Time Management Hacks: How To Be More Productive

welcome to today's episode of the mindset Mentor podcast I'm your host Rob dial today we're going to talk about how to be more productive and I'm going to give you some time management hacks one thing that I've found with people I coach a lot of business owners I've coached thousands of business owners over the past few years is that one of the things that I hear that's an excuse for not being where you want to be yet is I don't have enough time in that I'm just going to be honest with you is fully 100 a cop-out and the reason why is because of fact that nobody in this Earth is going to get more than 24 hours in a day we all get exactly the same amount and so really what it comes down to is if I'm saying I don't have enough time I'm taking the blame and I'm blaming something externally outside of me when in reality for me personally I want to be able to blame everything on myself because if I can blame it on myself that means I can also control it so it's not that you don't have enough time and you're not able to do it it's just that maybe you haven't been able to effectively manage your time that you do have I'm not saying that some people don't have a full-time job and kids and all of that and some people don't have a job and don't have kids and there's difference in how much time that they have time management means that you just need to get better at managing your time in the amount of important tasks that you get done per day or per week will dictate What Becomes of your life and so really what we need to focus on is with every hour of our day how can we be more productive not busy but productive busy is like I don't know if you've ever been busy all day long and you're working and you're working working you're doing things you're doing things doing things and at the end of the day you're like God I feel like I got nothing done well it's usually because you're focusing on busy tasks but when you're productive you have the feeling of moving the needle forward and that's what we're going to talk about today is how to be more productive so I'm going to give you four tips on it the first one is to yes everybody start scheduling your week on Sunday night this only takes 15 minutes I recommend that every person do this I've been recommending it for years and years and years you have a date with yourself every single Sunday night it could be Sunday morning if you want to while you're having your coffee and the kids are still asleep or Sunday night when you're just sitting there and you're thinking about the week ahead you take 15 minutes and you look at your calendar and what you have going on and you look at your to-do list and what you have going on and then what you want to do is inside of your calendar this is something I was taught when I was younger before we actually had our calendars on our phones and everything we used to have like the actual 15 minute calendar from 7 A. M until 7 PM every 15-minute increment was broken out and we used to take our calendars and we used to have the set things and we just have the movable things set is something that is static something that cannot be moved and so what you do is you sit down and you write all of the things that are set in your schedule that have to occur at certain times and you put those into your schedule first so it could be like you have a meeting with your boss Tuesday at 3 pm put that in your schedule that is something that is set that is something that is static that is something that is not movable right it's like a boulder you can't move a boulder you're just gonna put that in your schedule so in those 15 minutes you put all of your meetings and all the things that cannot be moved in your schedule then you look at your to-do list and you start to plan the things that are movable these are things that will be placed into your schedule after the static things after the things that are set after the big huge Boulders now you can start placing the little rocks the rocks can be movable if they need to be but what you're trying to do is you're trying to get a pretty good idea and that your schedule will change multiple times throughout the day throughout the week I promise you that but you're trying to get an overall idea of what the week looks like because a lot of times people are stressed or anxious going into their week or going into their their day because they don't have a real solid set schedule that they can look at and says okay from this time this time from this and this time for this and this time this is what I'm doing when you have a schedule that is has all of your set things and all of your movable things have been placed into it in the other times it makes you feel way better and then because schedules change and things get done and some things don't get done you have a morning meeting with yourself for five maybe ten minutes every single morning what you do is you take your to-do list for that day things that need to be done that day what you do is you actually start to plan out your day move around things that need to be moved and make sure that you get done the things that are the most important a lot of times people just want to check off stuff on their to-do list but those things on a to-do list are not necessarily important and so you're just gonna have a five minute meeting with yourself and just visualize what your day is going to look like you put it on paper you start to plan it out okay I'm gonna cross off this my to-do list at 2PM across this one to this at 11 A. M and you start to get an idea of how to actually start Crossing stuff off because a lot of times people we just get stressed when we have open time and we know we have a lot of things to do but we don't know exactly what to do right now we're trying to mitigate that by just making sure that we can look at our schedule and just go okay yeah I do this and we just take action now that goes into number two number two is actually how to prioritize your to-do list and so there's a thing called the Eisenhower box it is also called the Urgent important Matrix and it was created by the 34th president of the United States Dwight D Eisenhower and the Matrix really helps you make decisions to prioritize tasks based on their urgency and their importance and so it's basically if you just imagine a box and you imagine a cross through the middle of it so it looks like a window this is what it what it really is there's four separate quadrants of the Box quadrant one which is in the top left is the Urgent and important things this is called the do it now section the things that have to be done today and you do these tasks immediately if possible these are tasks that need immediate attention either do them immediately or you make sure 100 that they're going to be crossed off today these require your immediate attention so you know then maybe a crisis comes up or a pressing problem or a deadline is really approaching these are the things that are going to be in that box so like an example would be let's say you have a a work deadline and you have a presentation that's coming up tomorrow but you haven't finished the slides for it well then obviously this is going to be in quadrant one this is urgent and this is important finalizing this becomes your top priority for the day and so you look at your schedule and you actually put it in there how you're going to get this top priority done so that is quadrant one next to that in the top is to the top right is not urgent but important this is what they call the decide part of the Box you decide when to do it so what you do is you start to schedule these things out so things are like super urgent you're probably going to do right now quadrant run is hey this is this is definitely something that needs to be done it's not urgent doesn't have to be done at this exact second but it is very important and you're also going to schedule those into your schedule to make sure they get done you want to cross off as many important things whether it's urgent and important or not urgent but also important you want to try to schedule those into your day today these are really really critical for your long-term success these can be tasks that are like related to your your long-term goals your planning whatever it might be but spending more time here reduces the chances of the tasks falling into quadrant launches like holy I got to get this done immediately right now so it could be like for instance personal development setting aside time like this is is not urgent it doesn't have to be done right now but it's really important for me to get this done or my workout it doesn't have to be done at this exact moment but it is really important that it gets done today so you set aside time each week just to learn a new skill or to get better with your personal development or to make sure that you work out or to learn a foreign language or get better at digital marketing things that can enhance your professional and personal life could be in this another thing could be your relationships for instance planning a date night with your spouse is probably not urgent but it's important this is something that definitely you want to make sure that you do because I don't know if you're like the average person that I speak to the average person I speak to is like man yeah my wife and I we've been talking about going on date nights every single week and then this happens and we have the kids and then we have work and we end up just pushing it to the next week and then we forget about it we push it into next week so it's like it's not it doesn't have to be done immediately but it's important so maybe look at your schedule and say okay Friday 6 p.

m I'm gonna make sure I take my wife out we're going to go to this place okay so I'm going to get reservations here and I also need to make sure that we schedule a babysitter so therefore you're planning ahead in these things that are not urgent they don't have to get done right this second but they're still important we make sure scheduled okay so that's quadrant two quadrant three is in the bottom left of this little box in quadrant three is the delegate section the question who can do it for you so one of the things I think is is really has been really eye-opening for me and will be eye-opening to a lot of people listening to this read the book that was written by Tim Ferriss called four hour work week he completely changed my mind on time management he changed my mind on emails he changed my mind on delegation some of you guys are like well I work a job and I work for someone else a lot of times you could hire a virtual assistant for six to ten dollars an hour they could work 10 hours a week for you and they can get done the little tasks as almost as well as you can but now you can just pay them to do it so that you can focus on the more important things you can hire somebody to do it maybe if you have things that are urgent but not important then they need to be done today maybe you can delegate them to your children if they're old enough if they're teenagers and they can get that thing done for you hey honey can you do this thing for me and make sure they do it sometimes you can delegate it to your spouse maybe they can do it oh this thing has to be done today but it's not the most important thing so it might be like it's really important that we it's urgent that we get everything figured out all the clothes washed for our kids before their soccer practice tonight their soccer game tonight but it's not like the most important thing in your life to make sure that your kids have a clean Jersey but it's important I'm sorry it's not important but it is urgent and some you can either hire someone to do certain things for you you can have the the children do it for you you can have your spouse do it for you the question really is in this section can somebody else do it for you if you cannot delegate then set specific times in your schedule to handle them so if like you say okay well I'm looking ahead on my schedule Tommy has his soccer game Thursday at 6 p. m he's got a bunch of dirty clothes he's 16 years old he can do it himself figure it out either that or you're just going to wear some dirty smelly clothes to your next game you could do that if you wanted to or you could say hey he's only six he's not able to do his clothes so I'm going to make sure that I do it at 7 pm tomorrow so therefore I know it's going to be done on time and so that way you can use these tasks and make sure they get done but you can hopefully if you can get better at this like delegation is not an easy thing for a lot of people but if you can delegate all these things that are not important it'd be really good another good example this would be like emails right emails sure maybe sometimes emails are urgent but 95 of the time emails are not really urgent they don't have to be done immediately and so emails can be an example of this when you're being interrupted by constant email notifications that aren't really like related to pressing issues and things that have to be done in your life like right now or your primary objectives or like your biggest things on your to-do list those can get in the way can you talk to your boss if you're a manager and say Hey listen I really need an assistant could we talk about maybe me getting an assistant so that I can start focusing on the higher level things that are to my pay grade so therefore I'm not doing these tasks that really aren't important for us making more Revenue in the business you know see if that's possible it might be it might not be but really what it comes down to is starting to actually look ahead and plan these things out and then quadrant four is in the bottom right and it's not urgent not important and this is what they call the delete section you want to try to eliminate as many of these things as possible these are activities that are in this quadrant have very little value for in your life it could be time wasting tasks or would it would be nice to get this thing done but examples of this could be like mindlessly scrolling on social media that's not urgent that's not important can you just cancel those things out of your life delete Instagram see how much better your life becomes or it could be watching Random TV shows maybe you do love a TV show but you know that thing's not going to completely change your life by watching the next reality TV show and so if you can start to think about your to-do list that you may think every single Sunday and then you go through every single and change around and create every single Monday then you start to put them into these four different quadrants and sort of see what's in what's urgent what's important what's not urgent what's not important and start to actually figure out how you can get better at these that's number two number three is time blocking and batching time blocking just basically involves saying hey from this time to this time I'm going to be doing this which we've kind of been talking about a little bit but really what it comes down to is time blocking I really need to get this thing done so I'm from this time to this time I'm focusing don't talk to me I'm not doing anything I'm not talking anybody I'm focusing on one task and one task only which we're going to talk about in Step number four but really what it comes down to is how can I make sure that I am time blocking to get my things done when they need to be done in in time blocking is really holding that time sacred to make sure that what needs to be done is actually done because I don't know about you there's nothing more stressful than being busy all day not productive not getting the things done that are really urgent and really important and then having to push them to another day that's the type of stuff that's in your head when you wake up in the morning to go to the bathroom and you go to the bathroom and your brain immediately goes to that thing and then you're up for like two hours because you're like oh I didn't get that thing done I didn't plan it as well as I should have and so that's really what it comes down to is is time blocking and then with batching is can you get if you do something consistently throughout the week multiple times throughout the week can you get all of that done one in one section where you time block that so for instance I've used this example many times when I record the podcast I sit down and record the podcast so the the new structure of what we have is I and Monday Wednesday morning I plan two podcast episodes do all my research everything I need to do I put all the bullet points together and then I record those two on Wednesday afternoon then on Thursday I do the exact same thing as Wednesday so Thursday morning I plan them out I figure it all out and then I record two of them so that way I execute four every single week and I don't do like one on Monday and one on Tuesday and one on Wednesday and one on Thursday it's it's batching all of the things that I could do so if you maybe create content on social media for your business you have a flower business and you want to start putting up promotional stuff and make sure that you get as many pictures and videos and reels done and stories and all of that well maybe you could just batch all of that content on Monday morning take a two hour block and get the entire week done and all now all you have to do is just post it and not actually have to worry about creating it every single day and so that's what batching looks like something that you do multiple times throughout the day is it possible to to have as few segments of your schedule that are longer to get all of those things done test number three and number four if you've listened to this podcast for a while you know like I'm the biggest fan in the world on this not only am I the biggest fan and I use it every single day like this is how I live my life and get stuff done but it's also in my book like I literally have a section in my book where I teach this what is it called everybody the Pomodoro Technique the Pomodoro Technique was developed in the 1980s and it works really well and there's actually a whole lot of Science and Neuroscience behind why this works so well and what you do is you take one task and one task only and you do it over 25 minutes so you do 25 minutes on five minutes off 25 minutes on five minutes off and in that time you do nothing at all that's set for that one thing so you don't check your emails you don't check your phone you don't send text messages for me when I'm sitting down to to do a like a Pomodoro 25 minutes what I do is I'll sit down on my computer if that's like for instance planning on the podcast I'll sit on my computer I'll put on noise canceling headphones so I literally can't be distracted my brain can't go to anything else I put on the same song which is focus binaural beats on YouTube it's a three hour song and I just let it play and then for 25 minutes all I can do for instance is research and planning of a podcast episode my phone is in another room it is inside of my kitchen drawer and that's where I keep it my notifications are off of my computer so that there's no way for anyone to get a hold of me frankly even if there was a fire I wouldn't even know right so because at the end of people act that there's so many urgent things that happen in their life all the time and really there's not a whole lot of urgent things that really require you right now right this second and at the end of the 25 minute session if you know there is a fire you can find out and so you do 25 minutes of one task one task only and you try to bring 100 of your brain power to this task because if you really think about it why would you want to bring less than than 100 of your brain power to a task your best self to this task and so if you're if I'm sitting there and I'm writing a podcast episode and then I get a notification on my phone I'm like oh my gosh I forgot to do this thing and then I send a text message that breaks my distraction and usually it's it actually hurts when I come back in and try to get focused again so if I'm focused and I break my focus it can take up to 15 minutes 15 to 17 minutes psychologists have found for you to get your focus back to where it was before and so really what it comes down to more than anything else is you're not going to get more time in your day it's just not going to happen how can you make sure that with that you get better at planning ahead for the entire week you get better at planning every single day in the morning and then all you have to do is just execute on the task when the tasks need to be done and you are checking off the most important tasks of your day every single day so that is my tips to help you get better time management and get more done and be more productive so if you love this episode please do me a favor share it on your Instagram stories and tag me in it Rob dial Junior Rob d-i-a-l-jr and uh if you love this once again you'll probably love my book that is coming out and it's called level up how to get focused stop procrastinating and upgrade your life I would love it if you would buy that book it is 16 years of knowledge it is you know three years of writing and about 15 to 16 rounds of edits to go through I put everything that I possibly could into taking action how to take action how to create the life that you want to how to stop being how to be more productive how to stop being person who procrastinates and how to get more focused so if that sounds like something that you want go to robdial. com book you can pre-order it there everybody who pre-orders it you should get it the day that it comes out which is October 3rd and you'll also get when you pre-order and only pre-orders only a free mini course on how to be more productive and stop procrastinating that will come with that it's a video course and you'll get entered into a drawing for over 25 000 in cash and prizes so once again is Rob dial.