Mastering Time Management: 12 Strategies To TRIPLE Your Productivity

hey everyone this is stefan james and welcome to another session of the online business mastery accelerator today we're going to talk about such an important topic that will determine your success and the speed of which you achieve the goals that you have for your business and that's the topic of time management and productivity today we're going to talk about mastering time management and i want to share with you principles and strategies that i live by that can literally allow you to double triple even quadruple your productivity and this is the difference between success and failure i mean there's many different there's many differences when you analyze someone that's incredibly successful at anything they do versus people that aren't but one of them i think we can all agree upon is that people that are successful they use their time in different ways than people that aren't they value their time differently they associate different thoughts and feelings and emotions to the time they have and so they're able to maximize one hour of their time or a day of their life and get more from that than someone that just might waste it away so i want to share with you the principles that have transformed my life the principles that i live by this session is going to be very dense and very heavy i've got a lot that i'm going to throw at you okay a lot of information so i would recommend take out a pen and paper open up something on your computer and take notes on this this is something you're going to want to come back to again and again and practice some of these principles that i'm going to share with you now unfortunately a lot of people in my opinion they don't really value their time in fact most people in society i'd say they waste their time and you know the reality is we all share the same amount of time we all have 24 hours in the day and obviously what you do with that time is what's going to make a difference in your life and so i want to help you shift your belief about the time you have i believe that second by second minute by minute hour by hour we're losing out on the opportunity of becoming the person that we want to be that time is a depreciating asset time is something that we all share the same amount of time but it's it's depreciating over time we're only getting less and less as we get older and you can never get it back i don't care how much money you have you can never buy your time back so time is something that we need to value a lot more we need to think about how we can utilize our time and get the most from it and a lot of people they just don't really value their time and they just waste it away and sure enough they don't get much from it so one thing that's helped me with this is changing how i view my time and how much my time is worth if you really did the math on this and determine exactly knowing how much one hour your time is worth i can guarantee it's going to change the way that you look at it and how you choose to invest it so a simple example of what you could do to determine right now how much money specifically just as a theory right now how much an hour of your time is worth is determine how much money you make in a year okay so let's say for example purposes you made 60 000 in a year well if we divide that amount of money based on how many weeks there are in a year that's 52 weeks let me just take out a calculator so if we determine you make 60 dollars a year okay and that's currently what you're getting paid based on your market value your value to the marketplace your employer and other companies out there have determined if you have a job that's how much money you're worth that's what they're paying you you might be worth more you might be worth less that's based on the market and obviously you pursuing jobs and upgrading your skills but just for example purposes sixty thousand divided by fifty two is one thousand one hundred fifty three dollars a week now let's say that you decided to work 40 hours a week which is the average work week for most people that'd be 28 and 84 cents for one hour of your time okay that's how much one hour of your time is worth now you might already know that if you have a job you get paid by the hour maybe you get paid based on a salary maybe you work more hours maybe you work less but that's a simple way that you can determine how much your time is worth now why is that important to know well if you know that one hour your time is worth 28 dollars it's gonna change the way you look at what you do with your time that's the earning power of one hour of your time and you know what holds a lot of people back is they spend their time in their business or in their life doing things that are worth less than what their earning power is so for example one of the simplest things i see in business is as someone's growing their business they don't outsource they don't delegate things and they're doing everything themselves and so sure you know more often most people they'll do their customer support for example now customer support that's something as a business owner can be useful to do once in a while or maybe at the beginning that helps you learn about your customers and their challenges and maybe make your product your business better and that could be useful but if you're always engaging in that and you know let's say it requires five hours a week you know as you're building your business and you're getting customers and sales if you think about it if one hour your time is worth 28 that's what you can earn with the current job you have now but you're doing something that the value of it if you were to hire someone else to do it for you and maybe hire someone for example in the philippines as a virtual assistant someone doing customer support that you could hire to get someone to do that very activity for you for let's say five dollars an hour ten dollars an hour if you could hire someone to do that for you and they can do a competent job of that at five dollars an hour and here your hour over time is worth 28 then that's not a good use of your time you can get someone else to do that for you because that's a low low leverage low income generating activity and instead you could put your time to activities that are worth that much more either 28 an hour or maybe more than that okay so hopefully you're starting to see how important this is a lot of people they're spending their time doing low income generating activities with their time and they're wasting their time in my opinion if they're always indulging in those things so just case in point if you spend five hours a week doing customer support five times 28 well let's do five times 25 just to make it simpler that's 125 of earning earning power that you're putting to use five hours a week that's worth 125 dollars now if you hire someone else to do that for you for five dollars an hour ten dollars five dollars now that's only that's what 25 dollars a week you know maybe 10 50 a week 25 to 50 dollars a week if it's 50 a week then there's a 75 difference there okay 50 to get someone else to do it for you or cost you 125 let's say so one of the most important things as an entrepreneur is valuing your time more okay and to realize this and to not get caught up in doing things that aren't moving the needle they're not making the biggest impact things that aren't generating a lot of income for you and to instead value your time more than what it's currently worth okay that's what i want you to think about if whatever you get paid right now whatever you know when you do the math on this whatever one hour your time is worth i want you to think about and imagine it's worth more than that because i want you to not just think about the earning power of an hour but the earning potential of it and when you start to value your time more and treat and act as if it's worth double triple quadruple than what it currently is then that's going to shift your mindset to focus more on things that matter and can produce more income for you in your life and in your business case in point if you made a million dollars a year and let's say that you worked 40 hours a week one hour of your time would be worth 480 dollars okay now i want you to act as if and imagine if you're a millionaire even before you are one because part of becoming a millionaire is you have to be one up here first you have to imagine and see yourself as that before you are because the reality will follow whatever your imagination creates for example muhammad ali he would say again and again to himself i am the greatest i am the greatest i am the greatest and he had imagined himself as a champion before he won anything right so by by him acting as if he was already a champion and sure enough the reality in life followed that it's the same thing with making money imagine act as if one hour of your time is worth 480 if you believe that and took that on as a new mindset it's going to change what you do with your day change what you do with your time you're not going to want to waste your time knowing that man the opportunity of this one hour could potentially be worth 480 to me and when you assess what you're going to focus on in your business in life you want to focus your time and attention on activities and actions that are worth a lot more than the ones that aren't the ones that aren't you can outsource you can delegate see for me in my life and my business the reason why i've been able to achieve so much and been able to accelerate it and do so much today in my life is not because i have more time than you i don't have any more time than you do the difference is how i use my time and how i perceive it and i'm smart with the time that i have so for me i realized in my business my business is pretty big it's pretty complex there's a lot of moving pieces to it but i can't do everything myself and so i started by doing a lot of things myself but the sooner that i realized that i can outsource and get other people to do these other things for me and i realized this is my gift this is the most important thing that i can be doing with my time in my business which for me is creating content helping people making an impact focus on high level strategies in my business maybe it's doing copywriting maybe it's creating high-level funnels maybe it's networking and developing partnerships and collaborations those are things that produce the most revenue that are the hardest to outsource it costs so much money to hire someone else to replace me to do those things so i realized that's the most valuable use of my time but everything else you know doing things on social media and customer support and technical parts of my business and accounting and managing people all of those things if i can hire someone else to do that i should because that frees up my time to focus more on what can make the biggest impact in my life my business what i enjoy the most and can allow me to scale that much more so that mindset guys is a game changer and even looking at your personal life in the same way i realized this with cleaning you know i used to spend hours and hours every week cleaning my apartment but i realized that's not the best use of my time yes i can do it i'm capable of doing it i don't really enjoy it but if i spend five hours a week cleaning or cooking and i could hire someone else to do that for me for minimum wage and that instead i could value my time more and say you know what it's worth this much and spend my time doing things that can generate me more income then for me that it was just a no-brainer and today that's why i have two dif two personal assistants and i've got a team of 15 people or so and i've got a chef and i got a cleaner i've got all of that because for me i want to spend my time on things that matter and things that not only can produce the most income but the things that i enjoy the most too but that started guys by shifting my relationship with time and how i value it so i want you to all value your time more than what it's worth right now i think if you do that you're going to get more out of your day more out of your life you're going to make more more income and more possibilities and all of that's gonna change for you okay don't waste your time guys and i'm not saying that you can't enjoy your time and have fun with it as well this is just a theory a way that you can look at it that is meant to empower you not to not for you to be too anal about your time either because i think there is definitely value of course in resting relaxing fun play having time for that too but understanding that you're proactive with it rather than reactive with it but if you've got a 40 hour work week not all activities are equal a lot of people they mistake an activity with achievement they think that by being busy it means that they're productive not the case a lot of people they're busy but they're doing things that aren't really moving the needle that much they're doing things that aren't really growing their business that aren't really making them more money that aren't really making a big impact and it's being able to identify out of the things that you're doing what out of these activities matters the most and is going to make the biggest impact if you can do that and prioritize better it will change your life because the big challenge with people is not as much time management it's priority management knowing how to prioritize of everything that you could do what's the most important thing that you should be doing that will equal the greatest results so with that being said i've got 12 strategies okay a lot here for you guys today and i'm going to go through some of it more quicker than others some of it i'll spend more time on but i want to share with you these strategies that can really make a huge difference in your level of productivity and your success and obviously you know the more that you utilize this and implement this to your life and your business the faster that you go oftentimes people ask me the question stefan how long is it going to take me to become successful how long is it going to take me for me to quit my job or how long it's going to take me to make x amount of money my answer always is how long do you want it to take how long do you want it to take you get to decide you know obviously the more time that you put into something the more you get out of it and so you know you implement more of this you're more efficient you're more productive you dedicate yourself more you put in more time you can you can achieve incredible things in months years other people for example they take their time they're slow and you know there's nothing wrong with that everyone has their own pace and different life lifestyles and different desires of course but obviously you know you work at something a lot slower you work at it here and there you're going to get a very different experience a different result than someone that really dedicates themselves to what is they're trying to accomplish in their business they're going to go a lot further and so you can always accelerate your success by putting more into it you know putting more time making more sacrifices if you need to and you get to decide what that is there's a learning curve in business with anything new you suck at it the first time but you can accelerate that learning curve by putting more time into it i mean if you want to get good at basketball something that i've been practicing every day i realize you know if i play basketball once a week i'm going to get to a certain level within a few months or within a year but if i want to get a lot better and more skilled as a basketball player if i play every day then all of a sudden that's a big difference in in in experience that i'm gaining from someone that's just doing it once a week i'm moving so much faster working on something every day than once a week if i practice two hours a day i can double my productivity and i can achieve a much higher skill set way faster than someone that just works at something once a week so it's really up to you how fast you want to go and you know your time is a resource that you can invest into your business and into your success and the more that you invest it the more experience that you gain the more that you learn the faster that you grow so let's dive into these strategies number one is mastering tracking your day track tracking your day this is one of the most important things that you got to start out with a simple exercise that i want you to do is i want you to keep a journal throughout your day and i want you to track hour by hour what are all the activities that you do in your life in a day so what time do you wake up at keep this journal with you or take out your phone and have up evernote or something in your phone as you do this but i want you to track it to develop awareness of where you're spending your time because the big lie that people say is i don't have time that's such a story i mean the reality is and we'll get to it in a minute is you always have time but most people they're just not aware of where they're spending their time so if you actually track from the moment you wake up if you wake up at six o'clock in the morning okay what are you doing from 6am to 7am write down everything that you're doing and then from 7am to 8am what is every activity that you do there eight to nine and then so forth all the way till you go to bed by doing this if you do this over the course of a week you're going to develop a sense of awareness of where your time is actually going maybe you recognize by doing this oh my gosh i'm spending about three hours a day just watching tv or just randomly spending that time on social media and if that's the case maybe you can look at that time that you're spending three hours a day and you know obviously that can be pretty significant when you add that up over time you know if you add up three hours a day doing something or even an hour a day you compound that and you add it up over several weeks or months that's a significant a part of your life and it's up to you to decide if that's the best use of your time but if you're not getting to where you want to be in your business maybe you can look at if i'm spending three hours a day doing that what if i just make it two hours a day and i can get an hour and put that into something else that's more productive maybe for my business and then that one hour a day that i'm getting back and you're dedicating to something else that adds up over your lifetime i mean that that adds up to significant progress in your business or maybe you realize the time that you're spending cleaning or cooking and there's maybe a more efficient way to do that and most often people aren't aware until they actually look at it and they track it because otherwise you guess otherwise you just make it up in your head and most people they underestimate or sometimes they exaggerate i want you to be clear to understand and have awareness this is how much time every week i'm spending to have fun or to watch movies or for pleasure or sleep right a lot of people for example they sleep too much sometimes eight nine ten hours in a day maybe being to be successful if you're really lacking time or if you want to get there faster you can change your sleep schedule maybe you might decide you know what i only need to sleep six hours and maybe that's not the healthiest long term you know i don't recommend sacrificing or sleep too much but i think a healthy range is six to eight hours and everyone might be different and if you change your sleep schedule of course at first it takes a while to adapt to it but maybe you determine you know what if i just cut off 30 hours of sleep or an hour sorry 30 minutes or an hour of sleep every day that one difference i can then dedicate and put into something else in my life that i can get an even greater benefit from so i don't know about you but i know for myself when i did this i looked at many things in my life that were holding me back is what i realized i remember for example i went many many years without a tv because i learned from one of my mentors jim rohn that your tv is your electronic income reducing machine that the more time you spend is sitting there watching your tv you're watching other people live their lives instead of you going out there living your life and this is time you're spending that you can instead put into your business or things that can actually generate income and revenue for you so i decided because for me i had an addiction to video games tv things that weren't making much of a difference in my life i had to make the decision if i really want to be successful part of getting what i want is knowing what i have to give up and i was willing to sacrifice that get rid of my tv and my productivity went through the roof you know or today it's not just tv but it's youtube and it's other social media things or people they distract themselves with but you got to decide for yourself is that really contributing to your success and the life and and where you want to be in your life and for me i was willing to sacrifice my sleep as well i realized you know what if i just cut back my sleep by one hour i could do that maybe for the next year and i'll still you know it's still healthy to get six seven hours a sleep every night it might not be the most ideal eight hours maybe i might perform better at eight but i was willing to try that and i was willing to look at getting an extra hour of my life back and dedicate that to things that i thought could be more beneficial for me so tracking your day is really really important and looking at things that you're doing that you can you can you can remove from your life or change it around in a way that's more empowering for you it's up to you to decide how you want to live your life but most people in my opinion they're spending their time not doing things that are most productive for them there's not a purpose behind it and they're wasting it for me i like to be proactive with my time i like to have my time to relax to enjoy myself to have fun for a relationship but i'm going to do it on my terms and on the planet be proactive with it and make sure it's quality time that matters the most to me the other thing too is even looking as you go through your list of when you track this is what is the cost to benefit ratio so the cost is one hour looking at the benefit you're getting for that hour when you look at each thing you do in your in your day in your life and you say okay this is the cost but what was the benefit really the key is just making sure that your cost to benefit ratio is better so you're getting more benefit from whatever time that you're doing and that's something that you might want to look into number two the second strategy is to master your beliefs about time and productivity your beliefs are going to determine your actions and your behavior and there's a lot of limiting beliefs that people have around time the biggest one is people saying to themselves again and again i don't have the time i don't have the time i don't have the time the more that you say that the more you feed into it but that is all bs belief system because the reality is you do have time again like i said we have the same amount of time we both have 24 hours the truth is is what you're doing with your time and if you say you don't have time to do something really what you're saying is that you're dedicating your 24 hours to other things that you believe and made inside yourself more important than the thing that you're not doing so you've made it more important that you're more committed to getting your eight hours of sleep or you're more committed to your family or you're more committed to your job but you're more committed to these hobbies or interests or these people in your life or your social life you're more committed to that than whatever it is that you're saying that you don't have the time to do and i'm not here to say what's right or wrong i mean absolutely if you have a family if you have kids if you have a job if you have all that's all important but if you keep saying you don't have time the truth is you do have time but you've just decided that these other things are more important and part of getting success and building your business is to look at some of these things that you are saying are more important for you and deciding is there something here that i need to make less important so i can make this more important because for me i also could use the same excuse and say that i didn't have time but i had to look at everything that i was doing and saying you know do i want my business do i want this success more than my sleep do i want it more than my social life and friends and really long term the answer to that would be no but in the short term i realized you know what if i really want to make this happen i have to make my business and my success more important than going out with my friends in the weekend i got to make it more important than you know going out and just watching movies and having fun and entertaining myself because i realized if i was willing to sacrifice that in the short term if i was willing to sacrifice that in the short term and put more time into building my business the reality was that later in my life i could have all the free time that i want because when you're first building your business if you have a job you're trading your time for money that's a big time consumer of your life of your week you're spending 40 hours a week working for someone else you stop working you stop getting paid but i realize you know what what if i made passive income if i dedicated the next three years of my life and i really went in on this and i made sacrifices and i stopped watching tv and gave up a lot of these pleasures and going out on the weekend and i put it into building my business and i dedicated the time to that three years from now i can be in a position where i no longer have to work for someone else i can have all the time that i want and then i can you know take weeks off if i want to i can do whatever i want with my time and spend more time with my family or more time with my friends or more time doing the things that i really want to do with my life that bring fulfillment so i was willing to make a trade-off i was willing to trade in the short term a lot of the pleasures and things that i enjoyed in my life i was willing to trade that for the long-term rewards of being able to spend the rest of my life having as much fun as i want if i choose so i was willing to pay that price up front to later get my freedom and my time back that's how i looked at things and so the belief system is key so the belief system i want to empower you with is the belief system of saying yourself i make the time for whatever i'm committed to that could be an affirmation or an incantation you say to yourself again and again i make the time for whatever i'm committed to because isn't that the truth i mean if you're really committed enough you'll make the time for it you'll move things around in your schedule you'll cancel other things you'll you'll dedicate the time you'll sleep less you'll work harder you'll you'll figure it out and find a way to always get whatever you're committed to so it's not a matter of time it's a matter of commitment if you're more committed to this and you say to yourself if i'm committed enough i'll do this you will you always will you know if you have an important thing that comes up in your life i don't care how busy you are if it's important enough it's getting your taxes done or an emergency or whatever you'll you'll make that more important and you'll find ways to change your schedule move things around to be able to get that done i can guarantee it so i make the time for whatever i'm committed to one thing i like to say to myself so much time so little to do so much time so little to do it's got a fun ring to it because most people say you know so much to do so little time and the more you say that to yourself the more you buy into it believe it or not here's the crazy thing people will spend time talking about and complaining about not having time that's the craziest thing right because really it's not time it's oftentimes people are looking for something to rationalize or justify why they're not doing what they know they should be doing and so they create a story to say it's because i don't have time they talk about it and they spend time talking about it when they can just dedicate that time just to doing it because a lot of people are just afraid of doing and using an excuse and a story is a way to protect themselves from failure so changing that so much time so little to do there's always time when i look for it that's another powerful belief there's always time if you look for it i mean again that's not anyone i've ever worked with that says i don't have they say they don't have time and i say okay great let's look at your life write down everything that you're doing in a day and in a week and i can guarantee if you actually do that i don't care how busy you are we can actually look at your schedule and find pockets of time that you can dedicate more to whatever it is you want to do so it's always a bs story that people tell themselves i mean there's people that are much busier than you and i whether they're presidents or top ceos whoever it is out there they have the same amount of time than us but they're still dedicating themselves to doing these things because of that difference in psychology so it comes down to it being important enough for you and and shifting your beliefs to understand that that if you're committed you'll always make the time for whatever it is that you need to do the third strategy the third principle is mastering leverage and outsourcing mastering the power of leverage you're always going to be able to get more done through other people see a lot of people they work hard and amazing definitely success requires hard work but in my opinion a lot of people they over utilize that muscle and working hard is only going to get you so far even time is limited because there's only 24 hours in the day and there's only one of you and so the only way you really scale is using leverage by realizing you got to work smarter than harder so you have to work smart rather than hard and not just over utilize the fact that you can do things just because you can or because you're capable or because you're a hard worker that can actually end up holding you back in my opinion as you get older and as you achieve more success you want to figure out ways to get done more with less time you want to be more elegant with your time and be more efficient with your time and that's what i realized for me is to outsource things if i can outsource or automate something do it now amazing thing about the internet and building an online business is there's so much software and tools that can automate things for us you know i remember for me for example when i first had to build a website i had to learn html or i had to hire a programmer to do it for me and it takes so long it'd be so expensive to do that today there's tools like click funnels and wordpress and you can already get themes that someone else has already designed for you and you can save yourself time by having to create it yourself i could just pay the person you know for this theme or for this funnel even on click funnels i can pay them for that and save myself the 10 20 30 40 hours maybe more that amount of time of doing it myself i could just buy it from someone else that's working smarter and a lot of people they're trying to save money all the times and i think that's useful that's a good that is intelligent to try to save money or to budget or be efficient with it but sometimes people there they let the saving mentality actually hold them back from doing what's the most intelligent thing for them you know they spend so much time trying to learn something when it's like just outsource it get someone else to do that for you a case in point is graphics you can try to design the graphics yourself in your business your logo and everything else or you could just hire someone that's already mastered that skill they put in their 10 000 hours and you can buy a logo from them and paid them for that rather inexpensively because also the internet's changed the dynamic where you can hire people from anywhere in the world you can hire people overseas that if you're paying if you live in the u.s canada or europe you're paying euros dollars then the the buying power of that is worth so much more when you exchange it to another currency so when you hire someone from philippines or india or bangladesh or other countries where you know you do an exchange and based on their economy your dollars worth so much more for them you can get talent much cheaper than than what it would it cost by hiring someone in north america so there's many things like that you want to outsource and delegate and the reality is we already delegate we already outsource in our lives don't we i mean think about it do you ever go to the store and buy food that's already been made or you know buying you know groceries like fruits and vegetables you're paying a premium for that product okay you're paying a higher amount from that but you are outsourcing and leveraging the fact that you didn't have to grow it you didn't have to grow the fruit and the vegetables and you didn't have to kill the cow and process the meat and go through that whole experience you decided i'm willing to pay more by going to the store and just paying for someone that's already done that rather than me go through the hassle of growing and and and having my own farm and doing all of that that's called being smart now same thing if you go to a restaurant you go to a restaurant or you order food from a food delivery app you're essentially hiring a chef you're paying someone to have already gone and bought the food the groceries prepare it cooked it together and yes you're accepting i'm gonna pay a bit more for someone to prepare this for me because it's faster and more efficient i don't have to spend the time to cook and i can just pay someone else to do that for me that's called outsourcing right that's working smart so you already do this in your life but there's other things in your life in your business you also want to outsource and delegate you know case in point cleaning your house maybe you spend time doing that you can hire someone else to do that for you instead you know if you have kids maybe it's hiring a babysitter or even leveraging your parents or family to take care of your kids maybe once a week or however however often and you can then dedicate that time to your business maybe it's getting someone to cut your lawn for you you know these are things that don't have to cost much either there's many kids in the neighborhood that can cut your lawn and do landscaping for you rather inexpensively maybe it's doing your laundry or maybe it's having a virtual assistant you know for me i've always had assistance and even when i started i hired a virtual assistant from the philippines that could help me with research or help me with data entry or putting things together in my my appointments and things like that that could just free up my time so understanding that leveraging is really the ultimate way to scale and the areas of your business and your life you want to delegate and i would say outsource first or when you track what you're doing in a day you want to look at the repetitive things the things that are easy to hand off to someone else things that every week like customer support social media posting editing your videos um you know editing your books or whatever it might be the things that are consistent and repetitive you outsource that to someone else you give them a process maybe you train them on it but when you do that you're now buying back freedom and your time and then you can dedicate those hours that you're once doing for that you can now put it into another part of your business that can help you grow and scale okay so that's something you're going to want to learn to utilize and master the fourth strategy of time management and productivity is mastering your energy see a lot of people they just aren't getting the most out of their day because they're tired they're exhausted i mean the definition of society by my terms and standards is lethargic you know people are walking around like they're half dead they don't have passion they don't have energy you know most people they have to utilize stimulants like caffeine in order to get a boost of energy and there's nothing you know wrong with that i mean over time i think it could be a little bit unhealthy it could be a bit of a crutch over time because it can definitely wear out your adrenals and and uh become addictive in some ways too but i look at you know what can allow you to get the most out of your day and the most out of your business is really mastering your physical body your energy because a lot of people when they're trying to build their business they're trying to do so after they come home from work and for most people once they've already invested their eight hours at their job some people you might have a more intense job of 10 hours a day maybe 12 hours there's definitely circumstances like that but when you come home from that a lot of people are too tired and exhausted to now dedicate the time to build their business it's much easier to seek out comfort and instant gratification by watching tv or eating junk food ways to relax but that's not really going to get you to where you want to be and so really maximizing your physical body is one of the most important things having rituals and standards for what you put into your body because whatever you put into your body is going to affect your energy i mean if you eat foods your body have to expend a lot of energy to digest then that's going to slow you down i mean there's certain foods that are processed foods that don't have enzymes in it you have to use your enzymatic reserve which is usually cooked and processed food your body in some cases i mean if you eat a steak you know a steak can taste delicious and whatnot but your body has to now expend eight to 10 for 12 hours 14 hours to digest that a lot of people when they go to sleep they wake up and they're tired even after getting eight hours and it's because their mind was asleep but their body is working overtime digesting food and that's one of the biggest expenditures of energy in the body and so for me i have certain principles that i teach in my life mastery accelerator when it comes to health it's another program that i have that goes more to self-development and life mastery principles but you know sleep can affect your energy to what you put in your body i like to have more plant-based foods foods that have they're more water-rich foods that are more cleansing than clogging so that's fruits vegetables and sprouts contain the most water in it and so that can cleanse my body doesn't require as much energy to digest and i can actually utilize the enzymes in those living foods and i can also utilize the nutrients the vitamins the minerals all of that can add benefit to my body and can make a huge difference so more plant-based foods for me doing intermittent fasting is something that has transformed my energy because if i fast 14 to 16 hours a day you know for example if i have my last meal at 8 p.m and then let's say i wake up at you know or let's say at 8 a.m that's 12 hours okay of fasting but let's say i wait four more hours i wait till noon so i basically skip breakfast now my body has fasted for was that 14 hours 16 hours i think 16 hours and when your body is fasting and it's not digesting food it has more energy you often have more mental clarity and there's a lot of other benefits for fat loss and your body is now storing fat for fuel because that's what fat is body fat is stored energy so this energy your body will then start burning as a source of fuel now there can be a point where your blood sugar does drop and you do want to eat of course but i found that 14 to 16 hour range does wonders for my energy my productivity i'm not being slowed down as much you know optimizing your hormones and you know even taking a rest there's many different things you can do to really utilize your energy and the highest energy i've ever had for myself is often when i'm doing the ketogenic diet when i'm training my body to burn fat for fuel rather than carbohydrates and sugar because the way you got to look at carbohydrates is you get an immediate boost of energy which often is great if you're doing you know high intensity training where you need like weight lifting or running or sprinting and you need that boost but carbohydrates it's like burning lighter lighter fluid you know you get a burst of of a flame or fuel but then you crash and so you always need more carbohydrates to sustain that energy if you change your body to burning fat for fuel then it's like burning coals coals are slow and steady will give you more steady energy throughout the day and if you really want to learn about how to make that chef to get your body to burn fat for fuel then you might want to study someone like stu middleman stu middleman wrote a book called slow burn he ran a thousand miles in 11 days just running about i think like 16 hours a day is pretty intense he ran from san diego to new york in 11 days which is pretty incredible and he learned how to train and shift his body to burn fat which is more sustainable energy that can last more throughout the day so there's many things you can learn and study with with your energy exercising of course i like doing cardio for energy because it doesn't build up as much lactic acid if i'm if i'm doing cardio at a lower heart rate more of a fat burning zone because then also i'm getting more oxygen and then you can actually increase your blood supply you can increase your red blood cell count by um by doing more cardio that's in a fat burning state you can increase your red blood cells your red blood cells carry oxygen to the brain which give you more energy so there's many principles that you can do that can allow you to really get more out of yourself the fifth strategy is mastering weekly and daily planning becoming a planner because the big challenge is most people are reactive throughout the day see most people they don't have a plan for their day they have a plan for their life and if you don't have a plan guess what you fit into someone else's plan and someone else's plan for you is going to be mostly what's going to benefit them and it's not going to be in your best interest so you've got to have a plan for your day and for your week so what i do is i plan out my weeks in advance and my days in advance at the start of every week whether it's on sunday or monday often what i'll do is i'll make a list of all the most important things i want to accomplish during that week and i'll plan it and i'll schedule it i'll put it in my calendar so case in point you know uh in a week like this today's you know yesterday was monday today is tuesday i'd schedule a plan okay tuesday that's dedicated to my streams to this stream and preparing and putting everything into it so i'll schedule from this time to this time that's where i'm dedicated to this and then i'll schedule another day of the week where i'm going to focus on filming youtube videos and content i'll schedule another day of the week in certain parts of my day where i'm going to focus on working on this project or that project i'm going to schedule in when i wake up and when i do my morning ritual from this time or this time i schedule in when i go to the gym each day i schedule in my date night and my time for my relationship i schedule in the days and the times where i'm going gonna call friends and family and spend time with them i schedule in the times where i'm gonna you know work on studying the bible and do my bible study and where i'm gonna practice this or watch movies or have fun and enjoy myself but i have a plan for it i'm being proactive not reactive if you're reactive then what happens is you get sucked in to all the other demands from someone else it's called the vacuum effect if you don't have a structure and boundaries around your time you get lost consuming all these other things that aren't the best thing for you you know you go on social media and facebook because you're bored and then you find yourself spending three hours wasting your time on things that didn't really make a difference for you or you go to youtube and you're just watching video after video after video and all of these technologies are designed to get you addicted to them to suck you in youtube wants you to stay on youtube for as long as possible watching video after video after video after video because that's how they make money they make money by the more videos you watch the more advertisements are displayed the more money they make same thing with facebook same with all of these social media channels same thing with tv they want to hook you and get you engaged to watch the tv program again and for as long as possible because the more commercials that you watch the more money they make i mean these things are not designed in your best interest so you got to take hold of your attention and your focus and be deliberate about it be strategic about it so planning out your day planning out your week for me what i do is i on sunday or monday i make a list of everything for the day and i start scheduling it i schedule it ahead of time and i even write down what's my outcome okay what's my outcome for my business this week what's my outcome for my business today what's the goal and the focus on what that outcome is and then i even and i do this by the way you can do it in evernote that's what i got in front of me right now evernote is a an app or software on your computer your phone or you can take out a journal and do this whatever works for you but i deliberately write out what is my outcome why do i want this so in a day like this my outcome today is i want to be in an incredible state i want to add value to people's lives in my online business master accelerator stream i want to share with them ideas and things that can make a difference for them that can really help them accelerate their success and their business that's what my outcome is why do i want that well i want to put my skills my knowledge to the higher good in the world i want to put it to use i don't want to just keep what i know for myself i want to share it because i know by sharing it i can help so many other people solve problems and difficulties that i face myself that i know that is using what i've learned to the a greater good another reason why is i want to grow my business i want to build my brand i want to add value and build raving fan customers maybe another reason for it is i want to enjoy myself i want to have fun i want to share things that can make a difference but also can make a difference in my life and by me sharing it i can reinforce it integrate it to myself and apply it better in my life so now i know what i want for the day i know why i want it and i usually just kind of put down three bullet points of why i want this why it's important for me because that that makes it more fun and more engaging for myself and then i write down what do i need to do what are the actions that i need to take to make sure that i can achieve this outcome today and so for some of my actions is i need to prepare i want to prepare for the stream to make sure i'm mentally prepared emotionally prepared so i can be at my best i want to make sure that i'm prepared with my content and what i'm going to share i want to make sure that you know i test it i set up the camera that's an action that i'll put you know as part of my life set up the camera do my test for it make sure everything is working properly get my team to support me with whatever whatever it is that i need to look at the questions that people sent in advance and and to you know plan and organize so that i can add value to those people that doesn't happen by mistake it happens by having a plan and an outcome and and then looking at that plan of those actions and identifying what's the most important thing out of this list what's the highest leverage thing that i need to do here that will make the biggest difference to contribute to the to me achieving this outcome okay so planning if you don't plan you're going to plan to fail and so you've got to be proactive with it now the other thing i'm going to mention when it comes to planning your day and planning your week is understand a plan is there to guide you a schedule is there to guide you but it's not set in stone see i think it's when you're planning something whether it's a goal a project your day or your week all you're doing is you're speculating you're guessing or giving yourself a framework but that doesn't mean that you can't break it so for me i make certain decisions throughout the day that at times things that come up or take longer than i expected to because no plan is going to go the way you 100 expect there's always going to be things that come up and change you've got to be dynamic and flexible with that to look at your plan and say hey you know what this has taken longer than what i scheduled for i need to make a decision right now i think what's more important is continuing this to finish this than something else i've got going on so i might have to change my plan if i can or sometimes another thing that comes up and i've got a change and it's always using prioritization and your best judgment at all times to really shift your plan rather than thinking your plan and your schedule is something that you have to stick by no matter what i try to stick by it the best i can it gives me a structure for the day and focus and direction for the day but at the same time it doesn't limit me it doesn't pigeonhole me in any way okay because i can always be flexible and change and be dynamic with it which i think is very important okay the next strategy hopefully you guys are enjoying this i'm giving you guys a lot here all right but i'm gonna go through some of these a bit quicker based on time the next one number six is master elimination and focus elimination and focus you got to identify what is what is uh distracting you throughout the day what's a distraction something that's taking you away from what you're trying to accomplish what you're doing so when you're working everything that can distract you put it aside take your phone put it put it on airplane turn it off if you can put it in another room you know turn off facebook turn off social media turn off your email and focus on the most important thing if you've got other people in your environment your friend your family maybe or you work in an office you got to tell them to communicate and have boundaries and say listen please do not disturb me during this time you know from this time to this time i'm going to be focused and you're not going to be able to reach me and get a hold of me not unless it's an emergency but you've got to have those boundaries if you don't have boundaries other people won't respect it and they're going to come and bother you and studies show that when you're in a flow state of productivity when you're really immersed in a project when you get interrupted it takes about 20 minutes for your brain to go back to that same level of focus and flow than you were before so every time you get interrupted 20 minutes of lost productivity just like that so you got to make sure that you're focused and for me what i do that's why and we're going to get to this as i eliminate these things but i identify what's the most important thing and i focus on that first without any distractions for me my business there's a lot of distractions because a lot of people they come to me with questions distractions on social media emails comments my team you know sending me messages and whatnot my email there's this constant it's just constant other people things they need from me other demands they have and if i don't have a plan then i open my computer and i'm just reacting i got to answer this person that person this person needs this for me or that for me and so having those boundaries around my time i don't even open up my slack i turn off my skype i turn off my all of that distractions and i focus on what matters most and then later in the day then i'll dedicate the time or two you know an hour or two to get caught up on emails get caught up on messages or respond back to my team those things are important but i want to make sure i work and according to my plan of what's most important and ensure that nothing distracts distracts me there's actually another study that was done that multitasking is not powerful it's not as effective as we think in fact when you multitask you're lowering your iq more than as if you're as if you're smoking marijuana because when you're focused on so many things at once multitasking your iq drops your your level of focus it's more effective to focus on one thing and really make sure you accomplish that to the best of your ability before moving on to the next learning how to say no to things is important many opportunities that might arise but being okay saying no and having boundaries around your time and your focus and your energy is really important as well okay next one is mastering your routines and rituals routines and rituals i'm a big fan and believer of having routine every day having a ritual and optimizing it knowing what time you wake up and having a ritual around that waking up let's say 6am i love waking up early sometimes 5am but usually 6 but i like waking up early because i can accomplish more in the morning i often find if i wake up at 5 by the time it's 10 a.m i've already got so much done compared to most people and then most often in the morning there's less distractions less phone calls less activity that's going on and just gives you the psychological advantage so you get to decide you know what your ritual is you know i think many people can be effective waking up a little bit later as well um you know it doesn't everyone's different in that way but whenever you wake up for me i have a ritual that i do and that ritual i i do certain things that ensure that i'm at my best for the day i know that if i do this ritual and i put myself at level 10 then i can accomplish so much more i get so much more out of the day so for example you know i do things every morning for my mind i feed my mind and read books and feed my mind positivity and valuable information i put myself in a peak mental and emotional state i do meditation i do my gratitude journal i journal just about my day and what's going on in my life i do things that empower me mentally and emotionally and then physically i do things that support my body i drink water and i hydrate myself to doing stretching or yoga or playing some basketball outside or you know getting you know doing some cardio or getting some sunlight there's things that help nurture and support my my uh physical body and take certain supplements for example or maybe a healthy breakfast if you want to you know nurture yourself and something that can give you energy and then from my spirit for me that's prayer for me that's deep meditation um and spiritually feeding myself in that way so that i can be more effective when i do those things i feel unstoppable throughout the day things don't bother me as much you know i have less stress i have less anxiety and not as overwhelmed i can show up in different levels in my life and throughout the day and handle things with more power and being proactive rather than being reactive so have a ritual for your for your day of how you start off the day in a powerful way how you start the day is how you end the day you start it in a powerful way it's going to end in a powerful way as well the next one is master your musts master your musts so here's the important thing is identify each day this is always what's worked well for me each day when i have my to-do list i ask myself what are the top three most important things that by doing it today is going to make the biggest impact in my business what are the top three must for me the most important non-negotiable i've got to get this done today now the reason why i stick the top just to three is to make it simple and not overwhelming most people when they plan their day they'll write down this long list and in business it's never ending there's a million things you can always do to grow your business but most people they get overwhelmed by that and they're overwhelmed because they believe that they've got to do all that stuff they've got to do everything when you simplify just to three high leverage things it's a lot more you're changing your criteria for success so for me having a successful day doesn't mean that i have to do 10 million things for me a successful day is did i do three important things three important things that are gonna make a difference in my business the answer is yes it was a great day a great day because if every day you just do three big important things that's gonna make a transformation in your productivity and success so for me three important things would be doing you know doing my streams like this this is a very important thing or recording other youtube videos or working on a certain project that's really you know going to make a difference in my business those things that whenever i do it or you know going through a sales page or writing copy or writing an email to send to my list or connecting with this person and collaborating with them there's many things like that going back to what i shared before those high high income generating activities but i just focus on three important things and if that's too much for you then just one thing one important thing every day just focus on doing that and anything else you do on top of that is a bonus but don't be so hard on yourself just make it simple one two or three important things that you do each day that's your must and i recommend doing the most important thing first thing in the morning first thing when you start your work day after your morning ritual for example the first thing that you do because studies show that we have the most willpower early in the day there's a great book called the willpower instinct and it talks about how you can measure willpower and throughout the day our willpower gets depleted and that's why later in the day you have less willpower you're more likely to eat junk food or you know not be as disciplined but early in the day you have the most willpower that's why they always say the most important thing you do that in the morning so for me like if you really wanted to change your body and you're not exercising maybe try doing it first thing in the morning when you have the most willpower because after work you're going to have a lot less willpower to do it then same thing in your business the most important thing do it first emails for me emails and responding to people that's something that doesn't require as much willpower i can do that later but working on a big project that's important i want to do that first because my i know i'm going to put that off later if i'm tired or if i have depleted my willpower later in the day okay the next one and this one's really important number nine is mastering speed and urgency speed and urgency most people they don't achieve much because they're too slow i hate to break it to you most people that are too slow they move too slow they think too slow they act too slow they type too slow they're too slow in what they're doing they're not efficient with it and i really learned this from my brother i've got an older stepbrother and my brother used to have a renovations business and i used to work for him once in a while so work for him doing some renovation work and doing some construction and i hated doing it you know but i needed the extra money and so i made some extra money by doing that and helping them out and so i remember i used to you know i had to take the train uh the sky train in vancouver canada go to the job site and meet him there and you know the job every day would be different but most often to be doing demolition type stuff so we'd have to um you know we're renovating a house and the kitchen and i have to remove all the cabinets that are already there and the tiles the floor the walls and just kind of remove all that take all of it take it outside and one thing that i noticed was how fast i worked compared to my brother so my brother was very efficient he worked really really fast he moved very fast and for me i'd take my time you know at that stage of my life i hadn't really developed a strong work ethic and so for me my mindset the times well i'm getting paid for the hour um and so you know the lo you know if i work eight hours it doesn't matter i'm just gonna delay this as long as i can and that's actually something that holds you back when you have a job when you think that way right and you get paid per hour there's no urgency behind that hour because you're gonna get paid the same amount regardless when you're an entrepreneur you don't get paid by the hour you get paid based on the results you produce and the faster you produce those results the faster that you get paid right it's a different psychology going from having a job to having a business and so my brother would work incredibly fast he would not take any breaks he didn't take a coffee break a snack break a lunch break i remember actually he would um you know make he'd be driving to the job site he'd be making calls he'd get to the job site and he would just work and the faster the faster he could work the faster the job would be done the faster we get to go home the faster he completes that job in that project for his client and the sooner he gets to go on to the next job and make more money as a result and he was able to do more jobs in a year than other people that had a renovation business so he was just fast and efficient he would skip his lunch he'd have his lunch when he's driving home you know maybe not the healthiest it's not the most fulfilling way to be and i think you know there's balances of course to this to find ways to enjoy what you're doing but i can tell you for myself when i'm productive the most productive that i am is i'm getting things done fast while still maintaining a high level of quality in what i do so if you can get more done in an hour you have an advantage versus the next person you know if you can if you can if what takes one person to create a blog post or to work on something it takes them a certain amount of time to do that you can do it in half the amount of time or a third of the time you're going to get further ahead than the person that's just taking their time and wasting their time doing it so having more urgency and it also eliminates a perfectionist mentality see a lot of people don't take action because they're wanting things to be perfect and a simple way you can do this i learned this a long time ago is to set a timer when you start a project so take out your phone use a timer and say to yourself okay i'm going to work on this part of my business i'm going to work on writing an email i'm going to work on creating a funnel i'm going to work on writing a blog post set an amount of time for yourself use the time or say okay i'm going to give myself 50 minutes to do this now just by setting a timer it's going to increase your urgency you're going to have more pressure you're going to go faster because you know that once the timer hits zero you're done you can no longer work on this anymore you got to work on the next thing now and so that is kind of a game a trick that you can play on yourself and it helps eliminate you trying to be too perfect with it because then you can look at and say you know what i gave myself 50 minutes this is the best that i could produce in 50 minutes it's time to move on where it's time to finish this up now give myself another 10 minutes if i need to but let's move on now because otherwise i'm going to spend so much time doing this it's not the best use of my time and this extra time on a spin is not going to matter as much as i think so there's things like that you can play around with to help speed up your efficiency number 10 a few more guys master immersive deep work immersive deep work very powerful very powerful to work and immersion there's two two ways to work on something in your business spaced repetition which is doing something once a day once a week or multiple times a day or multiple times a week so for example like learning a language you can learn spanish by taking a class once a week and you space out the repetition of that or maybe three times a week or maybe every day one hour a day and that can help you become more proficient and learn spanish that's space repetition immersion is when you immerse yourself in something for an extended period of time so i venture to say if you want to learn spanish you can practice it a few times a week or you can go to spain or you can go to latin america and immerse yourself in the culture you're going to learn the language so much faster than you will by trying to space it out same thing in your business for me there's some projects where i need to immerse myself in it i can't just work on it an hour a day or once a week sometimes i need to immerse myself like if i'm working on a course i need to dedicate a whole week to it no distractions tell everybody in my life my team don't get a hold of me i'm busy and i immerse myself from morning till night for the whole week to get that done and as a result of that in one week i can finish something that's really really big and important that might normally take me months to be able to complete same thing with creating youtube videos i immerse myself in a day i can't record a video i could but you know i could record a video three times a week or i could just dedicate a day and from morning till night just record those three videos and get it done and utilize that flow and the momentum that i get from that so i remember you know some clients it's made a huge difference people that i've worked with um sometimes if you have kids and a family hey you know what i'm i'm going to get an airbnb and i'm going to spend this weekend no distractions i'm just going to work on my business it's amazing what you can accomplish in a weekend you know or if you have your vacation coming up dedicated to your online business don't just you know you can spend it with family and friends but for me i'd invest that in my business and in one week dedicate that time you can accomplish more in a week that might normally take you three months so immersing yourself in parts of your business is incredibly powerful number 11 is mastering celebration and reinforcement i believe in rewarding yourself because whatever gets rewarded gets repeated so whenever you do have a productive day you did what you said you're going to do for that day or for that week acknowledge yourself for it celebrate that reward yourself reinforce it you know maybe you allow yourself to you know watch tv now or to watch a movie or spend time with loved ones or to go get a massage or to treat yourself in some way and and view it as the reward for a productive day and when you do that you're reinforcing these positive behaviors and habits in your life are being productive and being efficient you know sometimes people have a hard time when they make money you know they want to save it or reinvest it sometimes you get to treat yourself too and say you know what i completed this project i launched this product you know when i make this amount of money i'm going to reward myself and the reward is the pleasure that you give yourself for for following through and being productive and all of that you don't want to make this you want to make this enjoyable you don't want to make this a chore for yourself and so i find little games and things that i do to celebrate whether it's just having fun on the weekend or taking a day off or that's the reward you give yourself and that helps to reinforce these positive habits and behaviors in your life as well and number 12 is master accountability master accountability you're you're always going to be able to get more done when you're accountable to someone else if you're only accountable to yourself and you say that i'm going to do this and you set a goal or a project in your business if you're only accountable to you and no one else knows about it you can easily break your commitment and there's no consequence nobody knows but you the only consequence is you're letting yourself down and your self-esteem lowers as a result of that you have less confidence you know trust yourself as much in the future that you're going to do what you say but when you're accountable to someone else and you say hey i'm going to get this done on this date that's my deadline and i want you to hold me accountable you're more likely to follow through and now there's a consequence if you don't do it you're letting them down and you're going to be embarrassed by that it's the same strategy that teachers use the education system use with their students you know we all grew up in school and your teachers give you projects and assignments and tests and homework and they give you a deadline for it and if you don't if you don't get it done the consequence is you get a bad grade and it doesn't matter what excuse you have you know my dog ate my homework or i was busy or this happened or that it doesn't matter there's either reasons or there's results and not unless there's an actual legitimate reason an emergency a health crisis the teacher doesn't care you're going to get graded based on the result of what you produce and it's the same thing as an entrepreneur you've got to have that accountability in place for your business because when you're your own boss it's a lot harder to hold yourself accountable you can easily just allow yourself off the hook and so i like to have an accountability buddy maybe a coach maybe a friend maybe another entrepreneur maybe someone that's a part of this program maybe a mastermind group that you're a part of but you could do it every week or every day i used to have a friend every morning we'd get on a quick call part of the morning ritual share with each other three things we're gonna do for that day and then later on in the evening time at five or six we hop on the call did you do the three things you said you know and just that one thing of checking in with someone every day i was able to get more out of the day i was able to get more out of myself as a result of that so those are 12 strategies for you guys that can really make a difference if you apply these it will make a huge difference in your level of productivity and the results that you're producing in your business and i'll share one more thing before we dive into the questions that you guys have really for me the most valuable productivity tool all of what i've shared with you is powerful and great but the most powerful one is leverage and outsourcing and what allows you to do that is making more money because everything else i shared with you for the most part is strategies that allow you to get more out of your day more out of the time you have the 24 hours but that's always going to be limited and when you can use your money to invest in other people and technology then you can really leverage and scale and get so much more done so for the time being as you're building your business you've got to maximize your time and your day and your week as much as you can and use your money intelligently to delegate and outsource and leverage yourself but as you make more money your your productivity and your results that you produce scale geometrically now because when you have money you can build a team and when you have a team and people working for you you're going to be able to get so much more done in your business it grows so much faster so understanding that you've got to maximize at the beginning your productivity but once you can build a team and they can start to act on you and and achieve for you rather now you have more freedom more time back and now you can get other people to achieve for you and they produce results and you you you end up paying them in exchange for that but you get the ultimate rewards for that so that's the ultimate that you got to move towards is you've got to maximize your abilities right now be as productive as possible until you're making enough money where you can hire people in your business free up your time more and that's what's going to allow you to scale and really create the financial freedom that you want in your business so listen i hope this is very helpful for you if i were to give you an assignment here today i would say what are one two or three principles that i mentioned here that you can immediately apply to your life write down what that is write down what are you going to take action on after this session what are you going to apply here today that's going to allow you to increase your productivity and practice it practice it every day practice it every week come back to this training if you need to and review it because what i shared with you has taken me a long time to learn

Channel: Project Life Mastery

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Keywords: time management, how to get more done, time management strategies, productivity tips, time management tips, time management skills, how to be more productive, increase productivity, how to manage your time, how to manage time, how to be productive, get more done, stop procrastinating, how to do more, motivational video, productivity hacks, how to stop procrastinating, time management techniques, get more done in a day, Stefan James, Project Life Mastery, how to video

Id: 0UTb0mnuJRE

Length: 69min 26sec (4166 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 10 2021