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James is the founder of TheAdvisorCoach.com, where you can find an entire suite of products designed to help financial advisors grow their businesses more rapidly than ever before. Now, here is your host, James Pollard.
James: I've been studying productivity for a long time. I've read a ton of productivity books. I've tried a bunch of different tools. I've used everything from project-management software to good old-fashioned pen and paper. Both of those have worked well for me, by the way. I've done a lot of things right and I've done even more things wrong. My hope for you is that you can learn from my mistakes, because I'm going to give you seven pieces of productivity advice that totally changed my life. [00:58.5]
Here we go, No. 1, and, by the way, these are not in any particular order. It's not like No. 1 is the most important or anything. I just put these together, okay? No. 1, plan your weeks in advance. I used to plan every day in advance the night before, but now what I do is I plan out my entire week to the best of my ability and then fill in any gaps the night before, or if something comes up, I'll squeeze it into my schedule. I have the basic structure of my week and then I fill in any gaps as the week happens.
Far too many people just wing it day to day. They get up, check their emails and their to-do list, and then reactively try fitting everything in somewhere. Being reactive is not a good way to live your life because it means someone else or something else is charting your course. When you do this, you constantly feel scattered and anxious about screwing things up, and you're just unclear about what deserves your attention the most. [01:50.4]
If you're operating this way, then productivity is an illusion, because you're probably not productive at all. You're probably just busy and that's not the same thing. Busy is not productive. Weekly planning can be the antidote to that chaos. If you dedicate 30 minutes to an hour every weekend—you can choose, right? Do you want to do it on a Friday night? Do you want to do it Saturday morning, Saturday night, whatever, Sunday? You get to choose. It gives you a little bit of flexibility even in the planning process. It's not just every single night like a robot. But if you can dedicate that time—you will instantly gain clarity in control.
When I started doing this, I made it my weekend ritual, and I started becoming more productive than ever. One reason for this is because planning my weeks helped me begin with the end in mind a little bit better, because I could ask myself, “What do I want to accomplish this week? If I was sitting at my kitchen table in seven days, reflecting on the week, what would I want to be happy about?” Then I would work that into my schedule. I would begin with the end in mind.
Weekly planning is a lot easier if you have big yearly goals or quarterly goals, because it's a little bit easier to focus on the big picture. When you're not planning at all, you're obviously not focused, and when you're planning every day, you miss the forest for the trees, so weekly planning is a nice balance. [03:06.0]
It has achieved three important things for me. First, it really forced me to think about whether I was moving toward my big goals, the audacious quarterly, yearly and even decades long goals. Yes, I have goals that are measured in decades. Second, visualizing all my commitments in one unified calendar that I could see that I could put on my computer, that I could print out that I could have in front of me, it helped me make hard decisions about what was realistic to tackle without over committing myself.
Let me give you an example. When I was planning every day, I might say I want to write 5,000 words on a Monday morning. Something might break. Then my 5,000 words will get pushed back to the next day and then something else will come up on that day, and I had a tendency to overcommit myself on a daily basis, but I didn't have that same tendency with weekly planning and I still don't. It might be different for you. I'm only sharing what worked for me. [03:56.4]
Third, it gave me a sense of organized calm heading into each week, having already dedicated my time to certain priorities that freed up immense mental RAM that previously got burned up in reactive firefighting mode. It transformed my workflow from frantic to focused and intentional all week long.
Best of all, weekly planning is a productivity practice that sticks. Even as life and business commitments change, continuing this ritual keeps paying dividends by forcing me to regularly reevaluate, is what I'm doing still advancing my core goals and priorities? If not, then I get realigned before diverging too far off course. Plus, it's a ritual that's easy to keep, because you got the whole freakin’ weekend to do it. It's not just every single night. Like I said, you get to choose, Friday night, Saturday morning or Sunday night, whatever. You’ve got a whole, what is that? At least 48 hours to get that thing done. [04:54.1]
No. 2, batch similar tasks. One massive productivity killer I had to overcome was my tendency to rapid-fire context switch between different types of tasks and projects. I’d go from answering emails to writing a blog post to replying on social media to jotting down notes for a client project, all within spans of 15 to 20 minutes or less.
The productivity advice that finally broke me out of that cycle was batching similar tasks together into dedicated blocks of time, instead of doing all that rapid context switching between different types of work. Such a simple switch in methodology. It utterly transformed my ability to work with intense focus, and even experienced that coveted flow state on a regular basis.
That means if I was working on email, that would be the only thing I would do for a few hours. If I was working on this podcast, it would be the only thing I would do. I wouldn't do a little bit of email, then switch to something else and then do something else. By batching similar tasks, I had these uninterrupted multi-hour blocks of time where I could absolutely go heads down and get into the zone. It made a huge difference. [06:00.0]
Next, No. 3, set time constraints for everything you do. I don't want this episode to make me seem like I was a terribly unproductive person before I started doing all of this. I wasn't. I was relatively productive, but I wasn't making the most of my abilities. I wasn't getting everything I could get. One specific example of that was I used to just go through my to-do list. I would work on one task and just work. Don't get me wrong, that's good. But is it the best way to get things done? No. If you're going to have a start time, then you should have an end time as well.
It took discovering time boxing, also called time blocking. I used to call it time blocking a lot. I guess I still do when I'm talking to financial advisors, but it's called multiple different things, right? It's basically setting a specific time constraint for any action item, task or entire project first, then committing yourself to working within that boundary. So, email, 30 minutes, podcast, one hour or whatever, right? You get it done within that hour. [07:03.2]
For example, instead of giving myself an open-ended timeline to create a direct mailer, I would set a rigid two-hour time box to make substantial headway or even get it done. That time constraint put pressure on me knowing I had that limited period to make progress before moving on to something else.
At first glance, it might seem like an invitation for sloppy work in order to hit those manufacturer time limits, because you think to yourself, Okay, I’ve got to get it done. I’ve got to get it done. I'm going to rush them and it's going to be sloppy. It actually yields the opposite impact, and because you're more focused, you're more dedicated, you get better over time, and it actually becomes more efficient and easier, the more you track your time.
For example, if I originally thought that it would take me two hours to create a direct mailer, and I looked back and I realized it took me three hours, then the next time I did that task, the next time I worked on a direct-mail piece, I would adjust my time box accordingly. Or if I look back, and I saw that it took me an hour, I would adjust it to be an hour. [08:08.1]
So, it helped me schedule more efficiently. Tracking your time, plus time blocking, it will transform your entire life, because if you're tracking your time, you will know exactly how long it takes you to complete certain tasks, and if you're doing the same task over and over and over, you will become a scheduling master.
No. 4, take intentional breaks. I'm not really the type of person who takes breaks. Left to my own devices, I would just work and work and work and work. Taking breathers doesn't come up as part of my, I guess natural productivity playbook. It turns out that failing to proactively schedule breaks can handicap your productivity more than anything else. [08:46.1]
It took leading up on research from top experts on peak productivity and performance and performance science, for me to understand just how vital intentional recovery periods are to sustain world-class output over time. So, the science overwhelmingly shows our primate brains are hardwired to be cyclical. That's important, we are cyclical beings. We oscillate between intensive bouts of focused work and breaks, focused work, breaks, focused work, breaks to restore and recharge before repeating that productive cycle. Again, we are sprinters, not marathon runners.
Working at peak capacity, it depletes the fuel that you have, whether that's glucose for just raw brain power, whether that's neurotransmitters like dopamine, regulating your motivation and your attention control, or even just your willpower, which is also finite. You need to recharge and restore yourself with rest periods.
Once I internalize these human limitations, like it's not just my theory, it's not what I think, it's not my opinion, it is actual science, when I realized that, it clicked for me and I became convinced and I started injecting frequent rubber I was into my workflow and I just scheduled it. I put it into my calendar when I was working on the week and I discovered two primary categories of breaks that yielded the best results for overall productivity. [10:13.6]
The first is the micro break. The micro break is a five to a 10-minute break dedicated to just getting off of the screen. You do a light exercise. You make a snack. You meditate. You just close your eyes. You just let your mind wander, right? Five to 10 minutes, you just chill out. You stop whatever it is that you're doing and you just hang out. To the untrained eye, it looks like you're just sitting there doing nothing. [10:37.8]
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Beyond those micro breaks, though, the second kind is a 60- to 90-minute longer break, fully disconnected and it's just a great recovery period, and that is where the magic really happens. These more extensive breaks, they allow you to pursue different hobbies, whatever you want to do. You can read literature. You can go to the gym. You can take walks outdoors. You can do whatever it is that you want to do. When I started doing that, I became far more productive.
The science behind why these longer breaks are important is that pursuing separate hobbies, it activates a completely different neurological network. It's like cross-training for your brain and it can lead to wild boosting cognitive flexibility over time, so you start to see things that you didn't see before. Parts of your brain are lighting up. There's a whole bunch of science behind it. If you want to google it on your own time and dig and go down that rabbit hole, feel free to do so. [11:56.2]
But when I returned from their 60–90 minute breaks, I would blitz through whatever it was I had next, and I got that productivity boost by respecting the biological need for a cyclical recovery on both micro and macro scale. So, I had the micro break and then I guess I would call it the macro break. The 60–90 minute break is the macro break. If you're like me and you think success comes from working continuously without pause, please hear my words. Learn from my mistakes. Your body is not built that way. If you're a human being, you need to operate cyclically.
No. 5, protect your calendar. Repeat after me, “This calendar is mine. There are many like it, but this one is mine. My calendar is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it as I master my life.” If you're in the Marines, that sounds familiar to you, or at least I hope it does. I highly suggest starting with your calendar by planning your weeks in advance, like I discussed earlier.
Start with your goals. What do you want? That way you don't succumb to every incoming distraction or shiny meeting request. You should own your calendar first by building how you want your time to be allocated day to day and week to week. Do not open your calendar to randomness. [13:10.0]
Now, will meeting requests or other distractions occasionally slip through the cracks? Of course, it happens to the best of us. But adopting this calendar control mentality will instill exponentially more discipline and more ownership over how you invest your time, because here's the harsh reality—when you surrender sovereignty over your schedule to whatever comes up, you indirectly surrender control of your entire life. Your time becomes everyone else's but your own under the perpetual barrage of distractions and false urgencies.
No. 6, optimize your environment for productivity. Financial advisors, I see a lot of your home offices in your little social media posts and in your Zoom meetings with me. You have to step it up a little bit. Stop working on a rinky-dink little laptop. Stop expecting any real work to get done on a crappy desk. [14:06.0]
Get a large desktop monitor, or even better, two or three monitors like a real professional so you can get real work done. It is absolutely absurd how much time people spend working at their desk and their desk just flat out suck. Get a real keyboard, an actual mechanical keyboard that is easier to use and responds better when you're typing on it.
Get a good ergonomic mouse that you can program to do certain things on your computer. I highly recommend the MX Master, which is the one I have and I've been using that for years. I had the original. Then I upgraded to the second version. Now I have the third version, so the MX Master 3. It makes navigating on the computer so much easier because it has buttons that can be programmed to do certain tasks. For example, I can click a button and my email app opens. I can click another button and it opens a specific set of browser tabs. I can click another button and it will open the calculator for me, because I use a calculator all the time. These might seem like little things, but they add up. [15:03.7]
Also, get a standing desk. Stop sitting so much. I used to be an affiliate for this program called “Unlock Your Hip Flexors,” which was one of the best programs I've ever taken. I don't even think it's available. I just have the printout. I have the videos on a flash drive somewhere. It was a stretching program that walked you through the stretches to undo a lot of the damage from sitting too much.
I've always had problems with my hip flexors. They were just so tight, I have to proactively stretch them all the time and sitting makes it way worse. Of course, you might be able to sit for 10 hours a day without any problems. If you can, cool, but I can't. Getting a standing desk helped me quite a bit.
It also allowed me to do better work with the financial advisors I helped. When I have Zoom meetings with financial advisors, nine times out of 10, I am standing. Why? Because I can think better. I'm more focused and I don't have to worry about my hip flexors hurting or distracting me from the meeting. I can bring my A game. [16:00.0]
I don't want to talk too much about this, because optimization really depends on you and your goals. It's different for different people, but you should break down every piece of your environment and question if it is helping you. Especially if you work from a laptop, please, please consider a desktop. Desktops are just better in every sense of the word. They are just so much better. Having a dedicated working space is better. That is the one thing, I will say, should apply to every single person. I don't care if you're some nomad that you go everywhere. I really don't care at your house, wherever it is that you spend the most time, get a desktop.
No. 7, this is the final productivity piece of advice I have for you, this is extremely important, and that is to systematize whenever possible. The more you can think in terms of systems, the more productive you will be. In marketing, this is easy. Having an email autoresponder is one way to do it. It is a system of emails and those emails get sent out automatically no matter what you're doing. Scheduling your social media posts is another system. [17:03.0]
Both of those are automated systems, but not all systems have to be automated. I don't want to give you that impression. Sometimes systems can be as simple as just reminders to do stuff. For example, I have reminders to do stuff to keep my home maintained.
Here I’ll leave my actual list to show you how I do this. I'm getting my phone, I'm going to read my actual list to you. “Tomorrow, someone is coming out to clean my roof and my gutters at 3:30.” I have a yearly reminder to do both of those things, to schedule. I just text the guy and say, “Hey, roof, gutter cleaning,” whatever he says. “Sure, here's the price.” Maybe the price goes up, whatever, and I get it done. It takes five minutes, okay?
I also have a reminder to swap out my Keurig filter. Yes, I use Keurigs. I know, it’s bad. I have a reminder to swap that filter every 60 days, so I'll swap it. I'll reset the reminder, and in 60 days from now to say, “Hey, swap that Keurig filter.” [17:54.4]
On Saturday, I have a reminder to clean out all of my faucet aerators in the house. This happens every quarter. Every single quarter, I get a reminder. Next Tuesday, I have a reminder to check the TPR valve on my water heater. This happens every six months, and if you don't check that valve, you really should, because, boy, you don't want that thing to fail.
After that, I have a reminder to schedule my meal deliveries. I alternate between HelloFresh. I have their Factor. I had Fresh N Lean back in the day. Right now I'm using Factor for lunches. I have a reminder to check my fire extinguishers for a charge to change some batteries around the house, to swap my car’s air filters, and even to replace my toothbrush head.
All of those reminders come in automatically. I don't have to think about them. I don't have to wonder, Hmm, when was the last time I did those things? Nope. I just open my schedule. I see what I have to do today and I do it. It also helps things run very smoothly in my personal life. Guess how many times I've had appliances break down because they haven't been taken care of? Zero. It has never happened, ever. Guess how many times I've had a problem with one of my vehicles because of poor maintenance. Zero. It has never ever, ever happened. [19:01.4]
Imagine being a grown man or woman and your furnace breaks down because you didn't change the filters. It's a symptom of everything else in your life. Imagine looking at the repair person and saying, “Yep, I'd never changed my filters. I'm irresponsible.” Let me tell you something. This is something I did recently. One of the recurring tasks I have is to pressure wash my trash cans. I have one for trash and one for recycling, and as they tend to do, they get dirty. Every quarter, I pressure wash them. It takes about 10 minutes. It's super easy, gets them nice and clean.
Literally nobody will see those trash cans except for me, my family and the people who clean my house. I don't even think the trash pickup people see the inside of the trash cans because they use the truck to pick it up and dump it. But if hardly anyone sees the inside of the trash cans, why do I clean them? Because it's representative of everything else in my life. I know they're clean because they're mine. [19:55.1]
I don't do these things to impress other people. I do them to impress me and to reinforce to myself psychologically that I respect myself enough to pay attention to even the smallest details. That is excellent. I require excellence in my life. Even my trash cans are going to sparkle. So, require a little more excellence from yourself. You might be surprised at how much it improves your life.
That's it for this episode. If you haven't subscribed to the Inner Circle Newsletter yet, make sure you do that over TheAdvisorCoach.com/coaching. This episode is scheduled to air on May 27, so the next issue will ship out in a few days on June 1. The very first thing on June 1, we're shipping it out. The deadline to lock in your spot is Friday, May 31 at 11:59 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, not Central, not Pacific. It is 11:59 p.m. Eastern Standard Time on Friday, May 31.
Once again, you can subscribe by going to TheAdvisorCoach.com/coaching, and if you've been a longtime listener of this podcast and you're not subscribed to the newsletter, honestly, you're just being a silly goose. Thank you so much for listening, and I will catch you next week. [21:02.6]
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