- Prioritization graph.
I learned this from Stephen Covey.
- Yeah.
- Seven Habits Of Highly Effective People.
So any of the tasks that you have on your list,
so now you know your magic number,
you know you need to avoid minimum wage activities.
So let's now look at all the things
that you've got going on, right?
And do me a favor, if you're listening to this,
make a list of, just give me some examples,
four or five things,
because I want to walk you through this,
and actually coach you a little bit.
So just list out very quickly, a piece of paper,
what are some of the things that you have on your list
that you do on a regular basis, right?
So this is what the chart look like,
so imagine you have the quadrant, right,
you have the quadrant.
So we divide the task into either they're important, urgent.
So just important, urgent, that's it, right?
So your tasks that are urgent and important,
which we put that as like level one.
- Yep.
- Those are the most important things.
Guess what those things you kinda gotta take care of, right?
- Yes.
- In this case, important goals, deadlines, projects,
different things that you're working on.
Things that makes a difference, right, major things.
So that's level one, kinda issues.
Tasks, level one tasks, work on those.
And then you have the tasks that are urgent
but not important.
They're kind of like urgent, you gotta get it done
but they're actually, they don't contribute a lot
to your long term goals, right?
It could be reports, it could be low priority email,
or spending a lot of time, wasting time on social media,
right?
Like, I mean like checking your friends' walls
and stuff like that.
I mean they're actually not that important,
actually not even urgent at all.
- Not urgent at all, no.
- And then you have,
so those would be the things that level three
kind of a problem, right, level three kind of a task.
Level two: not urgent but important.
Not urgent.
- But important.
Long term, important long term.
So those tasks, it could be planning, right?
It could be meeting that person, or meeting that client,
that could turn into something great.
- Build that relationship.
- Maybe not today, but maybe three months down the road
it could be something huge.
So it's not urgent, but they're very, very important
to your long term success, right?
Those are, like, level two.
So, urgent important level one.
Not urgent important level two.
So you should spend a lot of time, most of the time,
in the top of the quadrant.
Last one, not urgent, not important.
If they're not urgent, not important,
then my question to you is why email them at all.
Right?
Why do you even do them at all?
Now we all have some tasks in our lives
where they're not urgent and not important, and that's okay,
but just knowing that, it could be, you know,
you go watch a movie.
- Yep.
- It's not urgent, it's not important,
but it's fun, it's entertainment.
That's perfectly fine.
Like, just know that, you're aware
that that's what you're doing.
- And I guess if the bulk of your activities are
in that area, that's why you're broke.
Right?
- So ask yourself right now, are there activities,
the few activities you're doing on a regular basis,
are they urgent, important, are they not urgent, important,
are you doing a lot of stuff
that's like urgent, not important,
and not urgent, not important.
Tell me.
Do you see how many things you gotta say no to?
You see now, how many things you have to say no.
You have to say "No, that's not what I do."
- Even being able to just, you know,
and you kind find this online, guys, you can print this out,
you can draw it yourself on a whiteboard.
- I learned it from Stephen Covey.
- Yes.
But how many of you are gonna actually to do it?
How many of you are gonna do it not just on,
you know, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday,
but by next week you're still doing this?
Or two weeks from now, you're still doing this,
you're still writing it out on a daily basis.
That's another thing that is probably lacking,
is that many of you, you like the idea tonight,
it sounds great,
but then are you actually going to implement it?
I'm going to challenge you,
I'm going to challenge those out there to get it done.
- Yes. So to think about all the tasks that you do,
if you know you are doing a lot of level three
and level four,
then you know that's killing your productivity.
But if you are probably most of the time, level one,
level two, then you're good.
Like that's kind of your baseline, right?
That's your baseline.
So you should spend the majority of your time
in the top quadrants, not bottom quadrants.
So anything that you do,
so now, to me, I do it kind of second nature,
anything that I need to do automatically I put it
into a quadrant, right?
I will put it in the quadrant.
And sometimes, a lot of these things where I would say,
okay, that's urgent but that's not important,
then okay I need to maybe delegate to the team,
or if it's not urgent, not important, I ask,
the first question is should I even just eliminate this?
That's my first line of defense.
Why are we even doing this at all?
So I eliminate it.
Right, and you know train yourself to do that.
Sometimes it's tough to.
- It's not easy to do this actually.
- And something I trained guests quite a bit.
Because his personality, he's more optimistic,
and like to make it work, like to say "yes", like to,
not, I shouldn't say burn bridges,
it's you don't want to upset people, because he's very kind,
doesn't want to say no people.
And that's the thing I'm always reminding him,
sometimes you gotta say no.
And sometimes, you know what, we're not going to do it.
And sometimes kinda pushing outside the comfort zone a bit.
So you're not gonna do that.
- Then Big Dan also coached me as well and said,
protect your time.
So I have to look at this before I even,
sometimes even just ask the question,
to see who wastes his time,
when I could have figured it out.
- Sometimes he might know that I'm probably going to say no,
but maybe I should still ask, it happens too,
so that's an ongoing thing we work on.
So there is not a single time management,
we talk about systems, we talk about disciplines on earth,
that doesn't revolve around some kind of a list.
Making or using some kind of list.
I'm a very big fan of lists.
Now different people like to do it different ways.
I am going to share with you my way, okay,
just my way of doing it.
I do not like to do it on here.
I don't like to make lists on my phone.
I'm very old school.
I'm a paper, notepad, journal kinda guy.
That is what has worked for me over the years.
The phone, making to do lists, it doesn't work for me.
Don't know why, it just doesn't work for me.
I like to feel the ink. I need to write it.
And what's very powerful is I have a journal
that I use all the time, when I write things out,
when I cross it out, there's that.
- Satisfaction.
Fulfillment.
- Satisfaction, fulfillment.
And what's very, very good is you can get this simple
journal from any Office, Staples, whatever, place,
very simple thing.
It's very, very interesting if you actually write down,
this is for this quarter, or this year, whatever.
You accumulate a bunch of these journals
and you can look back, after a few years,
the problems you were solving before,
versus the problems you are solving now.
You can see the progress.
One thing that inspired me,
that's a book by Richard Branson.
This is Stripped Bare.
Right?
You wanna get a copy of that book,
it's one of his best books.
But what's very inspiring is, you will see
before the first page of the book, like,
when you open the cover, you will see his to do list.
- Right.
- It's fascinating, okay?
You open it up, it's actually a very, like, doodle, kind of,
but you can see the drawing, right?
- Yes.
- You can see the drawing of his to do list.
What I read there inspires the hell out of me.
You know what he has on his thing?
- No.
- Buying a 747 jet, for his Virgin Airlines, right?
It's like big things.
- Big giant things.
- I'm gonna acquire this company,
I'm gonna pay this hundred dollar thing.
- It doesn't say washing the car, mowing the lawn.
- No. It's like the biggest thing you will see.
I find that fascinating.
Like just getting the book, reading Richard's to do list,
you're like, they're all big items.
They're all like, urgent, important,
or like, important, not urgent tasks.
Phenomenal.
That tells me a lot about the way he operates, right?
- Whiteboard.
Whiteboard as well, is another good way.
- Whiteboard, that's a great way to do it.
I mean whiteboard.
I still, I use whiteboard for short-term,
but I still like the paper.
Because whiteboard once you finish it.
You kind of erase it.
I like to keep a record,
because I like to see my own progress,
so good old paper and pen,
it doesn't cost a lot of money, it's not having fancy,
I know a lot of people that use a very fancy app
or software.
I can be very simple, I still can be very simple.
- Right.
- I don't even use the Excel, I like paper.
So find what works for you, right?
Do not carry it all on your head,
that's what you don't want to do.
Put it, write it out.
The more details you get on paper,
the fewer you must remember and worry about.
You know how it is sometimes,
you have so many things you worry about.
- I got too many things.
- Right, like, too many things, and then you miss some,
and then, you're like "Shit".
The guilt kicks in, and "Oh my God", and they're gonna.
so then in your mind, you don't know it,
but you're spending a lot of mental bandwidth.
- Mental energy, yes.
- Revising that thing many, many, many times.
- But when you write it out.
All of a sudden it's there, it's clear.
Then there's this relief.
- Relief, yeah.
And sometimes, and do this, when you,
in your mind you might have, "Oh, I've 50 things to do,"
but when you write all that out, and you use the quadrant.
- It's actually not that many, yeah.
- Oh maybe you got like 20 things you gotta do.
And the other 20 things, like we find,
it's like you totally don't have to do, you can eliminate.
And actually you only have like seven things
that you can focus on.
- That's true, that's true.
- So, I like to do that, like all the time.
I do it all the time.
All the time.
- This goes back to the people who say they're busy
all the time.
They say they're busy, but if you write it out,
actually maybe they realize they're not that busy.
- And a lot of the stuff
that they do is minimum wage activities anyway.
It's not important.