From Chaos to Control Strategies for Maximizing Every Hour

From Chaos to Control Strategies for Maximizing Every Hour

D Brent Dowlen: [00:00:00] I'm always moving forward, never backward. You can never catch me, but I always catch up with you. What am I? I, I know. I know. It's, it's a really simple riddle, but my kids are that age where they're stupidly in riddle. So I hear them all the time and they're kind of in my brain right now. Better said, William Penn actually said, time is what we want most, but what we use the worst.

Time is the one thing we can never get back and most people cannot afford to buy back a bunch of it. Sure. If you have a significant income, you might be able to buy some of your PA time back and that scales depending on how much disposable income you co have. I know there are a lot of successful business people who trade basically time for money, or sorry, money for time because they're super busy.

Right. But for the average person like myself. That's not in reach most of the time. I do little things like I, I [00:01:00] pay my daughter to mow the lawn instead of me doing it because my time is more valuable than what I pay her to mow the lawn. But for most average people, that's just a little outside of reach a lot of times, is buying back your time.

Successful time management has been a game changer in my life, and after many interviews with highly successful entrepreneurs and businessmen, I know that it's needed. For anyone who wants more out of their life. So if you want more out of your life, then you really need to master time management, and this episode is absolutely for you.

In fact, to be honest, I'm not sure I've ever met anyone who air quotes had enough time, right? So if on that boat today I'm gonna share some techniques, concepts, and insights to time management. That have made my life better and brought me success in my life and will help you manage your time more efficiently so that you can live the life that you wanna live.

So [00:02:00] what do you wish you had more time for? And be realistic. Okay. Not like some woo way out there. Crazy. Over the top? No. What do you actually wish you had more time for? Do you wish you had more time to spend with your family, your kids, your spouse? Do you wish you had more time to go fishing? Maybe? What is that one thing that really matters that you wish you had more time for?

Now, bear with me. Really think about that for just a couple minutes. I want that to sink into your brain and I want you to process that because it will be very helpful going into the rest of the episode. One thing that will absolutely help you manage your time more effectively is getting better sleep at night, because it's hard to stay on point when you're dragging ass.

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Wholesale price 29.98. I'm probably getting my kids some today. King size sheets 34 98. The deals are there, guys, so go to mypillow.com and use promo code [00:04:00] Thrive. Yep, I know. Super original right? Driven to Thrive broadcast. I want it to be easy, so use promo code Thrive or call 807 9 4 5 8 3 4. That's my dedicated 800 number.

There's free shipping options available. This allotment won't last long, and when they're gone, they're gone. So remember, go to mypillow.com, use promo code Thrive, or call 807 9 4 5 8 3 4 to get these amazing wholesale offers. Now let's get on with the show. And by the way, welcome to The Driven to Thrive broadcast purpose, growth, and lasting impact for men.

I'm your host, Brent Dallen, and we help men go from living to thriving purpose-filled intentional lives. Now I'm gonna break all the best practices of podcasting right off the bat, because when you start a podcast, you never tell someone to go somewhere else. But this one I'm gonna tell you to get the very, very most out of this episode, you should go listen to last week's episode first.

We talked [00:05:00] about goal achievement and setting goals. One of the most critical, critical aspects of successful time management is that you have to be utterly clear on what your goals are and priorities are. Without that, then you're not gonna be able to clearly leverage how to, let me rephrase that.

Without that, you're not going to be able to effectively. Clearly leverage your time in the best way. So since you're trying to live a more purpose-filled intentional life, make sure and listen to that episode first. If you missed it now, you can go back to it, obviously, but I don't generally do episodes that have dependencies where you have to listen one or the other, and you'll absolutely get something to outta this episode if you haven't heard that episode, but you will get more out of it.

If you listen to that episode, so either listen to it first and then come back to this episode, or listen to this episode and go straight to that episode. To get the most out of this kind of, I don't want to call it a [00:06:00] two-parter, but really they go hand in hand as you're trying to make the life you want and live intentionally.

And so they really compliment each other and to maximize the benefit of. Either podcast, you should listen to the other one. Now, I've totally shot myself in the foot. That's such a bad practice. You're totally not supposed to do that in podcasting. But I want you guys to get the very most outta these episodes.

I spent a lot of time planning these episodes and my goal is to give you tools to help you live the life you wanna live. And so please don't jump off the episode entirely. Come back to it. Whatever you need to do. I've got so much for you today guys, that will just amplify it. So let's start talking time management.

We're gonna break it into three major areas 'cause it's kind of a, a building process. So we gotta start with what may seem like low hanging fruit to a lot of you. But the number one problem for anybody starts at the [00:07:00] foundational level, level of time management. And that is with wasted time is number one.

There's. Always, always like it makes me incredibly unpopular to say this. But we as adults tend to waste way too much time. The average adult in the US spends 42 hours a week on media con consumption process. That guys 42 hours a week. You spend almost as much time on media consumption as you do at work.

For some of you, that's less 'cause you spend 50 or 60 hours a week at work. But you know what I'm saying. That's six hours a day. Basic math, right? It's six hours a day. Now let's be generous and say part of that is background noise on YouTube or something while you're working. I know I'm a Gen Xer. I grew up in the generation where I always had background music on or something playing in the background, and for years I worked with music or movies playing in the background.

I'm more listening to while I'm doing mind [00:08:00] numbing task, so we'll be generous and say, you know. Only three and a half or four hours a day is pointless. Right. Well, I made two big cuts in my life personally. I walked away from video gaming after I realized I had enough play play hours on one single game that it came out to three years of time.

Guys, I'm, I'm ashamed to admit that like I played. I gamed at a professional level, but I never made money doing it because no one talked about or thought about streaming gaming when I was doing it. But I played at a almost a professional level and never got anything out of it, but I did waste three years of my life.

Now I had some fun, but it doesn't gimme back three years of what I could have actually been doing with my life. A few years later, I had to cut how much television I watched because I realized that keeping up with my favorite shows, I was watching so many shows. [00:09:00] Basically I came home, I went to work, I went to the gym and I came home and the rest of the night was spent watching television with my wife and then we went to bed.

That was all we ever accomplished. Now, maybe you're not at that extreme, so let me be really clear. I don't have any regrets about time. I have spent cuddling with my wife or my children since then. Enjoying a movie are a show we we like to watch Reruns of The Big Bang Theory at my house and Last Minute Standing, and I'm really digging.

Tim Allen's new show. Switching gears, there's a time for entertainment and a value to be had in entertainment as well as part of our ritual as we'll. Watch one of those before we wind down for the night is kind of the signal that we're starting, that ramped down process, and I don't regret that time. My wife and I like every other young married couple.

When we first got married, we didn't have a lot of money, so we spent a lot of time watching VHS tapes. Yes, I'm that old. But [00:10:00] there's a time for it, right? And then there, what I'm suggesting here is that there is a time, but like in my case, I had to examine how much of that time was falling into the category and it started getting away from me.

And I was spending way more time doing that than doing things that actually benefited my life if I had been game streaming. Which was a relatively new thing and unheard of for the most part, back when I was gaming, then it would've been beneficial. My brother actually suggested that I started streaming because I was really good at it.

But that was hindsight years later, right? That didn't include, there's now doom scrolling on social media. Our phones are in our hands all the time. Social media claims an increasing amount of tension, intent, or attention, not intention, sorry. [00:11:00] Social media is claiming an increasing amount of attention every year at people's times.

In fact, some of the most successful people you've heard of don't have social media apps on their phone. Me, I have them on my phone because I do digital marketing and because I'm also on social media with a podcast. But I have them there for work. I actually have them in a folder on my phone that says, time suck under it.

So I have to remind myself immediately. Anytime I open a social media app, the first vision is time suck, is a giant warning to my brain. Get on post, get off. I don't spend time on social media guys. I get in, I post what I need to, I leave because it's very easy for me. To get distracted on Facebook or Instagram and start doom scrolling.

I look down. Holy crap, it's been 30 minutes or an hour, right? It is a time period where life is designed to take your attention, and we've got a lot of it between [00:12:00] movies and television on demand and YouTube and social media. We have a lot of wasted time in our lives. Like I said, there's a time for entertainment.

But if you've got so much entertainment that is preventing you from the living life you want, it's time to reevaluate, to get rid of the waste audit your time regularly start to start. You can go hardcore. I. Just write down like for the first week, like hardcore. I'm only gonna ask you to do this for maybe a week two at max.

Write down everything you do and how much time you spend doing it. Bathroom trips, guys. Ladies, you're guilty of this too. Bathroom trips used to be much shorter for most people before social media. So tip, your phone has a screen time recorder and you can see where you're spending your screen time. Now, you won't have to do that for very long a week or two, and I promise that will be a real wake up call when you actually start [00:13:00] documenting all the time you spend on social media or watching television or movies.

After that, just regularly check in. And reevaluate. Are you still on point or have you gotten distracted again? 'cause this is a constant effort. I know something I have to like reevaluate still on a regular basis all the time. Every month or two, I'm looking at how much time am I spending on different things because it's so easy to fall into that very fun comfort level.

Now, remember Brent's Law, if you caught us last week, we tried this last week, we're seeing if it sticks. So you guys spread Brent's law. Brent's law is you will fill all the empty space, read space time right in your life with pointless stuff. If you don't set aside that time for something specific. We like to fill in the cracks with whatever, because for some reason we're convinced we should be busy.

Now if you want more time, if you need more time in your life, for things that matter, the first and easiest place to start is with [00:14:00] attracting time-wasters like social media, television, movies, media. You spend time just watching, take away the things that don't get you where you want to go, will increase your time a lot.

We seem to be predisposed to losing our drive in favor of entertainment, and it has something to do with dopamine and brain chemicals that I'm sure. Someone like Andrew Erman is much more qualified to explain to you, but it has something to do with dopamine. At the very core of it, the it works kinda like this.

The donut, my hand is way more satisfying now as opposed to something that will take six months to feel good. Right? That's the problem with working out the donut in my hand now. Woo. That's satisfying. I like it and I love a good cinnamon roll. It doesn't feel near as good as it will in six months when I'm healthier and at a better weight, right?

And so that's the con problem we run into. So it's easy to waste time [00:15:00] doing things that feel good, but don't actually take you wherever you want to go. And this world is optimized for distracting you, right? Ask Foundation point number one, distraction is stealing your time. A different kind of distraction, which takes us to the next time management hack.

Have you ever heard the term cleanliness? It's next to godliness. It's kind of a cliche right now. I'm not sure it's next to godliness, but clutter and chaos in disorganization. Disorganization is stealing your time. Organization and cleanliness. Like I said, to optimize your time, you need to optimize your organizational levels to be more efficient.

Organization increases speed if you know where things are. You need that you use your optimizing performance as opposed to having to hunt and look for things. I just put in a new shelf over here to my side, uh, earlier this week from hanging It Simple, and I absolutely love it. And it is redefining the way I do [00:16:00] cable storage because I have a lot of cables in my studio, and for years I've had them in a tub behind me.

Well, guess what? Having them hanging with an arm's reach of my desk to my side, just off camera here. It's much more efficient and I know exactly where they are, and I have to dig for 'em when I need them, right? That is the point of organization. Cleanliness increases calm and decreases distraction in your brain.

Numerous studies have taught us that visual chaos is kind of like static noises for the eyes. It takes mental energy to process everything in your surroundings. Because whether you are focused on it or not, your eyes and your mind are trying to process your surroundings 24 hours a day. It takes mental energy to process all that.

When you have to constantly filter out the disorganization, your cognitive load increases, leaving fewer resources for creativity, problem solving are simply enjoying what you're doing. [00:17:00] Now I know if you live in a busy household with multiple people, especially if you've got small kids and pets that live indoors, then this can be a mountainous task.

So focus in on areas you produce in. For me, that's keeping my studio clean and organized for you, that might be your shop space. Depending on what you do, that might be your office space. You got a cubicle. I worked in a cubicle for years. Keeping it neat and organized is part of the way I stayed efficient.

That might be your vehicle. I worked out, I did a job as a sales guy and I was in a region. I traveled a lot and keeping my vehicle organized, optimize speed and efficiency. Now, that leads us right into number three, which is upgrade your environment. One of the biggest issues that steals time is not having the tools you need to be efficient and stay on point now.

For all of us men out there, let me throw this in. That doesn't mean that you need to go [00:18:00] buy that one tool that you're gonna use one time every 10 years. I am so guilty of this. What it does mean is investing in tools, furniture, ambiance, lighting, uh, any number of things to support your productivity. Is important.

Your space and your equipment reflects your priorities. I built my space here in the studio specifically on the fact that it is a small studio, so I have optimized it and everything except my lights are connected to one adjustable desk that is on casters, and I can turn this desk in three different directions and shoot against three different walls and have totally different backgrounds for different styles of videos.

I optimized my studio space to get the most out of it. That did mean spending a little extra money on the desk, [00:19:00] and I found a huge workaround with that and bought a Home Depot work bench instead of a powered, uh, adjustable height desk. Huge, huge. Guys. If you need an adjustable height desk, home Depot mobile workout desk, our mobile.

Workbench that you can adjust Python way cheaper than buying an adjustable height desk. It's just for all of you who need a desk at home. I actually bought two of them because it was such a great, great idea. But I can spend this, what you see now on video. If you're watching the video, if you watch my videos in the past, you'll notice the background is a little different than it was a year ago.

I can shoot on three walls in this eight and a half by eight and a half room, and the other wall is for sound absorption. So building the space to optimize my production was super important to what I was trying to do. Your space and your equipment is going to reflect your [00:20:00] priorities, and if that's being productive, then you're absolutely going to find out that, uh.

How you set it up matters, right? This is why you find big screens in almost every home and very few books for a lot of people is because people prioritize entertainment. So set yourself up for success by making sure that you have what you need right here at hand. It literally takes me about five minutes to get this office ready to record versus when I am.

Editing my podcast. I'm also a podcast producer for other podcasts, right? It takes me five minutes to set up to record, and then I can go into production mode, which has a lot of moving parts. I rearrange things, I move lights, blah, blah, blah. I optimize for what I was trying to do. Now these first things fall into the first category of [00:21:00] time management, which to me is the basics, the foundation of time management.

They're incredibly important and often overlooked, but there's something that benefits anyone and everyone and that everyone can do. You can optimize your space. You can make sure it's clean and clutter, freeing and organized. You can. Make sure you're not wasting hours and hours and hours every single day watching something instead of doing something.

We're big, big into watching other people do things instead of doing stuff ourselves. This next level of time management is everyday functionality. Their techniques and optimization processes that will help you. Get more outta every single day. So we're focusing on that in this next segment for time management, everyday techniques to optimize your day.

These things build, so start with a foundational level. If you haven't done those things and in that [00:22:00] foundational level alone, you're gonna get a lot more out of your day just by working and focusing on those three things. Moving forward. You won't use every optimum option in the segment we're about to dive into, but you're gonna find what works best for you.

I've tried all the options that I'm gonna present to you and found what is optimal for me. None the other options aren't bad, but one of the other ideas may be better for you than like the one I chose, right. It's kinda like dieting. The best diet is the one you can stick with. Well, the best techniques for time management have to do with what fits your personality and style the most effortlessly.

The things that are easiest for you to adapt and stick with. There's a principle called Parkinson's Law. The states work expands to fill the time allotted. This concept was first published in 1955, and it is true and accurate and has been tested. [00:23:00] Beyond re roach over again. Like people spend years studying Parkinson's law.

You experienced this in your life. I guarantee you've given yourself a deadline and it took you that long or longer. Most time it took you that long, right? But the fact is, a lot of times you could have accomplished that sooner, but we like to protect ourselves. We're afraid of failure, so we set these longer deadlines than we actually need.

So step number one for everyday functionality of techniques and optimization for time management is set te tighter deadlines for yourself. Most people have a failure of failure and unrealistic, unrealistic sense of time and combined. It leads to us giving ourselves ridiculously long time periods to do things that really we could accomplish faster.[00:24:00]

We always think that things will take longer than we have to do with them in, or we subconsciously are afraid of not meeting that deadline. So we pad time 'cause we don't want to come up short. Set realistic but tighter deadlines for yourself because you will take as much time as you are given.

It is better to give yourself, instead of giving yourself a four week time period, it is better to give yourself a two week time period and get to that two week time period and be just a little bit short. Something that you, it's like, okay, well I can extend that a little farther then to give yourself four weeks.

Because if you give yourself four weeks, you're going to take all four weeks to get it done before you hand it in or do it or whatever, because you've given yourself that much time. [00:25:00] If you want to manage your time more effectively, cut those deadlines down. Give yourself realistic deadlines. But if you tighten them up a little bit, you'll be amazed at how fast you get things done.

The second one option is the apply the two minute rule. Now, if you caught last week's show, or you're gonna catch last week's show, you're gonna hear about this as well. The two minute rule is very simple. Stop putting little things off. Don't make a note for yourself to do it later. Anything will just take you two minutes, and I sometimes apply this just a five minute rule for me.

Anything will take me two minutes or five minutes or less. I do it now, get it done, get it off the list. When I worked in the corporate, corporate world, I used to hate it when I was talking to someone at work already, like on a break or at lunch or something, or in passing in the hall, and something would come up and they would say, well, let's set a meeting to talk [00:26:00] about that first.

Now. They legitimately had to run right then and do something because they had another meeting. Sure. Whatever. But the majority of the time it was we were on break and they didn't wanna talk about that right then. So let's set a meeting to talk about that for something that would be really a short conversation.

Now talk this through with me. We're gonna walk away from this conversation we're having right now. We're gonna go back to our desk and I'm gonna send a meeting request, or you're gonna send a meeting request and wait till you get around to answering that email to check your schedule and find out, Nope, that doesn't work for me.

And you send a different proposed time back. We may do that two or three times. Well, we schedule it and we might wait a day, or we might make five days depending on our schedules. Then we stop doing what we're doing, get together for this [00:27:00] meeting. That really was a couple minute conversation. We talk about it and then we have to go back and reference some things because we haven't talked about it in a week, and we gotta sync up on where we were when we start talking about it, and we may decide something.

I make any sense at all. We're here now. We started the conversation. We can get this squared away in three minutes. Why send via emails when I can make one phone call? Why send 10 text messages when a two minute conversation will solve it? Don't set a meeting for a question that can be solved in a quick line or text in an email.

A friend of mine and a former coworker and work mentor who taught me, he got me started in my IT career and he taught me some very valuable lessons. I was at work one day and I got jammed up on this project and I had major deadlines on this project. I sent an email off to an engineer I needed to help oversee fixing this issue.

A day later, my friend [00:28:00] came by to check on me again 'cause he was my uplink. And I was like, yeah, I'm so, I'm waiting on this email from this engineer. And he asked me why I sent an email. Well, I didn't know everybody there. He had worked there a lot longer than I have and. I didn't understand how it all worked.

It was a very new world for me. It was my first job in it. And so he's like, you know what, come with me. We stood up, we walked outta my little cubicle area 'cause I didn't have my own office. It wasn't that important. But we got outta my little cubicle area. We went over to the elevators, we went down the floor.

We walked to another part of the building on the floor below us and knocked on the door. And this is the guy I sent an email to. Yesterday, I hadn't heard back from him. I had no idea. The engineer was a floor away from me, but when I asked him about the email, he's like, Hey, my boy here sends you an email.

You hear anything? What? What's going on [00:29:00] with that? He was like, oh, you know what? I didn't even see. Well, that engineer gets 300 plus emails a day. Okay. I went down to his office, stood face to face with a man. He resolved my issue. That was a massive blocking issue on a big project. In three minutes, I learned two lessons that day, and it was simply this apply the two minute rule, five minute rule, however you wanna give it yourself.

Literally it was like seven minutes outta my life to go do this. So apply the two minute rule and the third one is optimize communication for the fastest result. Understand. That communication is key to everything, so optimize your communication for the fastest result. Don't sit there and send text messages back and forth when you can pick up the phone and settle in 40 seconds.

Don't send a bunch of emails back and forth when you can send a text directly to the person that they're gonna get an alert for, right? It's very, [00:30:00] very simple. Four is batching. Did you know factually the switching task doesn't just slow you down, like it makes you super inefficient, shifting task, getting distracted from what you're doing.

Science has said that it takes 20 to 25 minutes as you switch task. Now, I'll give you an example, right when I record my show. I'm recording this right now after I stop recording this episode. If I already have it written out, I'll record the next episode. If I don't, I'll also record my children's podcast while I've got the cameras rolling.

Why? Because my studio is in record mode, depending on which camera angle I have up right now. You can see I have lights around me, I have cameras around me. I am set to record. [00:31:00] Now because I'm efficient in the way I set up my studio, that only takes about five minutes for me to be ready to record. Five minutes, put together five minutes, take down that's 10 minutes.

That may not seem like a whole lot when you hear those numbers. 10 minutes set up everything. My studio is set up and organized to record right now, so why would I record this when I can reach on on the bookshelf behind me? Grab the children's book from my children's podcast this week and pull it down while I've got all the cameras on and, and record it.

Why Take five minutes, put everything away, finish this, this stuff, stuff. Reset everything up. Record the record, the podcast or the children's podcast. Tear everything, everything back down and work on that, on that. Why would, why would I do that? This is, is more efficient. Batching has been a huge success in my life.

I do this, [00:32:00] this all the time, time. Instead of doing it multiple times, record, I, I record multiple episodes at once because that's what I'm, I'm working on and my brain, brain is there. I do do the same thing thing with client task. Sorry, I. Okay. Okay. When you're in, you're in the group. The group I, I do digital marketing, a company.

Company out Florida. Florida. And I work with several, several clients. I do lot, a lot of social media. I around a lot of their blogs. And so, so when, when I'm doing one thing thing for this, this client, I'm gonna get a blog post to this client. This client, I go, go from that blog post, post to, to this client.

Client. They have go client if a, their right. If I can do, can do all their brain in mode. In writing mode, so I, I do it all and there way efficient. Your brain, brain, that groove, groove. Do the things that fit the groove groove while, while you're there switch requires mental, and sometimes, sometimes a physical shift slows slow down you down, [00:33:00] make sure you're efficient.

Then you have to, you have to get refocused something, something new, reorganized. And it slows you down. Slows you down. So is King. King. When you do a do a task, I wanna you with five options, various times, optimize management for working on, on things efficiently. This comes, comes down to your, your person personality, your flow flow, how you work best, you work best.

Some are based as, as overall time day looking, looking at our perspective are based, are based on prioritizing. Prioritizing what's most, most important, important accomplish for, for you. I have tried these things, a combination of them, but let present, present them to you and you can see, see some ideas that might help you, you manage your time better and chance are you combine.

Combine a couple of them to make it make it most effective. There's something's, something's called the Pomodoro technique. There's something, something you can, you can look up and it [00:34:00] is, it is 20 minute focused sprint, five minute breaks. And this is how you, is, how you pace yourself all day. 25. 25 minutes on, five minutes, five minutes.

Get walk away and breathe. Do something, something. Get a cup coffee, come, come back 25 minutes on. Literally, literally set timers. They're basically advertisers. Guys, you can do it with, you can do with your phone, but, but 25 minutes, five minutes off, five off, and you do, you do three to five to five cycle cycles.

You taking 30 minute, 30 minute break, I think you five of the cycle cycles. Minute, 30 minute lunch for lunch, and then you go, you go again. That's one, one option. Working, working more efficiently, more efficiently. Time blocking is having, is having set banks time on your calendar, on your calendar. When you're, when you're in that time, time block, that's what you do.

Nothing else else exists. World in the world exists. Nothing, nothing else invades. Thats that bubble bubble of time. This is of this one of my go, go-to techniques. If you look at calendar, [00:35:00] have walks of time, of time all over my and what, what is what that says. That's what I'm doing. Nothing else in the world exists.

I don't just do this with my work stuff. I do this with my family time. I have blocks on my calendar. Blocks of time on my calendar, uh, that belong to my daughters or belong to my wife and they're theirs, period dot, if you call me, I'm not answering the phone unless it's an emergency. If you text me, I'm not returning the text.

I'm not scrolling social media. I'm not working at work for my clients or for myself in that time block I'm on, whatever that is. This has been a very effective use of my time. You can buy calendars to do this, but honest to God, you can do this with any calendar. It's stupidly simple, but time blocking means I'm here present in this moment, doing this one thing, and I'm not doing anything else until the end of that time period.

Third option is eat the frog technique. This is so popular. There's an entire book called Eat the Frog. [00:36:00] Uh, I read it recently. It, it's a long book for a very simple compt idea. Start your day by doing the most difficult and consuming task first and getting them outta the way and go through a priority order.

It's really that simple. Uh, I don't wanna discourage you from reading the book, but that's the takeaway, right? The simple premise is this, if tomorrow you had to eat a frog raw, which sounds absolutely gross, would you spend all day dreading it? Would you just swallow that thing whole at the beginning of the day and get it outta your way and clear up that mental space and the stress, the frustration, and the fears, and blah, blah, blah, right?

That's the concept. Simple, straightforward. The Eisenhower Matrix is an optimization process that sequences things by urgency and importance is a four piece quadrant, and it's [00:37:00] helped you to focus your time based on what's really. Not only important but critical that you handle it. Now, I did an entire video on this and I will put that, uh, down in the show notes as well as at the end if you're watching this on YouTube, because I'm not gonna rehash something that I literally spent an entire 25 minute video explaining to people.

But if you're interested in the Eisenhower Matrix, it really is just a four quadrant matrix. Based on urgency and importance of you doing it. So that's how it works. Go watch the video and you'll get clarity on that or go listen to the episode. The Kanban. Kanban, I probably pronounce that right. Wrong. I'm really, it's K-A-N-B-A-N.

I'm really bad at pronouncing things sometimes. So Conb band, however you pronounce this, the Conb band technique. This is for all you list lovers out there, like my wife, if it [00:38:00] can be done by taking notes, right? My wife loves lists. Now I can't tease her too much because I like list two and it can be done on paper.

I have a whiteboard in my office as huge classroom size whiteboard that takes up most one wall in my little office. Uh, you can do it with Post-it notes. I am the king of Post-it notes. I got post-it notes everywhere as part of the reason I have a whiteboard. But you can use software like Notion, which I'm a big fan of, not connected at all, but you can use software like Notion.

I've actually switched to using it because I was going through too many post-it notes, because what you do is you list out all the things you need to do physically in front of you, and that might be on your desk or on a whiteboard or. However you choose to do it. Okay? That could be on a legal pad, write out all the things you need to do today, and then you rearrange them into priority [00:39:00] order, and then you scratch them off the notepad or you throw away the post-it note, or you erase it off the whiteboard.

Are you moving it to the completed section N notion? Whatever you wanna do, but this is for you guys. List out all things you need to do. Prioritize them, knock 'em out, wipe 'em off, bam. That's the Kanban techniques. Like I said, some of these are based on time. Some of these based are based on priorities. All of them will help you increase your time management.

Now, I've used all these techniques and I actually run a combination of these techniques. I run a combination of the Kanban. Like I said, I don't use Post-It notes anymore. I use notion. I am a visual guy, so listening it out all in front of me and then being able to rearrange it really helps my brain. I arranged it based on the Eisenhower MA Matrix, what's important, what's urgent for me, right?

And then I filter it through the [00:40:00] CEE framework, which I shared in my last episode about goal completion and goal achievement. And then I time block. For the execution of completing these tasks, right? So I identify, prioritize, and then sort by time, right? I told you, you're going to find your own combination of these things.

That's gonna work for the way your brain works, the way your life works, and the way youth function. That's the way I do it. It's not right, it's not wrong. It may not be perfect for you. But somewhere in those lists, you can combine these things to actually make yourself much more time efficient. Now, pro tip, one of the things I've learned is I have notepads all over, not just post-it notes, but I have notepads all over my office and usually with me, and that is so I can write down things [00:41:00] because random things pop in my head.

I'm like, whoa, that's a cool idea. Hmm. Write it down, get it out of your head so you don't forget. Get it, but it doesn't distract you because you think start thinking about it. Because that what's happened a lot of times is we get an idea and we start down that rabbit trail because we don't wanna lose that thought.

When you're focused on time management, write it down so you don't forget to come back and think about it and have a time to come back and think about those ideas, but don't let it distract you from what you're doing. And that's where a notebook comes in really handy. Next level hacks guys. This is the third level of time management.

So we've set the foundation and we worked on, worked on daily time management efficiency tips. This is next level hacks. After you've already implemented the first part, you're working on the second part. These are little pieces that are going to take those and make them even more effective. [00:42:00] So as you refine that time management.

Pass the foundational, pass the everyday functionality. Here's some time management helps tips that will help you stretch it a little bit further. Number one is set time for admin task. Don't do them any other time. That means like email. Okay. The amount of time the average American spends checking their email is ghastly.

Uh, maybe that's not your word. It's ridiculous. Let's try that word. Okay. Only check your email at specific times of the day as required and be sure and thin out your emails. Get rid of all those junk emails, all the ad emails, all the marketing email. Get rid of all that crap. Unsubscribe. Now I know I, I have to work on that on a regular basis because somehow I end up, I swear I'm on like those sales list where they sell my email because I get these emails like, I never signed up for [00:43:00] this.

Why am I getting it? Okay. Don't just delete them every time. Actually unsubscribe to them, and I know that's unsavory because it takes more time and more work to unsubscribe than it does to just throw them away. Get rid of 'em. Okay. Email is one of the biggest distractions in the world for adults. Like really, the average American spends over an hour and a half looking through email a day.

The average corporate American spends like four hours a day on email. And I understand after working in the corporate IT world that some companies run entirely by email. I had a dedicated screen on my computer system just for my inbox because I got a hundred plus emails every single day and I had to be aware of them.

Right? Unless that's you, then you need to set that admin task and say, I'm gonna check my emails at noon. I actually would [00:44:00] recommend that you find when you work most efficiently. For me, I get up super early in the morning and that's when I do my best work and that's when I get the most done. My wife, she stays up late.

That's when she gets work done. That's when she most efficient, right? Set that email time. At an inefficient time. I should not get up and check my email first thing. I don't have to corporately, so I shouldn't do it anymore. Because that's my time of genius. That's when I should be absolutely function on focusing on total creation and doing my work.

So set admin tasks. The average person checks their email like 20 plus times a day. It's ridiculous. Most people, it's really not that important. So stop burning time. You can reclaim a lot of your day set 20 minutes, twice a day that you check your email, and that's the only time you ever look at it. Stop loosening time.

If you've got the money, get an assistant who [00:45:00] opens your email and don't look at it ever again. Um, Branson, CEO, I just wanna blank on his first name, huge. CEO owns like a hundred companies. Doesn't ever open an email, ever. He doesn't even have email on his computer. He doesn't have a device. He has an assistant, Richard Branson.

There we go. He has an assistant. That has a device and has his email and tells him what he needs to know. Richard Branson doesn't actually have a device with stuff on it, and he doesn't have email. Elise that he looks at. He is told the information he needs to know because it is too much of a distraction for the fact that he runs like a hundred companies simultaneously.

So understand, an email is just somebody else prioritizing your day. That's what it really is. Number two, delegate anything you can and we kinda led into it. I would love to have an assistant check my email. I don't, that'd be nice. But [00:46:00] delegate anything you can. Now, that means if it falls below your pre pay grade as far as your expertise, like email, that's not what you should be spending your time on.

So delegate that ca task if you can right now. I know a lot of people. Can't do this. Say, I don't, bro, I don't have any money. I, I can't afford, you're right, I don't have a personal assistant either, but this can filter down. I shared last time on the podcast, I delegate my lawn mowing to my 13-year-old daughter.

Why? Because it's way below my pay grade and that 45 minutes. In that 45 minutes, I can produce a lot more value and a lot more that's worth more money. Then I can spending the time mowing my lawn. Now, for some of you, mowing the lawn is a, a great escape and you love it. My father, he loved to mow the lawn.

He loved getting out and mowing the lawn. He, it was like a high part of his week. If you do that and [00:47:00] that's part of your stress relief, great for me. I hate mowing the lawn. It's wasted time for me. It's below my pay grade. I delegate it. Delegate anything you can beyond what you normally do. Number three, clear your brain immediately jot down those ideas to prevent mental clutter.

We talked about this briefly. Zuckerberg not a big fan of Mark Zuckerberg, but Zuckerberg and Steve Jobs were both mocked initially because they wore the same exact outfit every single day. When it first gained the notice of the media, they were ridiculed. People didn't understand the concept of decision fatigue, which science has now confirmed.

It's a totally real thing. You only have so much mental g mental energy every day and every decision you make. Drains that, think of it like this, and I explain this to 'em, clients in the gym as well, right? When you walk into [00:48:00] the gym, you are a gallon jug of water that is totally full and someone pokes a hole in the bottom of that jug.

You're going to run out of juice, so you have to prioritize what matters in the gym. Likewise, in your life, you have mental and emotional energy that drains every single day, and there's a cap on that, and at the beginning of the day, you are at your maximal amount. As the day goes with every decision you have less and less and less.

It is a proven fact that by the end of the day, people are making decisions and the quality of their decisions are less than 60% of the normal quality. They will put into a decision that they are at the beginning of their day. It's called decision fatigue. It's a completely legitimate thing and it affects your life well, every time you get distracted.

[00:49:00] It sucks mental energy out. So when you have those ideas, write that brain down on that idea, down on the notepad so you don't lose it. But don't think about it because it's going to take away from your efficiency with what you're trying to do. Write it down. Look at it later that day when you have time scheduled in your schedule for it at night.

Write down things for the next day. Do a total brain dump. So you won't forget about the things that are on your mind, but it will clear those things off your mind. You'll actually get better rest like you would from our friends, MyPillow if you have their stuff. Number four, automate anything you can. We are in the age of AI guys.

Uh, for some of us that's a little disconcerting. For some people. They're really excited about it. Some people were thinking it's the apocalypse. I don't know where it is. I'm a little disconcerted with some of it, but you know what? I use AI when I can to make my life more efficient, and you should too. I actually watched a video about creating, [00:50:00] uh, AI agents today.

I, I still don't understand it. I'm not gonna go create one, but I think there might be something to it, so I'm starting to investigate it. Right. We're in this crazy age where you can automate some task. So in this age, clear your plate of anything you can automate. If you have some stupid little repetitive task that you do all the time, that really is a no brainer for you.

Figure out how to automate that sucker. Number five, patterns and routines. We as people. Automatically, naturally have patterns and routines, so optimize your patterns and routines to be more efficient so you have less breaks from what you need to focus on when you're in those focused time periods, whether you're time blocking or doing the uh, Pomodoro technique or whatever it is.

Okay. Optimize the work time for as little distraction as possible by setting in patterns and routines. When [00:51:00] you get up to go get coffee, go to the bathroom while you're up, get some water while you're up, blah, blah, blah. While you're up, do it while you're all up. Don't get up four times for four different things.

That's just stupid. Less breaks from your focus time. It can be established through patterns and routines. It also lets you get rid of some of the dec decision fatigue. If I get up at the same time every day, if I start my morning, the power of morning routines are, is vastly overstated on YouTube, but the power of mad morning routines is not what that routine is.

It is the ritual of doing things that you know will benefit you and start your day correctly. That you don't have to think about it is starting your morning in a positive movement that doesn't drain you mentally or emotionally. That's the power of a morning routine no matter what that morning routine is.

Getting [00:52:00] rid of the decision fatigue and just having a set pattern you run through that, you know, helps you start your day in a positive way. That's the power of a routine. Number six is binary beats for focus when you're working. Now, a year ago, guys, I would've completely, completely mocked anyone for saying something like this, but after experimenting it with it for almost a year, it really is effective, especially if your mind tends to wonder or you're easily distracted.

I've tested this in my own life and guys, the difference in productivity is. Beyond ridiculous. If I was still working a corporate job, I would be embarrassed at how much more efficient I am working with my binary or beats versus my just working with regular music. I tested this with my 13-year-old whose mind is always busy.

She's always [00:53:00] thinking and is going a million different directions to help her focus better on her schoolwork, and the results were very similar. She got done faster. She did better at school. She comprehended things better. She got better grades. It was crazy. I'll put my favorite YouTube background, binary beats track in the notes for you guys.

It's eight and a half hours long and I listen to it every single day. The channel has other tracks that I've tried for some reason. This one, this one is the right combination for me. One of 'em I really liked, but it had too much base in it, and my listening to my headphones all day actually started giving me a headache.

This one has been perfect. It's been perfect for my daughter. She uses the same one. I'll put the link down there. I'm not connected with them, affiliated with them in any way, but I've experimented with this on and off for almost a year now. Guys, when I'm using it, my output increases [00:54:00] by a minimum of a third.

Let that soak in. Sometimes by half, depending on what I'm doing. So I kid you not, that is the difference. Something about that 40 hertz frequency, the focus I put on my clamshell headphones in a couple minutes. I don't even hear the music anymore. I. I'm just laser focused. I'm fast, I'm efficient. It's crazy.

So I'll put that link below if you wanna try it. I absolutely recommend it. Like I said, I mocked it a lot, but wow. There it is, gentlemen. Now you're gonna have to play with some of these ideas because there's no one size fits all. If you can get the foundational level down. You're gonna be off to a great start in reclaiming your time and to be able to focus on building the life you wanna live.

That alone is gonna help you overcome [00:55:00] that stuck or trapped feeling that a lot of people tend just fill. You're not stuck where you are, and taking back your time from the trash that fills it will help you have a more positive perspective in the possibilities of what you can do with your life. Start implementing some of the everyday functional level that fits your personality.

As I shared, use a combination of the principles and techniques that fit your personality and style. And as you experiment with those techniques, you're gonna find the combo that works best for you. Just getting that foundational stuff done is gonna be a game changer. Getting some of that daily work in is going to just radicalize your life now.

Think of that next level. Okay. The, uh, what did I call 'em? Sorry. The next level hacks, guys, think of that next level hacks. They're like the icing or the cherries or whatever metaphor you want to [00:56:00] use on top. Okay? They're things that will amplify the daily strategies. These strategies will take your time management to a whole nother level and set you on a positive path towards living the life you wanna live and being able to live more purposefully.

Now, I know we covered a lot today. I've been doing that a lot lately. Sorry about that, but. There is a significant chance you are listening to this in the car or on the go or on the treadmill, and if you're worried because you couldn't take notes, don't be. I've got you covered. Head over to purpose driven men.com and you can go to the episode page and you'll find a free PDF download with some notes for you.

You can also find a full transcript as well if you want to go even beyond those notes While you're there, be sure to sign up for our bi free biweekly newsletter for exclusive insights. Behind the scenes information offers from our guest and more, uh, we, we put stuff, there's content that is exclusive to that [00:57:00] email that never comes out on the podcast, so be sure to sign up for that while you're there.

And next week we're gonna dive into some habit stacking help for you guys because habit stacking has been a game changer in my life as well. So be sure, like, share and subscribe. Share this with someone who needs it. And until next time, go take back control of your time. Be better tomorrow because of what you today.

We'll see you on the next one. The Driven to Thrive broadcast purpose, growth, and lasting impact for men. Helping men go from living to thriving. Purpose-filled intentional lives.