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You can watch the video for the last episode recorded on October 31, 2019, above, or you can review the transcript below.
In this episode we talked about:
- How do I get that habit if I’m having trouble doing this?
- What daily habits affect productivity the most and why?
To find recommended tools and other great resources, check out the Productivity Academy Resource Toolkit: https://productivity.academy/resources
All right, welcome everybody to Episode 100 of the productivity Academy weekly Q and A. As you can see, I’ve got my background a little bit off, but luckily the costume is in full effect. So wanted to share this with everybody, as I had it on earlier today for video and I was thinking like, man, should I do this? Like, yeah, why not?
So in case you’re not sure how I’m supposed to be since I don’t look like him at all supposed to be Andy from Parks and Rec. If you’ve ever seen that you can look it up. It’s Chris Pratt from guardians of the galaxy and a lot of other stuff. So anyways, having fun, I’m actually going to head out for a group run it falls on our weekly group run.
And so I’m going to wear this with some running shorts and go out for a run. Should be a lot of fun. But anyways, wanted to say hello, and hope that everyone’s gonna have a great Halloween or if you’re catching this later. hope you had a great one. And for me, this is great. This is Episode 100.
Alright, got 100 Weekly Q and A’s in the bag and looking forward to doing more and getting more questions and answering what I can and sharing what’s working with me with you. So, real quick, if you’re watching this live and you got questions, go ahead and ask them. I’ll get to those as I have time.
If you are not live, if you’re checking this out, maybe on YouTube or on the blog, you can always head over to the group and join us live and ask questions, you can find the link down below and if you’re checking this out on YouTube, and you want to stay up to date, sadly, I’m not always in costume.
But if you want to find out more about productivity, time management, automation, team building all that sort of good stuff, go ahead and click subscribe and stay up to date. So today, I’ve got a few things I wanted to cover.
I thought that you know being Episode 100 be kind of fun to do a quick review on you know, where things stand what I still feel is the most important what I hear the most from people about and I’ve got a specific question I want to go over and then that’ll kind of wrap it up because man I got Hello But let’s get into it.
So it’s been kind of interesting. And I’m starting to actually make some changes to my routine. And I think that’s normal in the sense of doing this maybe once per year, or whatever you start to see for myself, it’s about once per year it started, you know, maybe you find a new tour, you just start maybe wanting to add some features or add or sorry, take away features or kind of contract.
But the things that stay the same are the overarching goals. And that’s why I advocate kind of having your own framework and that’s why I called the book and wrote the foundation, it’s a framework to get results and it doesn’t matter on what tool you’re using. You can use Evernote, you can use notion you can use a pen and paper it doesn’t matter.
That stuff stays the same. And then you can swap tools out use what’s best for you build your framework around that tool. So you know top of the list has got to be and still is daily planning if I could only do one thing to keep myself really productive to keep myself on task. And to hit my goals, it would be doing a really thorough daily review, and then adding it.
So just to reiterate to on that, for those of you who maybe haven’t implemented this, or you maybe just kind of check your calendar, and that’s your daily review, that really means, you know, integrating some stuff from like getting things done from you know, taking in all of your input. So if you have sticky notes, all right, if you’ve got maybe to do list or Evernote.
But whatever it is, you take all of that in and you get it into one central location so that you can deal with it. You can understand what needs to be done and decide what actions to then take. All right, and on top of that, I highly recommend like I just said, using your calendar, starting to plan that stuff out and saying okay, well I’ve got 11 things on my to do list today.
I’ve got three actual hours that I could put this into the Okay, so what do you do you prioritize right? And then that’s where you form Well, what is actually the most important so that you work on those important tasks that support your longer term goals. Get that stuff moving, and if you just get in that habit on a day to day basis, he started to see real results.
All right, and this isn’t, certainly I’m not the only person to ever say this. But it’s important to reiterate it both I want you to hear it and I do it to myself daily to because it can be distracting to be like, well, I’ve got this email, just reply to that, or, you know, slack messages all this is fun, I’ve got, you know, a gift over here I want to do, and a little bit of that is okay.
I’m certainly not saying that not have fun in your life, but realizing that, hey, you know, if you’re spending 45 minutes or an hour doing all this other stuff, well, if it’s your most productive kind of peak time and you’re doing that, then you know, that’s time you don’t get back and you could be really focused in on what it is you want to do.
The goals you want to achieve, and getting there and you don’t get that time back. And then also for myself, I just know I’m productive first thing in the morning, I want to really focus and get that stuff done. So in the afternoon, I have more time to myself, I can do some reading, I could go through a course and make some calls, do things like that.
Whereas if I you know, Krasney in the morning then that stuff gets pushed out, and then I’m even less likely to do it. But you know how that goes. So, daily planning daily review, I think that that is incredibly important. And right behind that would then be the review of some sort. And I say this because it’s totally up to you, I do weekly review.
I think that’s a really good timeline, or, I guess, span of time to do it. And that is asking yourself some questions and literally writing them out the answers to these you know, what’s working well for you? What isn’t working so well. And to each of those trying to brainstorm what are some things that I could do to fix those or to enhance those results.
And last, but not least, what some things I could delegate, what are some things I could delete, or automate? All right, and just little things, maybe it’s only a two or three minute task a week, but if you automate that, that’s gone forever. And depending on how long that could have gone on for that literally could be days you’re saving.
So and that stuff just adds up over time. If you can save yourself five minutes a week. Something that’s recurring. That actually adds up to more than a week of your time in a year. It’s crazy. So, you know, really putting some time towards that, even if it’s 2030 minutes, 45 an hour if you can, and doing a review and going back over and asking yourself again, you know, what is working well, and how can I get more results like that?
What isn’t working well? How can either fix it or get it, get rid of it? And then what can i delegate, delete, or automate, then just recognizing that, hey, this doesn’t have to be, you know, I need to get this huge project off of my list or off of my plate, like, No, you can just start with those little things because they add up over time and it’s really, really powerful.
Let’s see, I’m gonna check real quick for some questions. Okay. Um, so, the,
the last thing I want to say on this is that this works at all scales, I’m not going to go into Okay, do it. You know, do your daily review six days a week and then take every other Friday off or anything like that a lot of this is pretty.
And, you know, I highly suggest trying to make this a daily habit even on the weekends. I’m certainly not perfect with this, I am for that. And I strive for it so that it’s just a habit, right? It’s not a Okay, well, I need to know which day it is and what I’m doing, tried to stick to things that for me, that’s the way it works well as things that I do on a very regular basis.
And then having a backup plan as well, you know, and in case I’m traveling, sometimes I don’t have the time or I didn’t bring the right equipment with me, for whatever reason, or you just find yourself unable to do your normal routine, then have a backup that you can always do.
You know, maybe it’s a mental run through you say I always check these five things, right, you know, look on my phone and check my calendar, my email, I clear my inbox and I look at my projects, listen, whatever tool I’m using, you know, no matter what, something like that, so that you can always stay on top of it.
Because when you let those things slide over time, that’s when you get into those situations where again, I hear this from people you’re like, I’m feeling overwhelmed. You know, I’ve got too many things coming in. Are you You know, I’ve had things, let things interrupt me and I haven’t kept to my routine.
And it’s just saying, okay, you know, understanding that, hey, sometimes you are going to be thrown some curve balls in life, have a plan to deal with that. All right. And then last but not least, like I was talking about with doing this on timescales, it makes sense for you, you know, you can expand this, that’s great.
Certainly, if you do a daily review, maybe you could then do a weekly review, and just look at a week ahead and do a higher level review. And then from that, do a month review and then maybe a planning session, and then 90 day quarterly if you do that. And so you can apply this at a lot of different levels. And it’s not.
It’s not like you’re starting over from scratch. When you go from like, well, I’m doing a daily review, I bet it’s going to take that long, you know, to figure out and get in that habit to do a monthly review and a quarterly review. And the answer is it’s not. It’s actually you’ve laid the groundwork by doing a daily review.
You understand the process, how you work, what you need to look at. Now, you can do this on a little bit bigger scale. There might be some small changes as far as what tools You’re using our again, where exactly you’re looking, but the idea is the same. So please put that to use.
And you know, looking back again, like I said, over 100 episodes, looking back at questions I’ve answered for people, you know, this really does solve a lot of problems and questions for people and it’s becoming, are getting to that point where you know, daily review or a daily planning session, and then a, like, a weekly review is a habit.
So then the underlying question is, well, how do I get that habit? If I’m having trouble doing this? And I would say that there’s two really good things you can do for yourself is one recognize the benefits you’re going to get.
Don’t think of this as Okay, this is something else I have to add, I’ve got to do this, you know, I or I struggle and I can’t think about what this is going to do positively for you, which is all stuff just described. But you know, if you need it concrete, it you know, not missing meetings, right?
It’s staying on top of your projects, it’s hitting the goals you want to it’s reducing your stress, all of that stuff comes out of this. Alright, so Looking at it that way, and then you know, take the burden off your shoulders. Don’t expect yourself to be a robot or a computer, you’re not going to remember this stuff all the time, set up reminders.
You know, if you need to, in the beginning set up too many reminders, have your phone alarm go off when you’re supposed to do your daily review, maybe get an email reminder, if you find yourself in the inbox too much. You know, whatever it takes to get you in that habit.
And then over time, maybe you can break those down a little bit until you’re just, you know, getting like a reminder, hey, it’s time to do your daily review something like that. Cool. So hopefully, that’s helpful. Looking forward to seeing what the next hundred episodes brings.
But looking back, I was like, Man, this is definitely the top thing that can get people the best results, excuse me with the lowest effort. Which is funny too, because the exact question was asked was what daily habits affect productivity the most and why? And, you know, I really just see that as having the daily routine.
So long as you stay on top. It’s kind of to me one Those things were what’s what’s the phrase what gets measured gets managed. And a lot of times where we start feeling overwhelmed is when we like jump into work because we feel like we’re so busy.
We have to get this stuff done we’ve got to do this you know we got this urgent email we but if we have never seen that email or you know, we’ve never let that interruption come, we probably would have taken the time to sit down plan out our day a little bit.
Make sure we allotted time correctly or said hey, I’ve got five half hour projects and I’ve only got two hours something isn’t going to fit here or I need to delegate handed off do something else. So I really do just go back to you know, having that daily planning time is really paramount to getting the most out of your day and then longer skills as well.
So check real quick over here. Why, and then you know, take the burden off your shoulders. Don’t expect yourself to be a robot or a computer, you’re not going to remember this stuff all the time, set up reminders. You know, if you need to, in the beginning set up too many reminders, have your phone alarm go off when you’re supposed to do your daily review.
Maybe get an email reminder, if you find yourself in the inbox too much. You know, whatever it takes to get you in that habit. And then over time, maybe you can break those down a little bit until you’re just, you know, getting like a reminder, hey, it’s time to do your daily review something like that. Cool.
So hopefully, that’s helpful. Looking forward to seeing what the next hundred episodes brings. But looking back, I was like, Man, this is definitely the top thing that can get people the best results, excuse me with the lowest effort. Which is funny too, because the exact question was asked was what daily habits affect productivity the most and why?
And, you know, I really just see that as having the daily routine. So long as you stay on top. It’s kind of to me one Those things were what’s what’s the phrase what gets measured gets managed. And a lot of times where we start feeling overwhelmed is when we like jump into work because we feel like we’re so busy we have to get this stuff done.
We’ve got to do this you know we got this urgent email we but if we have never seen that email or you know, we’ve never let that interruption come, we probably would have taken the time to sit down plan out our day a little bit.
Make sure we allotted time correctly or said hey, I’ve got five half hour projects and I’ve only got two hours something isn’t going to fit here or I need to delegate handed off do something else. So I really do just go back to you know, having that daily planning time is really paramount to getting the most out of your day and then longer skills as well.
So check real quick over here. Alright, cool. Well, I think this is going to do it. Like I said, Keep this pretty short for Episode 100 got to get out and get some running in here in a little bit and wrap up if few other things so appreciate it.
First of all, thanks to everyone who’s asked questions over the last hundred episodes. You can always ask questions ahead of time if you’re watching on YouTube, you can find that link down below. I believe it is productivity dot Academy slash let me find it real quick, it is questions.
Alright, productivity dot Academy slash questions you can ask them ahead of time. I check those out before going live and we’ll answer those and you can either watch live or check out the replay. So thanks again for watching and I will see everybody for Episode 101.
