We are all given the same 24 hours every single day and some people use that time
to go start multi-million dollar businesses, other people learn amazing skills,
form amazing relationships, and some people just get by which is why in this video,
we want to give you six tips to help you get twice as much done every single day or
you get the same amount done in a normal day and just have more time
to spend doing the things that you love and for this video, I want to reintroduce Ben;
I'm doing this again because we have had Ben on previous Thursdays but some of you were curious who he is.
He is my co-founder, he's been doing Charisma on Command with me since
the very beginning so take it away, Ben.
Let's define productivity.
Productivity is not getting a bunch of random stuff done super quickly that doesn't matter.
Okay, it's about doing the important stuff more quickly.
This first productivity hack comes from my friend, Zach Obront who co-founded a
10-figure business, Book in a Box, when he was 23 years old and he calls it Killing Bob.
No offense to Bobs; I am named after a Bob, that's in my family but
he calls Bob the persona we all have that is kind of lazy and has a tendency
to procrastinate or to waste time. How do you kill Bob?
Every Sunday, sit down and set a timer for 10 minutes.
And then, brainstorm what would you do to accomplish whatever goal you're trying to be productive in accomplishing if you had infinite time.
You had all the time in the world and just write down every single thing that you would do
then once the timer goes off, you look at it and you prioritize.
How do you prioritize? You pick — what are the biggest-impact things that are gonna take the least amount of time from me?
Once you have that list of high-impact things, you wake up every Monday to Friday
and you just make the first thing on the list the first thing you do that day.
It guarantees — no matter what happens, no matter what kind of crazy stuff comes from your boss or fires come up in your business —
you get to go to bed knowing, "I did something big to accomplish my goal."
If your thing on the list is really huge like launch a business or write a book,
just chunk it into 60-minute chunks and then just do that the first thing every day.
That brings me to my second point for being more productive which is —
make work an escape room. If you haven't done an escape room, I highly recommend it; I love them.
But it's basically — you get locked in a room and then you solve puzzles
and riddles in order to escape before a clock counts down from 60 minutes to zero.
Do that exact same thing with work; this is great for killing perfectionism which is something I'm very guilty of.
Given infinite time work is a gas and it will expand
or contract depending on how much time you give it.
I have a friend that, just by killing Bob and making work an escape room,
worked three hours a day for a year and made a seven-figure business. How?
He would get a buddy, he'd go to Starbucks, he'd set a timer for three hours and he would just crank
and as soon as that timer went to zero, he'd get up, he'd go to the beach, he'd hang out — he's done for the day.
This is amazing because, one, if you're an entrepreneur, it lets you have more time
outside your business or, two, if you work a job but you want to start a business,
it gives you a method for doing that; working eight hours a day and then just slapping on two or three hours on top of it
so that you can be free of a job you don't like within a year — that's crazy.
A very important part of that is my third tip which is saying no to time vampires.
If you're only gonna work two or three hours a day on this thing that matters to you,
how do you make those two or three hours productive? How do you make them count as much as possible?
Say no to time vampires; a time vampire is anything that sucks your time and does not give you anything back for it.
So this could be group calls with 15 people about a project that you're not really involved in,
or this could be coffee meetings with someone that you're not very excited to hang out with.
Just say no to it — super easy for an entrepreneur or a student but even if you work for somebody else.
If they invite you to a call with 12 people and you say, "Hey, Steve,
I'd love to come to this but I'm cranking really hard on this project that I think is more important and I'd love to be able to sit this one out and just get it finished."
If what you're working on is gonna make that person more money or make him look good,
they're going to say, "Yeah, for sure. Skip the call. Do your thing,"
which means that you get to either work less because now you have to go to the call and work and stay late
or you get to do what's important to you and skip the stuff that's boring.
The other time vampires to say no to are things that you bring on yourself —
Facebook, email, your phone — huge distractions.
There's been so many studies that even looking at your phone for five minutes
doesn't just cost you those five minutes; it takes you out of flow, it distracts you
and then when you go back to work, you're thinking about what you just looked at.
And it makes you so much less productive so just shut it all down and go into airplane mode.
Work for that work period and then go actually have fun and do something that you really enjoy afterwards.
The biggest time vampire that I can recommend getting rid of is television.
The average American watches 5 hours of TV every day; that's insane.
Yes, go on movie dates. Yes, watch documentaries or watch things that make you
learn and make you a better person but to just sit down and watch
mind-numbing TV so that the time passes is such a waste of time
when you could spend those five hours achieving whatever your goals are —
starting business or becoming skilled, becoming a virtuoso — five hours is so much time each day.
In addition to saying no to time vampires, say no to brain-draining activities.
Great example of this is drinking but it's really just anything that is
going to make you useless afterwards.
Again, I'm not trying to be a fun ruiner, I'm not trying to rain on your parade —
go out, party, go on dates, get dinner with friends, have a drink or two
but if you're useless the next day and if you're just sitting on the couch watching TV hiding from the sunlight,
it wasn't worth it, right? It's going to severely hamper your ability to achieve whatever you want, right?
And if you're watching this video, that means you have something that you want to achieve and you want to do so
keep going out but stop drinking and stop doing any other brain-draining activities.
All right, number five — to wake up your mind, wake up your body.
Now, in general, tons of productivity gurus will tell you that exercise is a super important part
of being healthy and being mentally focused but it takes time and it can fatigue you.
So when you're in a time crunch or right before you're about to work, you don't want to go play basketball for two hours.
What you can do is this — set a timer for 60 seconds and do jumping jacks
or push-ups as quickly as you can; that's it, 60 seconds.
You will get the benefits of exercise, the endorphins and the adrenaline,
plus it will energize you instead of fatiguing you.
Now, numbers six is the only thing on this list that might not be accessible for everyone but
if you have some extra money, I highly recommend time arbitrage.
What time arbitrage is is basically this —
write down all the things that you do that someone else could do that take time out of your day.
This could be grocery shopping, cleaning your apartment, getting gas —
whatever it might be and think, "Can I hire somebody? Can I pay somebody else to do this at a lower rate than I make per hour?"
because if I can work for three hours to save myself four hours, that's amazing.
That's a free hour to go have fun with my friends, hang out with my girlfriend, or work towards my goals.
So time arbitrage — some great companies for this are sponsored Blue Apron or InstaCart for grocery delivery,
any cleaning service, TaskRabbit, to do little things, Fiver if you want someone to help you online...
It's really, really incredible how helpful this can be.
I personally don't do any grocery shopping anymore because
the amount of time it takes for me to go to the store, do the shopping and come back,
I can actually make much more in that same amount of time
than the small fee that those services charge.
If that interests you, our sponsor, Blue Apron, is giving away three free meals completely free if you just go through the link below
but in general, I highly recommend Blue Apron, InstaCart, TaskRabbit, Fiver — anything that you can afford
where you get to save time by paying someone else to do something you don't like.
There you have it; six tips to massively increase your productivity —
kill Bob, make your work an escape room, say no to time vampires, say no to
brain-draining activities, wake up your body and take advantage of time arbitrage.
If you do these things, you will see so much benefit.
I really, really implore you even if it sounds simple or it sounds like it won't work,
just try it for one week and you'll be amazed at the amount you can accomplish.
So that's it; thank you so much for watching.
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