On today\'s episode, I interview a 12-year-old novelist, who increased her productivity so much that she now writes over 2500 words per hour and finished the first draft of her book in only one month.

On today\'s episode, I interview a 12-year-old novelist, who increased her productivity so much that she now writes over 2500 words per hour and finished the first draft of her book in only one month.

This 12 Year Old Wrote A Novel...What's Your Excuse?

Pete Mockaitis

Pete Mockaitis is a former Bain consultant who now coaches top executives in extreme productivity. He is also the host of the How To Be Awesome At Your Job podcast.

Pete Mockaitis is a former Bain consultant who now coaches top executives in extreme productivity. He is also the host of the <a href="https://awesomeatyourjob.com/podcast/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">How To Be Awesome At Your Job</a> podcast.

Elite Productivity Coach to Top Executives | Pete Mockaitis

NY Times bestselling author, Kevin Kruse answers questions from business students in June Covington’s Leadership and Motivation class at Chico State.

NY Times bestselling author, Kevin Kruse answers questions from business students in June Covington’s Leadership and Motivation class at Chico State.

Leadership And Motivation Q&A

NY Times bestselling author, Kevin Kruse discusses the shadow side of having a growth mindset and more.

NY Times bestselling author, Kevin Kruse discusses the shadow side of having a growth mindset and more.

The Shadow Side Of Growth Mindset

Michael Hyatt

Michael Hyatt is a New York Times bestselling author of three books and his newest is Free to Focus.

Michael Hyatt is a New York Times bestselling author of three books and his newest is <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07F3DM7C1/?tag=leadx-20" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Free to Focus</a>.

Free to Focus | Interview with Michael Hyatt

NY Times best selling author, Kevin Kruse talks about the key ideas in his new book, Great Leaders Have No Rules. Buy the book here: http://norulesleadership.com

NY Times best selling author, Kevin Kruse talks about the key ideas in his new book, Great Leaders Have No Rules. Buy the book here: <a href="http://norulesleadership.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://norulesleadership.com</a>

Book Launch! Great Leaders Have No Rules

Remote

NY Times best selling author, Kevin Kruse, answers listener questions about productivity.

NY Times best selling author, Kevin Kruse, answers listener questions about productivity.

How To Keep Your Remote Workforce Aligned And Engaged

2019 New Year’s Resolutions

Are Phones Hurting Candor At Work?

How Often Do You Check Your Phone?

Would you like to 10x your productivity while adding at least one extra hour of free time to your day? Join Kevin Kruse, a New York Times bestselling author and Inc 500 serial entrepreneur as he shares time management tips, tools and actionable advice from entrepreneurs, self-made millionaires, Olympic athletes, straight-A students and other ultra-productive people.

I just listened to 12 podcasts in a row😂

LOVE this podcast!

Love the podcast and plenty of actionable content

Great podcast

Extreme Productivity with Kevin Kruse

Today, we’re going to talk about why high achievers and ultra productive people don’t use to do lists and what they use instead. What you’re going to learn:  The truth about to-do lists and why they’re making you unproductive and stressed out What millionaires and high achievers use instead of to-do lists How to use the same tool to get your own goals accomplished on time  Key Quotes: “Throw away your to do list. Toss it out the window, burn it, stomp on it, tear it into a million pieces and toss them into the wind like confetti.”  “You run the day or the day runs you.” Read Full Transcript Hey, hey, welcome everyone. I’m Kevin Kruse and I interviewed over 200 self-made millionaires and successful entrepreneurs—like the cofounders of Facebook, Zynga, Groupon, Atlassian and also successful solopreneurs like Pat Flynn and John Lee Dumas all to discover their secrets to extreme productivity.  In the previous episode I gave you simple questions to zero in on your Most Important Task and talked about the power of proper priorities. Today we’re talking about why high achievers ultra productive people don’t use to do lists!  But first, if you want to 10x your productivity grab your smartphone and text the word ACHIEVE to 44222 and I’ll send you The 1-Page Planning Tool That Millionaire’s Use To Schedule Their Day. Just text ACHIEVE to 44222 or you can visit the website productivity-podcast.com to download the 1-Page Planning Tool that Millionaire’s Use To Schedule Their Day and other bonuses. Let me ask you this, do you really think back in the day Steve Jobs just kept a running task list in his pocket and would pull out that little piece of paper and ask himself several times a day, what's my next action? If you are not a Steve Jobs or an Apple fan, put in whoever your productivity superhero is, whether that's Bill Gates or Michael Dell or any of these kinds of guys. Do you think they're just running around with that long to do list picking things off throughout the day? Let's get out of business, do you think extreme athletes, professional athletes are working and running their life off a to do list? Does a quarterback say, "Wow, I got a big game on Sunday, let me wake-up and look at my to do list and get to it?" That's not how they work, that's not how they live. To-do lists should be called, nagging wish lists.  	A whole bunch of tasks that you hope to accomplish, you think you're supposed to accomplish but you don't have a specific plan as to when you're going to get it all done. How many things on your current to-to list, be honest, have been there for days or even months. There was a time when I had some items on my list for more than a year, like you know, get the 2012 family photo album done. I think that was on the list for several years. Research was done in 2014 and was published in a guide, if you want to start googling around. The Busy Person's Guide to the Done List and they found that 41% of to do list items are never completed, 41% are never completed. 50% of the to do list items that are completed are completed within a day and many of those within an hour of it being written down. It's almost like, we write it on the to do list and then cross it off right away so we can feel productive. Here's the problem, to do lists are, it's a technology that's 120 years old. 	The story goes that to do lists were invented by a guy names Ivy Lee. He was a consultant that was hire by Charles Schwabb who was running U.S steel at the time and Schwabb said, " Hey. I want my executives to get more stuff done, you know, to be better with their time." Ivy Lee said, " All right, here's the answer, at the beginning of the day, I want you all to take out a piece of paper and write down 6 things that you'd like to do and start working on the first item and then work on it until it's done and then move on to the second item and keep going through your list until it is time to go home." Well, that sounds really quaint. Only 6 items and work on stuff until it's time to go home but that was 120 years ago. When people worked an 8 hour day and was more about put clock in your time in instead of this round the clock, never ending cycle. You know the world was round and not flat, meaning you worked in one time zone and not multiple time zones. 	It wasn't as competitive, these were companies and businesses that had monopolies. Every executive had their own secretary, you know, called secretaries back then. It was just a completely different time and look, to do lists work today if you don't have much to do. If you only have a handful of things to do, sure write them down, cross them off. For most of us, we're talking about high achievers, we're talking about extreme productivity. How do we get in the top 10% or even 1% when it comes to getting things done? This shows why, people always ask me, "Does the world really need another time management book? Why are you working on that Kevin?" The fact that we've been taught to use to-do lists all this time, all the books are about to-do lists, all the time management courses are about to-do lists and yet, here we are. Do you feel any less stressed? You know, we're over-scheduled overworked and overwhelmed. I like to say, "We're fatigued, we're frazzled, we're frustrated, we're totally effed because of the to-do list." 	Listen, to do lists they're the graveyards of important but not urgent tasks and the reason why is even when you try to prioritize them, we don't distinguish our to do list. What is going to take a few minutes vs. what's going to take an hour or more so we generally just say, "What are we going to tackle next?" And we gravitate to the ones that are real fast, you know the ones the we can cross off within the hour. It makes it really easy to work on the urgent stuff instead of the important, Ooh, this feels like it's a burning fire, let me work on that. To do lists also cause undue stress, the psychologists call this the Zeigarnik effect. When our minds, when our subconscious knows we got stuff to do and there's no plan to do it, it eats at us, it stresses us out. That's why at night we go home and we're exhausted and we collapse in the bed and then we can't fall asleep. You know we've got insomnia because out brain's churning on all those things that we still have to do. 	What's the answer? Highly successful people don't have a to do list but they have a very well kept calendar. Ultra productive people live from their calendar. Now you're probably like disappointed with the surprise answer but sometimes the simple stuff is hard to implement and still life changing, career changing when it's done right. This was one of the most consistent messages I got from all of the people I interviewed, from all the research. If you truly want to get something done, if you truly plan on doing it, put it on your calendar. Jordan Harbinger, co-founder of the Art of Charm, its a podcast and a school and course that teaches people networking and relationship skills. He told me this, he says, "Listen, use a calendar and schedule your entire day into 15 minute blocks. It sounds like a pain but this will set you up in the 95 percentile as far as organization goes. If it's not on the calendar it doesn't get done. If it's on the calendar, it gets done no matter what. Use this not just for appointments but for workouts, calls, emails blocks et cetera."  	 Notice the 15 minute blocks ultra productive people know the power of 1440. There's 1,440 minutes in a day. It's true that by default Outlook and Google calendar is going to open up an event for 30 minutes or 60 minutes. Change that. You can change that in the settings done to 15 minutes. Marissa Mayor runs 10 minute long meetings because she is doing so many meetings. Serial entrepreneur, best selling author Chris Ducker told me what's his secret to success? What's his secret to productivity? "I simply put everything on my schedule, that's it. Everything I do on a day to day basis gets put on my schedule, 30 minutes of social media, on the schedule, 45 minutes of email management, on the schedule. Catching up with my virtual team, on the schedule, quiet time to contemplate and plan, on the schedule." 	Shannon Miller, won more Olympic medals than any other gymnast. She told me that she learned it back when she was an athlete and she's doing it now that she has, you know, her own business. She schedules her life down to the minute. CEO of LinkedIn, Jeff Weiner wrote a blog post about this, about how his entire day is scheduled and he schedules buffer time. 30 minute blocks throughout the day for him to catch up or to sit quietly and to think. To regroup so that he's not running around like a crazy maniac. He says, "It felt like a luxury, I felt guilty about it at first but being mindful, being present, being strategic, focused on the right things is the right thing to do." When you move from a to-do list to a calendar, all of a sudden you can manage distractions so much better. You know you're not checking email throughout the day as thinking you are being productive when really it's just a procrastination technique. You're not checking in to Snapchat or Facebook or Twitter throughout the entire day. 	You can process social media, you can process email but you've got a time for it and limits on it. Listen, I know I am going to be doing social media 30 minutes this afternoon, so I am not going to hop on it 50 times between now and then. The other reason why putting everything on your calendar is so important and effective is it makes sure that the urgent items don't erase the important items. Think about Jeff Weiner and Chris Ducker, they're even scheduling their quiet time, their creative time, their strategic time. Now I talked about in the last episode, Identify your most important task and time block it. You should have at least an hour, if not 90 minutes or 2 hours of a recurring time block, five days a week on you calendar. Okay from 9-10:30 that's MIT time and I'll jot in the specific MIT on a day to day basis but it's just time blocked there. Don't ask me to have a coffee meeting at 9:30 in the morning because that's my MIT time. 	The other reason when you time block all of your work and life activities is that it makes it more realistic in terms of saying yes to items or saying no to items. "Oh, you want to get together and catch up and pick my brain over coffee. Hey, sure I'd love to do that, that's great," but instead of saying, "Yes let's do it tomorrow because there is a blank slot on my calendar" and now pushing all my to-do list down another 2 hours at least because I've now got this coffee time. I'm going to open the calendar and if the time slot isn't available tomorrow for catching up with people or for networking or whatever you want to classify that. I'm going to say, "You know what, we can grab coffee but all of my calendar is full until 3 weeks from now. How's Friday the 21st at 10 am, I've got a time block there?"  	That was something I learned from Dave Kerpen, he said, "Listen, I value making new friends and getting back to people including strangers, so I don't just ignore all of those emails that come in. People saying, hey can I pick you're brain. Can we jump on the phone. I just time block it. I've got 1 hour a week dedicated to talking to random people on the phone and when someone asks to get together, I send them my calendar link and they get into the first slot. If I got 15 minutes free this Thursday, fantastic but maybe I'm booked up for the next 5 weeks." He's not saying, "No." He's not saying, "I never do that thing." He's allocated time for it, whether that's an hour a week, a day week, whatever you want to do and then when it's full, It's full. When you really get in tune with time blocking on your calendar, you can look at your week and see your true values. 	They say we can tell what a person truly values by looking at their checkbook and their calendar. You know, how are they spending their money? How are they spending their time? You say that you value your marriage? Well, why don't we see date night time blocked on your calendar once a week? You say that your kids are one of the highest priorities and values but have you already put all of their soccer games on to your schedule for the season? Did you already time block all of their practices and their dance performances and all of those things? Why is that not on your calendar? You say that in my own case, something I learned, I value my team members both because I want to coach them and help them from a humanistic reason and because it makes sense. You know everybody that reports to me, if I can upgrade their skills quickly, then they're going to do better for my business. 	Every Monday, I time block one on one time for each of my direct reports. Now look, they might not get a whole lot of my attention Tuesday through Friday because I have other time blocks but they know they are always going to get my attention, one on one for 30-60 minutes every single Monday. I value my health so I time block 60 minutes of workout times on a daily basis. Another thing is once you've identified your values, you've time blocked all of this, then you need to protect the time like it's a doctors appointment. You know someone wants to get together. Your boss wants to talk to you, it's like okay I can but I got a doctor appointment can we do it another time? If not it's okay, I can reschedule. That's the other take away. You don't just cancel your doctor appointment, you reschedule it. I think you've got the idea and it's amazing. Once you've put everything from your to do list on to your calendar, that Zeigarnik effect disappears. Your subconscious knows yeah you've got a lot of stuff to do but there's a plan for it.  	You've got a time already allocated on this day and this time, you're going to work on it. All of a sudden that insomnia and all that chatter in your subconscious goes away. How do you apply the really specifically? If you are not already using an online or digital calendar, I suggest you get one. I use Google calendar. In the past I used Outlook calendar. There's great calendar apps. Just pick something that can be synchronized across your devices that's available online remotely that you might want to share with some virtual assistance or your admin or some partners and then look at your to do list. Take all those items on your to do list and schedule time to get them done. Even if it's a non-urgent non-important item, lie work on the family photo album or whatever that is. Okay, put it 3 months from now and on a Sunday afternoon get It all out of your mind, out of your to do list piece of paper and get it on your calendar and throw away that to do list.  	Toss it out the window, burn it in the fireplace, tear it up and you know, yell hip, hip, hooray and toss the confetti in the air because now you are gong to sleep well tonight knowing exactly what you need to do and that you've got a plan to get it done. You need to stop using a to do list and start living your life from the calendar. You run the day, or the day runs you. All right, thank you again for joining me on this episode of The Extreme Productivity Podcast. Don't forget, if you want to download that one page finding tool that millionaires use to schedule their day, just visit extreme-productivity.Com or text the word "achieve" to 44222 and come back for the next episode. You are going to learn that there are 4 types of procrastinators. What is your procrastination personality? Find out on the next episode, until then remember, master your minutes to master your life.

Today, we’re going to talk about why high achievers and ultra productive people don’t use to do lists and what they use instead. What you’re going to learn: <ul> <li>The truth about to-do lists and why they’re making you unproductive and stressed out</li> <li>What millionaires and high achievers use instead of to-do lists</li> <li>How to use the same tool to get your own goals accomplished on time</li> </ul> Key Quotes: “Throw away your to do list. Toss it out the window, burn it, stomp on it, tear it into a million pieces and toss them into the wind like confetti.”  “You run the day or the day runs you.” <a href="#" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Read Full Transcript</a> Hey, hey, welcome everyone. I’m Kevin Kruse and I interviewed over 200 self-made millionaires and successful entrepreneurs—like the cofounders of Facebook, Zynga, Groupon, Atlassian and also successful solopreneurs like Pat Flynn and John Lee Dumas all to discover their secrets to extreme productivity. In the previous episode I gave you simple questions to zero in on your Most Important Task and talked about the power of proper priorities. Today we’re talking about why high achievers ultra productive people don’t use to do lists! But first, if you want to 10x your productivity grab your smartphone and text the word ACHIEVE to 44222 and I’ll send you The 1-Page Planning Tool That Millionaire’s Use To Schedule Their Day. Just text ACHIEVE to 44222 or you can visit the website <a href="http://productivity-podcast.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">productivity-podcast.com</a> to download the 1-Page Planning Tool that Millionaire’s Use To Schedule Their Day and other bonuses. Let me ask you this, do you really think back in the day Steve Jobs just kept a running task list in his pocket and would pull out that little piece of paper and ask himself several times a day, what's my next action? If you are not a Steve Jobs or an Apple fan, put in whoever your productivity superhero is, whether that's Bill Gates or Michael Dell or any of these kinds of guys. Do you think they're just running around with that long to do list picking things off throughout the day? Let's get out of business, do you think extreme athletes, professional athletes are working and running their life off a to do list? Does a quarterback say, "Wow, I got a big game on Sunday, let me wake-up and look at my to do list and get to it?" That's not how they work, that's not how they live. To-do lists should be called, nagging wish lists. 	A whole bunch of tasks that you hope to accomplish, you think you're supposed to accomplish but you don't have a specific plan as to when you're going to get it all done. How many things on your current to-to list, be honest, have been there for days or even months. There was a time when I had some items on my list for more than a year, like you know, get the 2012 family photo album done. I think that was on the list for several years. Research was done in 2014 and was published in a guide, if you want to start googling around. The Busy Person's Guide to the Done List and they found that 41% of to do list items are never completed, 41% are never completed. 50% of the to do list items that are completed are completed within a day and many of those within an hour of it being written down. It's almost like, we write it on the to do list and then cross it off right away so we can feel productive. Here's the problem, to do lists are, it's a technology that's 120 years old. 	The story goes that to do lists were invented by a guy names Ivy Lee. He was a consultant that was hire by Charles Schwabb who was running U.S steel at the time and Schwabb said, " Hey. I want my executives to get more stuff done, you know, to be better with their time." Ivy Lee said, " All right, here's the answer, at the beginning of the day, I want you all to take out a piece of paper and write down 6 things that you'd like to do and start working on the first item and then work on it until it's done and then move on to the second item and keep going through your list until it is time to go home." Well, that sounds really quaint. Only 6 items and work on stuff until it's time to go home but that was 120 years ago. When people worked an 8 hour day and was more about put clock in your time in instead of this round the clock, never ending cycle. You know the world was round and not flat, meaning you worked in one time zone and not multiple time zones. 	It wasn't as competitive, these were companies and businesses that had monopolies. Every executive had their own secretary, you know, called secretaries back then. It was just a completely different time and look, to do lists work today if you don't have much to do. If you only have a handful of things to do, sure write them down, cross them off. For most of us, we're talking about high achievers, we're talking about extreme productivity. How do we get in the top 10% or even 1% when it comes to getting things done? This shows why, people always ask me, "Does the world really need another time management book? Why are you working on that Kevin?" The fact that we've been taught to use to-do lists all this time, all the books are about to-do lists, all the time management courses are about to-do lists and yet, here we are. Do you feel any less stressed? You know, we're over-scheduled overworked and overwhelmed. I like to say, "We're fatigued, we're frazzled, we're frustrated, we're totally effed because of the to-do list." 	Listen, to do lists they're the graveyards of important but not urgent tasks and the reason why is even when you try to prioritize them, we don't distinguish our to do list. What is going to take a few minutes vs. what's going to take an hour or more so we generally just say, "What are we going to tackle next?" And we gravitate to the ones that are real fast, you know the ones the we can cross off within the hour. It makes it really easy to work on the urgent stuff instead of the important, Ooh, this feels like it's a burning fire, let me work on that. To do lists also cause undue stress, the psychologists call this the Zeigarnik effect. When our minds, when our subconscious knows we got stuff to do and there's no plan to do it, it eats at us, it stresses us out. That's why at night we go home and we're exhausted and we collapse in the bed and then we can't fall asleep. You know we've got insomnia because out brain's churning on all those things that we still have to do. 	What's the answer? Highly successful people don't have a to do list but they have a very well kept calendar. Ultra productive people live from their calendar. Now you're probably like disappointed with the surprise answer but sometimes the simple stuff is hard to implement and still life changing, career changing when it's done right. This was one of the most consistent messages I got from all of the people I interviewed, from all the research. If you truly want to get something done, if you truly plan on doing it, put it on your calendar. Jordan Harbinger, co-founder of the Art of Charm, its a podcast and a school and course that teaches people networking and relationship skills. He told me this, he says, "Listen, use a calendar and schedule your entire day into 15 minute blocks. It sounds like a pain but this will set you up in the 95 percentile as far as organization goes. If it's not on the calendar it doesn't get done. If it's on the calendar, it gets done no matter what. Use this not just for appointments but for workouts, calls, emails blocks et cetera." 	 Notice the 15 minute blocks ultra productive people know the power of 1440. There's 1,440 minutes in a day. It's true that by default Outlook and Google calendar is going to open up an event for 30 minutes or 60 minutes. Change that. You can change that in the settings done to 15 minutes. Marissa Mayor runs 10 minute long meetings because she is doing so many meetings. Serial entrepreneur, best selling author Chris Ducker told me what's his secret to success? What's his secret to productivity? "I simply put everything on my schedule, that's it. Everything I do on a day to day basis gets put on my schedule, 30 minutes of social media, on the schedule, 45 minutes of email management, on the schedule. Catching up with my virtual team, on the schedule, quiet time to contemplate and plan, on the schedule." 	Shannon Miller, won more Olympic medals than any other gymnast. She told me that she learned it back when she was an athlete and she's doing it now that she has, you know, her own business. She schedules her life down to the minute. CEO of LinkedIn, Jeff Weiner wrote a blog post about this, about how his entire day is scheduled and he schedules buffer time. 30 minute blocks throughout the day for him to catch up or to sit quietly and to think. To regroup so that he's not running around like a crazy maniac. He says, "It felt like a luxury, I felt guilty about it at first but being mindful, being present, being strategic, focused on the right things is the right thing to do." When you move from a to-do list to a calendar, all of a sudden you can manage distractions so much better. You know you're not checking email throughout the day as thinking you are being productive when really it's just a procrastination technique. You're not checking in to Snapchat or Facebook or Twitter throughout the entire day. 	You can process social media, you can process email but you've got a time for it and limits on it. Listen, I know I am going to be doing social media 30 minutes this afternoon, so I am not going to hop on it 50 times between now and then. The other reason why putting everything on your calendar is so important and effective is it makes sure that the urgent items don't erase the important items. Think about Jeff Weiner and Chris Ducker, they're even scheduling their quiet time, their creative time, their strategic time. Now I talked about in the last episode, Identify your most important task and time block it. You should have at least an hour, if not 90 minutes or 2 hours of a recurring time block, five days a week on you calendar. Okay from 9-10:30 that's MIT time and I'll jot in the specific MIT on a day to day basis but it's just time blocked there. Don't ask me to have a coffee meeting at 9:30 in the morning because that's my MIT time. 	The other reason when you time block all of your work and life activities is that it makes it more realistic in terms of saying yes to items or saying no to items. "Oh, you want to get together and catch up and pick my brain over coffee. Hey, sure I'd love to do that, that's great," but instead of saying, "Yes let's do it tomorrow because there is a blank slot on my calendar" and now pushing all my to-do list down another 2 hours at least because I've now got this coffee time. I'm going to open the calendar and if the time slot isn't available tomorrow for catching up with people or for networking or whatever you want to classify that. I'm going to say, "You know what, we can grab coffee but all of my calendar is full until 3 weeks from now. How's Friday the 21st at 10 am, I've got a time block there?" 	That was something I learned from Dave Kerpen, he said, "Listen, I value making new friends and getting back to people including strangers, so I don't just ignore all of those emails that come in. People saying, hey can I pick you're brain. Can we jump on the phone. I just time block it. I've got 1 hour a week dedicated to talking to random people on the phone and when someone asks to get together, I send them my calendar link and they get into the first slot. If I got 15 minutes free this Thursday, fantastic but maybe I'm booked up for the next 5 weeks." He's not saying, "No." He's not saying, "I never do that thing." He's allocated time for it, whether that's an hour a week, a day week, whatever you want to do and then when it's full, It's full. When you really get in tune with time blocking on your calendar, you can look at your week and see your true values. 	They say we can tell what a person truly values by looking at their checkbook and their calendar. You know, how are they spending their money? How are they spending their time? You say that you value your marriage? Well, why don't we see date night time blocked on your calendar once a week? You say that your kids are one of the highest priorities and values but have you already put all of their soccer games on to your schedule for the season? Did you already time block all of their practices and their dance performances and all of those things? Why is that not on your calendar? You say that in my own case, something I learned, I value my team members both because I want to coach them and help them from a humanistic reason and because it makes sense. You know everybody that reports to me, if I can upgrade their skills quickly, then they're going to do better for my business. 	Every Monday, I time block one on one time for each of my direct reports. Now look, they might not get a whole lot of my attention Tuesday through Friday because I have other time blocks but they know they are always going to get my attention, one on one for 30-60 minutes every single Monday. I value my health so I time block 60 minutes of workout times on a daily basis. Another thing is once you've identified your values, you've time blocked all of this, then you need to protect the time like it's a doctors appointment. You know someone wants to get together. Your boss wants to talk to you, it's like okay I can but I got a doctor appointment can we do it another time? If not it's okay, I can reschedule. That's the other take away. You don't just cancel your doctor appointment, you reschedule it. I think you've got the idea and it's amazing. Once you've put everything from your to do list on to your calendar, that Zeigarnik effect disappears. Your subconscious knows yeah you've got a lot of stuff to do but there's a plan for it. 	You've got a time already allocated on this day and this time, you're going to work on it. All of a sudden that insomnia and all that chatter in your subconscious goes away. How do you apply the really specifically? If you are not already using an online or digital calendar, I suggest you get one. I use Google calendar. In the past I used Outlook calendar. There's great calendar apps. Just pick something that can be synchronized across your devices that's available online remotely that you might want to share with some virtual assistance or your admin or some partners and then look at your to do list. Take all those items on your to do list and schedule time to get them done. Even if it's a non-urgent non-important item, lie work on the family photo album or whatever that is. Okay, put it 3 months from now and on a Sunday afternoon get It all out of your mind, out of your to do list piece of paper and get it on your calendar and throw away that to do list. 	Toss it out the window, burn it in the fireplace, tear it up and you know, yell hip, hip, hooray and toss the confetti in the air because now you are gong to sleep well tonight knowing exactly what you need to do and that you've got a plan to get it done. You need to stop using a to do list and start living your life from the calendar. You run the day, or the day runs you. All right, thank you again for joining me on this episode of The Extreme Productivity Podcast. Don't forget, if you want to download that one page finding tool that millionaires use to schedule their day, just visit <a href="http://extreme-productivity.Com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">extreme-productivity.Com</a> or text the word "achieve" to 44222 and come back for the next episode. You are going to learn that there are 4 types of procrastinators. What is your procrastination personality? Find out on the next episode, until then remember, master your minutes to master your life.

Why Millionaires Don’t Use To-Do Lists

In this episode, I’ll teach you how to beat procrastination and become productive. What you’re going to learn:  The four types of procrastination The best tips to cure procrastination  Key Quotes: “Leaders often get promoted in their careers because they get things done.” “Ultra-productive people don’t use to-do lists.” “Be clear on your MIT.”

In this episode, I’ll teach you how to beat procrastination and become productive. What you’re going to learn: <ul> <li>The four types of procrastination</li> <li>The best tips to cure procrastination</li> </ul> Key Quotes: “Leaders often get promoted in their careers because they get things done.” “Ultra-productive people don’t use to-do lists.” “Be clear on your MIT.”

The Cure For Procrastination

How To Not Feel Overwhelmed

What you’re going to learn:  The 4 different causes of procrastination How to identify your own personal procrastination personality  Key Quotes: “Seize the future by seizing the present. Start procrastinating tomorrow.” – Zig Ziglar “Nothing beats the timely pursuit of one’s intentions. It is the measure of success in life.” – Clarry Lay “When we procrastinate, it interferes with our happiness and drains us of our energy.” – Kevin Kruse Read Full Transcript Hello, everybody. I am glad you made the time to join me. You didn't find the time, you didn't have the time. You made the time to join me. I'm Kevin Kruse and as you know I interviewed Mark Cuban and other billionaires, over a dozen Olympic athletes, and hundreds of successful entrepreneurs to uncover the real secrets to time management, which I'm sharing with you. Last week I explained why millionaires don't use to-do lists, and today we're talking about the four different causes of procrastination, and you'll discover your own procrastination personality. First, I want to send you a quick start action plan that includes the one page planning tool that millionaires use to schedule their day. All you need to do is text the word "Achieve" to 44-222, or just point your browser over to the website productivity-podcast.com. Procrastination. Even the great struggle with it. Let's review some wise words. Napoleon Hill, author of Think and Grow Rich and bestselling success, self-development author of all time, he said, "Procrastination is the bad habit of putting off until the day after tomorrow what should have been done the day before yesterday." Zig Ziglar once said, "Seize the future by seizing the present. Start procrastinating tomorrow." That's funny. Of course let's not forget my annoying cat Oscar, who says all the time to me, "Stop goofing off and come feed me now." It doesn't matter if he just ate. He says that to me all the time. Back on a serious note, professor Clarry Lay at York University, he specializes in the study of procrastination and he believes, he says, "Nothing beats the timely pursuit of one's intentions. It is the measure of success in life."  He believes the timely pursuit of one's intentions is the most important indicator of success. He says it's more important than general performance, prestige, a bigger predictor than your grades in school. All of those things are secondary to one's commitment to prompt action. Know what you want to do and take prompt action on it. Everyone procrastinates at some point. They say 20% of us are chronic procrastinators. We procrastinate so often that it's having a negative impact on our happiness and on our lives. It is an important thing because it's certainly, procrastination, puts off achievement of our big dreams, our big, hairy, audacious goals. Procrastination is the enemy of that novel you want to write or that marathon you want to run or the career change or the job change that you want.  We so often procrastinate health related things. Going to the gym or eating a healthier diet. If we can overcome procrastination on our health behaviors, well then we are going to end up with more energy and productivity just from that one change. In year 2015 I did a original research study over 4000 working professionals, looking at procrastination and other productivity habits. People who rarely procrastinate report high levels of not just productivity, which we would assume, but also higher levels of happiness and energy. When we procrastinate, it interferes with our happiness and drains us of our energy. To beat it, let's start by making sure we understand it. There're four major reasons why we procrastinate. The first reason is behavioral. This is the most common reason. The behavioral reason, it's when we do something, or that we tend to pick something that's more pleasurable or less painful to avoid doing the hard or the painful or the boring thing. The people who have this behavioral type of procrastination, they say they pursue their wants instead of their needs. You know, they chase what feels good instead of what is good for them. That's the first type of procrastination. The second type, it's a cognitive issue. It's a cognitive challenge around time perceptions. Basically it's saying we can't estimate time very well if we've got this problem. A big school project that's due at the end of the semester in two months, we don't really understand what that means, and so as the days tick away, we don't have this concept, this cognitive concept of how much time is left and how much time we need to spend to get that project done. Now, the third type of procrastination is another cognitive defect. It's called cognitive sensation seeking. It's when we have a constant need for stimulus. That could be social media stimulus. "Oh, we just got to get on Snapchat and see what story got posted." Or we're always partying because of all the stimuli, whether it's substances or socializing that happens there, or we're constantly eating and stimulating ourselves through food and things that we drink. Basically it's a cognitive defect where we just are constantly chasing the thing that feels good in the moment. The fourth and final type of procrastination, it's a subconscious personality issue. We think deep down, subconsciously or unconsciously, that if we achieve certain things, if we do certain things, it might change the sense we have of our self.  It might change our self-identity or we think it might change the way other people treat us. We're afraid to rock the boat around the people in our lives. "Maybe I'm going to write a book and my friend won't like it." "What if I get my MBA and get a big raise at work, and suddenly I'm making more money than my husband? Maybe he's not going to like it. Maybe it'll change the dynamic in our relationship." It's all these what ifs that might be holding us back. Those are the four reasons. One behavioral reason, two cognitive reasons, and one is a subconscious reason why we procrastinate. Procrastination has nothing to do with being lazy. It's one of these four underlying reasons. Researchers, to make this more accessible, they've labeled them. They call them the four procrastination personalities. That first one, the behavioral one, they call that the Postponer. About 60% of all procrastination is this form. We are the Postponer. We're pursuing our wants instead of our needs. Again, that's just a behavioral issue. The second type they call the Perfectionist. It's the type of procrastination where you don't want to start something because it's never going to be good enough. Why start something if we're never going to finish it? It's a perfectionist type of behavior. Third, the Punisher. It's where you're the one that you're punishing yourself with self-talk about how painful an item's going to be. You want to have positive sensations and emotions all the time and you're going to punish yourself by thinking about how negative it is going to be to do one of these items that you should do. Finally, that subconscious need to make everybody happy, to not rock the boat or change our identity and place in a social structure, they call being the Politician. You want to please everybody. You don't want to be disagreeable or challenging. What does this mean to you? How can you apply it? Basically, the first step to overcoming procrastination is to understand it and to identify what is it that you're procrastinating on, and what type of procrastinator are you. Listen to yourself talk when you catch yourself procrastinating. If you're a Postponer your self-talk is going to say, "Oh, that's so boring. I don't want to do that." You sound like a little kid. "I don't want to." I got three kids so I hear that a lot. "Clean your room." "I don't want to."  If your self-talk is that of the Perfectionist you're going to say, "It's not good enough" or, "I need to wait until everything's all lined up, and I can do it right. I'm going to wait until I have more time." You're always waiting until that perfect moment. The self-talk of the Punisher is more like it's hopeless. "Why should I even bother doing that? That's going to be so painful. That's not going to matter." Then finally the Politician is self-talk about other people. "What if Joe doesn't like it?" "What's everybody going to think about me if I actually carry this through and do publish my novel or whatever it might be?" "What if people laugh at me when I tell them I'm going to run a marathon this year?" That's the self-talk of a Politician.  Listen to or own chatter and try to figure out what type of procrastinator are you. What's your procrastination personality? In the next episode, I am then going to share the nine step guaranteed cure for procrastination. Thanks for joining me on this episode of the Extreme Productivity Podcast. Remember, if you want to instantly download your quick start action plan, including the procrastination cure infographic ready to print and leave as a handy reference, just text the word, "Achieve" to 44-222 or visit extremeproductivity.com. By the way, did you know that president George W. Bush used to read 95 books a year while he was still in office, while he was the president? How did he find time to do that? And how can his secret help you to make it home in time for dinner? That's what we're talking about on our next episode. Until then remember, master your minutes to master your life.

What you’re going to learn: <ul> <li>The 4 different causes of procrastination</li> <li>How to identify your own personal procrastination personality</li> </ul> Key Quotes: “Seize the future by seizing the present. Start procrastinating tomorrow.” – Zig Ziglar “Nothing beats the timely pursuit of one’s intentions. It is the measure of success in life.” – Clarry Lay “When we procrastinate, it interferes with our happiness and drains us of our energy.” – Kevin Kruse <a href="#" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Read Full Transcript</a> Hello, everybody. I am glad you made the time to join me. You didn't find the time, you didn't have the time. You made the time to join me. I'm Kevin Kruse and as you know I interviewed Mark Cuban and other billionaires, over a dozen Olympic athletes, and hundreds of successful entrepreneurs to uncover the real secrets to time management, which I'm sharing with you. Last week I explained why millionaires don't use to-do lists, and today we're talking about the four different causes of procrastination, and you'll discover your own procrastination personality. First, I want to send you a quick start action plan that includes the one page planning tool that millionaires use to schedule their day. All you need to do is text the word "Achieve" to 44-222, or just point your browser over to the website <a href="http://productivity-podcast.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">productivity-podcast.com</a>. Procrastination. Even the great struggle with it. Let's review some wise words. Napoleon Hill, author of Think and Grow Rich and bestselling success, self-development author of all time, he said, "Procrastination is the bad habit of putting off until the day after tomorrow what should have been done the day before yesterday." Zig Ziglar once said, "Seize the future by seizing the present. Start procrastinating tomorrow." That's funny. Of course let's not forget my annoying cat Oscar, who says all the time to me, "Stop goofing off and come feed me now." It doesn't matter if he just ate. He says that to me all the time. Back on a serious note, professor Clarry Lay at York University, he specializes in the study of procrastination and he believes, he says, "Nothing beats the timely pursuit of one's intentions. It is the measure of success in life." He believes the timely pursuit of one's intentions is the most important indicator of success. He says it's more important than general performance, prestige, a bigger predictor than your grades in school. All of those things are secondary to one's commitment to prompt action. Know what you want to do and take prompt action on it. Everyone procrastinates at some point. They say 20% of us are chronic procrastinators. We procrastinate so often that it's having a negative impact on our happiness and on our lives. It is an important thing because it's certainly, procrastination, puts off achievement of our big dreams, our big, hairy, audacious goals. Procrastination is the enemy of that novel you want to write or that marathon you want to run or the career change or the job change that you want. We so often procrastinate health related things. Going to the gym or eating a healthier diet. If we can overcome procrastination on our health behaviors, well then we are going to end up with more energy and productivity just from that one change. In year 2015 I did a original research study over 4000 working professionals, looking at procrastination and other productivity habits. People who rarely procrastinate report high levels of not just productivity, which we would assume, but also higher levels of happiness and energy. When we procrastinate, it interferes with our happiness and drains us of our energy. To beat it, let's start by making sure we understand it. There're four major reasons why we procrastinate. The first reason is behavioral. This is the most common reason. The behavioral reason, it's when we do something, or that we tend to pick something that's more pleasurable or less painful to avoid doing the hard or the painful or the boring thing. The people who have this behavioral type of procrastination, they say they pursue their wants instead of their needs. You know, they chase what feels good instead of what is good for them. That's the first type of procrastination. The second type, it's a cognitive issue. It's a cognitive challenge around time perceptions. Basically it's saying we can't estimate time very well if we've got this problem. A big school project that's due at the end of the semester in two months, we don't really understand what that means, and so as the days tick away, we don't have this concept, this cognitive concept of how much time is left and how much time we need to spend to get that project done. Now, the third type of procrastination is another cognitive defect. It's called cognitive sensation seeking. It's when we have a constant need for stimulus. That could be social media stimulus. "Oh, we just got to get on Snapchat and see what story got posted." Or we're always partying because of all the stimuli, whether it's substances or socializing that happens there, or we're constantly eating and stimulating ourselves through food and things that we drink. Basically it's a cognitive defect where we just are constantly chasing the thing that feels good in the moment. The fourth and final type of procrastination, it's a subconscious personality issue. We think deep down, subconsciously or unconsciously, that if we achieve certain things, if we do certain things, it might change the sense we have of our self. It might change our self-identity or we think it might change the way other people treat us. We're afraid to rock the boat around the people in our lives. "Maybe I'm going to write a book and my friend won't like it." "What if I get my MBA and get a big raise at work, and suddenly I'm making more money than my husband? Maybe he's not going to like it. Maybe it'll change the dynamic in our relationship." It's all these what ifs that might be holding us back. Those are the four reasons. One behavioral reason, two cognitive reasons, and one is a subconscious reason why we procrastinate. Procrastination has nothing to do with being lazy. It's one of these four underlying reasons. Researchers, to make this more accessible, they've labeled them. They call them the four procrastination personalities. That first one, the behavioral one, they call that the Postponer. About 60% of all procrastination is this form. We are the Postponer. We're pursuing our wants instead of our needs. Again, that's just a behavioral issue. The second type they call the Perfectionist. It's the type of procrastination where you don't want to start something because it's never going to be good enough. Why start something if we're never going to finish it? It's a perfectionist type of behavior. Third, the Punisher. It's where you're the one that you're punishing yourself with self-talk about how painful an item's going to be. You want to have positive sensations and emotions all the time and you're going to punish yourself by thinking about how negative it is going to be to do one of these items that you should do. Finally, that subconscious need to make everybody happy, to not rock the boat or change our identity and place in a social structure, they call being the Politician. You want to please everybody. You don't want to be disagreeable or challenging. What does this mean to you? How can you apply it? Basically, the first step to overcoming procrastination is to understand it and to identify what is it that you're procrastinating on, and what type of procrastinator are you. Listen to yourself talk when you catch yourself procrastinating. If you're a Postponer your self-talk is going to say, "Oh, that's so boring. I don't want to do that." You sound like a little kid. "I don't want to." I got three kids so I hear that a lot. "Clean your room." "I don't want to." If your self-talk is that of the Perfectionist you're going to say, "It's not good enough" or, "I need to wait until everything's all lined up, and I can do it right. I'm going to wait until I have more time." You're always waiting until that perfect moment. The self-talk of the Punisher is more like it's hopeless. "Why should I even bother doing that? That's going to be so painful. That's not going to matter." Then finally the Politician is self-talk about other people. "What if Joe doesn't like it?" "What's everybody going to think about me if I actually carry this through and do publish my novel or whatever it might be?" "What if people laugh at me when I tell them I'm going to run a marathon this year?" That's the self-talk of a Politician. Listen to or own chatter and try to figure out what type of procrastinator are you. What's your procrastination personality? In the next episode, I am then going to share the nine step guaranteed cure for procrastination. Thanks for joining me on this episode of the Extreme Productivity Podcast. Remember, if you want to instantly download your quick start action plan, including the procrastination cure infographic ready to print and leave as a handy reference, just text the word, "Achieve" to 44-222 or visit <a href="http://extremeproductivity.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">extremeproductivity.com</a>. By the way, did you know that president George W. Bush used to read 95 books a year while he was still in office, while he was the president? How did he find time to do that? And how can his secret help you to make it home in time for dinner? That's what we're talking about on our next episode. Until then remember, master your minutes to master your life.

The Four Procrastination Personalities

4 Secrets To Replace Your Bad Habits With Good Habits

Today I’m going to give you the cure for procrastination. What you’re going to learn:  Why you’re procrastinating The 9 steps you can take, today, to overcome procrastination  Key Quotes: “Plan to settle for good enough.” “Take small actions and they will build upon each other.” “I am worse off when I put it off.” Read Full Transcript Welcome back you high-achiever you. I'm Kevin Kruse and I'm sharing the truth bombs from my 200 plus interviews with ultra-productive people like Grant Cardone, John Lee Dumas, Neil Patel, James Altucher even Mark Cuban and so many others. Last week I shared why we must stamp out the evils of procrastination. I shared the 4 procrastination personalities. Which one are you by the way? The postponer, the perfectionist, the punisher, or the politician? 	Today I'm going to give you the cure for procrastination. Listen up, take some notes, share out the wisdom on social media maybe, I'd appreciate that. First I want to send you a quick start action plan that includes and inforgraphic on procrastination and how to cure your procrastination. It's instant download just send a text message. Text the word "Achieve" to the number 44222 or go to the website productivity-podcast.com. 	I don't want to procrastinate, I want to dive right into it. We need to cure our procrastination for so many reasons. Certainly to help us with just life maintenance like getting our car's oil changed on time. Getting our teeth cleaned every 6 months, and dental hygiene is important. I get most excited about sharing procrastination around our big hairy audacious goals.  	I want you to finally write that book you've been thinking about. I want you to run that marathon you've been dreaming of. I want you to, whatever jump on Match.com and find the love of your life. Whatever big things that you've been putting off I want you to overcome your procrastination and take action. 	Here's the 9 steps. First step is just to recognize it. What have you been procrastinating on lately? Are there certain things, tasks, activities that you always procrastinate? What are you weak spots? When do you fall prey to this problem? 	The second step is to reflect. Why am I procrastinating? What is it about this thing? It is just because it's boring and you'd rather be doing something more fun or is it that you're afraid you are actually going to achieve it and that's going to change your life in some way. This is a challenge to your self-identity or a challenge to your relationship structure. Think about that a little bit. 	Third, reflect am I over-estimating the unpleasantness involved. Most of procrastination is behavioral, they say about 60%. We think it's going to be more fun to put something off. My own research and others show we are happier when we procrastinate less. A lot of this is in our mind. Things tend to not be as painful or boring as we think they're going to be.  	Going right along with that is step 4, which is just, know that when you take action on it your mood will automatically change for the better. A lot research on this and I've seen it myself. Sometimes I'm feeling the pressure to turn in a book manuscript and maybe I've got to do a rewrite and all the fun of the first draft is gone now I've just got to cut stuff out and look for grammar and typo problems. It sounds kind of boring I'd rather be off writing the next book. I start to do that negative self-talk.  	Then once I dive in whether that's doing a second draft of the book or creating slides for a speech all of a sudden I start to have some fun with it. I'd come up with some new material or some new research. I just feel good about improving my work and it isn't ever as bad as I thought it was going to be.  	Now step 5 this is a powerful one but it's kind of hard to explain. It's kind of tricky. It has to do with rebalancing or reframing your thoughts around pain and pleasure on the activity. Let me do my best here. We tend to, when we think about an activity whether it's going to the dentist, or going to the gym, or whatever it is. We tend to kind of have this mental scale. How much pleasure will we get out of it? How much pain are we going to get from it?  	When the pain side lowers that scale, weighs more than the pleasure then it's like, I'd rather jump on Facebook than do that thing because it feels painful, or boring, or whatever. A powerful technique is to reframe your pleasure and pain equation not around doing the task, but on not doing the task.  	Let's do the silly example about going to the dentist. Normally I would think about going to the dentist and I would say, well look, I mean, the good thing about going to the dentist is it's good not to have cavities, and my smiles going to be a little brighter. I know I should, but on the pain side it's mildly uncomfortable to get your teeth cleaned and it's taking time out of my busy week. It's going to cost me some money, maybe some co-pay or whatever. I think, those negatives are slightly outweighing the positives I'll do it next week or next month or what are the odds I'm going to get any cavities. I'll just put it off and procrastinate it.  	Now imagine I reframe it and I say, what's the pleasure, the benefit, or the pain, the cons of not going to the dentist. Well, I can try to self-talk my way into this new frame, what's that equation look like. Well, if I don't go it's true it will more fun doing something else than going to the dentist. I'll be a little more productive and it's going to save me some money if I don't go. Those are all good things. 	If I don't go to the dentist and I get a cavity then that visit to fix the cavity's going to hurt so much worse down the road. It's going to cost me so much more to fix the cavity than just the co-pay for the cleaning. If I don't go for a while and my teeth start to get a little nasty, or yellow, or and my smile isn't so good. All of a sudden that's my ego and my self-image I'm attaching.  	Now I realize, yeah the benefit of not going to the dentist it's true I save a little time, money, productivity. The down side is a painful cavity in that chair with more money. I'm not going to risk that, let me just call the frickin dentist and make an appointment for next week and get it done. It's about reframing around not doing an item.  	Step 6, this is for the perfectionist out there. Plan to settle for good enough. I know it's easier to say it than to do it. This is something the software industry knows. Engineer, software engineers have this saying, "That shift is better than perfect." The software's never perfect and that's why whether it's Windows on your computer there was Windows 1.0, 2.0 all the way up to 10.0 whatever in incremental improvements along the way. Whether it's an app your Facebook app or your Snapchat app. I mean there's constantly new releases it's never perfect, it's never done.  	Take that mindset and when I have to do that with my books, my books are never done. I mean, every time they're published I think, oh my gosh I now think something different than what I wrote on page 55, or I've got better material for chapter 10, or I found 7 more resources for the appendix. I'm always improving things, but now I realize listen getting a good but not perfect out there is better than never getting a perfect book out there at all. I think about it like software, okay once a year I'm going to go through all my published books and update them again. What's an equivalent around I don't know health.  	I'm not going to wait until I have the perfect plan and the perfect meal plan. I'm not going to wait until I know I've got an hour a day for 5 straight days to go to the gym. I'm just going to start imperfectly. I'm going to go the gym and I'm only going to do 1 or 2 stations in the 6 station circuit workout because that's all I got time for. That's all I can handle right now. I'm going to start now I'm not going to wait for perfect.  	Step 7 this is just fundamental. You need to learn how to take your big hairy audacious goals and break them down into bite size chunks. Nobody knows how to write an entire book. How do you do that? You just do it by writing a page at a time. You just start where you can. Take small actions and they will build upon each other.  	As we've already reviewed in this podcast if you really want something to happen you have to schedule it. Schedule time for those items that you procrastinate on. Put them as early in the day as possible so the rest of life doesn't knock them out of that slot.  	Finally step 9 it's kind of, it sounds like very Zen but the people who consistently ... All the people I've met and I've interviewed who consistently go to the gym every day and hit their workouts. Who write a 1,000 words a day on their next book. Who whatever is important to them they're hitting it every single day. It becomes a habit so they don't think about it. You don't think, you do.  	Peter Brackman is an author, who business author, who kind of instills a lot of his writing with wisdom and advice more from Eastern practices and philosophies. He talks about rituals and habits. You don't think about brushing your teeth in the morning or brushing your teeth before you go to bed at night it's just part of your routine. There's no thought about it, like what's the pro or con about brushing my teeth. I think I'm going to check Facebook for a while and not brush my teeth. You just do it.  	That's the other thing once you commit to something don't think about it. You just roll out of bed, your stepping on your shorts, and your shirt, and your sneakers. You slip them on and before you even wake up you're out the door and fast walking around the block which turns into a jog. You're not thinking you just do.  	Practically speaking what does this mean to you. How do you cure procrastination? Listen, whether it's the small stuff or the big stuff just say, what am I procrastinating on and why? Am I over estimating how bad, boring, or tough it's going to be? Once I start it's probably going to feel a lot better. I might actually like it a little bit. I'm going to reframe, I'm going to realize all the negatives of not doing the task. That's what I'm going to do is reframe it. I won't be a perfectionist, I'm going to make sure I just take small steps even if they're imperfect I'm going to settle for good enough. Take my big projects break them down. Put it on my calendar and I'm just going to do it and not think about it.  	Some people swear by self-talk and giving themselves an anti-procrastination mantra. I know a lot people that take that Nike slogan "Just Do It." The author of "Miracle Morning" Hal Elrod once wrote that he tells himself, "If I do it, it will be done." If I do it, it will be done and that's going to feel fantastic. Just get it over with. I like to say, I like to remind myself, "I am worse off when I put it off." I am worse off when I put it off. That's what the research shows we think we're going to be happier sitting on the couch surfing channels instead of working on that report or whatever it is we don't want to do. The reality is we are happier when we just do it and get it done.  	Okay, thanks for joining me on this episode of the Extreme Productivity Podcast remember download the procrastination share infographic, you're going to handy cheat sheet from the last 2 episodes. Just to get it text the word "Achieve" to 44222 or go to the website extreme-productivity.com. 	By the way did you know that President George Bush used to read 95 books a year while he was President? How'd he find the time to do that? How can his time management secret help you to make it home for dinner? We'll cover that in the next episode, until then remember master your minutes to master your life. 

Today I’m going to give you the cure for procrastination. What you’re going to learn: <ul> <li>Why you’re procrastinating</li> <li>The 9 steps you can take, today, to overcome procrastination</li> </ul> Key Quotes: <blockquote>“Plan to settle for good enough.” “Take small actions and they will build upon each other.” “I am worse off when I put it off.”</blockquote> <a href="#" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Read Full Transcript</a> Welcome back you high-achiever you. I'm Kevin Kruse and I'm sharing the truth bombs from my 200 plus interviews with ultra-productive people like Grant Cardone, John Lee Dumas, Neil Patel, James Altucher even Mark Cuban and so many others. Last week I shared why we must stamp out the evils of procrastination. I shared the 4 procrastination personalities. Which one are you by the way? The postponer, the perfectionist, the punisher, or the politician? 	Today I'm going to give you the cure for procrastination. Listen up, take some notes, share out the wisdom on social media maybe, I'd appreciate that. First I want to send you a quick start action plan that includes and inforgraphic on procrastination and how to cure your procrastination. It's instant download just send a text message. Text the word "Achieve" to the number 44222 or go to the website <a href="http://productivity-podcast.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">productivity-podcast.com</a>. 	I don't want to procrastinate, I want to dive right into it. We need to cure our procrastination for so many reasons. Certainly to help us with just life maintenance like getting our car's oil changed on time. Getting our teeth cleaned every 6 months, and dental hygiene is important. I get most excited about sharing procrastination around our big hairy audacious goals. 	I want you to finally write that book you've been thinking about. I want you to run that marathon you've been dreaming of. I want you to, whatever jump on <a href="http://Match.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Match.com</a> and find the love of your life. Whatever big things that you've been putting off I want you to overcome your procrastination and take action. 	Here's the 9 steps. First step is just to recognize it. What have you been procrastinating on lately? Are there certain things, tasks, activities that you always procrastinate? What are you weak spots? When do you fall prey to this problem? 	The second step is to reflect. Why am I procrastinating? What is it about this thing? It is just because it's boring and you'd rather be doing something more fun or is it that you're afraid you are actually going to achieve it and that's going to change your life in some way. This is a challenge to your self-identity or a challenge to your relationship structure. Think about that a little bit. 	Third, reflect am I over-estimating the unpleasantness involved. Most of procrastination is behavioral, they say about 60%. We think it's going to be more fun to put something off. My own research and others show we are happier when we procrastinate less. A lot of this is in our mind. Things tend to not be as painful or boring as we think they're going to be. 	Going right along with that is step 4, which is just, know that when you take action on it your mood will automatically change for the better. A lot research on this and I've seen it myself. Sometimes I'm feeling the pressure to turn in a book manuscript and maybe I've got to do a rewrite and all the fun of the first draft is gone now I've just got to cut stuff out and look for grammar and typo problems. It sounds kind of boring I'd rather be off writing the next book. I start to do that negative self-talk. 	Then once I dive in whether that's doing a second draft of the book or creating slides for a speech all of a sudden I start to have some fun with it. I'd come up with some new material or some new research. I just feel good about improving my work and it isn't ever as bad as I thought it was going to be. 	Now step 5 this is a powerful one but it's kind of hard to explain. It's kind of tricky. It has to do with rebalancing or reframing your thoughts around pain and pleasure on the activity. Let me do my best here. We tend to, when we think about an activity whether it's going to the dentist, or going to the gym, or whatever it is. We tend to kind of have this mental scale. How much pleasure will we get out of it? How much pain are we going to get from it? 	When the pain side lowers that scale, weighs more than the pleasure then it's like, I'd rather jump on Facebook than do that thing because it feels painful, or boring, or whatever. A powerful technique is to reframe your pleasure and pain equation not around doing the task, but on not doing the task. 	Let's do the silly example about going to the dentist. Normally I would think about going to the dentist and I would say, well look, I mean, the good thing about going to the dentist is it's good not to have cavities, and my smiles going to be a little brighter. I know I should, but on the pain side it's mildly uncomfortable to get your teeth cleaned and it's taking time out of my busy week. It's going to cost me some money, maybe some co-pay or whatever. I think, those negatives are slightly outweighing the positives I'll do it next week or next month or what are the odds I'm going to get any cavities. I'll just put it off and procrastinate it. 	Now imagine I reframe it and I say, what's the pleasure, the benefit, or the pain, the cons of not going to the dentist. Well, I can try to self-talk my way into this new frame, what's that equation look like. Well, if I don't go it's true it will more fun doing something else than going to the dentist. I'll be a little more productive and it's going to save me some money if I don't go. Those are all good things. 	If I don't go to the dentist and I get a cavity then that visit to fix the cavity's going to hurt so much worse down the road. It's going to cost me so much more to fix the cavity than just the co-pay for the cleaning. If I don't go for a while and my teeth start to get a little nasty, or yellow, or and my smile isn't so good. All of a sudden that's my ego and my self-image I'm attaching. 	Now I realize, yeah the benefit of not going to the dentist it's true I save a little time, money, productivity. The down side is a painful cavity in that chair with more money. I'm not going to risk that, let me just call the frickin dentist and make an appointment for next week and get it done. It's about reframing around not doing an item. 	Step 6, this is for the perfectionist out there. Plan to settle for good enough. I know it's easier to say it than to do it. This is something the software industry knows. Engineer, software engineers have this saying, "That shift is better than perfect." The software's never perfect and that's why whether it's Windows on your computer there was Windows 1.0, 2.0 all the way up to 10.0 whatever in incremental improvements along the way. Whether it's an app your Facebook app or your Snapchat app. I mean there's constantly new releases it's never perfect, it's never done. 	Take that mindset and when I have to do that with my books, my books are never done. I mean, every time they're published I think, oh my gosh I now think something different than what I wrote on page 55, or I've got better material for chapter 10, or I found 7 more resources for the appendix. I'm always improving things, but now I realize listen getting a good but not perfect out there is better than never getting a perfect book out there at all. I think about it like software, okay once a year I'm going to go through all my published books and update them again. What's an equivalent around I don't know health. 	I'm not going to wait until I have the perfect plan and the perfect meal plan. I'm not going to wait until I know I've got an hour a day for 5 straight days to go to the gym. I'm just going to start imperfectly. I'm going to go the gym and I'm only going to do 1 or 2 stations in the 6 station circuit workout because that's all I got time for. That's all I can handle right now. I'm going to start now I'm not going to wait for perfect. 	Step 7 this is just fundamental. You need to learn how to take your big hairy audacious goals and break them down into bite size chunks. Nobody knows how to write an entire book. How do you do that? You just do it by writing a page at a time. You just start where you can. Take small actions and they will build upon each other. 	As we've already reviewed in this podcast if you really want something to happen you have to schedule it. Schedule time for those items that you procrastinate on. Put them as early in the day as possible so the rest of life doesn't knock them out of that slot. 	Finally step 9 it's kind of, it sounds like very Zen but the people who consistently ... All the people I've met and I've interviewed who consistently go to the gym every day and hit their workouts. Who write a 1,000 words a day on their next book. Who whatever is important to them they're hitting it every single day. It becomes a habit so they don't think about it. You don't think, you do. 	Peter Brackman is an author, who business author, who kind of instills a lot of his writing with wisdom and advice more from Eastern practices and philosophies. He talks about rituals and habits. You don't think about brushing your teeth in the morning or brushing your teeth before you go to bed at night it's just part of your routine. There's no thought about it, like what's the pro or con about brushing my teeth. I think I'm going to check Facebook for a while and not brush my teeth. You just do it. 	That's the other thing once you commit to something don't think about it. You just roll out of bed, your stepping on your shorts, and your shirt, and your sneakers. You slip them on and before you even wake up you're out the door and fast walking around the block which turns into a jog. You're not thinking you just do. 	Practically speaking what does this mean to you. How do you cure procrastination? Listen, whether it's the small stuff or the big stuff just say, what am I procrastinating on and why? Am I over estimating how bad, boring, or tough it's going to be? Once I start it's probably going to feel a lot better. I might actually like it a little bit. I'm going to reframe, I'm going to realize all the negatives of not doing the task. That's what I'm going to do is reframe it. I won't be a perfectionist, I'm going to make sure I just take small steps even if they're imperfect I'm going to settle for good enough. Take my big projects break them down. Put it on my calendar and I'm just going to do it and not think about it. 	Some people swear by self-talk and giving themselves an anti-procrastination mantra. I know a lot people that take that Nike slogan "Just Do It." The author of "Miracle Morning" Hal Elrod once wrote that he tells himself, "If I do it, it will be done." If I do it, it will be done and that's going to feel fantastic. Just get it over with. I like to say, I like to remind myself, "I am worse off when I put it off." I am worse off when I put it off. That's what the research shows we think we're going to be happier sitting on the couch surfing channels instead of working on that report or whatever it is we don't want to do. The reality is we are happier when we just do it and get it done. 	Okay, thanks for joining me on this episode of the Extreme Productivity Podcast remember download the procrastination share infographic, you're going to handy cheat sheet from the last 2 episodes. Just to get it text the word "Achieve" to 44222 or go to the website <a href="http://extreme-productivity.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">extreme-productivity.com</a>. 	By the way did you know that President George Bush used to read 95 books a year while he was President? How'd he find the time to do that? How can his time management secret help you to make it home for dinner? We'll cover that in the next episode, until then remember master your minutes to master your life.

The 9-Step Procrastination Cure

In this episode, I’m going to reveal five steps to get you out of bed alert, awake and productive.  What you’re going to learn:  The Five-Minute Snooze-Proof Wake-Up Strategy  Key Quotes: “If you want to win the day, it starts the night before.” “Ultra-productive people know that dehydration impacts our productivity.”

In this episode, I’m going to reveal five steps to get you out of bed alert, awake and productive. What you’re going to learn: <ul> <li>The Five-Minute Snooze-Proof Wake-Up Strategy</li> </ul> Key Quotes: “If you want to win the day, it starts the night before.” “Ultra-productive people know that dehydration impacts our productivity.”

5-minute Snooze Proof Wake-Up Strategy

In this episode, I’m going to explain how to manage your most important asset — time. What you’re going to learn:  Why time is a more valuable asset compared to health, money and friends How you can guard yourself from the so-called “time thieves” that rob you of valuable time.  Key Quotes: “You can never lose time and get it back again. “ “Meetings are notorious for killing time.”

In this episode, I’m going to explain how to manage your most important asset — time. What you’re going to learn: <ul> <li>Why time is a more valuable asset compared to health, money and friends</li> <li>How you can guard yourself from the so-called “time thieves” that rob you of valuable time.</li> </ul> Key Quotes: “You can never lose time and get it back again. “ “Meetings are notorious for killing time.”

Time Is Your Most Important Asset

In this episode, I’m going to teach you how to turn your goals into MITs. What you’re going to learn:  The Importance of the Most Important Task (MIT) MITs For Big Company Workers   Key Quotes: “Identifying your MIT makes your scheduling decisions much easier.” “Simply, the most important things are to know what to focus on and how you are going to get it done.” 

In this episode, I’m going to teach you how to turn your goals into MITs. What you’re going to learn: <ul> <li>The Importance of the Most Important Task (MIT)</li> <li>MITs For Big Company Workers </li> </ul> Key Quotes: “Identifying your MIT makes your scheduling decisions much easier.” “Simply, the most important things are to know what to focus on and how you are going to get it done.”

Turn Your SMART Goals Into MITs

In this episode, I’m going to give you 3 Harvard questions that can save you 8 hours each week on average. What you’re going to learn:  The results of a productivity experiment conducted by Harvard professors Julian Birkinshaw and Jordan Cone that helped participants achieve massive time gains How to delegate your tasks (even if you don’t have a staff to delegate to) Online services you can use to take over annoying tasks like grocery shopping, internet research, making doctor appointments (the list goes on and on) How I manage my own company with a completely virtual team  Key Quotes: “41% of knowledge workers time is spent on discretionary activities that weren’t very satisfying and could also be done by others.”  “From general freelancers to miscellaneous chores, you can get help for almost any task and probably for less money than you think.”

In this episode, I’m going to give you 3 Harvard questions that can save you 8 hours each week on average. What you’re going to learn: <ul> <li>The results of a productivity experiment conducted by Harvard professors Julian Birkinshaw and Jordan Cone that helped participants achieve massive time gains</li> <li>How to delegate your tasks (even if you don’t have a staff to delegate to)</li> <li>Online services you can use to take over annoying tasks like grocery shopping, internet research, making doctor appointments (the list goes on and on)</li> <li>How I manage my own company with a completely virtual team</li> </ul> Key Quotes: <blockquote>“41% of knowledge workers time is spent on discretionary activities that weren’t very satisfying and could also be done by others.” “From general freelancers to miscellaneous chores, you can get help for almost any task and probably for less money than you think.”</blockquote>

3 Questions To Save 8 Hours A Week

What is the 80-20 rule and can it make 80% of work disappear? What you’re going to learn:  How to identify which projects or goals are most important to your organization and which ones are going to get you that promotion How to apply the 80-20 rule to your work as a freelancer  Key Quotes: “Don’t try to do everything at once.” Read Full Transcript Hey I'm Kevin Kruse, and I am here to 10x your productivity at least in key areas of your life and to dramatically increase your productivity everywhere. Today I'm extra high energy because Saturday night I did something I don't usually do I went to an NBA basketball game. I'm outside of Philadelphia, so I went and watched the Philadelphia 76ers play the Detroit Pistons. Don't worry this isn't about basketball. If you don't follow American basketball, if you're listening from some other part of the world and don't even know the teams or what I'm talking about it's okay. I only got to about 1 or 2 games a year. I like to go with my friend we take our boys have a good time. The Sixers this year are horrible. They've won the worst records in the history of the NBA, but we were there for fun games get out to have some cheese steaks and just relax. It was a good game it was a fun game but what made me take notice is all over sudden this short kid for the Sixers comes running out onto the court and the entire pace of the game changed. This guy his name is T.J. McConnell; he all over sudden starts racing up and down the court like someone's chasing him. I mean all the sudden he's going for steals, he's only 6 foot 2 and he's jumping in trying to get rebounds, he's making crazy plays I mean he's bringing it. It's like nobody told them that the Sixers are going to be in the last place no matter what happens. No one told them that the game didn't really count. He was bringing it no matter what. Like I said I don't follow the Sixers or basketball that much so I'm Googling this guy, turns out he's a rookie he was undrafted. As I mentioned only 6 foot 2 he used to play for Arizona I believe, has no profiles on social media. He's not out there trying to be a star or anything else. That might be a mistake but as soon as he took the courts the entire energy and mood of the game changed. You might not be the star on your team, but you can always bring the energy you might not be the tallest or most naturally gifted. You can always set the pace you might not have the best jump shot or whatever the analogy is in your career you, but you can always set the tone. This is the underlying secret of productivity. There is no such thing as time management. We can't control time, but we can control our energy and focus. You take two people with the same 1 hour and the same to do list to burn through in that 1 hour. You take someone who's feeling tired, and lethargic, and is multitasking, and is low energy. I'm sounding like Donald Trump accusing people of being low energy, but anyway, you take the other person like T.J. McConnell, who I've never heard of before this undrafted 6 foot 2 rookie, and you decide to bring it. You are high energy you're focused you're not multitasking you're loving what you're doing you're trying to beat the clock. Who's going to get more done? It's the same 60 minutes, it's the same 1,440 minutes in a day, it's about bringing focused energy to the task at hand. Hats off to T.J. McConnell, and he's my new favorite player. I hope he's got a jersey or something out because I'm going to get it. Listen, in the last episode, I talked about the 6 secrets to stop being so overwhelmed new book for my friend Kelly Exeter. If you didn't hear that episode listen to that one after this one.  It's not going anywhere so you can wait. Today I'm going to talk about the very real possibility that you might just be able to make 80% of your workload disappear. You just might be able to ignore it or, at least, give it to someone else. First, you know I want you to have that one-page planning tool that millionaires use to schedule their day. I want to stay in touch with you. Just text the word achieve to 44222 or open up your web browser and go to productivity-podcast.com that way I can send you this quick start action plan you can 10x your productivity and the world will be a better place. Alright, what is the 80-20 rule and can it make 80% of work disappear? Here is the story behind this concept not already knows the story even if you've heard of the rule. There was a guy named Pareto, he was born in Italy in 1848. He was a business manager and all the rest but in his 40's kind of an old guy by 1848 standard he became an economist, he started doing more serious work. Legend has it that one day he noticed in his own personal Garden that 20% of the pea plants gave him 80% of its healthy pea pods. Twenty percent of the plants out produced 80% of the plants. He started thinking about this rule in nature of uneven distribution. He started doing some digging in the files in research among Italian landowners. He found out that 80% of the land in Italy was owned by 20% of the population. He then investigated different Industries and found that usually 80% of production came from just 20% of the top companies in that industry. He came up with this generalization 80% of results come from just 20% of the action. People started to look around and apply this rule of thumb to a lot of different areas, and you could probably see it yourself specially if were a small-business owner, medium-sized business owner. Twenty percent of sales representatives are usually the ones that are getting you 80% of your sales. You have a 100 sales reps most of your sales are coming from about 20 of them. Twenty percent of your customers generally account for 80% of total profits. Some customers are a pain in the butt, they're difficult to work with, they complain, they need special customization, they don't pay their bills. Those are money-losing or low-profit customers others they're ready to buy off the shelf they pay cash their dream customer dream clients. Twenty percent of your customers are accounting for 80% of your profit. In software, 20% of the software bugs reported are generally the ones that cause 80% of software crashes. If you want to stop your software from crashing you don't need to fix all your bugs, you need to fix those 20% that are causing 80% of those crashes. Let's look at healthcare, today in the United States 20% of patients account for 80% of all healthcare spending. By the way, 5% of all patients account for 50% of all of our healthcare spending. Over half of our healthcare spending is going to a very small number of patients. Look I like to personalize everything right so here's are some examples from my own life. Think about whether they apply or you have something similar in your own life. I own about I think 5 very expensive amazing suits. I don't suit up very often unless I'm going out on a speaking gig or something. Eighty percent of the time when I need a suit I just grab my black very well-tailored single-breasted Armani suit I grab the same powder blue shirt. Even though I've got 5 suits, I don't rotate I just keep grabbing the same suit 1 out of 5 suits all the time. For you ladies out there how many shoes do you own, how many high heels do you own? I'll bet you probably grab the same 20% and wear those over and over and then there's others that you we're almost never. I've got 15 rooms in my house and about 80% of the time I spend in just the bedroom family room or my office that's 20% of my rooms. I don't know how many miles of roadway are Highway are in and around my town, but I'm sure I drive on less than 20% of them. I go to the school, I go to the grocery store, I go to the bank ,I go to the gas station, and that's about it and then the airport. On my smartphone, I counted about 48 different mobile apps but 80% of the time I'm only using the 8 apps that are on my home screen. Look, this 80-20 it's not always exactly as you start to look at your own sales reps in sales or as you start to look at your own life practices. It's more about the point of uneven inputs and outputs. In fact, it all started we talked about Pareto looking at wealth distribution and of course, in the United States it's a big topic right now is the growing wealth gap. As of now it's not 80-20 that would seem pretty equitable by today's standards. As of now in the United States, .1% one-tenth of 1% of Americans own 90% of the wealth, the same amount of wealth as 90% of all other Americans. That's not even 80-20, it's 90 and .1. When I was doing all those interviews with the Olympic athletes, the self-made millionaires, the straight A's students, and others. They were all using explicitly or not they were using some form of the Pareto Principle. They're all distinctly aware that listen we only have 1,440 minutes in a day, and there will always be more to do. There is always more stuff that can be done that we'll never get too. It's not like you just work and try to get everything done, you will never get everything done. A strategy is like when is enough enough. Use 80-20 use the Pareto principle as a way to help you figure out the core things you need to be working on and then let the rest go or delegate it if it does have to be done. How can you apply it, how do you apply this into your real world? Listen if you're an executive you're a team leader in a large organization a company, not all projects are equal instead of trying to do the impossible. Instead of you trying to do everything or have your team do everything. Instead, a Pareto approaches is to understand which projects which goal are most important to your organization which one's align to your organization's goals. Which projects or goals are most important to your boss, right? like some things are going to be scrutinized something things she's asking you about for follow-up and tracking the progress. Others she hasn't asked you in about 6 months so not all things are created equal. Understand what are the 20% of projects 20% of goals 20% of tasks that you need to personally stay on top of because they're going to get you 80% of your bonus of your evaluation of your outcomes and then the rest delegate it to others or drop it in entirely if you can. If you're a freelancer startup entrepreneur this still applies to you I mean money is time. Use the Pareto Principle to understand who your best paying clients are. It's always going to be easier to sell more stuff to an existing customer than new stuff to a new customer. Don't burn yourself out focus on quality work with fewer project and fewer customers and entrepreneurs in general. I've got an idea every single day for a new gazillion dollar business whether it really would be who knows but I still have those ideas. Entrepreneurs need to focus just stay focused in your one area until you've maximized the results from that area then expand your marketplace. I can remember years ago to being in a board meeting and supporting the CEO. The CEO presented to the board this idea of we're going to ... we were in the United States software company, and he says "okay now here's our plan we're going to open up offices in Europe to expand." He went through this whole presentation about global expansion, and finally, one of the board members raised a hand and said "when you only control about 2% of the market in the United States is it a little easier to grow your market here in the United States before you decide on flying across the Atlantic and dealing with different cultures and languages and currencies and Technologies and everything else. Why do you want to do that?" That was the end of our global expansion plan. He didn't use the words, he's basically saying stay focused don't try to do everything all at once. This is a powerful principle even in your personal life. You could be a stay-at-home parent or just a busy homeowner trying to do it all at home. The never ending chore list the Honeydew list right? Think about that 80-20 rule, I think about let's say yard work. I've got one neighbor in particular who spends every morning night weekend out in his yard. I'm hoping he enjoys that I hope that's like a hobby so good for him if it is. When I look around my neighbors yards and my own yards I drive up and down the street what do I notice? I notice that someone needs to mow their lawn or if they've got really tall weeds growing around. Other than that I don't notice if the bushes have been trimmed a little bit, I don't notice if they've got fresh flowers by their doorsteps, I don't notice if they fertilize their lawn right? There are two things long weeds and mowing their lawn that would get them 80% of the beauty of their front yard, and they wouldn't have to work on all those other things. Again if you enjoy doing it, that's a different story. What 20% of your to-do list items at work and at home drive 80% of the outcome? Eighty percent of your reward 80% of your happiness. Alright, I hope you tell a friend about this episode. There's got to be someone you know who is too hard on herself always trying to get it all done. Someone who foolishly thinks she can just keep adding more things to her to do list and that she will do them all. Just send her to productivity-podcast.com so she can listen to these other episodes. She can also text the word achieve don't forget about that way, text the word achieve to 44222 and that will get her signed up as well. Do it so that you both can listen to the very next episode its doing to be a funny one. I'm going to tell you about who I call the world's biggest slacker and how he won company awards for excellence while he goofed off 8 hours a day surfing the web. Strange but true tale of unusual productivity. Until next week remember master your minutes to master your life.

What is the 80-20 rule and can it make 80% of work disappear? What you’re going to learn: <ul> <li>How to identify which projects or goals are most important to your organization and which ones are going to get you that promotion</li> <li>How to apply the 80-20 rule to your work as a freelancer</li> </ul> Key Quotes: <blockquote>“Don’t try to do everything at once.”</blockquote> <a href="#" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Read Full Transcript</a> Hey I'm Kevin Kruse, and I am here to 10x your productivity at least in key areas of your life and to dramatically increase your productivity everywhere. Today I'm extra high energy because Saturday night I did something I don't usually do I went to an NBA basketball game. I'm outside of Philadelphia, so I went and watched the Philadelphia 76ers play the Detroit Pistons. Don't worry this isn't about basketball. If you don't follow American basketball, if you're listening from some other part of the world and don't even know the teams or what I'm talking about it's okay. I only got to about 1 or 2 games a year. I like to go with my friend we take our boys have a good time. The Sixers this year are horrible. They've won the worst records in the history of the NBA, but we were there for fun games get out to have some cheese steaks and just relax. It was a good game it was a fun game but what made me take notice is all over sudden this short kid for the Sixers comes running out onto the court and the entire pace of the game changed. This guy his name is T.J. McConnell; he all over sudden starts racing up and down the court like someone's chasing him. I mean all the sudden he's going for steals, he's only 6 foot 2 and he's jumping in trying to get rebounds, he's making crazy plays I mean he's bringing it. It's like nobody told them that the Sixers are going to be in the last place no matter what happens. No one told them that the game didn't really count. He was bringing it no matter what. Like I said I don't follow the Sixers or basketball that much so I'm Googling this guy, turns out he's a rookie he was undrafted. As I mentioned only 6 foot 2 he used to play for Arizona I believe, has no profiles on social media. He's not out there trying to be a star or anything else. That might be a mistake but as soon as he took the courts the entire energy and mood of the game changed. You might not be the star on your team, but you can always bring the energy you might not be the tallest or most naturally gifted. You can always set the pace you might not have the best jump shot or whatever the analogy is in your career you, but you can always set the tone. This is the underlying secret of productivity. There is no such thing as time management. We can't control time, but we can control our energy and focus. You take two people with the same 1 hour and the same to do list to burn through in that 1 hour. You take someone who's feeling tired, and lethargic, and is multitasking, and is low energy. I'm sounding like Donald Trump accusing people of being low energy, but anyway, you take the other person like T.J. McConnell, who I've never heard of before this undrafted 6 foot 2 rookie, and you decide to bring it. You are high energy you're focused you're not multitasking you're loving what you're doing you're trying to beat the clock. Who's going to get more done? It's the same 60 minutes, it's the same 1,440 minutes in a day, it's about bringing focused energy to the task at hand. Hats off to T.J. McConnell, and he's my new favorite player. I hope he's got a jersey or something out because I'm going to get it. Listen, in the last episode, I talked about the 6 secrets to stop being so overwhelmed new book for my friend Kelly Exeter. If you didn't hear that episode listen to that one after this one. It's not going anywhere so you can wait. Today I'm going to talk about the very real possibility that you might just be able to make 80% of your workload disappear. You just might be able to ignore it or, at least, give it to someone else. First, you know I want you to have that one-page planning tool that millionaires use to schedule their day. I want to stay in touch with you. Just text the word achieve to 44222 or open up your web browser and go to <a href="http://productivity-podcast.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">productivity-podcast.com</a> that way I can send you this quick start action plan you can 10x your productivity and the world will be a better place. Alright, what is the 80-20 rule and can it make 80% of work disappear? Here is the story behind this concept not already knows the story even if you've heard of the rule. There was a guy named Pareto, he was born in Italy in 1848. He was a business manager and all the rest but in his 40's kind of an old guy by 1848 standard he became an economist, he started doing more serious work. Legend has it that one day he noticed in his own personal Garden that 20% of the pea plants gave him 80% of its healthy pea pods. Twenty percent of the plants out produced 80% of the plants. He started thinking about this rule in nature of uneven distribution. He started doing some digging in the files in research among Italian landowners. He found out that 80% of the land in Italy was owned by 20% of the population. He then investigated different Industries and found that usually 80% of production came from just 20% of the top companies in that industry. He came up with this generalization 80% of results come from just 20% of the action. People started to look around and apply this rule of thumb to a lot of different areas, and you could probably see it yourself specially if were a small-business owner, medium-sized business owner. Twenty percent of sales representatives are usually the ones that are getting you 80% of your sales. You have a 100 sales reps most of your sales are coming from about 20 of them. Twenty percent of your customers generally account for 80% of total profits. Some customers are a pain in the butt, they're difficult to work with, they complain, they need special customization, they don't pay their bills. Those are money-losing or low-profit customers others they're ready to buy off the shelf they pay cash their dream customer dream clients. Twenty percent of your customers are accounting for 80% of your profit. In software, 20% of the software bugs reported are generally the ones that cause 80% of software crashes. If you want to stop your software from crashing you don't need to fix all your bugs, you need to fix those 20% that are causing 80% of those crashes. Let's look at healthcare, today in the United States 20% of patients account for 80% of all healthcare spending. By the way, 5% of all patients account for 50% of all of our healthcare spending. Over half of our healthcare spending is going to a very small number of patients. Look I like to personalize everything right so here's are some examples from my own life. Think about whether they apply or you have something similar in your own life. I own about I think 5 very expensive amazing suits. I don't suit up very often unless I'm going out on a speaking gig or something. Eighty percent of the time when I need a suit I just grab my black very well-tailored single-breasted Armani suit I grab the same powder blue shirt. Even though I've got 5 suits, I don't rotate I just keep grabbing the same suit 1 out of 5 suits all the time. For you ladies out there how many shoes do you own, how many high heels do you own? I'll bet you probably grab the same 20% and wear those over and over and then there's others that you we're almost never. I've got 15 rooms in my house and about 80% of the time I spend in just the bedroom family room or my office that's 20% of my rooms. I don't know how many miles of roadway are Highway are in and around my town, but I'm sure I drive on less than 20% of them. I go to the school, I go to the grocery store, I go to the bank ,I go to the gas station, and that's about it and then the airport. On my smartphone, I counted about 48 different mobile apps but 80% of the time I'm only using the 8 apps that are on my home screen. Look, this 80-20 it's not always exactly as you start to look at your own sales reps in sales or as you start to look at your own life practices. It's more about the point of uneven inputs and outputs. In fact, it all started we talked about Pareto looking at wealth distribution and of course, in the United States it's a big topic right now is the growing wealth gap. As of now it's not 80-20 that would seem pretty equitable by today's standards. As of now in the United States, .1% one-tenth of 1% of Americans own 90% of the wealth, the same amount of wealth as 90% of all other Americans. That's not even 80-20, it's 90 and .1. When I was doing all those interviews with the Olympic athletes, the self-made millionaires, the straight A's students, and others. They were all using explicitly or not they were using some form of the Pareto Principle. They're all distinctly aware that listen we only have 1,440 minutes in a day, and there will always be more to do. There is always more stuff that can be done that we'll never get too. It's not like you just work and try to get everything done, you will never get everything done. A strategy is like when is enough enough. Use 80-20 use the Pareto principle as a way to help you figure out the core things you need to be working on and then let the rest go or delegate it if it does have to be done. How can you apply it, how do you apply this into your real world? Listen if you're an executive you're a team leader in a large organization a company, not all projects are equal instead of trying to do the impossible. Instead of you trying to do everything or have your team do everything. Instead, a Pareto approaches is to understand which projects which goal are most important to your organization which one's align to your organization's goals. Which projects or goals are most important to your boss, right? like some things are going to be scrutinized something things she's asking you about for follow-up and tracking the progress. Others she hasn't asked you in about 6 months so not all things are created equal. Understand what are the 20% of projects 20% of goals 20% of tasks that you need to personally stay on top of because they're going to get you 80% of your bonus of your evaluation of your outcomes and then the rest delegate it to others or drop it in entirely if you can. If you're a freelancer startup entrepreneur this still applies to you I mean money is time. Use the Pareto Principle to understand who your best paying clients are. It's always going to be easier to sell more stuff to an existing customer than new stuff to a new customer. Don't burn yourself out focus on quality work with fewer project and fewer customers and entrepreneurs in general. I've got an idea every single day for a new gazillion dollar business whether it really would be who knows but I still have those ideas. Entrepreneurs need to focus just stay focused in your one area until you've maximized the results from that area then expand your marketplace. I can remember years ago to being in a board meeting and supporting the CEO. The CEO presented to the board this idea of we're going to ... we were in the United States software company, and he says "okay now here's our plan we're going to open up offices in Europe to expand." He went through this whole presentation about global expansion, and finally, one of the board members raised a hand and said "when you only control about 2% of the market in the United States is it a little easier to grow your market here in the United States before you decide on flying across the Atlantic and dealing with different cultures and languages and currencies and Technologies and everything else. Why do you want to do that?" That was the end of our global expansion plan. He didn't use the words, he's basically saying stay focused don't try to do everything all at once. This is a powerful principle even in your personal life. You could be a stay-at-home parent or just a busy homeowner trying to do it all at home. The never ending chore list the Honeydew list right? Think about that 80-20 rule, I think about let's say yard work. I've got one neighbor in particular who spends every morning night weekend out in his yard. I'm hoping he enjoys that I hope that's like a hobby so good for him if it is. When I look around my neighbors yards and my own yards I drive up and down the street what do I notice? I notice that someone needs to mow their lawn or if they've got really tall weeds growing around. Other than that I don't notice if the bushes have been trimmed a little bit, I don't notice if they've got fresh flowers by their doorsteps, I don't notice if they fertilize their lawn right? There are two things long weeds and mowing their lawn that would get them 80% of the beauty of their front yard, and they wouldn't have to work on all those other things. Again if you enjoy doing it, that's a different story. What 20% of your to-do list items at work and at home drive 80% of the outcome? Eighty percent of your reward 80% of your happiness. Alright, I hope you tell a friend about this episode. There's got to be someone you know who is too hard on herself always trying to get it all done. Someone who foolishly thinks she can just keep adding more things to her to do list and that she will do them all. Just send her to <a href="http://productivity-podcast.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">productivity-podcast.com</a> so she can listen to these other episodes. She can also text the word achieve don't forget about that way, text the word achieve to 44222 and that will get her signed up as well. Do it so that you both can listen to the very next episode its doing to be a funny one. I'm going to tell you about who I call the world's biggest slacker and how he won company awards for excellence while he goofed off 8 hours a day surfing the web. Strange but true tale of unusual productivity. Until next week remember master your minutes to master your life.

Life Changing Magic Of The 80-20 Rule

How To Schedule Long-Term Goals On Your Calendar

In this episode, I’ll teach you how to accomplish all the list of things that you want to do. What you’re going to learn:  Tips on how to develop a process on all the things that you need to be doing to actually get them done.  Key Quotes: “We cannot make more minutes.” “Give time as a gift to yourself first.”

In this episode, I’ll teach you how to accomplish all the list of things that you want to do. What you’re going to learn: <ul> <li>Tips on how to develop a process on all the things that you need to be doing to actually get them done.</li> </ul> Key Quotes: “We cannot make more minutes.” “Give time as a gift to yourself first.”

How To Get It All Done

Today, I’m going to talk about a new book that just came out that I just loved. It teaches us the secrets to defeating that feeling of being overworked and overwhelmed. It’s by a writer named Kelly Exeter. What you’re going to learn:  The 3 main reasons people feel overworked and overwhelmed all of the time 6 secret habits to cure the feeling of being overworked and overwhelmed without sacrificing your goals or career advancement  Key Quotes: “Don’t compare highlight reels with your everyday life.” “Facebook life is the life everyone would have if we were all living on that TV series Sex in the City.” “There’s nobody that’s got a perfect family, perfect career, perfect body, and great mental health.” “Your values, what you truly want from life, are your values. It’s okay that they’re completely different than those around you.” Read Full Transcript Kevin Kruse here with another life changing episode of Extreme Productivity. At least that's my mindset. Every time I record one of these, every article I write, every book that I write, I hope to change at least one person's life. I hope you approach it the same way. I hope you listen to each episode and say, "Hey, let me listen to see if I can get one idea that just might change my life." I just got back from Key West, about a five day vacation, super long weekend. I think it was the fifth time I've been down there. Finally figured out how to do it right. I mean, it's a food town and I'm finding all the best places to eat. I'm a foodie at heart. I'm always asked by people wondering if I follow these fifteen productivity principles on the weekend and on vacation and all this kind of stuff. Heck no. I preach extreme productivity for when you're trying to be extremely productive but I also believe in completely unplugging and relaxing when that's what you're supposed to be doing. I spent time at Irish Kevin's Bar, which is a famous bar down there. One, because I'm Irish. Two, because my name is Kevin. Three, because it's a bar. I also played with the six-toed cats at Ernest Hemingway's house. You can Google them if you don't know the reference. I've been there two, three times. Ernest Hemingway's house. It's great. It's a great place. Great to learn about Hemingway. As a writer, I like to get inspiration and look around his house and wonder, "Hmm, maybe being a suicidal womanizing alcoholic is the key to great writing." It probably isn't but it might be a fun experiment someday. Last but not least, a friend of mine opened a restaurant. She's got her own restaurant which was off the hook. I mean that literally. It is called Off the Hook. Get it? Seafood? Off the Hook. If you're ever down there, it's amazing. It's on Simonton, not Duval but almost right downtown. It's easy to get to. I had a great time and I am ready and back. I'm going to binge record a bunch of these episodes here. That's why I'm all fired up. In the last episode, I talked about how millionaires schedule their day. Today, I'm going to talk about a new book that just came out that I just loved. It teaches us the secrets to defeating that feeling of being overworked and overwhelmed. It's by a writer named Kelly Exeter. First, as always, I want to make sure that you've gotten that one page planning tool that millionaires use to schedule their day. It will help us to stay in touch. Just send me a text message. Send a text to 44222 with the word "achieve" or you can always just go over to the website productivity-podcast.com. Let's dive in. Do you ever feel like you're a hamster on a wheel? Just running and running, not making any progress. Imagine if you could cure that feeling of being overworked and overwhelmed without sacrificing your goals and your career advancement. I just read a new book called Practical Perfection by Kelly Exeter. Now, she's a really cool Australian writer and consultant and she's got it all going on, but five years ago, she literally had a breakdown, a pretty serious breakdown from trying to please everyone, working too hard, not taking care of herself. She rebounded and got back to being better than ever before with what she has now called this term practical perfection framework. That's sort of her answer. This practical perfection framework that she's written in this book, Practical Perfection. Her goal is to get you the time and space so that you can be good for the world, you can serve those closest to you and, of course, you can be good to yourself. I just want to focus on one chapter. This was my favorite chapter. This one chapter is well worth the price of the entire book. The chapter is about how do we stop feeling so overwhelmed. Exeter, when doing research for her book, found that 52%, over half the people surveyed that she surveyed, said that they feel overwhelmed a lot or all of the time. Overwhelm has really become the new normal for the majority of us. Now, what causes us to feel that way? Kelly says that there's three main reasons. First is FOMO, fear of missing out. Second is FODO, fear of disappointing others. The third is being so passionate about our stuff, whatever our stuff is, that we just want to use up every available minute of the day working on it. We don't actually want to spend any time resting or recovering. Now, I don't know about you, but I can relate to all three of these things. Just this morning, I got an invitation from the dean of a local college to go to the opening of their entrepreneur center. I was invited by a professor who's setting up a Shark Tank style business plan competition. They wanted me to help design it and be a judge. A friend of mine is racing in the Indie 500, invited me to watch the race. This is the one-hundredth anniversary of the Indie 500. There's a very cool writer's conference coming up in Austin, Texas and really want to go to that. Of course, my work which is my passion. I mean, I got a long list of articles I want to write and books to write and on and on. I don't want to miss out, FOMO, on all these amazing experiences. It's hard for me to say no, FODO, to other people who are asking me to participate in some of this. I just want to release more and more work. That's my passion. I'm going to say no to all that but it's hard. Kelly would say that the potential for feeling overwhelmed is high, especially if I give in and agree to doing all these very cool things. What's the cure when we're feeling overwhelmed? How do we fight back against FOMO and FODO? Sounds like a quest for ... We're a bunch of hobbits trying to cure evil. Anyway, here's the first one. The first way to tackle that feeling of being overwhelmed. Don't compare highlight reels with your everyday life. What Kelly's talking about is that we're looking at social media all the time. Facebook and Instagram and if you're a youngin', you're now on Snapchat. We need to remember that everything we see on social media is really just the highlight reel of people's lives. I once heard somebody say that the Facebook life is the life everyone would have if we were all living on that TV series Sex in the City. It's not real. People are not uploading videos of all the boring stuff, of all the painful stuff, of all the disappointments. They're only putting their highlight reel up there. How do we tackle overwhelm advice number two? Understand that no one has it all. This is similar to number one. Nobody truly has it all. We can't compare. We got to get over this comparison-itis. We can't look at the family down the street and think that's a perfect family. We can't look at that team member and think they have the perfect career. We can't look at our friend or the online people and think they've got a perfect body and, of course, great mental health. There's nobody that's got a perfect family, perfect career, perfect body, and great mental health. That reminded me. I had, a long time ago, there was a friend and she was always Miss Positive, which is good to look at the glass half full, but it can be to a fault if you're not willing to be vulnerable with your friends and family members. I could remember asking her how everything was. She said, "Oh, everything's great." Everything was just great. Then, I shared about relationship troubles or whatever I was going through and then just after that, I found out that she actually had a pretty serious cancer diagnosis and was going through early treatment. She didn't even bring it up. It wasn't just that I wasn't that close to her. She wasn't telling anybody other than her immediate family. That's certainly her right and a very personal thing. That was the story I thought about when we think about the friends at work or online, especially who seem to have it all. The perfect life. Nobody has a perfect life. Just because they're not talking about their struggle doesn't mean that they don't have a bad day or an inner-struggle as well. Let's see. How do we tackle overwhelm secret number three? Understand that other people's goals are not your goals. It's natural to be influenced by our peers. We just have to remember that as much as we love our friends, our family members, and we care about their opinions and stuff to a certain degree, we can't let it get under our skin in a negative way. Just because your sister has a PhD doesn't mean you need to stay in school pursuing higher education. Just because your brother became a venture capitalist and is worth a bazillion dollars doesn't mean you need to pursue a career in business or measure your own self worth by the number of dollars that you have. Your values, what you truly want from life, are your values. It's okay that they can be completely different than those around you. That's what makes you you. Secret number four to tackling overwhelm. Understand that your priorities may not really be priorities at all. Sometimes we think that we have something as a priority. In reality, it's just something that might be nice to have but really isn't that important. Obviously, I'm a writer and I get approached by friends and strangers who tell me with envy in their voice that I'm so lucky and it must be great to be an author and have the author lifestyle. They have a book inside of them and they're going to write a book and they would love to be an author someday. They make it sound like this is a pretty high priority for them to write their book. If I were to ask them, none of them have read a book on how to be a writer, how to write. I think I've read 50. They don't belong to any writing groups on Facebook where other writers share tips and commiserate. They don't even write or write a journal. All these people who say, "Oh, yeah. I'm so disappointed. I've never found the time." That's a stupid phrase, right? "Found the time to write that book. You must be so lucky. You must be so fortunate. You must be so happy being an author." Yeah, I am, but maybe it's just not really a priority for them. You know, I do it too. I think that being in great shape is a priority for me and on many days, I'll feel badly about myself that I don't look like some male model. Most days I need to remember that, jeez, if that was truly a priority, I would probably go to the gym someday. If I don't go to the gym and don't really pay too much attention to what I'm eating, maybe looking like a male model isn't much of a priority. It's nice to have but I've got to stop beating myself up over it. Secret to overcoming overwhelm number five. This is a big one. Get comfortable with disappointing others. It's a hard one, right? From the time we're little kids, we're raised and told that it's good to help others, it's good to be polite. We want to be accommodating. We don't want to have disagreements. We're supposed to play nice in the sandbox. No fighting, no arguing. It's no wonder that as adults, so many of us struggle with saying no. N-O. That's one of the chapters in my book as well, one of the fifteen secrets, is a default to no. You need to become comfortable with protecting your time, with establishing your boundaries. Listen, if your friends are truly friends, if your colleagues at work are truly professional, if your family members truly love you and I know they do, they're not going to expect you to be able to say yes all of the time. They're going to be understanding, especially if you say, "Hey, I'd really like to help, just not this time. I can't this time." If they truly care about you, if they're truly professional, they're not going to hold it against you. Finally, secret number six on how to tackle feeling overworked and overwhelmed. Learn six simple words. This is the most specific advice in Kelly Exeter's entire book. She says we need to memorize six simple words. Here they are: Let me get back to you. This goes along with secret number five. By default, we're programmed to say yes to everything and everyone. Every opportunity, we're supposed to jump on it. Everyone needs help, we're supposed to help them. We need to reprogram ourselves to say no, but until we can do that, because it is hard, at least reprogram yourself so that instead of saying yes, you say those six words, "Let me get back to you." Now, you could say that and then get back to them in five minutes with a yes, that's fine, or you could take a day or a week. That's the beauty of it. You're not locking yourself into a specific time frame. It gives you a little bit of space, a little bit of time to think it through. Do you really want to say yes or not? Hey, if it's a little hard to say no to someone's face, it's a little easier to say no via email or voice mail. That's another benefit from all of it. Kelly Exeter, you know, her book is called Practical Perfection. The reason why it's called that is she has this visual model. Imagine a Venn diagram. Three circles that overlap. There's like a bulls eye in the middle. Each circle, she says represents ... One circle is passion, another is priorities, and another is productivity. The zone in the middle where all of these three things overlap, that's the practical perfection zone. When we're working with our passion, our priorities, and our productivity, if any one of those three things are missing, we're going to feel it. We're going to notice it in our bodies emotionally. When we're feeling overwhelmed, it's usually when we are being productive, we're working it hard, we're passionate, we like helping people, we like working on our work, but what's missing is the third circle, priorities. Overwhelmed is passion plus productivity minus priorities. To get all the other awesome chapters, go onto Amazon. Just search on Practical Perfection. You'll see the book by Kelly Exeter and I encourage you to check it out. How are we going to apply what we just reviewed from Kelly's book today? First of all, listen, should you be maybe spending less time on Facebook so you don't have that comparison-itis, looking at the highlight reel of everyone else's life. Hey, maybe you need to unfriend or unfollow at least some people who like to show us their Sex in the City lifestyle or at least move that Facebook icon to the last page on your phone, the last tile on your phone, not the first, so you don't just by default, "Hey, I got five seconds to kill. Let me feel bad about myself by looking at what Joanne's doing today." You know, we don't need to be doing that. Then, hey, driving home from work or going for a quick coffee break, think about your goals and priorities and other people's goals and priorities. Are yours really yours or are your goals and priorities being influenced by what your parents think or by what your big brother thinks or because your boss wants you to do a certain thing that you don't really think is your future career path? Just get really clear on what your values are, what your priorities are. What is really important to you? Third and last thing, I got to challenge for you. What are those six words? Let me get back to you. Practice it. I want you to use those six words even if you know it's a yes. I don't care. Hubby says, "Hey, you want to go catch a movie on Friday?" "Let me get back to you." He's going to be like, "What? What do you mean get back to you?" That's okay. Boss says, "Hey, I need five copies of this report done by 3:00." "Let me get back to you." "What do you mean, 'Let me get back to you?'" I don't care if it's an easy yes. Get people used to hearing those six words. Sixty seconds later, you can still say, "Yeah, that's not going to be a problem," or, "Yeah, that's a great idea." You need to practice saying, "Let me get back to you." All right. Hopefully, you enjoyed this latest episode. As always, I want to make sure that we stay connected via email. All you need to do is text the word "achieve" to 44222 or visit productivity-podcast.com and you'll sign up for my weekly tip list and you're immediately going to download the one page planning tool that millionaires and other ultra productive people use to plan their day. It's part of the quick start action plan you're going to get. Hey, make sure you subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher if you're a droid user like me so you don't miss the next episode which is all about how the 80-20 rule, the Pareto Principle, can totally change your life. If you liked this episode, send the link to some friends, send them to productivity-podcast.com. Time is life. You want to help them out, don't you? Until next week, remember, master your minutes to master your life.

Today, I’m going to talk about a <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Practical-Perfection-Smart-strategies-excellent/dp/0992441633/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">new book</a> that just came out that I just loved. It teaches us the secrets to defeating that feeling of being overworked and overwhelmed. It’s by a writer named Kelly Exeter. What you’re going to learn: <ul> <li>The 3 main reasons people feel overworked and overwhelmed all of the time</li> <li>6 secret habits to cure the feeling of being overworked and overwhelmed without sacrificing your goals or career advancement</li> </ul> Key Quotes: <blockquote>“Don’t compare highlight reels with your everyday life.” “Facebook life is the life everyone would have if we were all living on that TV series Sex in the City.” “There’s nobody that’s got a perfect family, perfect career, perfect body, and great mental health.” “Your values, what you truly want from life, are your values. It’s okay that they’re completely different than those around you.”</blockquote> <a href="#" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Read Full Transcript</a> Kevin Kruse here with another life changing episode of Extreme Productivity. At least that's my mindset. Every time I record one of these, every article I write, every book that I write, I hope to change at least one person's life. I hope you approach it the same way. I hope you listen to each episode and say, "Hey, let me listen to see if I can get one idea that just might change my life." I just got back from Key West, about a five day vacation, super long weekend. I think it was the fifth time I've been down there. Finally figured out how to do it right. I mean, it's a food town and I'm finding all the best places to eat. I'm a foodie at heart. I'm always asked by people wondering if I follow these fifteen productivity principles on the weekend and on vacation and all this kind of stuff. Heck no. I preach extreme productivity for when you're trying to be extremely productive but I also believe in completely unplugging and relaxing when that's what you're supposed to be doing. I spent time at Irish Kevin's Bar, which is a famous bar down there. One, because I'm Irish. Two, because my name is Kevin. Three, because it's a bar. I also played with the six-toed cats at Ernest Hemingway's house. You can Google them if you don't know the reference. I've been there two, three times. Ernest Hemingway's house. It's great. It's a great place. Great to learn about Hemingway. As a writer, I like to get inspiration and look around his house and wonder, "Hmm, maybe being a suicidal womanizing alcoholic is the key to great writing." It probably isn't but it might be a fun experiment someday. Last but not least, a friend of mine opened a restaurant. She's got her own restaurant which was off the hook. I mean that literally. It is called Off the Hook. Get it? Seafood? Off the Hook. If you're ever down there, it's amazing. It's on Simonton, not Duval but almost right downtown. It's easy to get to. I had a great time and I am ready and back. I'm going to binge record a bunch of these episodes here. That's why I'm all fired up. In the last episode, I talked about how millionaires schedule their day. Today, I'm going to talk about a new book that just came out that I just loved. It teaches us the secrets to defeating that feeling of being overworked and overwhelmed. It's by a writer named Kelly Exeter. First, as always, I want to make sure that you've gotten that one page planning tool that millionaires use to schedule their day. It will help us to stay in touch. Just send me a text message. Send a text to 44222 with the word "achieve" or you can always just go over to the website <a href="http://productivity-podcast.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">productivity-podcast.com</a>. Let's dive in. Do you ever feel like you're a hamster on a wheel? Just running and running, not making any progress. Imagine if you could cure that feeling of being overworked and overwhelmed without sacrificing your goals and your career advancement. I just read a new book called Practical Perfection by Kelly Exeter. Now, she's a really cool Australian writer and consultant and she's got it all going on, but five years ago, she literally had a breakdown, a pretty serious breakdown from trying to please everyone, working too hard, not taking care of herself. She rebounded and got back to being better than ever before with what she has now called this term practical perfection framework. That's sort of her answer. This practical perfection framework that she's written in this book, Practical Perfection. Her goal is to get you the time and space so that you can be good for the world, you can serve those closest to you and, of course, you can be good to yourself. I just want to focus on one chapter. This was my favorite chapter. This one chapter is well worth the price of the entire book. The chapter is about how do we stop feeling so overwhelmed. Exeter, when doing research for her book, found that 52%, over half the people surveyed that she surveyed, said that they feel overwhelmed a lot or all of the time. Overwhelm has really become the new normal for the majority of us. Now, what causes us to feel that way? Kelly says that there's three main reasons. First is FOMO, fear of missing out. Second is FODO, fear of disappointing others. The third is being so passionate about our stuff, whatever our stuff is, that we just want to use up every available minute of the day working on it. We don't actually want to spend any time resting or recovering. Now, I don't know about you, but I can relate to all three of these things. Just this morning, I got an invitation from the dean of a local college to go to the opening of their entrepreneur center. I was invited by a professor who's setting up a Shark Tank style business plan competition. They wanted me to help design it and be a judge. A friend of mine is racing in the Indie 500, invited me to watch the race. This is the one-hundredth anniversary of the Indie 500. There's a very cool writer's conference coming up in Austin, Texas and really want to go to that. Of course, my work which is my passion. I mean, I got a long list of articles I want to write and books to write and on and on. I don't want to miss out, FOMO, on all these amazing experiences. It's hard for me to say no, FODO, to other people who are asking me to participate in some of this. I just want to release more and more work. That's my passion. I'm going to say no to all that but it's hard. Kelly would say that the potential for feeling overwhelmed is high, especially if I give in and agree to doing all these very cool things. What's the cure when we're feeling overwhelmed? How do we fight back against FOMO and FODO? Sounds like a quest for ... We're a bunch of hobbits trying to cure evil. Anyway, here's the first one. The first way to tackle that feeling of being overwhelmed. Don't compare highlight reels with your everyday life. What Kelly's talking about is that we're looking at social media all the time. Facebook and Instagram and if you're a youngin', you're now on Snapchat. We need to remember that everything we see on social media is really just the highlight reel of people's lives. I once heard somebody say that the Facebook life is the life everyone would have if we were all living on that TV series Sex in the City. It's not real. People are not uploading videos of all the boring stuff, of all the painful stuff, of all the disappointments. They're only putting their highlight reel up there. How do we tackle overwhelm advice number two? Understand that no one has it all. This is similar to number one. Nobody truly has it all. We can't compare. We got to get over this comparison-itis. We can't look at the family down the street and think that's a perfect family. We can't look at that team member and think they have the perfect career. We can't look at our friend or the online people and think they've got a perfect body and, of course, great mental health. There's nobody that's got a perfect family, perfect career, perfect body, and great mental health. That reminded me. I had, a long time ago, there was a friend and she was always Miss Positive, which is good to look at the glass half full, but it can be to a fault if you're not willing to be vulnerable with your friends and family members. I could remember asking her how everything was. She said, "Oh, everything's great." Everything was just great. Then, I shared about relationship troubles or whatever I was going through and then just after that, I found out that she actually had a pretty serious cancer diagnosis and was going through early treatment. She didn't even bring it up. It wasn't just that I wasn't that close to her. She wasn't telling anybody other than her immediate family. That's certainly her right and a very personal thing. That was the story I thought about when we think about the friends at work or online, especially who seem to have it all. The perfect life. Nobody has a perfect life. Just because they're not talking about their struggle doesn't mean that they don't have a bad day or an inner-struggle as well. Let's see. How do we tackle overwhelm secret number three? Understand that other people's goals are not your goals. It's natural to be influenced by our peers. We just have to remember that as much as we love our friends, our family members, and we care about their opinions and stuff to a certain degree, we can't let it get under our skin in a negative way. Just because your sister has a PhD doesn't mean you need to stay in school pursuing higher education. Just because your brother became a venture capitalist and is worth a bazillion dollars doesn't mean you need to pursue a career in business or measure your own self worth by the number of dollars that you have. Your values, what you truly want from life, are your values. It's okay that they can be completely different than those around you. That's what makes you you. Secret number four to tackling overwhelm. Understand that your priorities may not really be priorities at all. Sometimes we think that we have something as a priority. In reality, it's just something that might be nice to have but really isn't that important. Obviously, I'm a writer and I get approached by friends and strangers who tell me with envy in their voice that I'm so lucky and it must be great to be an author and have the author lifestyle. They have a book inside of them and they're going to write a book and they would love to be an author someday. They make it sound like this is a pretty high priority for them to write their book. If I were to ask them, none of them have read a book on how to be a writer, how to write. I think I've read 50. They don't belong to any writing groups on Facebook where other writers share tips and commiserate. They don't even write or write a journal. All these people who say, "Oh, yeah. I'm so disappointed. I've never found the time." That's a stupid phrase, right? "Found the time to write that book. You must be so lucky. You must be so fortunate. You must be so happy being an author." Yeah, I am, but maybe it's just not really a priority for them. You know, I do it too. I think that being in great shape is a priority for me and on many days, I'll feel badly about myself that I don't look like some male model. Most days I need to remember that, jeez, if that was truly a priority, I would probably go to the gym someday. If I don't go to the gym and don't really pay too much attention to what I'm eating, maybe looking like a male model isn't much of a priority. It's nice to have but I've got to stop beating myself up over it. Secret to overcoming overwhelm number five. This is a big one. Get comfortable with disappointing others. It's a hard one, right? From the time we're little kids, we're raised and told that it's good to help others, it's good to be polite. We want to be accommodating. We don't want to have disagreements. We're supposed to play nice in the sandbox. No fighting, no arguing. It's no wonder that as adults, so many of us struggle with saying no. N-O. That's one of the chapters in my book as well, one of the fifteen secrets, is a default to no. You need to become comfortable with protecting your time, with establishing your boundaries. Listen, if your friends are truly friends, if your colleagues at work are truly professional, if your family members truly love you and I know they do, they're not going to expect you to be able to say yes all of the time. They're going to be understanding, especially if you say, "Hey, I'd really like to help, just not this time. I can't this time." If they truly care about you, if they're truly professional, they're not going to hold it against you. Finally, secret number six on how to tackle feeling overworked and overwhelmed. Learn six simple words. This is the most specific advice in Kelly Exeter's entire book. She says we need to memorize six simple words. Here they are: Let me get back to you. This goes along with secret number five. By default, we're programmed to say yes to everything and everyone. Every opportunity, we're supposed to jump on it. Everyone needs help, we're supposed to help them. We need to reprogram ourselves to say no, but until we can do that, because it is hard, at least reprogram yourself so that instead of saying yes, you say those six words, "Let me get back to you." Now, you could say that and then get back to them in five minutes with a yes, that's fine, or you could take a day or a week. That's the beauty of it. You're not locking yourself into a specific time frame. It gives you a little bit of space, a little bit of time to think it through. Do you really want to say yes or not? Hey, if it's a little hard to say no to someone's face, it's a little easier to say no via email or voice mail. That's another benefit from all of it. Kelly Exeter, you know, her book is called Practical Perfection. The reason why it's called that is she has this visual model. Imagine a Venn diagram. Three circles that overlap. There's like a bulls eye in the middle. Each circle, she says represents ... One circle is passion, another is priorities, and another is productivity. The zone in the middle where all of these three things overlap, that's the practical perfection zone. When we're working with our passion, our priorities, and our productivity, if any one of those three things are missing, we're going to feel it. We're going to notice it in our bodies emotionally. When we're feeling overwhelmed, it's usually when we are being productive, we're working it hard, we're passionate, we like helping people, we like working on our work, but what's missing is the third circle, priorities. Overwhelmed is passion plus productivity minus priorities. To get all the other awesome chapters, go onto Amazon. Just search on Practical Perfection. You'll see the book by Kelly Exeter and I encourage you to check it out. How are we going to apply what we just reviewed from Kelly's book today? First of all, listen, should you be maybe spending less time on Facebook so you don't have that comparison-itis, looking at the highlight reel of everyone else's life. Hey, maybe you need to unfriend or unfollow at least some people who like to show us their Sex in the City lifestyle or at least move that Facebook icon to the last page on your phone, the last tile on your phone, not the first, so you don't just by default, "Hey, I got five seconds to kill. Let me feel bad about myself by looking at what Joanne's doing today." You know, we don't need to be doing that. Then, hey, driving home from work or going for a quick coffee break, think about your goals and priorities and other people's goals and priorities. Are yours really yours or are your goals and priorities being influenced by what your parents think or by what your big brother thinks or because your boss wants you to do a certain thing that you don't really think is your future career path? Just get really clear on what your values are, what your priorities are. What is really important to you? Third and last thing, I got to challenge for you. What are those six words? Let me get back to you. Practice it. I want you to use those six words even if you know it's a yes. I don't care. Hubby says, "Hey, you want to go catch a movie on Friday?" "Let me get back to you." He's going to be like, "What? What do you mean get back to you?" That's okay. Boss says, "Hey, I need five copies of this report done by 3:00." "Let me get back to you." "What do you mean, 'Let me get back to you?'" I don't care if it's an easy yes. Get people used to hearing those six words. Sixty seconds later, you can still say, "Yeah, that's not going to be a problem," or, "Yeah, that's a great idea." You need to practice saying, "Let me get back to you." All right. Hopefully, you enjoyed this latest episode. As always, I want to make sure that we stay connected via email. All you need to do is text the word "achieve" to 44222 or visit <a href="http://productivity-podcast.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">productivity-podcast.com</a> and you'll sign up for my weekly tip list and you're immediately going to download the one page planning tool that millionaires and other ultra productive people use to plan their day. It's part of the quick start action plan you're going to get. Hey, make sure you subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher if you're a droid user like me so you don't miss the next episode which is all about how the 80-20 rule, the Pareto Principle, can totally change your life. If you liked this episode, send the link to some friends, send them to <a href="http://productivity-podcast.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">productivity-podcast.com</a>. Time is life. You want to help them out, don't you? Until next week, remember, master your minutes to master your life.

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