downside. The downside is the stakes. It might be
00:04:28.680 selling something you love or giving somebody you don't like some money. It has to be painful. The
00:04:34.220 more painful it is, the harder you're going to work to get your goal, which leads us to principle
00:04:37.980 number 11, positive peer pressure. The interesting part of human psychology is you'll do more for
00:04:43.660 other people than you'll ever do for yourself. For example, if your dog's sick and you go to
00:04:47.500 the vet and he gives you medication, every dog owner will make sure that dog has 100% of that
00:04:52.320 medication all the way till the very end. You get sick, go to the hospital or your doctor because
00:04:56.120 you get the flu, they give you medication. Most people stop at about 70%. As soon as they start
00:05:00.600 feeling good, honestly, that's why having an accountability circle, other people that you've
00:05:04.900 shared your goals with,
00:05:06.120 the things you wanna get done with your day,
00:05:07.960 your week, your month,
00:05:08.840 will hold you more accountable
00:05:10.100 because you don't wanna lose face with those people
00:05:12.380 than you just having those goals that you say to yourself
00:05:14.540 and you write them down in private.
00:05:15.840 Which leads us to principle number 12, big rocks first.
00:05:19.160 If you want to get a result in your life,
00:05:21.840 start the first two hours of your day,
00:05:24.020 focus on that result.
00:05:25.160 That's why the morning routine is so powerful.
00:05:27.360 It's not necessarily what you do,
00:05:29.020 it's that you allocated that time for you for your goals.
00:05:32.220 You gotta do the big thing first in the morning
00:05:34.540 to build momentum so you can be more productive.
00:05:37.140 Which leads us to principle number 13, batch work.
00:05:40.380 Most people think they can multitask, but they can't.
00:05:43.680 Multitasking means screwing up multiple things at once.
00:05:46.440 Taking similar type work
00:05:48.280 that's sprinkled out throughout your week
00:05:49.920 and then grouping it all together
00:05:51.480 and sitting down for three hours, four hours
00:05:53.760 and getting it all done is way more productive
00:05:55.880 because you've ramped up your brain
00:05:57.200 with all the different variables in the context
00:05:59.200 to understand what you're trying to work on.
00:06:01.480 Financials, creative work, sales follow-ups,
00:06:03.760 batch them together so that you get in that energy of doing that specific work which leads us to
00:06:08.400 principle number 14 gamify progress if you're not having fun you're doing something wrong take your
00:06:14.400 milestones and treat them like a game one of my favorite ways to do this is take your goals and
00:06:19.200 put it in a ladder and then give yourself a reward for each one of those goals i call it the align
00:06:23.920 goal ladder you don't get the reward of the top level goal without getting the bottom ones first
00:06:28.640 it's a really cool way to get separate teams connected and accountable to each other if some
00:06:33.120 other team is accountable for that first level goal and you're at the top and if they don't get
00:06:36.880 theirs you don't get yours and you're going to be asking them how they're doing which is a very neat
00:06:40.560 way to be more productive in a gamified strategy which leads us to principle number 15 create a
00:06:46.000 not to do list steve jobs used to say deciding what not to do is as important as deciding what
00:06:52.000 to do when kids see me out in public and i'm driving one of my supercars they always ask me
00:06:56.240 what do you do and my answer is always the same it's not what i do it's what i don't do i don't
00:07:00.960 drink i don't smoke i don't gamble i don't play video games i don't scream at people i don't get
00:07:05.520 into fights it's all the things that take away from your life that actually stops you from being
00:07:09.040 productive which leads us to principle number 16 upgrade your environment i believe that your
00:07:14.000 environment communicates your priorities if you're serious about your work that workstation should be
00:07:19.280 a major investment if you're creating content you should invest in your creative space creating
00:07:24.160 content if you're trying to be a top salesperson then invest in the tools to be the top salesperson
00:07:29.760 invest in the training your environment affects your energy that affects your productivity so if
00:07:34.400 you need to upgrade your office space get a new desk maybe invest in that killer chair so you
00:07:38.960 don't have back pains but pretending like your environment doesn't impact your productivity is
00:07:42.960 silly which leads us to principle number 17 involved unattached you need to put your heart 0.92
00:07:48.160 into your work but not your worth the goal is to give it everything you've got but don't beat
00:07:52.800 yourself up if it doesn't happen be incredibly involved in creation and pushing things forward
00:07:58.160 and being productive, but be unattached to the outcomes
00:08:01.720 because you don't control those all the time.
00:08:03.720 Suffering and feeling unproductive
00:08:05.620 just makes you more unproductive.
00:08:07.600 So disconnect from the need to feel more productive
00:08:10.520 to get more done, which leads us to principle number 18,
00:08:13.460 add a zero.
00:08:14.880 10X focus is easier than 2X.
00:08:17.720 Ben Hardy wrote a great book on this concept.
00:08:19.680 You're gonna wake up and you're gonna work.
00:08:20.920 So if you decide to build $100,000 a year business,
00:08:23.300 then that's what you'll build.
00:08:24.220 But the same effort, the same getting up,
00:08:26.060 the same work to build that versus a million dollar a year business is the same you just focus
00:08:30.660 on different things so you can 2x sure but you could also 10x and it's going to change the series
00:08:35.880 of activities you're going to do and that makes you way more productive which leads us to principle
00:08:39.840 number 19 ask for help if you want to go fast go alone but if you want to go far go together
00:08:46.240 i'd never ask for advice from anybody any help until i launched my book buy back your time once
00:08:52.240 wrote that book and i realized the amount of effort and heart i put into it i was willing to
00:08:56.480 ask for people that i've supported over the years to help me promoting it and going on their podcasts
00:09:00.880 and creating content with me i can't tell you how powerful it is to get more done by having other
00:09:06.000 people that you can co-create collaborate with get feedback ask for support to not only be more
00:09:11.760 successful but make the whole process fun the ultimate level of productivity is having other
00:09:16.640 people that are helping you get the things done for you which leads us to principle number 20
00:09:21.120 define your why if you have a big enough why it will help you overcome anyhow most people are
00:09:27.200 stuck in the what do i do next but they don't even know why they're doing it in the first place
00:09:31.280 your why will help you skip from a to z where a lot of people want to go a then b then c then d
00:09:36.960 then e they think there's a step to do it the thing is if you think big enough then you just
00:09:40.640 have to skip to the end i want to inspire a bunch of youth in my community and i thought that i'm
00:09:44.880 just going to start with a few people in my office and that's how it started there was five kids we
00:09:48.720 We called it King's Club and it was super fun and interesting.
00:09:51.360 Now, last event yesterday, there was 115 kids standing room only because it only fits 100
00:09:56.480 and we're looking now to fill out a whole arena.
00:09:58.840 What shifted is that I changed my why.
00:10:01.180 I made my why big enough and it took care of all the hows.
00:10:04.220 But productivity is only the first step in your success journey.
00:10:08.140 So if you want to learn the seven high income skills of the top 1% people in the world,
00:10:12.340 click the video and I'll see you on the other side.