Afford Anything - How to Optimize Your Time and Energy -- with Mike Vardy, The Productivityist

Episode Date: December 24, 2018

#168: You can do anything, but not everything ... and definitely not everything at the same time. How can you optimize your time and energy? How do you choose what's worthwhile and what's a waste of time? How can you eliminate small decisions so that your mind is free to focus on the few choices that make a massive 10x impact? How can you spend less time struggling with your Inbox, and more time on long-term projects that can boost your income? When inspiration strikes or new opportunities present themselves, how can you decide whether or not this new project is worth your time? What's the difference between being efficient vs. being effective? How can you eliminate distractions? Can you train yourself to pay attention to important tasks, rather than getting distracted by Facebook, email, television and other time-wasters? When is it okay to relax? And what are the keys to a great morning routine? In today's episode, productivity expert Mike Vardy describes his answers to these questions. Here are five of the nine takeaways from today's episode: 1) Eliminate decisions. Don't waste your time and energy deciding what to work on; create a system that makes this decision for you in advance, and review that system periodically. Your decisions, therefore, are focused on the system, not the daily tasks inside of it. 2) Create boundaries, so that you know your limits, and also don't be afraid to break them. Boundaries are a guidepost, not a strict law. 3) Rather than setting New Years Resolutions, choose three words that will be the "theme" of your year. These words will be the values that guide your decisions throughout the year, helping you identify what projects to undertake and which ones to defer or decline. 4) Time-management tactics are really meant to be a compass. The purpose of "productivity hacks" is not tactical task-management; it's strategic decision-making. 5) Productivity is not about getting things done. It's about aligning your attention with your intentions. Enjoy! For more information, visit the show notes at https://affordanything.com/episode168  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You can afford anything but not everything. Every decision that you make is a trade-off. It carries an opportunity cost. And that doesn't just apply to your money. It applies to your time and your focus and your energy. It applies to anything in your life. That's a limited resource. And so how do we harness these limited resources?

How do we do so in a way that aligns with our priorities? And how do we carry this out day to day? Those are the questions that this podcast is here to explore. My name is Paula Pan. I'm the host of the Afford Anything podcast. we are doing an interview with Mike Vardy, the productivist. Now, a productivityist is a productivity enthusiast, and that's what Mike is. Since 2011, he has been writing about productivity.

And in our upcoming conversation, we're going to discuss everything from morning routines to deciding whether or not to quit a project, knowing what to say yes to and what to say no to. We're going to discuss efficiency versus effectiveness. We're going to talk about declassies. pluttering, basically everything that is kind of batched in with what I always say in the beginning of these episodes, that you can do anything. You just can't do everything. And you especially can't do everything all at the same time. So what's important and what's not? What opportunity costs are we willing to accept? And how do we make the best use of our ultimate limited resource,

which is time and energy? We're going to get the answers to these questions right now. Here's Mike Vardy, the Productivityist. Hey, Mike. Hey, Paula, how you doing? Great. How are you? I'm doing really, really well. I'm just, it's my deep work day as we're recording this. It's a real pleasure.

And I just have been kind of focusing on reading and writing today. Nice. And deep work, that concept comes from Cowell Newport. I know he's a friend of yours. He's been a previous guest on this podcast. Yep. It's one of those things where people who are familiar with my work, I theme my day. So Friday, the theme is to focus on.

deep work. And what's interesting is it's involved to not just the deep writing or deep creative work, but also deep relationships. Like I will take Friday mornings and go have coffee with people that I either really want to have engaging conversations with or just catching up with friends, having those deep meaningful conversations where we just, you know, instead of just passing by and using social and liking stuff, we actually end up getting together and having really good coffee or later in the day, maybe beer. But deep work for me is more than just, that idea of focusing on my core material. It's about depth across the board. So deep work almost has this connotation of lingering a little bit.

Yeah, I would say lingering. I mean, I need to know if I'm having it that day that I will wake up in the morning because when I wake up in the morning, I don't say, what am I going to do today? I wake up in the morning and I say, well, what day is it? Oh, it's Friday. What's Friday mean? Friday is deep work day. Okay, what deep work am I going to do today? And then what that allows me to do is I can look at my to-do list wherever it may be and doesn't matter what app you use or whatever paper plan or whatever I can say oh well here are all the things I've categorized as deep work some of it is like you said some of it is going to be stuff that lingers like stuff that's going to be something that I want to continue and make continual progress on and for me that's really important is when

I have those questions in the morning what am I going to do today my theme days and any time I theme it it has to have an ability to work both personally and professionally. Because if it's just professionally, then that's really not work-life harmony. And if it's just personally, then, you know, it's also not work-life harmony. So for me, having those themed time periods are really, really helpful. And it helps me create boundaries. Like I said, you were the only person that I'm having a, quote, meeting with today. I normally don't have meetings on Fridays.

So if a coaching client wants to book time with me, they can't book time with me on a Friday. And they know this. So I think that for me, it allows me to do that work that is fruitful, whether it's deep work on a Friday or audio work on a Wednesday or optimization type stuff on a Monday. I just, I have these clear paths and I have funneled focus so that I can make all of these moments matter every single day. I took a look at your, you've got this page, Mikevarty.com slash now where you outlined what you do each day. And as you said Monday is your optimization day and Tuesday is video day and Wednesday is audio day. I like that concept of theming each day of the week and deciding what tasks fit under those categories. And if you don't finish all of your video stuff on Tuesday, well, then it gets pushed to the following Tuesday.

Right. How do you do this, however, when travel and other types of things like that interrupt it? Like you and I off camera before this interview, we were chatting about all of these conferences that we both go to. there's a lot of travel that happens midweek that throws everything off. If it only happened every once in a while, that's one thing. But you and I both travel enough that the irregular is regular. The abnormal is normal. So how do you handle that?

So number one, you have to have those theme days. The categories have to be broad enough that things can fit in them that you might not necessarily at first blush think would fit in them. So, for example, if Tuesday's my video day and I'm in San Antonio, which I was just, you know, not too long before this interview, what video am I going to do? Well, I don't have my regular good camera with me because I'm on vacation and I don't have my studio because I'm staying at someone else's place. So what video tasks can I do? Well, writing video scripts is something I could do on my video day. Learning more about TubeBuddy would be something I could do on my video day.

So I think it's important that if you're going to theme your time, whether you theme seven days of the week, one day of the week just to see if you can get that going. I'm a real big believer in personalizing your process, not throwing it all in at once, but taking steps so that you can have marginal gains, not just a, I'm going to try all seven days at once, and then it doesn't work for one day of the weekend, you decide to throw the baby out with a bathwater because, oh, it didn't work for this Friday, so there's no way it could work for subsequent Fridays, or I can't get this to work on a Monday. How could I get it to work any other the six days of the week? So, for example, when I'm traveling and I'm doing audio work, I won't necessarily do interviews.

Instead, I will plan podcast things. I will do a little mini audio episodes that I give to my members, things like that. So I think it's important when you theme your time, whether you're doing it by day or whether you're doing what I call horizontal theming, which is, you know, from 9 to 2 Monday through Friday, like on Monday through Friday, maybe you're going to focus on creative work or whatever. it's important to have those categories be broad enough that enough stuff can fit in them so that you generally, A, oddly enough, don't run out of things to do, but also that it gives you enough focus to say, oh, well, this is a video task, but writing a script could also be a deep work task. So now I have a couple of options. And the other thing that people often say when we talk about theming their time is, what if

you don't give the video work done that you need to get done on Tuesday? What if you run out of time? What if a meeting comes up? What if something? And I like to call those abstractions. Some people say, oh, what if you get distracted? Like distractions, you can mitigate distractions over time. You can, you know, if you know there's a meeting every Tuesday, then you're probably not going to make that your deep work day because you know you have to go to a meeting every

Tuesday. But if something pops up and you're like, oh, you know, I didn't get all the video I needed to get done on this day, then you may not be able to put all the video tasks on to the next Tuesday. But you certainly won't move every single one of them to tomorrow or the next tomorrow. you'll prioritize. And that's what I do. So if I didn't get all of the video work done that I want to get done on a Tuesday, done that Tuesday, there may be two of them that I move to Friday or I might do them the next day. But those are the exceptions to the rule. I mean, once you have boundaries, then you can explore how to bend them as needed. But you have to have them in place in the first place. So yeah, travel makes it tough. And there's an irregularity to my schedule. Just like there's an irregularity yours and lots of people out there. You listening right now. definitely would have that. But I think that once you have those parameters that are personal in place, and you can say, you know what, I qualify a video task as not just picking up a camera and shooting, but I also qualified as learning about Instagram video or, you know, writing a script or

updating, maybe editing, because you can edit on the go too, right? So there's lots of different things you can do to make this work. You just have to be willing to put in time and energy and attention to make that happen. Okay. So something like choosing. Using a theme for each day and having five themes for the five days of the week or seven themes for the seven days of the week. That's a tactic, right? Zooming out and looking more broadly, more strategically, how do you decide what to work on and what not to? How do you decide what is in the bigger picture worth your energy and time or not? Oddly enough, theming still comes into play there because I do what I call my mind.

monthly themes as well. My monthly theme, I have a professional monthly theme and a personal monthly theme. So let's say I start my year in September. So October is traditionally a month where I'm doing probably it'll be a specific project that I might have listed there for October. So that would be a professional one. And maybe for a personal one, maybe we're going to build. We're talking about building a new bedroom upstairs so that we can continue to Airbnb or basement. So that might be the project for October. And again, I'm paraphrasing here. The bottom line is, If I'm looking at my daily themes and I'm saying, oh, today is optimization day, as a Monday is an optimization day.

Well, what am I going to optimize? Well, what's the monthly theme? Oh, the monthly theme is this project I'm working on. Okay, well, great. Let me do all the optimization tasks for this project. Or let me look at all of the, if it's a Friday, let me look all the deep work tasks for this project. Oh, I've done all the deep work tasks for this project. Okay, well, what other deep work can I do?

So I am funneling it. And then the other thing I do is I, and Chris Brogan, and popularize this a long time ago, the three words. So I didn't make New Year's resolutions. Instead, I choose words to represent my year. Those words help me decide what projects and what things I'm going to take on at various times of the year or whether I'm going to take them on at all. So this year, my words are redefined, rebuild, and reclaim. When I'm assessing a project, let's say someone comes to me and says, hey, we want you to work on this book. And I look at the book. Actually, this happened for a book a couple years ago. And I looked at it and at first glance, I was like,

I'm going to do it. But then I said, hold on, Mike, you got to put it up against these three words to see if it makes sense. And when I did that against those three words, redefine, will it redefine who I want to be as a creator, as a professional, as a person, as a productivity strategist? Will it? No, it won't. Oh, really? It's not taking me down the path I want to go down long term. Okay, what about rebuild? Well, it would probably rebuild me a bit because a book deal is a book deal. It's a book deal. There will be people that would, but what about reclaim? Like, will it help me reclaim my position as an authority in the space? It will help me reclaim my time so that I can focus on the things that will, will it allow or will it take away? No, it wouldn't. Oh, it didn't hit two of the three words. I'm sorry, I'm not doing it.

So I put these three words out there as kind of like a measuring stick against projects and initiatives that I'm going to choose to tackle. And what's funny is there's this one project that I've wanted to work on for like three years. And I'm slowly like I've never put 100% into it because every time I put it up against the three words for this year, it's not the time to work on it. But because I know it's something I might want to do down the road, I don't throw it out. I keep it incubating in a sauna as a project that's just sitting there. But I already know that I've kind of assessed its value in the current day and age. and it's not something that is going to be moved forward with right now, but I don't want to lose sight of it either. So I think capturing is really important too because then you can make educated decisions and make proper assessments as opposed to having an idea and just saying, oh, well, I'll write it down later or I'll look at it later.

You have to have a place where you can look at it later so you can assess it continuously. So essentially, you choose three words at the beginning of each year, and those three words act as values or barometers against which you make. long-term decisions. Agreed. Yep. And then once you make those long-term decisions, then daily theming is the way that you execute those long-term decisions over the course of that year. Right. And every month has a theme, too. So, you know, I know that August will always, and this is what happens. I think over time, when you do something like you put these tactics and these strategies in place, like every August, I will tell you that is my planning month because I start me here in September. So it has just naturally been the month where I plan. And that's the other thing

is that monthly themes, it doesn't mean I only focus on those things during the month. It's just they are my emphasis. They are my compass. If I get stuck or I feel like I've lost my way, I have an anchor there. And that monthly theme, both personally and professionally, are anchors so that I know what to look at and say, oh, it's, you know, it's October. October is I'm going to be working on this project. And we're going to look at home improvement stuff. And that's what we do.

So almost what I hear is like a tier of. values where when you choose three words for the year, you're choosing your values for the year. And that's the yardstick. That's the barometer against which everything will be measured at the 30,000 foot level. And then when you choose your word for the month, your theme for the month, you're choosing that value at the, say, 10,000 foot level. And then when you go daily, then that's when you get into the nitty gritty of, all right, how am I going to, what am I going to do on Tuesdays that reflect this or what am I going to do on Wednesdays that reflect this? Yep, absolutely. And then I have what I, again, those horizontal themes. And again, this methodology, these tactics I teach,

which I call time crafting, there are what I call horizontal themes, which like, so for example, every day from 9 to 10 a.m., I go into maintaining mode. So it's all the maintenance work that I need do. I'm not a mooring person, so it's all low-hanging fruit kind of stuff, but the stuff that I need to do daily. So it's that hour of maintenance overrides whatever the daily theme is. So on Friday, even though it's deep work day from 9 to 10 a.m., I'm doing maintenance. And then once 10 a.m. hits, all of a sudden, my focus now goes back to deep work. And then from 2 to 4 is probably the best time for me to be creating based on my body clock. If you've ever read the book The Power of When by Dr. Michael Bruce, or even, I mean, Dan Pink's book as well,

they talk about like knowing when it's the best time for you to be doing certain types of activity. And I've always been a night owl. I don't fight my body clock. And in the afternoon is when I'm best at making things. So I go into making mode from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. 7 days a week. Now, what I make in that time is often determined by the daily theme or by the monthly theme. So if it's, I'm making something between 2 and 4 on a Wednesday, you're probably going to see that I'm in a podcasting studio at that time, actually making the thing.

And then in the evening, because I don't go to bed until about 1, but from 10 to midnight, I go into what I call musing mode. So that's journaling. It's probably reading actual paper books, not the screen, all that kind of stuff, setting up the table for the next day. So just lighter things as well as setting up, you know, what am I going to do the next day, et cetera, et cetera. So I have those there and they override the daily themes. And I also have what I call weekly sprints, which also override monthly themes. And those are for things that you can do quickly. Like, oh, I'm going to create this course.

And I can do it in a week. Okay, great. Well, that's my weekly sprint. It overrides whatever is the monthly theme. And then when the week is done, the focus becomes a month again. So what I'm trying to do is get rid of overchoice and remove decision fatigue because in a moment when you're presented with a task or something like that that came out of nowhere, you're going to have a tough time resisting it in some cases,

especially if it's something you didn't plan or somebody gave you something or it's a new opportunity. It's shiny. It's new. Human beings are curious creatures that love to explore. What I like to do is have these parameters in place, these boundaries. So that way my decision is easier, right? I can say, oh, this is not the day for that. I don't do audio on Friday.

I do it on Wednesday. I will deal with that on Wednesday. So it allows me to move forward better and ultimately faster. How do you define being efficient with your time versus being effective? You've talked a lot about execution. How do you know if what you're executing is effectively allowing? you to reach those bigger goals? For me, the barometer that I use for that would be journal.

I do review, but journaling, daily journaling keeps me understanding whether or not, am I doing the right things daily? Am I on a video day? My journal entry will start with today was video day. Here are some of the videos that I did. Or some days it'll be, you know what? I didn't do any video today. What's wrong?

Why didn't I do it? So there's a lot of self-reflection there. I'm a big believer in trying to find a balance between quantitative productivity and qualitative productivity, which is hard because the human mind loves quantitative stuff because that's why inbox zero is still a popular thing. Oh, I got my email inbox to zero. I had 333 emails and now I have zero. I'm like, well, what else did you do today? Did you work on that chapter of your book? Well, no, but I got my email inbox to zero. I have 33 emails. And you hear I'm like, yeah, but what were those emails about? Like were you just doing busy work for the job? Did you work for the book? I'm the sake of busy work, were those the right emails to be doing, et cetera, et cetera. So I think for me, having the combination of looking at a to-do list and seeing how many items you can check off, I think is important. But like you said, that's not necessarily being productive. It's not even really necessarily being efficient because most people say, oh, well, efficient is speed. No, it's not. It's speed about the right things. Just like effectiveness is doing things well.

And I think those things come over time, the more you spend time having a process in place that allows you to build up your efficiency and your effectiveness. So for me, the journaling is a huge part of that. And I think it's one of the least valued elements of priority and time and attention management. I think people, if you took five minutes, which, and you know that there's, you and I both know there's an actual product out there called the five minute journal. You could take five minutes of your day, which is, I think, 0.03% of your waking hours to write in a journal about how you felt about today. Not just what you did because the calendar will give you an idea and your to-do list will give you the details, but more about the emotional. Like, is this working? Why is this project behind schedule?

Or, you know what? I need to split my audio and video day up now because I'm going to be doing more video, which happened a while ago, because I wanted to do more stuff on YouTube. But I couldn't combine those on the same day. So then you know it's time to start making changes and tweaks and letting your system evolve. So I think journaling for me has been a big one. And, you know, when people say I don't have time to journal, I asked them if they're on Facebook. And they say, oh, yeah, of course I'm on Facebook. You know, 90% of the people are.

And I said, well, if you're on Facebook and you're putting stuff on Facebook every day, you're journaling for the world. I think Facebook might be a better place if people put some of the stuff in their journals instead of putting it on Facebook. The great thing about my journal is that no one will read it except me. And I'll be long gone by the time someone reads it and goes, oh, this is how Mike felt about that. This is how he wasn't very pleased with himself that day or he felt great about himself that day. So I think that that's something that people should really consider, which is a bit unconventional, but I think it's incredibly important. Tell me about your morning routine. Do you have a specific morning routine? Yep. I'm a big believer in routines because I think that, you know, they're basically the bookends for your day, right? Honestly, my evening routine is more important than my morning routine, basically because I suck at mornings.

So I set myself up the night before. So they bleed to. into each other quite nicely. When I get up in the morning, the first thing I do is I go to the restroom and drink a bottle of water that's been left out. Wait, wait, is the bottle of water in the restroom? Yeah, yeah, yeah. We leave it in the, I leave in the restroom. Oh, wow. Yeah, I just have it there. Because then what happens is I just take it out of the fridge the night before, put it on the countertop, and it's sealed and I just drink it. The reason is, one first things I want to do is hydrate. Secondly, and I used to just splash water on my face to wake me up, but we have like a rain shower now in the bathroom. So I just lean my head over and just back of my neck. Because sometimes I will

have an earlier morning coaching call than I'd want to have. So I can get my hair done up the way I want it to. And those are the first two things I do. And then I go grab a neutral bullet shake, like a pre-prepared one out of the fridge. I put the water in it and make it. And then I brew my coffee, which is the airpress is already set up and ready to go. And then I read for about 25 minutes. I read feedly and my RSS feed and then I read flipboard and then from then I go look at my to do list app and I do the first of my important tasks for the day that are for that day's theme and then the night before that's when I basically set the table for all that the water goes into the bathroom the shake gets made in advance the coffee gets put out because I again

I truly don't wake up until I start reading I think anything else is just on autopot to that point because like you were talking about earlier about travel I needed to have a routine that I knew would be portable. You know, I needed to make sure that it was something that no matter where I was, I could do it consistently. So like the journaling, people like, oh, well, I can't, I don't bring my journal with me on the road. I'm like, well, I just leave it home.

Like, well, find a way to bring it with you or find another way to journal. So if that's part of your evening or morning routine, it should be with you. Even when you're on vacation. And it drove my wife nuts for the first couple of years when we'd go on vacation. I would journal every night. But then we'd go back. Like, I actually went back and was able to look in the journal and see how. I felt about different days of the vacation, there's value there, right?

So I think you have to make your routines portable like anything else. Once you make things too complicated, that's when they can start to break down. So for me, it's very important that when people start their routines, I say start with three things. Three things in the morning, three things at night, make sure they're easily transferable, easily portable. And they're not going to take you a ton of energy to commit to consistently. And then if you want to add things or let's say in the summertime, your kids are They're not in school, so you have to change a little bit of it.

But you still have those three core things you do in the morning and the three core things you do in the evening that will never move because they're woven into the fabric of what you need to do to make the day begin and end in such a way that you can actually get to sleep and not worry about the messy middle. I mean, that's the way I look at it. Yeah, I think that's excellent advice. Make it portable and keep it simple. Absolutely. And I mean, people are like, well, why would you put out clothes the night before? I'm like, because I don't want to think about what I'm wearing. In fact, what's funny, Paul, is I actually have gone out of my way to buy t-shirts that are emblematic of my daily themes.

It wasn't something I set out to do initially. So a weird one, I just bought it not too long ago. I was in a store, even though the TV show didn't do very well, they had an Inhumans shirt and the Black Bolt symbol was on it. And I can't expect anyone here to know who Black Bolt was, but Black Bolt is like the leader of the Inhumans. And his voice was his weapon. And if anything came out of his mouth, it could destroy things. I'm like, that's the shirt I need for my audio day. That's my audio day shirt.

So it makes it even easier when I go to bed. I'm like, okay, oh, it's Wednesday time to get out the black bolt shirt. And oh, it's Thursday. Oh, that's training day. I'm going to wear the teach everything you know shirt. Oh, it's Friday. It's Deep Work Day. Oh, I've got the Stranger Thing shirt that says mornings are made for coffee and contemplation.

That's the shirt I'm going to wear that day. So I'm very deliberate about it. And I think that that's to what we tell, you know, deep work. we talked about deep. Being deliberate is so critical. And you can be far more deliberate, like you said, if the things are simple. We'll come back to this episode after this word from our sponsors. If you are a small business owner, you know that small business owners wear a lot of hats. And while some of these are great, others like the necessity to file taxes and run payroll, eh, it's not so great, but it's necessary. That's where Gusto comes in.

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dot com slash paula sk i l-l-share dot com slash paula to start your two months now skillshare.com slash paula what's interesting to me about the fact that you have a shirt for each day is again it reduces that decision fatigue you don't stand in the closet wondering what am i going to wear today and that might sound like something small but there's a reason that mark Zuckerberg wears exactly the same thing every day steve jobs wore exactly the same thing every day it's because the fewer decisions they have to make, the more their mental bandwidth is free to focus on bigger decisions or more important decisions. Right.

And one of the things that I learned as I was building my business and building my methodology was I took from where I started, which was Costco. I worked to Costco for over a decade in the warehouses. And if you go to a Costco, they're built on this idea of simplicity, flexibility, and durability. You know, I mean, you go into a Costco and the stores are poor concrete. The shelves are not shelves at all. their pallets and steel. But the other thing that I often bring up when it comes to choice and

decision fatigue is that if you go into Costco to buy it like say mustard or something like that, you're going to be able only buy French's mustard because that's the brand they sell. But not only that, you can either buy the big tub of French's mustard, the barbecue pack that has three of the squeezable bottles or the restaurant packets that restaurants buy. Those are your three choices. So either you buy one of those or you don't buy mustard at Costco. And what happens, and what they've noticed is because they have far less items for sale, like way, like, I think 4,000, just under 4,000 skews compared to like a Walmart that has like 187,000, I think, or something like that.

What happens is, is when you go into a Costco to buy very deliberate things, they've deliberately set out the store in a way that you walk out of the going, I only came in here for bread and milk and stuff, but I bought jeans and these books and a new electric toothbrush and please load the TV into the back of the truck because you have not been worn down by overchoice. And that reminds me of Barry Schwartz, the paradox of choice. They did the study in which if a person was presented with, I think it was somewhere around six jars, you go to a fair and you can buy jam, right? And if you're presented with six different flavors, say strawberry, grape, cherry, then with only six flavors, people are more likely to buy a jam. But if they're

presented with 28 flavors. They're so inundated by choice that they end up not buying anything. Yep. Yeah. I mean, it's surprising that Baskin-Robbins is doing this with 31 flavors. Like, no, I only want three. Give me three flavors. But one of the books that I've been kind of making my way through is a book from 1971 by Alvin Toffler called Future Shock. And he talks about this idea over choice. And if you were to read that book now, and you can get it, I think it's available on archive.org or Gutenberg, like it's now past that point where you can easily get it, you read that book and it might as well be written today. Like the things that you go, life is moving really fast and all the stuff.

And like, this is before computers were household appliances, right? And let alone things you can wear. So I think when you're looking at any kind of principles, any kind of tactics or strategies you're going to put in place, you need to make sure that you've got to future proof them as much as possible. So again, routines, simple. That's why I love theming my days. It's very simple.

I don't wake up in the morning and say, what am I going to do today? Because like you said, there are a myriad of choices. So what do I end up doing? I end up likely doing what someone else wants me to do. I check email first thing and email tells me what to do instead of me defining what I'm going to do. By limiting my choice and saying, what day is it today? Well, hold on. No, no.

It's Friday. Okay, well, what's Friday mean? Friday means deep work. Okay, what deep work am I going to do today? Well, it's the monthly theme. Oh, it's this project. the book, okay, well, you're going to do some deep work on the book. I went from 372 items on my to do list down to 12 without having to really having to overthink it.

We get out of our own way. I think that that's what you just get out of your own way because the person that's sitting there right now in that moment is not nearly as wise at that point in time as the person who was there last time that said, man, if only I had something in place that would, you know, allow me to get going in the morning better or would keep me away from this analysis paralysis situation. Once you put those in place and then you have to continuously use it so that you can start to trust the process, then you're going to get the outcomes you want. Rather than just say, I'm going to check off, you know, oh, my to do list, I checked off 43 things. So I was, you know, I did 43 things. Well, there's that quote by a, there's a quote that

says, everyone's busy. So are the ants. But the question is, what are you busy about? And I think that that's the thing is if you have a process and a framework in place, it will give you the ability to make better choices as to how you're going to use your time. And oddly enough, frameworks, they foster freedom. You know, if you put those in place, you can afford to be more spontaneous. You can afford to say, you know what? On Fridays, I'm not going to have meetings because I don't want to, and I've got a framework that supports that. And so, oddly enough, you have the freedom, which is, sounds counterintuitive, but we all know that constraints help. It's just you need to put them in place and then consistently trust and work with them so that that way they hold true and they

hold fast. There are a lot of ways to eliminate distractions that come from the outside world, but how do you eliminate distractions that come from inside of your own head? I'll give you an example. This actually happened today. I'm redesigning my website. My design. My design sent me an email saying, hey, we need this one particular photo from you. I probably could have dug this up within less than five minutes. But in the course of searching for that photo, I then started looking through all of my other photos and started reminiscing about this trip that I took. And I don't even know how much time passed by probably an hour. I mean, I went deep into the like reminiscing. It was very pleasant, but it was this complete self-imposed. Post distraction. Right. I come across this a lot. And I think you will always have this happen.

It's what happens when you go down this path of distraction to the point where it becomes a diversion. I would say that those are definitely more distractions than, say, a disruption. Like, and I talk about this a lot. I talk about like distraction and disruptions can lead to diversion. So you have to have something that can stop that before they become too diversionary. I think for me, the big thing is if that was to happen to me, you know, and I need this photo, I would say, okay. And then as soon as I found the photo, but I felt myself, and this is about

being aware, and oddly enough, slowing down, is to say, oh, I look at all these photos and, man, I really love these photos. I would stop myself and go, okay, you know, I do want to take a look at these photos. I'm going to capture that. So put that down because your brain at that point in time is going, oh, these photos, I really want to look at them, you know, let's just do it. And the reason part of your brain is going, not right now. This is not the time to do it. But I definitely. do want to get back to this so I would capture it. And then then for me, so in that situation, if it was something that was family oriented, let's say, let's say there's photos of me and the family, I would then say, go and look at all the photos and maybe organize them if that's what I

wanted to do. So then I have a choice. Well, I'll do that on my family day, which is Saturday, or maybe I'll do that on Monday. I think that having that tactic in place allows me to at least know I can get out of it. Now, that doesn't mean that you do. Like, so I'm not going to say, you know, every time something like that happens, you need to stop it because we're human beings. But if you know that you have that tool in your toolbox of, hey, I'm going to capture this right now because it makes sense for me to do that because I want to do this later. But right now is not the time because today is deep work day, not family day, not optimization day. Then at least my brain will then have the satisfaction of knowing that it's no longer just an emotional thing that's in my head.

but I've written it down, and I've got a way to bring it back to my attention later. I don't believe productivity is about efficiency and effectiveness on its face. I believe productivity is about intention and attention. What is your intention? How are you going to pay attention to that to get the outcome that you want? I think efficiency and effectiveness come when you constantly marry those two things together because they're a byproduct of it. So what happened for you, and a lot of people is my intention is to get this.

photo, oh, I have another intention now. It's to look at these other photos, but that's not what should have my attention right now. I need to have something in place that will allow it to come back to my attention later. And that's what the capturing of it or writing it down or doing whatever you would do to put it into your to-do list app or your master plan or whatever, that coupled with, you know, again, theming your time. For me, that that's how that works and that's how that helps. And again, it's just very simple. That makes sense. I use Wonderlist, so I could have gone into Wonderlist, and then I have a category in there that's personal. So then I could have made a note within that personal category of, hey, come back and go through these photos.

Just look at them. Just enjoy them. When I'm working with clients, I kind of do that a little bit because when we talk about them teaming time, they don't think it can be done. And then I point it, I find I do a pattern break and tell them, you're probably already doing it for housework. So you've probably got a household day, therefore something that you could already be doing. But there's other things. Like I say, you know, when do you normally think about putting up Christmas lights? And most people say, oh, when I see them come on sale on Amazon or I'm driving through the neighborhood and I see somebody put their Christmas lights up. I only have to think about it once the first time that I thought about Christmas lights.

I put it in my app. I used to do-ist for my personal stuff. And I have a recurring task every November 25th to decide when I want to put up Christmas lights. It's not put up Christmas lights because I might not be able to do it that day. but that task in and of itself tells me, hey, I never have to think about Christmas lights again. I trust that to-doist will tell me when I told it to tell me that, hey, let's put up Christmas lights. Let's water the plants.

Let's do it. And most people say, why do you need to put that in there? Like, what's the point? I said, because your mind was meant to be a factory and not a warehouse. And the more you stock it with the little crappy things, I say crappy in that they just take up space that they don't need to be taking up. Instead, if you say, hey, you know what, I'm going to taking out the garbage. I mean, most people put that stuff on the calendar.

And as someone who followed GTD for a long time getting things done, I'm the type of person that says, why would I put taking out garbage on a calendar? I don't have a date with garbage. That's a task. So I'll put it into my to-do list for the night before to take out the garbage. And what's happened, Paul, is people in my neighborhood see me put out the garbage the day before and I am now their trigger. They probably don't have garbage day written down anymore because they see me put it out

and they're like, oh, it must be garbage day because Mike's putting it out. So tomorrow must be garbage day. I'm the harbinger of garbage and recycling in her neighborhood, I guess. You should put it out on a totally random day just to screw everybody up. I probably could get away with that. I bet you could. I definitely could get away with that. And that's total proof because I trust my system and they know what I do, which helps.

So they trust me because I trust my system. So yeah, if I was to let them down, that would be kind of funny. Put it out on April Fool's Day. Could do that. Yeah. We'll return to the show in just a moment. Are you looking for a side help? Here's a really fun one. You can become a pet sitter on Rover. Rover lets pet sitters make their own schedules, set their own rates, and pick what kind of services they want to offer. So if you want to be a dog walker, you can be a dog walker. If you want to let dogs board overnight in your home when their owners are out of town, you can do that. So if you're looking for a side hustle, you can make extra money playing with dogs or feeding dogs, walking dogs. What you do is you set your own rates. It's generally.

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Radiusbank.com slash Paula. As you're working on a project, how do you make the decision as to whether or not you should quit a project? Because I put projects up against those three words at the start of the year, I normally don't get to the point where it's like, you know what, I don't want to do this anymore or I misjudged it. But it helps me say no a lot more because of the fact that I've got these monthly themes and these weekly sprints already in place. If someone was to ask me to do something, I normally am able to assess it up front. And very rarely, in fact, I can't even think of one where I looked at a project while I was working. on it after had passed that litmus test of the three words and said, you know what, I made a mistake. I shouldn't be doing this. If anything, most of them are self-delined oriented anyways. Like, I've set the deadline. I learned a while ago from Derek Sivers to keep certain things, you got to keep some of your goals to yourself rather than putting it out there and saying, hey, everyone, I'm going to build this thing. So I've gotten better at that because that creates a whole other

set of expectations. So I would say that when that happens, I'll let you know, but I can't remember the last time where I was working on a project. You know what? This is a mistake. I shouldn't be working on this. Or I shouldn't be, I shouldn't complete this. I should just kill this. If anything, more often than not, I've just paused things or or slowed down the progress. But I haven't necessarily said, okay, we're just now back to the drawing board. We're tearing this up. We're ending it. How do you make the choice between time and money? I mean, when do you know? And there are a lot of various interpretations to this question. But the most obvious one is, when do you know that you should do something yourself versus outsource it? Or when do you know if you have a new opportunity that

comes your way, if the compensation for that opportunity is worth the additional time commitment, what framework do you have for making those decisions? So I'll preface this by saying that I've often been very terrible with pricing my own services. This probably goes back to me doing comedy for nachos and beer back in the day. So when it comes to outsourcing, I will look at tasks and I kind of hold them up against like what I believe my rate per hour should be. And I say, is this something that I should I, I should be doing myself? And if it is below my hourly rate, then I ask myself, okay, is it something that I'm going to have to spend a lot of time training someone to do just once? Or is it something that I'm going to want to do regularly like podcast show notes or something like that? If I'm going to do it more

than once, then what I'll do is I will do the first time. I'll do it myself. But I will do it as if I'm training someone, so I'll do a screencast. I think it's that whole measure twice cut once kind of mentality when I'm looking at delegating. If I know that it's something that we're going to do regularly and I don't want to be the one doing it or I don't feel that I should be the one doing it and, you know, outsourcing, you can find ways to do it on the cheap if you want. There's lots of services out there. Chris Ducker taught me that a long time ago. Oddly enough, he's also the one that told me that I should price better.

But that's what I would do is I would say, okay, I'm going to make a video that way I've got it. And I've created a little library. So that way when I bring on someone, either that permanently on staff or I'm going to just outsource it to someone, I've already got it ready to go. In terms of deciding whether or not projects or tasks are worth based on how much I'm going to earn, that's been a struggle for a long time. But over the years, I've gotten better at saying, okay, this is what my products are worth. this is what my services are worth. And I just, I've gotten better at figuring out what my time is worth, both building something and being present with someone in the call. With regard to deciding whether or not a new project is worth your time, whether it's

compensation is high enough that it's worth your time, what framework do you use? What thinking or decision-making framework do you use that anyone who's listening could apply to their own life, regardless of what industry they're in? So when I'm looking at something, first off, it's got to be something that I'm going to enjoy doing. The money is secondary to me at any given time. So speaking gig would be an example or something like, I love speaking. So that's going to have an effect as to whether or not I'm going to want more money or not for it. So I look at, is this something that I'm going to enjoy doing?

If it is, then I'm already interested. So that's something that it's going to be something that I have to definitely put a measuring stick against. just I'm going to enjoy doing this. Great. Okay, how much time is it going to take? It's going to take X period. Is it going to pull me away from other things that I'm working on? If it's going to take away from something else I'm working on that will have a longer term impact, then that already lowers the ability for me to say yes, I'm going to do it. And then finally, is it going to be something that is going to be beneficial to me in the long term, thinking three, five years down the road because the internet is permanent or what I'm building is permanent versus is it just a quick,

short win and that's it. Then that tells me, hey, I may love doing this, but it's going to take me away from the bigger picture stuff. And also it's going to take me, it may not be the thing that I want to be represented in three, four, five years down the road. So I'm going to say no. And I do say no more often than yes these days just because time's at a premium. And I've got lots of things I'm working on for myself.

So there is some randomness to some of this, but largely those three elements are the things I look at when someone presents me with a project because I don't want to have too many things to think about when I'm doing it. Cool. Well, those are all the questions that I had for you. Is there anything that you'd like to emphasize? Any final takeaways? No, I think that, by the way, this is great.

I enjoyed my time immensely hanging out with you. I think the big thing that if people are going to try to take on any kind of process, the biggest thing that you should do when you're starting with is start small. I've worked with people who have tried to take on massive system overhauls and, oh, I'm going to use Agile now. We've never used it before. Like they try to do too much. And then what happens is it all falls apart. So if you're thinking, hey, you know what, I like this idea of theming my day is theme one day. Start with one.

And then maybe add a second. You don't have to theme all 12 months of the year. Or if you're going to journal, give yourself a five-minute timer to journal. Maybe have a template so that way it's not so free form. But create an environment that's going to allow you to grow and craft your time the way you want to. Over time, don't just try to do it all at once. Because when you try to do it all at once, you are setting yourself up for problems, especially because as you set up a new processor system, the rest of the things that are going on around you, they don't stop.

So start small and build from there. Nice. Well, thank you so much. Where can people find you if they'd like to learn more? You can find me at Productivityist.com. That's the word productivity and then IST at the end.com or at Mikevarty. Everything is kind of there. And then social media, productivity is storm Mike Vardy, all over the place.

Thanks, Mike. What are some of the core takeaways that we got from this conversation? Here are nine. Chief takeaway number one. Eliminate decision fatigue. the more decisions that you have to make, especially minor decisions about things that don't matter, by eliminating decisions, you're able to free up your energy to focus on the few things that truly move the needle. What I'm trying to do is get rid of overchoice and remove decision fatigue because in a moment when you're presented with a task or something like that that came out of nowhere, you're going to have a tough time resisting it in some cases, especially if it's something you didn't plan or somebody gave you something or it's a new opportunity. It's shiny, it's new.

Human beings are curious creatures that love to explore. What I like to do is have these parameters in place, these boundaries. So that way my decision is easier. The purpose of structuring your time, it isn't just so that you can maximize your hours. It's also so that you can minimize the amount of stuff that your brain has to do. It's so that you can minimize the amount of just making endless decisions. Do you ever go out to a restaurant with a friend and you have that like, where do you want to eat? I don't know. Where do you want to eat? I don't know. And it just takes so long and it's so energy draining. And sometimes it's just better if you have a friend who says, all right, you know what? Our options are A, B or C, pick one. You don't have to go through an endless array of options and you don't have to feel the weariness that comes from decision fatigue. And that is in a sense the reason that a person would plan their days and weeks and months.

with the level of detail that Mike does. The point of a structure like that isn't because it's best to do audio on a Tuesday. The point of a structure like that is to just eliminate thinking about what you're going to do that day. And so that's core takeaway number one. Design your life and design your days in ways that eliminate the amount of small decisions you need to make. Core takeaway number two. It's not about doing the most things. It's about doing the right things.

That's why inbox zero is still a popular thing. Oh, I got my email inbox to zero. I had 333 emails and now I have zero. I'm like, well, what else did you do today? Did you work on that chapter of your book? Well, no, but I got my email inbox to zero. Three hundred and thirty three emails. And you hear me like, yeah, but what were those emails about? Like, were you just doing busy work for the sake of busy work? Were those the right emails to be doing, et cetera, et cetera? So I think for me, having the combination of looking at a to do list and seeing how many items you can check off, I think is important. But like you said, that's not necessarily being productive. It's not even really necessarily being efficient because most people say, oh, well, efficient is speed. No, it's not. It's speed about the right thing. There is a famous quote by Steve Jobs in which he says that he is as proud of the things that he hasn't done

as he is of the things he's done. Being productive and being effective is not about busy work. It's not about doing everything. It's not even about doing a lot more. Less is more. And sometimes the way to be productive, the way to be effective is to be choosier about the few things that you do. Do fewer things, but do those few things well.

Core takeaway number three, in order to decide what's worth your time and energy and what's not, try journaling. When people say I don't have time to journal, I ask them if they're on Facebook. And they said, yeah, of course I'm on Facebook. And I said, well, if you're on Facebook and you're putting stuff on Facebook every day, you're journaling for the world. I think Facebook might be a better place if people put some of the stuff in their journals instead of putting it on Facebook. So you do have time. This is unique because it's a key takeaway that's also a tactic. I don't often include actionable tactics within these key takeaways.

I like to focus them on higher level concepts. But journaling is a tactic that I think can get you to a space in which you're able to think broadly about high-level concepts. in your own life. Journaling is essentially the physical act of reflecting. Writing is a physical manifestation of thinking. And so by giving yourself a practice of journaling just for five minutes a day, you are actually engaging in the process of thinking, the practice of thinking. And someone once gave me the advice, I thought this was brilliant. Notice what you journal about. if you are simply summarizing or recapping and experience, if you're writing about external events, then you're documenting but you're not introspecting. If, on the other hand, you're journaling about your thoughts and emotions as they relate to whatever is happening in your life, then you're actually journaling from a place of reflection, from a place of introspection.

So that's the other component of this. When you journal, do so in a way that is reflective rather than in a way that is documentarian. Key takeaway number four, in order to create good routines, start small. When people start their routines, I say start with three things. Three things in the morning, three things at night, make sure they're easily transferable, easily portable. And they're not going to take you a ton of energy to commit to consistently. And then if you want to add things or, let's say, in the summertime, your kids are not in school, so you have to change a little bit of it. But you still have those three core things you do in the morning and the three core things you do in the evening that will never move because they're woven into the fabric of what you need to do to make the day begin and end in such a way that you can actually get to sleep and not worry about the messy middle.

Your morning and evening routine do not need to be massive productions. try doing just three things consistently every morning and three things consistently every evening. And those things can be tiny. It can be as simple as drinking a glass of water or flossing. Leo Babuda, the founder of Zen Habits, famously says, you know what, if you want to start a flossing habit, start by flossing one tooth. Like one gap between your teeth. Just do that one. And it might seem silly to take out the dental floss and floss one tooth and then put it down.

but that will get you into the habit of it. If you want to get into a habit of doing push-ups, get on the ground and do one push-up. And it might seem silly to then get back up, but that's how you get into that habit. So that's the takeaway here is if you want to develop a habit, pick something that's portable so that you can bring it with you wherever you go, including while you're on the road,

and pick just a few small things. Improve your life in 1% increments. And continue doing that consistently, the tortoise and the hair. Core takeaway number five. Avoid getting bogged down by choices. I worked at Costco for over a decade in the warehouses. If you go to a Costco, they're built on this idea of simplicity, flexibility, and durability. You know, I mean, you go into a Costco and the stores are poor concrete.

The shelves are not shelves at all. They're pallets and steel. But the other thing that I often bring up when it comes to choice and decision fatigue is that if you go into Costco to buy mustard. You're going to be able only buy French's mustard because that's the brand they sell. Not only that, you can either buy the big tub of French's mustard, the barbecue pack that has three of the squeezable bottles, or the restaurant packets that restaurants buy. Those are your three choices.

So either you buy one of those or you don't buy mustard at Costco. And what happens and what they've noticed is because they have far less items for sale, like I think 4,000, just under 4,000 skews compared to like a Walmart that has like 187,000, I think, or something like that. What happens is, is when you go into a Costco to buy very deliberate things, they've deliberately set out the store in a way that you walk out of the going, I only came in here for bread and milk and stuff, but I bought jeans and these books and a new electric toothbrush,

and please load the TV into the back of the truck like you, because you have not been worn down by overchoice. When we are presented with too many choices, we often do nothing. That's human nature. And so the way out of that is to artificially limit our choices. Pick something that works, something that's good enough, and do it and then leave good enough alone and move on. Don't drive yourself crazy trying to study the best investments. I don't think there is a such thing as best.

Just pick something that has a reasonable likelihood of being good based on historical data. Call it good enough and move on and don't worry about endlessly tweaking it. there is this practice, particularly among frugality enthusiasts, there's this practice of constant optimizing, over-optimizing, where the ethos is, all right, how can we keep tweaking it and keep tweaking and keep tweaking and make this even better and better, which, you know, in the frugality world is cheaper and cheaper. Man, at a certain point, you just got to stop. Leave good enough alone and move on.

There's a great quote by Tim Ferriss where he says, get in the habit of letting small bad things happen so that you can leave space for the few big things. It's okay to pay a late fee for an overdue library book. It's not the end of the world. It's okay to order something on Amazon Prime, even if it's a dollar cheaper at the store. Because the time and energy and decision fatigue

that you save by just going to Amazon Prime and placing that order, rather than shopping around at four different places, that is valuable. That's worth something. So eliminate your choices. Pick a couple of options that are good enough and just go with it. And that's how you'll be able to leave space in your life for starting a new project, starting a side hustle,

or spending more time with your family and friends, which is something that you cannot outsource. You cannot pay people to go hang out with your friends on your behalf. Spend your time doing those things because those are the things that matter. Key takeaway number six. Create boundaries so that you can know where they are, but don't stick to them too closely. I mean, once you have boundaries, then you can explore how to bend them as needed, but you have to have them in place in the first place. You know how they say rules are meant to be broken?

Same thing with these boundaries. Create these boundaries just so you have a sense of them, but don't be afraid to break them or bend them as needed. Key takeaway number seven. Instead of setting New Year's resolutions, create three words that theme your year. So I don't make New Year's resolutions. Instead, I choose words to represent my year. Those words help me decide what projects and what things I'm going to take on at various times of the year or whether I'm going to take them on at all. By virtue of creating three words that will be the dominant theme of the year, fundamentally what you're doing is,

you are participating in an exercise around identifying your values for the year. A New Year's resolution is often a very specific goal, but a word that is the theme of your year is a value, a direction, a guidepost, and you can use that as a barometer for any choice that you make throughout the year. So that is key takeaway number seven, rather than setting New Year's resolutions, or maybe in addition to setting New Year's resolutions, whichever you prefer, also choose a few words that will be your theme for the year because those are your values that you want to move deeper into throughout the year.

Key takeaway number eight. The tactics that he outlined are really meant to be a compass. And that's the other thing is that monthly themes, it doesn't mean I only focus on those things during the month. It's just they are my emphasis. They are my compass. If I get stuck or I feel like I've lost my way, I have an anchor there. The purpose of monthly themes, or even daily themes, is not tactical task management.

It's strategic decision making. And one idea that kept arising over and over throughout our interview is that all of these productivity and time management tactics that he was talking about, those were really only tactics at the surface level, but what was going on underneath them, the why behind the what, is that all of these are tools that facilitate strategic decision-making. And that leads perfectly to our ninth and final takeaway. Productivity is not about getting things done. It's about aligning your attention with your intentions.

I don't believe productivity is about efficiency and effectiveness on its face. I believe productivity is about intention and attention. what is your intention, how are you going to pay attention to that, to get the outcome that you want? I think efficiency and effectiveness come when you constantly marry those two things together because they're a byproduct of it. Productivity is not about time management or task management. It's about making sure that your energy and effort align with your values and your priorities. Those are nine takeaways from this conversation.

Now, I want to say a huge thank you to everybody who left us a rating or a review. in iTunes or in your other favorite podcast player. And I want to give a shout out to this awesome one right here. The title is 27,000 total pay bump in 15 months. And it says, Just want to thank you for empowering me to go for what I'm worth. Last year, I received a $12,000 pay bump. I received that raise because my previous employer caught wind that I was looking.

And I have since left that employer and got the same pay with my current employer. Then last month, I received a $15,000 bump with my current employer due to a promotion after being with the company for 13 months. Now, the great news I received from my internal customers even means more now with the pay bumps. So I migrated to the U.S. 13 years ago with $100 in my pocket. And now I'm making $80,000. I'm still in disbelief. I feel so blessed. Please know that this money is going to good use.

I bought my mom a duplex that's going to get paid off next year. And then after that, I would like to start getting rental properties. Thank you again so much for all you do. Wow. That's incredible. Huge congratulations to this person who left this review. And the congratulations goes to you. You did this.

This is your achievement. Huge, huge, huge, huge congratulations to you. And thank you for sharing that with me and with this whole community here. If you enjoyed this show, please leave us a review in whatever app you use to listen to podcasts. And while you're there, hit that subscribe button so that you don't miss any future shows. Thank you so much for tuning in. My name is Paula Pant. I'm the host of the Afford Anything podcast.

I'll catch you next week.