Gaining More Time – A Better Daily And Weekly To Do System

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Welcome to think it be the podcast. I'm Kelly Hatfield.

Hey. And I'm John Michell. So the topic today is getting more

time by being highly organized. That's probably a good idea.

Don't you think? Kelly for time? Hello? Yeah.

That's a good thing. Good thing. I mean, really, the time is our

most precious commodity, right? Yep, absolutely. You know, I

tell you, one thing I've learned is, is to be highly organized

boy, you have got to have a great system. The system is the

key. And, and so often, I see that people are not very

organized, and they admit it. And

but I see when you have a great system, literally, you can

create time. And if you don't have a good system, you flush

time down the toilet. And so

this in in today's visit, I just want to talk about the

organizational system, we created this been so powerful.

And when I talk about an organizational system, I'm

really talking about daily and weekly to dues. And our system

basically comes down to three things. You plan your day, the

night before you time, block your day, and you identify your

top three priorities each day.

And it's I mean, it's amazingly simple. And the reason it's

important to prioritize those and highlight those top three

priorities is in case your day gets off kilter, which is

sometimes do does, you can just go and focus on what's

highlighted as your top three priorities and the power of, of

always getting your top three priorities is so amazingly

powerful. And so I tell us your thoughts on this whole concept

of, of organization and and the system we have, I think, you

know, the one thing that I'd like to add, you know, well,

first of all, the amount of stress, like we all have a ton

of stress in our lives, right? You know, just there's so much

for us to do, and so many competing interests, we have

full lives that aren't just about our careers, they're about

our families, and all of those things. And so the thing I want

to say about this organizational system is,

is the mind thrives on order. We talk about that. And so what

happens when you're organized, and you're focused on the things

that move the needle, and you plan your day, the night before,

is that it's, it's freeing. When you do this and get into the

habit of doing this, it's freeing and there's one other

thing I want to emphasize here too, is that we're talking about

time right now time is finite.

This also changes the quality of your time. Does that make sense?

Absolutely. So you can not only get more done with less, but

you're going to be thinking about how you're spending this

time and how you're going to show up during this time and it

shifts your entire this organizational system shifts

your entire perspective on time. And so anyway oh I know you're

gonna get more into it John, but I get so excited about this

because time is finite. We've This is it. So the question you

want to be able to ask yourself at the end of the day is like

hey, did I win the day to day? Yeah, did I did it this was it

and I hate to be morbid you know, but I am motivated by you

know by morbidity I am you know if this is for me.

What am I happy with how I with what this day looks like? What I

can't

lished how I showed up in all of the different areas of my life,

I want to know the answer yes to that the majority of the time,

and this organizational system helps you do that. Right? Well,

and I'll describe the organizational system in a

little more detail. So the first step is, like we said, plan your

day, the night before. Boy, I can't say enough about this, you

know, basically, the way we do it, is at the end of the day, we

sit down and plan what we're going to do tomorrow. Exactly.

When and, and there's so much power in creating again, to your

point, that order of now you've got order for tomorrow, as

you're wrapping up today. And you know, as your as your put

your little head on the pillow, and you you know that tomorrow

is plan, that's a great feeling. It also sort of frees your mind

to think of other things, maybe that you can do tomorrow that

you wouldn't otherwise be able to get to, because you hadn't

planned the day. So that that first step of of planning your

day, the night before, absolutely powerful. Then the

second thing is you're going to time block your day. So on the

daily to do sheet, you'll have all the day, all the hours of

the day in and 30 minute segments sort of lined out. And,

and as you as you plan your day, you basically also list what are

your top three priorities each day. And so as you you, first of

all, take those top three priorities and time, block them

into your day, then if you got that done, you highlight them in

yellow, so they they stick out. And then the next step is you go

in and fill out the rest of the time on your day with the things

that aren't your top three priorities. And so once you

finish that, and you're looking at that sheet of paper, now,

every thing you're going to do that day is planned out, you

know what time, and the top three priorities are staring you

in the face and with in, in red in yellow highlights. And so

it's just a powerful way to, to do your day. And then then as

you start your day, and you start crossing off things,

you're getting this continual dopamine hit from the the

psychic energy of getting things accomplished. And so

that's, that's how the system works. And it's,

it's interesting, when I, when I

put this into my life, and it, it moved me from probably a six

or seven on an organization to attend on a scale of one to 10.

And I thought, man, if it has such a big impact on me, I bet

you'd have a big impact on my employees. And I had like 175

employees. So I started going into the managers, and I asked

him, you know, on a scale of one to 10, how organized Are you?

And, and they would generally say about a sixth. And I'm like,

Wow, what a what a difference we can make if we as a company, all

do this. And I thought I'm going to teach some managers first and

then then the managers will teach the rest of the team. And

so off we go. And it was such a game changer. And we got so much

more done when, when it expanded beyond just me. Have you seen

that with your team? Oh, in terms of organization?

Absolutely. You know, for all of the same reasons. And I think

there's there's so much research on the fact that our brains

aren't designed to multitask, you know, so when you got a

plan, you know, any place for the different activities on your

calendar, those were things that move the needle that are that,

you know, are the top priorities for the day.

You know, then you're again, creating that order and creating

a space to do just that activity. So you speed up, that

activity is your protected time. And it is for that activity and

that activity alone. So what we have found with our team, is

when you're given a certain amount of time to do something,

guess what? It gets done. And you know, and they're focused on

it. They're not switching gears a million times. So at the end

of the day, feeling like they've got a bunch of unfinished

things. They've got those those key priorities done. And that

sends that feedback loop to where it's like, oh, you know,

these little victories that you're celebrating throughout

the day for things that actually you've accomplished and you've

moved the ball

A little further forward. And I think that's where so much of

our momentum as a team has come from, is from feeling like

you're actually accomplishing things, right? And then right,

because, you know, because we are, and then we went up to it

too, and, you know, kind of took it to the next level,

organization, you know, the the AP of organization, which is,

you know, so if you've got a meeting, let's say you've got a,

you know, a meeting with, with someone where you're thinking,

you're looking at that spot on your daily calendar, where that

meeting is, and you're like, how do I want to show up?

You know, what do I need to be prepared with? Am I prepared for

that meeting? And how do I want to show up, who's going to be at

that meeting, what it where you're really, so that you can

show up, be very present, engaged. And so we're also

finding that the outcome of those meetings, whether they're

sales meetings, whether they're level 10 meetings, where there's

so much more productive, the meetings themselves are, because

people are really thinking through how they're going to

show up in that block of time for that particular activity,

whether it's a meeting, whether it's a, you know, one of their

time blocks for a priority that they need to take care of. So

there's an intentionality around how you're showing up in that

time. Does that make sense? Absolutely, you know, I see with

with me, I will time block my planning of the meeting, you

know, if I have a meeting at three o'clock, I might time

block for 15 minutes, how am I going to run this meeting? What

do I want to accomplish? How do I want to show up, and so I'm

not only time blocking the meeting, I'm time blocking the

preparation for the meeting. And you know, another thing that

that's, I think critical, is, people are so distracted today

with emails and text messages. I mean, it's just phenomenal how

distracted people are. And

in our organizational system, we teach people to look at your

email, at the start of the day to see if there's anything

that's just critical. But basically, our plan is you don't

return the emails in the morning. And you designate a

time like maybe three o'clock in the afternoon, to return your

emails and to return your phone calls. And before that time, you

know, you're rolling and with the also the idea that the

morning is for your agenda. And the afternoon is to be

responsive to other people. And, and I found that philosophy to

be really powerful, because again, you got to get your stuff

done. And you had to be responsive to other people. And,

but but designating the morning for your priorities is so

empowering. And and it's just a great way to do it. And it just

allows you to focus and and I assume that's essentially how

you do it as well, right? Yes, absolutely. And I think there's

one thing I want to add to this is, you may be thinking, Oh,

that's easy for you to say, You know what I mean? Like, I've got

employees, you know, meeting stuff all day long. And I've got

clients that are counting on me and all of this.

What I would encourage you to do, and that it's so easy, your

brain automatically wants to go there, because you've organized

and you've managed your email that way, you've managed it

forever, you know, so your brain is kind of trained to be plugged

into it all day long. But what is a game changer is when you

communicate clearly to your team, to your clients, to

whoever would be emailing you that this is how I work. So I'm

going to check into my email, I look at it first thing in the

morning, maybe I usually do a half day like as soon as I'm

done eating lunch, I'll check in to see if any of the people that

are on my priority that had to do with my priority list or

moving project forward. got back to me real quick to see if

there's anything there that that connects to my priorities at

all. If there isn't, then it doesn't get addressed. It goes

to the you know, it goes to my last check in at the end of the

day. But my team knows that they know they're not going to get an

email back from me at 10am on something that it won't be

coming until the afternoon. That if it's an emergent situation

like there's blood or smoke involved that they can get in

touch with is that your rule of thumb it is blood or bone that's

that's the

No I know that they can call me we've got the you know direct

message. There's a way that they can get in touch with me if they

need to, but that so my point is be clear about

How you manage your inbox with the people in your life so that

they are very clear about and have very clear expectations of

what they're going to get from you. And when you're going to

respond, that takes a lot of the pressure and stress off. Because

when I first started doing this, I was like, Yeah, but like, if

I, if I don't get back to a client right away, they're going

to, you know, or if I don't get back to a team member, maybe

they're going to, you know, whatever the case may be, that's

just old programming, those are stories, myself. So it just

requires very clear communication.

And that immediately relieves stress. It trained them, they, I

needed to train myself and I needed to train other people.

Right, right, how I was going to be using my email and replying

to them. Right? Well, and, you know, it sort of goes back to

this thing that we've often talked about, about identifying

what moves the needle, you know, the vast majority of stuff does

not move the needle. And, and always looked at, I'm saving the

morning for what moves the needle, that's gonna be my

agenda. And I'm not distracted by texts or emails, and what a

what a much better way to live and operate than how most people

are operating where, where they're always checking their

emails and checking text messages. And, you know, it's

just it's, it's a much more powerful way to operate. And

like you said earlier, the mind thrives on order. So and I think

the way that you apply this using our 12 minute a day,

technique is, is you basically reaffirm that you plan your day,

the night before your time, block your day, and you

highlight your top three priorities. And as you're using

that system,

again, the system is a key because that's, that sort of

causes you to do those, those things. And I would say to our

audience, if anybody actually wants to see this system, again,

it's a daily

to do sheet and a weekly to do sheet on the weekly to do sheet,

where identifying, you know, different categories in your

life. And it's sort of customized, the weekly sheet is

customized to your life in six or seven categories, which is

another powerful thing in the process of planning your week,

makes it easy to plan it. And so it's powerful, but if anybody

wants a example of this, we'll be glad to provide it to them.

So just email, either myself or Kelly, think a bit.com. John,

thank you. via.com. Kelly, ah, that thing could be att.com. So

anything else, I you know, I one other little quick thing that

you just brought up in those key categories of your life, like,

this isn't just about being more productive in your work life or

your career. This is about being productive and showing up in the

different areas of your life. So as a parent, as a significant

other, like you literally are putting the things on your

calendar, like maybe it's a soccer game that you're

attending for your kid, well, you are thinking about how do I

want to show up? Like, how do I want my child to know that I'm

there for them? Well, here's a clue for everybody put your

frickin phone away, you know what I mean? And be present and

watch the game. Instead of being I sit, you know, in the stands

at my nephew's game. And I'm just like, watching all these

parents with their heads in their phones and like, come on,

you know, like this, you know, and show your. So I mean, it's

those kinds of things. But I wanted to point that out. We're

talking right now about career and but you just brought up a

really good point about the different areas of your life.

And there's a place where all of this lives on your calendar. So

right, right. Okay. Well Until next time, we'll see you.

Thanks for listening today. If you've had your own aha moment

from today's episode, send me or John an email. We'd love to

share your epiphany with our audience. So email us at

Kelly@thinkitbeit.com or John@thinkitbeit.com. In the

meantime, live the exceptional life