41% of items that people put on their to-do list are never done at all

It's like a to-do list is is the graveyard of you know?

Important but not urgent and when you truly realize what like just how valuable a single minute is

I mean money we can lose it and make it back again our health we can get sick and get healthy again

Time once it's gone, it is gone time is life

The 15 secrets successful people know about time management the productivity habits of seven billionaires

13 Olympic athletes

29 straight-a students and

239 entrepreneurs

You might not use all of them

but if you use one two

Three or four of them tell you you're gonna get a lot more out of your day. Any anyone can make a big difference. Absolutely

We all have the same amount of time every single one of us has the same amount of time

But some of us squander it some of us wasted some of us don't make best use of it

It's my goal my my hope at the end of this episode that you'll be able to see

Just how much time you have in the day and there's something something in this episode that you'll be able to use

To maybe get more out of your day and that to me is a win absolutely a win in my book

Golden Nugget number one time is your most valuable and scarcest resource. Hey

1440s the number that can change your life and that number is the number of minutes we all have in a single day and

While you know, most of the people that I interviewed

they're not all doing the same 15 secrets either the the common thread was that they always spoke about

minutes and the value of time and when you truly realize what like just how valuable a single minute is

I mean money we can lose it and make it back again our health we can get sick and get healthy again

Time once it's gone, it is gone time is life

And so, you know in one minute for your health, you know

You can bang out some push-ups or sit-ups or take a a cleansing breath for relationships

You can tell someone that you love them or that you're grateful for them in business

It takes a minute to have a breakthrough idea and once you truly

Understand that all of a sudden, you know

You're not gonna let people steal your time with all those got a minute meetings or other trivial things

There's a certain number of minutes every single day that I have at my disposal and so much of it is just wasted minutes

So if you start to capitalize on the time that you have you realize holy I can get a whole bunch done

so golden nugget number two

Identify your most important tasks and do it first the most important tasks the MIT

Your MIT is you know, what is that project that is gonna double the size of your business. What is that project?

That's gonna get you the promotion or max out your bonus at work and then break it down

It's like what Domino can I tip over today?

that's gonna lean on the next one and the next one and then we have to get in that discipline of

Scheduling time to work on our MIT

First thing in the morning behavioral psychologist, Dan Ariely talks about we are at our best

For about a two-hour window of time in the morning, you know, we're at our cognitive best

But what most of us do we stroll in with?

You know to work we open up email we start working on everybody else's that might ease by answering their emails and all that stuff

Before we respond to text before we listen to voicemails before we do email. We should work on our MIT

Goal the nugget number three work from your calendar not a to-do list

Stop using a to-do list, you know, I was asking all of these people self-made billionaire self-made millionaires

What is your number one secret of productivity they could've said anything and none of them mentioned a to-do list

I was about halfway through the interviews and finally I started doing the follow-up. I'm like, well, what about your to-do?

Let's give me some advice. They laughed at me. They're like to-do list, you know, we work from a calendar

And as I did the research it turns out

41% of items that people put on their to-do list are never done at all

It's like a to-do list is is the graveyard of you know important but not urgent

If you really want to get something done pick a day a time in a duration and then live from your calendar

Golden Nugget number four to overcome procrastination

Beat your future self. So we need to think about

alright, how's that future evil version of ourselves gonna jeopardize our best intentions and you know,

Let's say we want to start jogging this week. We want to we want to work out

Well, you know what that my evil self is gonna hit that snooze alarm. How do I how do I fight back?

I'm gonna I'm gonna put my iphone gonna set that alarm put on the other side of the room

So I got to literally get out of bed to shut it off and that evil Kevin's gonna say, oh man

I don't know where my workout stuff is. I'll work out tomorrow instead. Well, you know what?

I'm gonna beat that future version by putting my sneakers right at the end of my bed

In fact, I'm gonna go to sleep in my shorts and teacher

So I just need to put my sneakers on and I'm dressed nice, you know

so we just need to think about all the ways that we're gonna

Procrastinate all those excuses were to come up with and try to beat them in the present moment

Golden nugget number 5 there will always be more to do

Back when I was young a young and dumb entrepreneur, you know

I was the guy who was just eight hours a day wasn't enough

So I'd worked sixteen or twenty five days a week was enough

I'd work seven the

girlfriend or eventually the wife would be like

Hey at six o'clock dinner's cold when he coming home leaving the office in five minutes, then it's an hour later

I'm still in the office and you know

One of the things that I learned from interviewing all these people is they have this sense in their bones

Like there will always be more to do Andy Grove wrote

he was the founder and CEO of Intel and he said

you know my day ends when I'm tired and ready to go home not when I'm done because I am never done a

Manager's work has never done. There's always more to be done more. That should be done always more than can be done maybe

You know, maybe we've decided that we're gonna work a 10-hour day or a 12-hour day or a six-hour day

Whatever you decide be intentional about it and then realize you've allocated other minutes for your health, which is gym time

You've allocated other minutes for your relationship including date night or what time with your kids

golden link number six always carry a notebook

Everybody I spoke to talked about carrying a notebook. You know, Richard Branson is written about it over and over again

He says the single most important possession is his little notebook. That's how he built

You know the Virgin brand, you know, there's all these people that I interviewed that just swear by this power of of

Jotting down little notes, whether it's journaling or notes from meetings or words of wisdom from the books

They read but it just really changes their life

Yeah

And one of the things that David Allen always says that our minds are best used for

For processing different ideas not to hold on to information you'd be surprised when you start carrying around a notebook with you

Just how much information comes into your mind that you want to capture now when you start capturing that information you realize holy crap

I've been holding on to so many good like pieces of information and it's just been gone

like I just lose it or I hold on to it and it just ruins the ability to

Allow your mind to free itself up to process new information, which is the best state for your mind to be in

goal the nugget number seven control your Inbox to be honest many of us use our email INBOX

Jet and text messages and other social media apps as a form of procrastination

As a form of a little reward it releases dopamine. It's kind of like pulling that handle on a slot machines

It's gonna be something good and all of these companies out there and other people in our lives

They want our attention and that's fine, but it can get in the way of our productivity. So the bottom line is

Shut off the notifications on your phone on everything

it's okay to

go to email or messages and all of that but do it when you want to do it not because someone else is

Calling you kind of like Pavlov's dog, you know ringing a bell and I'm reaching for my phone. I

Process email like anything else three times a day morning noon and night now again the numbers not so important Ryan

I mean, you know, I know people who only process it once a week or once a day and others people

Tell me a I'm a stock broker. Whatever

I need to get back to people all the time funny process that every 30 minutes or 15 minutes

The idea is to be intentional about it

Shut off the notifications

So if you're out there and you haven't shut off your email notifications when you waiting for I've done that a long time ago

I shut it off because it's just

distraction

Golden nugget number eight schedule and attend meetings as a last resort

Now we can't all

You know be like Mark Cuban and just say no to our boss and other people of meetings we can say no much more often

We can say no to a lot of means we could say no to meetings before noon

Like let's keep our deep work in the morning then our collaborative work in the afternoon

And if you have to say yes to a meeting

Say no to long meetings

Richard Branson again says, there's few meetings that need to last more than five or ten minutes. And so that's just the ideas

Let's say no as often as possible. At least one day a week say no and then try to say no to long meetings

Mmm, absolutely not actually, you know what that breaks us into the next Golden Nugget Golden Nugget. I'd say no to everything

That doesn't support your immediate goals

There they're not being rude

But the most highly successful people

they know what their values are their goals are and they fill their calendar with things that'll get there and that doesn't leave time for

A lot of other other things, you know, we're raised from being really young to like hey

You know you you want to be like so you want to help people you're told it's nice to help people

You don't want to be rude

What's helpful to me is when I realized that every every time I say yes to something

I'm actually saying no to another thing or many things. I

Got myself into so much trouble man

because I like to be liked and so I

Would say yes to people all the time even though I knew by saying yes, it would screw up my schedule

I'd have to push other things back in the back of my head. I was like, you're not gonna do this anymore

You're not gonna go to the gym your whole schedules thrown off while of course

getting good at saying no and doing it in a very polite way in a delicate way is

Something that you a lot of you out there have to do

Golden Nugget number 10 follow the powerful Pareto principle

and Preta principle is more commonly known as the 80/20 rule and it's this idea that

most of the results in almost any activity

80% of the results comes from about 20% of the activity. So it's just really

Pausing slowing down and looking at with all the work that you're doing to build your business to get your work done

You know, what are the handful of tasks that are getting you most of your results just focus on those things

Gold nugget number 11 focus on your unique strengths and passion

We really need to remember the power of delegation

You know, I'm a perfectionist so nobody can do anything as good as I can

You know, I've got to do everything to do it, right and the reality Ryan is that might be true

but we have to realize again think about that 80/20 rule this feeds into this that yes if I delegate it to

Someone on my team. Maybe it's not gonna be perfect

But if it's 80% to perfect

I need to be okay with that and let it go because now that just freed up all of my time

Golden nugget number 12 batch your work with recurring themes

So this one, you know you reading the book innovative entrepreneurs

They really assign different themes to their office states that employees can really concentrate on one specific type of work

Well known sort of a consultant to consultants Dan Sullivan

You know he talks about

Entrepreneurs should have focus days buffer days in three days in the focus days. You know. Those are your game days

Those are those are the days where you are doing your most important activities

Usually it's sales or revenue related, but whatever your strengths are a buffer day

That's the day to catch up on phone calls and emails and sign paperwork and you know all the other

Administrative stuff we have to do and then free days are the days where you do not work and what you're doing is you're resting

And recharging which all the Olympic athletes really talked to me about that

golden nugget number 13

If you can do a task in less than five minutes do it immediately. So this really comes down to the touch it once principal

I'm an extreme on this one. I walked to get the mail out of the mailbox every day

well

most people you come inside and there's the two piles there's the junk pile and then the bills and then later we go through the

Junk again, and then we go through the bills again on my walk back up to the garage

I am sorting that junk and I'm dropping it right in the recycle bin before I even get into my house