In this video we talk about Kevin Kruse and his 15 secrets to time management, a subject
that can change your whole perception on the value of each second in the day, and what
you could be capable of.
[Intro]
I recently listened to the Cut the Crap podcast, which featured Kevin Kruse, who is an entrepreneur,
speaker and bestselling author with the book We: How to Increase Performance and Profits
Through Full Engagement.
The podcast had a hugely profound impact on me, where I gained insight on how the most
successful think about time and why they're able to achieve all that they have in their
lives.
So in this video I want to go through the first 8 tips from the 15, with a second part
due out next time.
The tips are about making efficient and productive use of time and gave me great context and
meaning to Dr Jordan Peterson's famous quote, which goes as follows:
"...well you know there are remarkable people who come into the world from time to time
and there are people who do find out over what they could be like if they were who they
were.
We do not know the limits to that and so you ask yourself well what would happen if you
just stop wasting the opportunities that are in front of you – who knows how much more
efficient you’d be?"
The point here is that time is the single most valuable resource we have in life, and
Kevin Kruse deconstructs the possibilities of how we're using time to make the most effective
use of it.
While all other resources, like money, can be recovered in life, once time passes it's
gone forever and there's no way to recover that period of your life.
So knowing the importance of time, how do the most successful make the best use of the
24 hours, or 1440 minutes, we have each day.
1.
Time is Your Most Valuable Resource We've already touched on this one, but to
quote Kevin Kruse "Time is Life".
Money if lost can be recovered.
If you get sick, you can usually get well again.
Time is different, because once you lose time, it's gone and isn't coming back.
Those who are successful understand and acknowledge this point.
They don't think about the value of years, or months, or days, the successful look at
the value of each individual minute in our day.
For example, if you sit and procrastinate for just a minute, that time is gone and isn't
coming back.
Many of us don't think about time in these terms, we don't think about the minutes and
focus on the macro, but where the difference that often counts is what you do when you
consider the micro, how much time do you waste in the day.
So try to just journal how you use your time in the day, see how you're spending literally
each minute of the day and after a period, perhaps a week or month, review the journal
to see the reality of how much time you lose in the day.
Doing this will give you perspective of how much more you could do in your life.
2.
Do the Most Important Task First If you're working towards something in your
life, consider what you need to do to make the greatest progress.
This is your most important task, which you should aim to do as soon as you can.
As you do this daily, your productivity and progress towards your goal will snowball,
which is something we all want.
However, it's not just about identifying the most important task, but it's about then identifying
the best time to do that task.
Generally speaking most people are at their best for a 2 hour period in the morning, this
time being the period that's invaluable towards progressing towards completing a task.
I find for me, this window is usually between 9:30 and 11:30, so much so I actually set
my watch against it.
Where possible, assign this time to do what's most important, whatever that might be to
you.
Try to find the 2 hours that's best for you, and set it aside for focused and fully concentrated
effort to accomplishing your most important task.
You'll be shocked at how productive you can be.
3.
Keep a Calendar Interestingly, Kevin Kruse found when researching
highly successful people, most responded that they didn't write To Do lists, at least not
in the sense that most of us would understand them.
You see for the average person a To Do list is a bullet list of tasks they want to complete.
The problem is that after writing the list, people don't actually decide when they're
going to act on the items on the list and often it falls to the wayside as other things
come up.
Successful people don't just list tasks, the schedule time to complete them.
By giving yourself responsibility to actually plan when you're going to complete tasks,
your significantly more likely to go ahead and complete it.
That means the next time you write a list of tasks, rather than just listing them out,
spend time to assess how long each one takes and set aside time in your day for them.
Make sure to write it down, keeping a calendar or diary to help you.
Doing this will make it significantly more likely that you'll follow through to complete
them.
4.
Beat Your Future Self This one is all about beating procrastination,
by identifying behaviours that can be counter productive to what you want to achieve and
cutting them out before they can have an effect.
So for example say you want to wake up at 5am and go for a jog first thing.
Identify what might stop you, which might be hitting snooze and hesitating about the
jog even if you're up.
In this case, you need to set yourself up to follow through.
For example, put your alarm clock in another room so that you have to physically get up
and move away from your bed at 5am.
Then to try and ensure you go on the run, try to wear the clothes you will run in when
asleep, try putting your shoes near where you set your alarm, so that you're reducing
possible moments of hesitation and doubts.
You could also try using the 5 second rule by Mel Robbins, launching yourself into action.
5.
Set Work Time Anyone who watches any motivational content
will surely have heard speakers talking about hustle and working non-stop and limiting sleep
for it.
While there's no denying the importance of hard work in any challenge, simply working
hard isn't feasible or sustainable in the long term, because there's always more to
do and it never ends.
If you don't take this into consideration, then chances are you'll either face burnout
or hit issues in other aspects of your life, such as your relationship.
Therefore, set your schedule intentionally, setting time for all of the responsibilities
you have in your life.
That means work, but also means health or time spent with your loved ones.
Even the likes of Gary Vaynerchuk, who talks about working in every possible moment you
can, dedicates time in his day to his health and family.
So set an end time for work, because there's always more to do.
6.
Keep a Notebook We constantly talk about the importance of
writing and journaling on this channel and there's good reasoning behind it.
Many, if not most, successful entrpreneurs keep a notebook with them to take notes, write
ideas, thoughts, feelings or reminders.
This is invaluable, because writing has been proven in various studies to help improve
productivity, as we're significantly more likely to take action on what we write down.
Likewise, writing notes frees the mind from having to try and remember details about ideas,
because they're already written.
That helps you free up mindspace on other things that can help you perform at your best.
Just make sure that you schedule time to reviewing your notebook as part of your work time, because
as mentioned with To Do lists, writing something down and not dedicating time to doing it will
likely lead to you not taking action to follow up on it.
7.
Control Your Inbox Controlling your inbox in today's terms means
to take control of notifications, not let them control you.
What I mean that by is set aside time to check your inbox, whether it be email or social
media, each day.
Kevin Kruse says he does this three times a day, morning, noon and evening.
He also goes onto the say that in certain positions you may need to check more often,
even every 15 minutes.
That's fine, but to improve productivity, set times to do it every 15 minutes, making
it an intentional action you take.
There's a couple of reasons for this, as firstly notifications are designed to distract you,
so when you get them your focus is away from what you set time towards.
The second is that when we get notifications, we get a dopamine boost on checking what they're
for, especially on social media.
The problem is that notifications are usually non-stop and never ending, which is where
the vicious cycle can occur where we feel the constant need to check our phones, leading
to addiction.
8.
Schedule Meetings as a Last Resort This one is usually for those employed and
let me just say, I hate meetings.
So much so that I try to minimise the time that I set for a meeting as much as possible,
as generally when in a meeting, I find people will use up all of the time allocated for
the meeting whether they need it or not.
To me it's a phenomenal waste of time, which gets multiplied by however many people are
in the meeting as all of them lose that time.
As already discussed, each minute counts, so losing 10, 15 or even 30 minutes unnecessarily
is immensely frustrating.
And the number of minutes lost from unncessary and meaningless time spent in meetings in
the world today is actually a depressing thought, as it's time we'll never get back again.
I'm not alone in this thought, for example Richard Branson believes most meetings don't
need to be more than 10 minutes.
So if you need to have a meeting, schedule the absolute minimum time needed for that
meeting and have a hard start and stop time for the meeting.
Don't let people take the meeting off track and definitely don't let time go to waste
in the meeting.
If you can, avoid meetings altogether, but if they must happen, then have them during
times of the day when you aren't expecting to be at your best performance, this being
the afternoon for most people.
The only exception is when the meeting is the most important task of your day, which
can happen on occasion, but should be the anomaly, not the normality.
Which of these tips do you already apply, or intend to apply, in your life?
Let me know in the comments section.
Next time we'll be covering the seven remaining tips from Kevin Kruse to use your time like
the most successful people in the world.
If you enjoyed this video please let me know with a Like, consider sharing this with friends
and subscribe as we aim to help people live life on their terms by providing practical
advice through inspirational content.
Thanks for watching.