5. Be Productive With Your Time

listening to seven keys to reclaiming yourtime, energy and productivity, a Himalaya learning audio course. Be sure tocheck out all of the other exclusive courses in the Himalaya app or onhimalaya.com. All right, friends. Welcome back. I'm excited to dive into keynumber five, be productive with your time.

[00:00:38] So now that you've blocked offyour calendar, you have a system of guarding your calendar and your time. Whatare you supposed to do with the time that you have? How can you be productivewith this new work rhythm that you've set up? Let's let's jump right in. Andwe'll talk about how to focus, how to actually produce during the time that youhave, uh, how to pace herself and, and more so when I first set up the idealweek calendar for one of my prior executives, I noticed that he had a wholebunch of time that he was wasting.

[00:01:32] Now it wasn't like we scheduledhim back to back to back to back and he was just going meeting to meeting tomeeting. And he just had no time to actually do anything. We actually had hoursof focus blocks on the calendar. Where I was very strict about not schedulingmeetings in those times. Well, what I realized was it didn't matter how manyfocus blocks didn't matter, how many uninterrupted times or days or afternoonsthat I would put on the calendar.

[00:02:13] He would still struggle to.Accomplish something you would struggle to be productive. And I didn't reallyknow what to do for a long time. I tried different things. Um, you know, thatdidn't work. I tried to add things to the calendar and said, Hey, here, youshould do this. And this time I check in later, he didn't do that and thattime.

[00:02:42] So how can. We actually producein these times now, again, we talked about guarding, so you're managinginterruptions. You're eliminating interruptions, but let's talk about focus,work versus busy work. So when I was writing my book, it's called the leaderassistant, um, launched in earlier this year, 2020.

[00:03:14] When I was writing my book, itwas a very big project. It took me months to complete it. And I found myselfthroughout that major project, wanting to do things that I could kind of checkoff of a list more quickly. And I found this is what was happening with my executiveas well. So, you know, if I wanted to write a book, I wasn't going to be ableto sit down and knock it out in three hours.

[00:03:52] And so what I would find myselfdoing is switching off of my writing software. And hopping on my internetbrowser and going to social media and posting something thoughtful that I hadjust written on LinkedIn or on Twitter or Instagram or whatever, or I'd say,Oh, this is a good blog post. I'm going to post a quick blog post.

[00:04:16] What I was doing was. I was tryingto accomplish something, trying to finish a task because the book felt sodaunting that I felt like I was never going to finish it. And I just wanted tohave a win. So you may find yourself doing this as well. You get thisuninterrupted time. You may get two or three hours every Monday afternoon nowbecause he rescheduled everything.

[00:04:44] You've set up your idea week.And you may find that you just want to accomplish something small. And so youend up doing busy work. So you check your email and you reply to 15 emails realquick, or archive a bunch of emails, or maybe you hop on social media and postsomething and feel like you've accomplished something.

[00:05:06] Or maybe you text a friend or acoworker sending us a message, asking them about something. You basically tryto keep yourself busy because. Again, oftentimes that's because we want toaccomplish something and have a, have a quote, unquote win. When we have a bigproject looming that we just don't see an end in sight.

[00:05:28] Um, but sometimes that's alsobecause we don't enjoy what we're. Trying to accomplish. And that comes back tothe bucketing your time and scheduling time and trying to do more of what youenjoy and less of what you don't enjoy. But typically the focus deep work. Hopefullyit's something that you enjoy.

[00:05:52] And so eliminating oreliminating may not be the right word. Uh, redirecting your work from the busywork into the deep work, um, is, is the challenge. So, what I would encourageyou to do is if you have something that's big and looming that you're like, Oh,I just want to mess around on Facebook or scroll through Twitter because I justdon't have energy right now.

[00:06:26] Sometimes. That means you justdon't have energy and you need to go exercise or you need to go have a snack orwhatever it is to get your energy up and then come back to it. Sometimesthough, that's just an excuse. Sometimes you just tell yourself that excuse, Ijust don't have the energy to do this, whatever.

[00:06:45] So if there's this big thingthat you say you don't have the energy to try to break it down into smallertasks. So what I would do with my executives. All right. You've got this bigproject here is this bite-sized thing. That's going to take you 30 minutes.Knock this out. Okay. You did that. All right.

[00:07:07] Here's the next bite sized task.And then you feel like in, in sometimes you physically put a checklist on theirdesk, they can cross things off so they can feel like they have a win. Um,That's kind of how I've done it with my, my executive. So for you, you, maybeyou just like to hit the check box on a software app to show that you've donesomething, maybe you like to cross something off on a physical piece of paper,whatever it is.

[00:07:36] Um, those breaking down thoselarger projects into smaller bite-sized tasks. Can be very helpful. And thenthe next thing you know, you've accomplished the big project and you're stillenergized and you were focused and you had, you did deep work. Now the nextkind of tip on, on this topic is to pace yourself.

[00:08:05] So I I'm guilty of just saying,all right, I'm going to knock all this out in one night. I don't care if I hadto stay up till 3:00 AM, but I'm just going to get it done. And sometimes itworks. Um, oftentimes it doesn't cause I run out of energy. Um, so pacingyourself is, is sometimes the best way to really produce.

[00:08:32] So maybe you have an hour offocus time on Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and you just say, all right, if I justfocus for the 60 minutes straight. And I work on this project and do thesetasks, then I can just, you know, turn my mind off from that project for therest of the day until, and then the next day. And on Wednesday, when I jumpedback in, I know I'm going to be focused in and do that.

[00:09:00] It kind of splits it up not onlyinto smaller tasks, but into separate blocks of time, instead of all in one.So. Again, you can pace yourself, um, when it comes to the size of what you'retrying to bite off, and then also the rhythm and the schedule of when you'retrying to do those, um, those focus times.

[00:09:24] Okay. Another thing I like todo, um, related to pacing myself is to just take tasks one at a time. Now, ifyou say, all right, I've got 500 emails in my inbox. I've got one hour to knockout as many as I can. I don't know if I can do this. I'm overwhelmed. Just goto the first one, whether it's a to-do list or an email inbox, whatever, go tothe first one, open it up and knock it out.

[00:09:56] Now, if it's going to take you halfan hour, an hour, maybe even two hours to, to knock it out. Mark it as unreadgo to the next one, knock it out, go to the next one, knock it out. The idea isthat you're going to go through and you're going to do any of the, the emailsyou're going to take care of any of the tasks or any of the emails that you cando within a minute or two.

[00:10:21] You're going to go ahead andknock those out, and then you can kind of come back at a more focused time. Andfocus on those ones that are going to take longer. So again, one task at atime, one email at a time, sometimes I'm so overwhelmed that I will look at myemail. I'll look at my to-do list and there's so much on it that I will justhave to grab a post-it and write five things that I need to do.

[00:10:52] You know, prioritize what timesensitive, urgent top, top priority items. And I'll just write those down inthat way. I look at that sheet and I say, all right, one at a time, let's dothis. Take a deep breath. All right, I'm going to tackle that first one. Andthen we'll take it from there and not worry about it.

[00:11:16] So a lot of times we. And again,myself included. A lot of times we look at the big picture, we see all thethings we've got to do next, and we can do this in our, in our lives ingeneral, where we don't enjoy the now, because we're always thinking about thefuture. And so enjoy the present. It's it's similar to when you're working onyour to-do list and you're trying to be productive, focus on the present.

[00:11:41] Don't worry about the future. Soif tomorrow you have this big looming thing coming up and you're really nervousabout it, or whatever, try to just focus on what you need to get done today,and then worry about that in the morning. Um, so again, pace yourself another, anothertrick and do, and do one thing at a time.

[00:12:01] One email, one task at a time.Knock it out. If you get stuck on one. Skip it go to go to the easier ones. Andso that's to segue to the kind of the last tip on this is tackle the easiesttasks. First can be very helpful. So I've, I've had times where I thought, youknow what, I'm going to do the hardest project first, that way I know it'sgoing to be easy, smooth sailing, and I'll use all my energy.

[00:12:29] And sometimes people, people cando that, but if you're really just staring at a list and you're struggling toproduce. Oftentimes, the best thing you can do is tackle the easiest taskfirst, because then you can build momentum, do an easiest one, do the secondeasiest one. And the next thing you know, you've had, you've got 10 things doneand you've got this.

[00:12:56] Snowball momentum goingdownhill. And when, by the time you get to that big project, you've got so muchmomentum, so much energy moving in the right direction that you can tackle thehard, challenging, difficult, um, you know, problem or project. You can, youcan accomplish that because you have that momentum.

[00:13:18] So do it one by one. Tackle theeasiest tasks. First, if you have trouble getting started now, I've also seenwhere for me, or for some of my executives, um, I've seen where sometimes.Starting with a really easy one is good to get the momentum. But then insteadof just continuing to go with easy ones, once you get in the groove and in thezone, then you can say, all right, I'm going to switch to the reallychallenging things because I'm in the zone.

[00:13:51] I'm not thinking about, youknow, my social media. I'm not thinking about, you know, what I had for lunchand actually like in a productive zone. All right. The. Kind of last tip onbeing productive with your time is context is very critical. Now physicalsetting and environment is critical as well. So if, if you can change yourphysical environment based on what type of project or task you're working on,that can help, but I'm even talking the applications on your device, you know,on your desktop, on your phone that you're using.

[00:14:34] Have a different I've even heardof people having different devices for different things. For example, I'veheard of people who use their iPad strictly for reading. They don't check theiremail on the iPad. They don't watch Netflix on the iPad. So every time theypick up the iPad, There, they know their mind kind of gets into the zone wherethey're like, I'm going to be reading now.

[00:15:00] And then they have their phoneand their phone is never for email. It's only for texts and phone calls. Ormaybe it's only for social media and texts. And then for their desktop, it'sonly for email and work. So you don't have to do this by device if you don'twant to, but you can do it by application.

[00:15:19] When I wrote my book, I didn'twrite it in Google docs initially, because I just, I kept thinking, Oh, I canswitch over to Facebook or I'll switch over to LinkedIn or I'll switch over toGoogle and look at this sports scores or whatever. I was in an app that didn'thave that option. And so I was kind of trigger my brain to be in writing mode.

[00:15:41] So whatever it is, maybe youhave an, maybe you have a different monitor. It could honestly just be, youhave three monitors and one monitor is your email monitor and that's all it is.And one of them is a calendar monitor. And one of them is your, is your, uh,project management. And internet browsing monitor.

[00:16:00] Um, and then when you're notchecking email and you're trying to focus on something else, you can turn theemail monitor off again, we're wired to associate things with tasks. So if youcan kind of train your brain to think, all right, I'm going to be in deep workfocused mode when I'm in this room or when I'm using this device that canreally help you produce versus.

[00:16:23] Everything all being jumbledtogether and your brain not knowing whether or not to be in chill, socialmedia, Instagram mode, or watch Netflix mode or reading an article mode oractually producing and getting work done. So hope that helps. Uh, again,there's that busy work you want to avoid? And you want to have focus, work deepwork, pace yourself, do one at a time, tackle the easiest tasks first to getsome momentum.

[00:16:51] And then context is key for thephysical space you're in or the applications you're using the differentmonitors so that your brain can kind of switch to different types of work, uh,when necessary. All right, we're going to talk about energy in the next lesson.So stay tuned. What you just heard was seven keys to reclaiming your time,energy and productivity, a Himalaya learning audio course.

[00:17:20] Be sure to check out all of theother exclusive courses in the Himalaya app or on himalaya.com.