How To Be Insanely Productive (all my hacks in one place)

Most people who follow me on social media probably think that I am a full-time coach. 

I’m not. I do this stuff because I love business and entrepreneurship.  

I actually have a full-time sales role that I LOVE and have no plans to leave anytime soon. 

I also LOVE podcasting (2 episodes a week). And time with my family/kids. And working out. And sleeping 8 hours per night. 

So how do I get it all done? Am I working from 5am until 9pm?  

The first thing that will people back from doing great things is they think you have to spend tons of time (building a podcast, social following, writing a book, creating a side hustle or business). 

Here’s the deal: you can build something great with small steps, repeated over and over with consistency. 

The Sticky Note Party: 

One of my favorite techniques for doing this is what I call the sticky note party. 

Grab a few stacks of sticky notes in various colors and use it to map out your business (or any other big project) on your wall. 

Break it down with 3-7 big steps, then a bunch of smaller steps under each big steps that need to be done. 

For example: 

A book has: chapters > paragraphs 

Martial arts: belts > stripes on each belt  

Course: Modules > lessons 

Write down all the big and smalls steps on the sticky notes and arrange them on the wall in the most logical order, and rearrange as needed.  

When I built out my Leveraging LinkedIn course, I mapped out the 8 modules vertically along the wall. Then for each module, I wrote down all the sub topics (lessons) and stuck them horizontally underneath the modules. 

This gave me a visual of what I needed to do next. Just focus on ONE step, no more, no less.  

Big step: Module 1. Small step: Lesson 1. 

It took me about 6 weeks to build this full course, set by step, one each day, 15-20 minutes. At the most I’ve spent 2 hours in one day on building the business, but mostly these small and manageable steps. 

Then I needed to launch and sell it. Same thing, step by step, one step at a time with consistency. 

Then I needed to create my business entity, bank accounts, payments, email list, etc.  

Same thing, step by step, one step at a time.  

All those steps have added up to big things in 18 months and allowed me a business that is making an impact!  

I’m still doing my 15-20 minute steps building far out into the future, offers and products that you might not see for a year. 

The Pomodoro technique  

To make the 15-20 minute increments even more effective, try the Pomodoro technique. This is where you’ll do a 15, 20, 25 minute interval of hard focus, free of distraction (email, notifications, social media off) then 5-15 minutes to do whatever you want (take a walk, go outside, scroll mindlessly).  

It’s very similar to interval training and is highly effective. The reason why 15-25 minutes is optimal for focus is because when you go longer than that, you tend to lose focus anyway so you are hitting the sweet spot.  

I also give me a little ‘dopamine reward’ of a chocolate almond to prime me to look forward to competing a Pomodoro and have a timer set for 25 minutes.  

Sneaking in some learning: 

Normally hard focus is the best way to retain and learn new info (and multi tasking diffuses focus). But I do confess to multi-tasking in the sense of using workout time to learn. When I work out or ride my bike I love to consume podcasts, audio books and course material.  

Over the years that adds up to hundreds if not thousands of hours of learning new things! I also revisit stuff I’ve listened to in the past because often things get forgotten, missed or might not have been relevant the first time around.  

Become a learning machine and your life will unfold into beautiful new chapters! 

Be the owner of your time.  

Stop saying “I don’t have enough time”. Time owns you if you say that. But you can own time  if you say “It’s not important enough for me to make time for”. 

You are the creator and if you don’t have enough time for something, then you haven’t created the space in your schedule because it isn’t important enough. 

The next time you have an opportunity for some self-care or creating something big, say that ‘its not important enough for me to make time for’ and you’ll see why this simple shift is so important to have. 

If it has to do with YOUR amazing future, then it is important!  

File or Delete:  

Don’t leave ideas spinning around in your head & taking up bandwidth or fade away because you forget about it. Have a ‘note’ app on your phone to dump things that are in your mind and distracting you, put them on the list, especially good ideas that you get when you are in a theta state, the trance like state when you are doing things like gardening, first waking up, driving or in the shower. Those are the best ideas! And the things that you know you need to do, file them away and let yourself know you’ll get back to them.

Ready to graduate from the sticky not party? Get a productivity or project management software, my go-to is Basecamp. I can run all my coaching from one place, start prepping and mapping out ideas like I used to with the sticky note party, invite people to collab on project, set up to-do list, store & share documents and content. 

Zapier – connect all of your apps and software and have one trigger an event in another (for example when someone downloads my audio masterclass ‘9 Ways To Monetize LinkedIn’, the app that allows someone to subscribe (Kajabi) sends a zap to Hello Audio to send them an email to subscribe, and also sends someone to a lead list.

Psychological hacks:  

Time has a lot to do with ‘how you feel about it’. Here are a couple of examples: 

Paradigm shift #1 – Why do people work 8 hours a day and 40 hours a week for practically every job out there? Who came up with this? Instead of filling up 40 hours with busy stuff, focus on what you need to get done without thinking about the time it takes. If you give someone a certain amount of time to complete a task they will almost always use up that amount of time. What happens if you shorten it? Takes less time.  

Try to pay yourself first with the things you want to do and let the rest fall into place. Trust that what needs to get done will get done.  

Paradigm shift #2 – stop using busy words in your vocab. Busy, hard, stressed, frantic, hurry, rushed. Ban them from your vocab. Even when you say them they make you feel rushed. Use words like productive, active, consistent, creating.  

Paradigm shift #3 – realize that franticness, stress, anxiety and the ‘concerned’ look on your face do very little to make things go faster or smother. Thing about this: since we were kids we’ve seen adults act like this with very important matters, so why wouldn’t we act like this? Things can still be urgent or important without the frantic behaviors. Be calm and people will give you a funny look but also you’ll still be able to do what you need to do.

Meditation gives you more time. Your mind is a supercomputer and processes so much more info than our lizard brains were designed to process so things start to back up & spin in your mind. Meditation or other types of 'downtime' will allow your mind to process information quicker and with less stress. Stress and anxiety is partially because of data being backlogged in your mind.

Outsource help: 

My last hack is a game changer and this shift is nothing new but is the differentiating factor from an employee mindset to an entrepreneur mindset. I used to stay away from hiring people to help me because I felt like spending money on help was making my finances go backward. Hiring actually helps you stay in your zone of genius and do more of what you love and make more money.  

Bookkeeper, sales reps, VA’s, landscapers, you can leverage yourself like crazy if you are willing to look at outsourcing help as an investment and not an expense.   

Ask & Receive:  

Most of us have a hard time asking, and what’s crazy is we also have a hard time receiving. Get better at asking for help, better at receiving and also at delegating and not having overlap in tasks.

Let me know one or more things on this list that you will implement this week!  

Check out the latest Mindset Hackers Podcast Episodes:

Wire your mindset for wealth on Apple podcasts and spotify.

This is how you unlock the next level of your life on Apple podcasts and spotify.

Send me back a message On LinkedIn or Instagram and let me know your thoughts!