EntreLeadership - #313: 3 Steps to Finding Freedom to Focus with Michael Hyatt

Episode Date: April 8, 2019

If you regularly struggle to get to the bottom of your to-do list and think the solution is finding more hours in the week, best-selling author Michael Hyatt says you’re wasting your time. Instead, the leadership and personal growth expert insists that the key to achieving more is to actually do less. Tune in as Michael shares his three-step process for taking control of the time you have so you can become more focused and productive—and infinitely less overwhelmed. Now that’s what we call a win-win.   entreleadership.com/podcast Buy the book: Free to Focus Michael Hyatt's website The Power of a Positive No Living Forward Your Best Year Ever Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's Ted Talk: Flow, The Secret to Happiness The Eisenhower Matrix Download: A 7-Day Plan to Triple Your Productivity Download: 5 Ways a Virtual Assistant Can Change Your Life from Belay Solutions   Want expert help with your business question? Call 844-944-1070 and leave a message or send an email to [e-mail]. You could be featured on a future podcast episode! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is why people with even good intentions find themselves working on the weekend or the evenings, because it's familiar, they enjoy it, and they don't have a plan to supplant it. Helping business leaders grow themselves, their team, and their profits. This is Entree Leadership. Now, here's your host, Ken Coleman. Coming to you from the Music City, this is the broadcast of leaders, by leaders, for leaders. Thank you so much for joining the conversation. Here's what's coming up. Michael Hyatt is our feature conversation. He is the founder and CEO of his own leadership development company and his new book, Free to Focus, is the focus of our conversation. Really good stuff. So let's get you to it. Michael Hyatt is known first and foremost as the former chairman and CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers. And then he walks away from that amazing publishing company and starts his own company. And Inc. 5,000 has designated it as one of its top Inc. 5,000 companies. So really, really special stuff,

growing like crazy because he's helping a lot of people. And what I love about this new book, which is the focus of our conversation, is it is built from his own productivity system. And then he took that system and he coaches his clients, his fan base, if you will, people that subscribe to what he's doing. And he knows this works. And I love this stuff. Some really, really good stuff. So let's get to it. Here is Michael Hyatt. Mike Hyatt. Great to have you. you back in studio. First time in the new studio. It is. New studio, new book, we're here. You've been on a handful of times and we're really excited about the new book. Free to focus, a total productivity system

to achieve more by doing less. And you hear that subtitle and you go, okay, everybody needs to hear that. Like high achievers, people who want to get more out of their life, you've come up with a system. So we're going to dive deep in the book, but I want to let you at least take us on the journey to how you got here, because I know you're a productive. maniac. I feel like as long as I've known you, you've always been trying publicly and privately to be more efficient. That's true. And it kind of started back in college. I was the geek that had a schedule, studied when he was supposed to study, do all the things you were supposed to do, because I was just obsessed with productivity. But as I went out of my life and life got more

complicated and five kids and busy career and all that, and then we hit the world of social media and all the distractions and interruptions, you know, I really really really, I realized that I needed not only an offensive system, but a defensive system to try to cope with that. Because now, in the world we live in now, with millions of apps, social media, text messages, all kinds of inboxes. We've got billion-dollar, multi-billion-dollar companies who are trying to capture our focus and capture our attention and disrupt it for their own use. And so we've got to be proactive if we're going to do the important work that really moves the needle in our lives and in our professional lives. Yeah. And let's take your journey. So you go from leading one of the most successful publishing houses in America. And then now you move into your own thing. You're the CEO, but you're also, you're the product in many ways. Right, right. Very much like Dave Ramsey. And so there's not just all the distractions from everybody else. There's also the reality that you're coming up with ideas all the time and you want to continue to help more people. And so it's not that you're creating distractions, but it's the temptation to do so much more. And I love the subtitle. Achieve more. by doing less. So I'm curious, you took us a little bit on your journey from college and then, of course,

you were a very successful CEO. Then you start your own business, where, again, you're the face. Right. So if nothing else, you're wearing at least two hats. That's right. Most days. What have you learned since that journey, since starting what you're doing now on your own, that led into this book? Well, one of the things I realized is that if I was going to scale my business, I had to learn to scale myself. I have 168 hours a week. And once those hours are booked, that's it. Right. So if I can't somehow clone myself, if I couldn't learn that, I couldn't grow the business. Last year our business grew 62%.

And most of it had to do with me getting out of people's way. You know, and stay in my lane and focusing on where I make the biggest and highest contribution. So I talk about that in a concept called the Freedom Compass inside the book. We'll talk about it. Yeah, absolutely. We'll get there. Okay. So let's talk about the book, three main sections, and I love this.

So we're going to kind of high level. Then I'll kind of dive in. Stop, Cut, and Act. Those are the three sections of this book. And I love this. Let's let you unpack stop. Formulate, evaluate, rejuvenate. I was going crazy over these words before we started recording.

Take us through those. We start with stop, which is totally counterintuitive. It really is. You think if you're going to read a book on productivity, you want to talk about, go. You know, get in the game, get some momentum, do something, anything. But stop. And that's because reflection, stopping and thinking about our work is one of those critical things we can do. And yet it's not very highly esteemed in our culture, right?

And so one of the things that I talk about in that first chapter in that section is to formulate, that's the name of the chapter title, to formulate a vision for what your life is going to be like when you adopt this productivity system. Here's the deal, Ken, productivity is not an end in itself. Right. You know, the goal is not just to do more. And this is how it is for so many people. You know, they're working a 12-hour day.

They go to a productivity seminar, have some productivity hacks. Now they've whittled it back to eight. Why? So they've got some margin in their life? No, so they can fill it back up with work. Right. So it just never stops. It's total work.

My premise is that productivity is a means to an end, specifically the end being freedom. And I talk about in that chapter four different kinds of freedom. First of all, the freedom to focus. I mean, we're so distracted, so interrupted. It's hard to focus for long enough to do the creative work. There really moves our businesses and our personalize forward. So the freedom to focus. the freedom to be totally present.

How many meetings have you set in a business, probably not here at Ramsey Solutions, but in a meeting where people are distracted by what's going on at home and they're not present in the meeting that they're attending? Or worse, you're out to dinner and you see somebody a couple, you know, across the restaurant, and they're totally, their heads are in their devices. That's right. They're not present. Or at a little league game. And, you know, the dad's not present with this kid, but he's somewhere else.

So the freedom to be present. The freedom to be spontaneous. You know, our lives are so. scheduled, so booked, there's no white space. I wouldn't be able to stop what I'm doing when the grandkids come over and give them my full attention. And then finally, the fourth freedom is the freedom to do nothing. Now, when Gail and I were in Italy, we spent a month there last summer, amazing. So they have this phrase called let don't you far naiente, and it's the sweetness of doing nothing. And the great thing about doing nothing about that freedom is that's when some of your

through ideas come. It's one of some of your best, most creative visions happen. Yeah. But you've got a lot of space for that. So productivity should serve that end. And if it doesn't, it's not really productivity. You're exactly right. Okay. There's so much. I got a problem. No, no, this is great. Okay. What is doing nothing look like for you? Maybe take us to Italy. So, because I want people to really grasp at least an example of doing nothing. I know what? What does that mean? But I understand what you're saying. So what does doing nothing look like for you? Maybe in Italy where you were able to come up with something because you intentionally were enjoying the sweetness of doing nothing.

And this comes to the chapter on rejuvenation. All the science says that we cannot work just full, you know, pedal to the middle without breaks. The more breaks we take, the more resilient our mind is, the more focused we can become. But you've only got about four to five hours of focused ability per day. And so the rest of the time needs to be stuff that rejuvenate you, that gives you rest. And for me, it might be as simple as rest. There's nothing that impacts your productivity more than a good night's sleep. Right.

If you're not getting seven to eight hours sleep on a regular basis, the science says your brain's going to be foggy, you're not going to be focused, you're not going to be productive. That's right. In Italy, I got a lot of rest. First of all, I have some rules around my sabbatical around my vacations and even my weekends. I don't think about work. I don't read about work. I don't talk about work.

Why? Because when I hit work, I want to be rejuvenated and 100% in. That's good. So in Italy, we would go for long walks in the evening. I mean, everybody pours into the streets in Italy, whether it's Rome or Florence or whatever. And people just enjoy one another's company, you know, talk to people. Yeah. It's amazing.

And did you find yourself when you do these walks? Because I also know from social media that you'll go on climbs or hikes and things like that. And so in essence, you're hiking, climbing, or walking with Gail. But it's not like you're engaged in anything other than I'm just here. I'm just present. I'm just here. Just talking with her. Do you find thoughts kind of just,

They kind of like pop up all over the place. Well, think about this. When does the breakthrough thinking typically happen? You're in the shower, right? Yes. Or behind the wheel of a car for me. Yeah. Or an airplane at 35,000 feet.

That's another one. That's right. It's usually a time when you're the most relaxed. And again, the brain science supports that. So we have to consciously and intentionally put ourselves in those environments where we can relax. You just can't be always on. You make a good point. I've also read something recently as a parent that it's good for our kids to be bored.

Totally. Well, Cal Newport. Do you know Cal Newport? I do. He's been on this program. Okay, so fantastic. So in his book, Deep Work, he talks about something called frustration tolerance. I talk about it in the book, too. So often what happens, we're doing something deep and something important, but, you know, it's challenging, it's difficult. So instead of staying with it, we're tempted if we're not careful, to bail out, go check

social media, walk down the hall, interrupt somebody else, do anything but the work we're supposed to be doing. And so frustration tolerance is learning to say no to ourselves and staying in that moment where we feel a little bored or a little frustrated because the breakthroughs on the other side of that. But if we bail out too soon, we'll never experience it. Oh, it's good. Okay, we're still folks in the stop section. And what I love is, is in this section, you, the reader, you're going to get the opportunity

to create a productivity vision. You talked about that just moments ago. This idea of it's not just productivity to cram more in. It's what's the desired future. That's what you're telling us. You want your life to look like. So after they create a productivity, productivity vision, now the reader is going to get the chance to evaluate their current status or position. I want you to help us. So when we cast vision, so we go, okay, I want to get more productive so that I can be this or be here. And then what is the process of, okay, where do I stand? Is it to look at the gap? Is that what we're doing? Well, partially. Okay. But I have a tool in there called the Freedom Compass. And it's a way of evaluating your tasks, your appointments, your opportunities, because they're not all created equal.

So I want you to imagine a circle that's divided into four quadrants. And think of a compass. And so there's north at the top. Okay. So there's south. I'm going to actually draw it for you. Yeah, I love this, folks. He's got the pencil out.

Okay. So north, okay, south down here. And there's this quadrant up here. Okay. And this is where passion and proficiency meet. Okay. What you love to do, what gives you joy and satisfaction, and what you're good at. Yes.

Okay. So I call that your desire. zone. This is where you make your highest, your greatest contribution. You're in the middle of flow. Like, when you're doing this, like you're one of the best interviewers I know. When you're doing this, you're in flow. This is your desire zone. You love it, right? Absolutely. And you're great at it. This is your desire zone. For me, there's only three things that fit into that. Everything else is a candidate for getting rid of. The exact opposite, down here south, this area here, we have your pencil. Yeah, go ahead. So this area right here, that's your drudgery zone. That stuff, you're not going to. You're not going to. You're not going to. You're not going to. You're not going to. You're at. Yeah, that's right. And you hate it. That's right. And it's a grind. Sucks the life out of you. It sucks the life out of you. Yeah, that's right. So for me, it's different for everybody. Right. Thankfully, not everybody has the same desire zone or the same drudgery zone. That's right. So for me, it would be like things like managing my inbox, booking travel, managing my calendar. I don't love it. And I'm not good at it. Yeah. Thankfully, my assistant Jim is great. That's stuff

that's in his desire zone. Yeah. So the cool thing about it is once you evaluate all the work you're doing and you realize there's so much you're doing that's outside of your desire zone, that's why you feel overwhelmed. Yep. That's why you feel frustrated. That's why you feel like, you know, you could work all day and be busy and never move the needle. So the key is to get focused on that desire zone and get rid of everything that's not in your desire zone. But it takes time. It's process. And by the way, what Mike's talking about is absolutely right. There's a guy by the name of Mihai, Cheek Sent Mehi. Yes. I had to practice that to be able to say it. I'm so impressed.

I've never known anybody that could pronounce that. I've learned for like a minute. I looked it up. I looked it up about a year ago. Yes. And I said, how do you say this guy's name? But he's the, I believe he's Hungarian. Yes. And psychologist, he does a TED talk. And this idea of flow, there's science behind us, 30 years of science this guy's putting it. So I just want to point that out, go watch his talk. What was his name again? Mihae, Cheek sent me high. Okay, thank you. You like that? I just want to hear you say it again. Yeah, I know. It's not easy, but I got to the point where I rehearsed it and rehearsed it so that I could say it. But you're reminded me of that, and it's really science that you're talking

about. Totally. Absolutely. 100%. It's not theory. This is proven stuff. All right, now, we're going to move into cut. Okay. So we've stopped, right?

And again, you can jump in here every you want. This is the stop section. We've got to get into the cut section. And this is where we talk about eliminate, automate, delegate. I'm going to let you get to do a little high level, then we'll dive in. Okay. So any living thing to be healthy, it has to be periodically pruned. Yes.

Right? That's right. So because you have 168 hours a week, you can't just keep adding stuff to your schedule without cutting stuff. So once we have the freedom compass and we know what we don't want to delegate, what we don't want to eliminate or automate, which is our desires on activities, everything else is a candidate to get rid of. So we start by eliminating. So we've got to ask ourselves the question, does this task, does this opportunity, does it need to be done at all? I mean, in corporate settings, it's amazing how many meetings persist that at one time made sense,

but nobody was courageous enough to kill it. It's absolutely right. And so just keep It keeps happening. So you've got to go in and prune, and that's what that whole chapter is about, is about eliminate, and get this. Learning to say no. Yes. Now, I know about you, but I'm a recovering people, pleaser. Oh, big time. And I hate to say no to anybody. Yeah, I get it. But every no, every yes, it's a trade-off. This is a zero-sum game. That's right. You know, if I say yes to have coffee with somebody that I barely know in the morning and skip my workout, I can't do both at the same time. That's right. If I decide to have a business meeting in the evening without Gail, I can't be home having a dinner with her.

That's right. So there's always a trade-off, yes and no trade-off. So I talk about in that chapter how to get better at saying no, including how to create a not-to-do list. Yeah. This is the stuff that you just decide in advance. I don't do that stuff. Yeah. I don't do it anymore.

Like, I don't take just casual meetings with acquaintances. Right. They're usually a waste of time. Right. And I'm not trying to be arrogant. Right. I've got 17 immediate family members. Right.

within 15 miles of here. And for me to give my time to them, my best friends, which are only about three of them, and then for my business associates, that's pretty much all my time spoken for. How do you say no? I mean, this is fascinating. I mean, I don't want to give it all away. But I think there are some people going, okay, this is great, but how do I do this without looking like an arrogant jerk? Well, here's the way you do it. So I use a formula called the yes, no yes formula. Okay. Okay. And I learned this from a book called The Power of the Positive No. But here's what it looks like. First of all, you affirm the intention to the other person who's making the request. Okay. So I'm not going to shame them. Right. I'm not going to ignore them, but I'm going to affirm it. I'm going to give you a real live example here in a second. Oh, this is good. Second thing I'm going to do is I'm going to say no. And I'm not going to say maybe, but there's going to be a clear boundary. I'm going to say no. And then third, I'm going to try to be helpful if I can, but probably not in the way that they expect it. Right. Okay. Yes. No, yes. Okay. So,

One of the things that happens to me is I get asked a lot because of my background in publishing, would I evaluate this book proposal? Oh, yeah, of course. Or what I read this manuscript. So here's what I say. I'll write back to them. And I have this as an email template and I talk about the email templates in here. But I'd say something like, congratulations on writing a proposal.

Most authors never get that far. You've done something amazing. Unfortunately, this is the no part. In order to be faithful to my other commitments, I'm going to have to say no to this. Right. So that lets them know that it's not just me being arrogant, but I've made other commitments, and I'm a person of integrity. Right.

And I'm going to keep those other commitments. So in order to be faithful to those other commitments, I'm going to have to say no. Then I try to say yes, at the very least, affirm them and wish them well, but maybe help them. Like in my case, because I've got a blog and a lot of stuff I'm publishing. You know, I might just refer them to a link or a helpful article or a product or whatever. Yes, no, yes. It's good. And I've got dozens of email templates.

People that ask me on boards, people that ask me to make a contribution, you know, because there's just more opportunity, more requests that I've got time of resources to fulfill. Okay. I think it's the same basic thing, but I just got to put you to the test because I know you're going to crush it. And this is just personal. I'm just going to tell you. Yeah. Hey, can we go to lunch? Right.

And I'm live on the air at 1 o'clock, okay, every day. So if I go to lunch, which is rare, I eat at my desk many days because of the schedule. Sure. Because people have meetings at 11 a.m. 1130. The team I've got to. And I really don't have a lot of time, but I don't want to seem like, and these are people that I may know in the neighborhood or whatever. And I end up putting it off and I'm doing a bad job.

Yeah. How do you do the yes, no yes for the, hey, let's go to coffee or lunch? Well, here's the wrong way to do it. And that is, I don't really know how to say no or I don't want to say no, so I procrastinate and the person's going crazy because I haven't heard from me. Yeah. Right. Or then they may bug me another time or two, and then I get really aggressive and I, you know, overreact. Don't you know I'm busy?

Right, right, right. So the best thing to do is to go ahead and respect. and say, let me just tell you something. My schedule is crazy right now, and there's really just no way that I can do it in order to be faithful to my current commitments. I would have to say no to this. And, you know, maybe next summer. But you got to be careful with that too. Well, right, because then they come back around and you don't want to like you're putting somebody off. And honestly, that's where I think you've got to sort of segregate your friends, you know, and I make a distinction between my best friends. You know, I'll drop everything for them. Of course. Then there's sort of

your good friends. And then there's your acquaintances. Then there's your fans and your followers. So I want to be very clear where they fall because I can't be accessible to everybody. That's right. Or I'm not going to be useful to anybody. That's right. That's good. So you've got to ask yourself the question, where do they fall in the pecking order? Yeah.

Do they need accessibility to me? Yeah. You know if I got some free time, great? Yeah. But usually the answer is no. Yeah. That's good. That's good.

Warren Buffett says the difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say no to almost everything. Wow. It's a direct quote. That's good. And by the way, you dropped a great book reference in there. Did you say the power of the positive? The power of the positive, no.

Okay. Yeah, William Erie. Okay, good. There you go. All right, moving on, we've got automate and delegate. I think people get automation. We'll let them read that in the book. But if you want to cover that, it's fine.

But I think delegation, it's a constant theme here at Ontario leadership. And again, I'd love to get your take on it. Because something you said at the start of our conversation, you said, Ken, we had huge growth last year. I think you said 60%. 62%. 62%. And you said, basically,

because I got out of people's way. There's a form of delegation there. I think one of the things we hear from our audience a lot, people certainly who are chief everything officers, they've got much smaller staff, they're getting after it, they're entrepreneurial. What have you learned over your time to really truly be able to do this thing you write about, delegate? Well, for people that want to scale their business, and this is most of my time right now is spending coaching entrepreneurs on how to scale their business. We've got a program called Business Accelerator, and that's what we do. And the thing that I tell these entrepreneurs is until you can scale yourself, you can't scale your business. And that means delegation.

So here's the problem. Most people have a delegation. I'm just going to take you back to 2011. When I left Thomas Nelson, we sold the business to Harper Collins. Now all of a sudden, in the corporate world, I had two full-time assistants, 650 employees. Now all of a sudden, I'm a solopreneur. I got nothing. I can't even find the FedExbox.

That had to be crazy. I was crazy. You know, I'm booking my own travel, managing my calendar, trying to manage my calendar, or trying to manage my inboxes. Right. And I'm thinking to myself, well, I want to hire some, but I don't want to spend the money.

Right. So I want to tell you the sentences that were going in my head. The first one was, and you can complete the sentence if you know it, if I want something done right, I have to do it. Myself.

Myself. Okay. And the other one is, it takes longer to explain it to somebody. I might as well just do it. Myself. Myself, right? Or I can't afford to do it right now.

I guess I'll just have to do it. Myself. Myself. And as long as you are stuck on yourself, you are the lid in your business. That's good. Okay? So here's the deal.

It does take longer to explain it the first time. It's like any investment. But then you begin to reap all kinds of rewards as somebody picks it up and does that task for you. There are certain things I've, a lot of things I've delegated, never see them again. You know, I don't care. I talk about the five levels of delegation so you can make sure that you're clear on your expectations. But then the whole thing about if you want it done right, you've got to do it. it yourself, when you get people who are operating in their desire zone that are working for you,

that's right. Not only can they do it as well as you can, my team does it better, not just that I could do it, better than I can imagine it. That's right. So it's getting the right people on the bus, but it takes that investment. So I want to give another example. So I had one of my coaching clients who said, I'm really stuck because I think I need to hire a web developer, but I know some stuff about web development, so I'm doing it and I'm getting by.

I said, well, how much do you earn an hour? And he said, well, I earn $150 an hour. That's how much I bill out at, $150 an hour. I said, what would it cost to hire a really great WordPress developer? He said, somebody really good? I said, yeah, somebody really good. He said, probably $50 an hour. I said, so why are you paying a guy that's not that good, $150 an hour?

Because that's exactly what he was doing. I said, if you would hire somebody that was really good at this, you would be free to bill out that same time at $150 an hour. You pay somebody else $50 an hour. that's a net gain of $100 an hour. That's right. Why wouldn't you do that? Well, the lights went on.

But it takes that investment first. When I left Thomas Nelson, we're both friends with the folks at Belay. Oh, yeah. So I hired an executive assistant from the Belay folks five hours a week. I think they have a minimum now of 10 hours a week, but in those days they were kind that I did five hours. In two weeks, it made such a huge difference in my life. And I was able to bill out that time, that additional time, that I immediately went to 10 hours a week and then 20 hours a week. And best investment I ever made.

I could not have scaled my business if I was not willing to make that investment. Because this is what I love about your story here in this illustration. You really did do it by yourself for a while with that virtual system. You got this thing up and going. I did. And then I'd hire another person. It was always investment. I'd think, oh, I can't spend the money.

I hate to spend the money. Every time my income went up because I'm now narrowing my focus to more and more things that, first of all, I can bill for. But the things I'm really good at and the things I love. And the things that create leverage for the company. How energized are you at this point where you now look at it and you've got a great team over there at Hyatt and co. It's just taking off.

It's going crazy. And you look at it now and you go, wow. I mean, how energizing is your day? Well, let me just say this. Productivity is more about energy management than it is about time management. Yes. So I am very energetic. I have to kind of throttle it back a little bit because I've never had more energy at any point in my life.

that I have now. Now, I'm going to tell you, part of the rejuvenation chapter, I'm taking care of myself. Sure, of course. You know, I'm monitoring my nutrition and supplements and exercise and adequate rest and vacations and all the rest. I took off 160 days last year. Wow. That's counting weekends, including, you know, one full month in Italy. So, yeah, I'm very energetic, but I know that productivity is about energy management. Think of it this way. You're reading a book, and you're tired, and you keep reading that same page over and over again. Right. You keep reading that same page over and over again. Right. You keep reading that paragraph over and over again.

Because you're lacking focus. You're lacking, you know, you're not productive. Good night's rest, you can do so much more. So managing your energy and being intentional about it, I know you're going into a really busy season. And you've got to be very intentional about managing your energy. Nothing else is more important. That's exactly right. Wow, so good.

Okay, so now we're still in the cut and we talked about eliminate, automate, delegate. The thing that I want to ask is, what would you challenge people as maybe, being one of the most difficult things there. Because I think the reason I'm asking this question, I think it's hard for people to cut. Certainly leaders, certainly when in business, it's very, very personal. And maybe there's not an answer here. But is there one of those three, maybe an action, a habit that makes one of those a little bit more difficult?

I would figure out how to say no. That's where it starts. Eliminate is important because you certainly don't want to automate or delegate something that doesn't need to be done. Right. So if you get the no, everything else kind of. That's right. If you get the no right.

Okay. And then of the things that are left, after you said no, then what things don't have to be done by a human? Those are the things you can automate. Gotcha. And then of the things that can be done or should be done by a human, they don't all have to be done by you. So what can you delegate to somebody else, a teammate, somebody that works for you, outside contractor, whatever, so that you're left, and this moves us to the third part of the book, which is act, on the things that are left for you to do. How could you organize your work and be strategic about it so that you maximize your efficiency, and be your most productive self. All right. This is perfect. Segway. Three key actions in Act, the section, the third section, consolidate, designate, activate. I'll tee you up here.

Consolidate. People have heard about a term called batching, right? You know, batching your test. You do something called mega batching. I'm not surprised. You took batching, you went, how can I be more productive? And you came up. And of course you did.

So what does that look like for you and how does it help you? Yeah, well, I teach a concept in this chapter called the Ideal Week. Daniel Harkavy and I talked about it in our book Living Forward too. But the idea is, what would my week look like if I was 100% in control of my time and resources so that it just sort of flowed in the ideal way? So let me tell you how it looks like for me. So Monday is my day for what I call backstage work. Okay. So this is my preparation to get ready for the front stage.

Everybody's front stage looks different. You're doing front stage work now. This is frankly my front stage work. But my backstage work, that's when I'm having my internal meetings. So Monday is designated for internal meetings. Tuesday is a day of just other kinds of prep for my front stage work all day long. Wednesday and Thursday are my front stage days. That's what I'm either doing podcast interviews or I'm doing, you know, I'm on stage,

but those are really the front stage kinds of things. So I'm mega-batching. When I'm doing my podcast, we do 13 episodes at a time over a day and a half. Oh, wow. So that's mega-batching. Yes, it is. Why? Because you get in that headspace.

You know how it is. You get in the headspace where you do. you're doing the interviews, roll with it. Yeah. Because so much time is left moving from one kind of space to another kind of space. That's good. And so then Friday, that's my day for external meetings. You know, if you wanted to get together with me, I'd be happy to do that, but it's got

to be on a Friday. Right. Now, I'm not legalistic about it. Right. And then Saturday and Sunday, that's my offstage time. And for a lot of entrepreneurs, they don't even know there's an off stage. You're right. Right?

That's exactly right. But offstage is where a lot of good stuff happens. So that's how I think about mega-batching. That's good. I want to keep going, but you made me think of a question. What do you do? Because you said earlier that on the weekends, you don't think about work at all. That's right. And so you were just talking about that's offstage time. I just got to believe there's an answer here that, how are you intentional, whether it be books, movies, concerts, music, things that are offstage with Gail, with the family, with couples, your close couple friends, that do inspire you so that maybe, you're not thinking about work, but come Monday morning, you go, oh my gosh, I was at this concert, or I watched this movie, or I read this book. Do you do that? Totally. Yeah. So here's the thing. If you do not plan your weekends, nature abhors a vacuum, you will drift back into what's familiar. Right. This is why people with even good intentions find themselves working on the weekend or the

evenings because it's familiar. They enjoy it. Right. And they don't have a plan to supplant it. Yes. So for me, what it looks like is, I'm planning my Saturday. I'm planning my Sunday. Now, there may be free time. I take a great long nap on Sunday afternoon, you know, but I'll go visit my parents. You know, I've got, see movies with Gail. But we plan it out because, again, if we don't, I'm going to drift back into work. And I don't want to drift in anything. I want to design. Right. I want to design my future, and I want to design my weekends. I love that. Okay. Consolidate. We talked about designate and activate. I want you to take us through designate. Okay. So designate is all about design

your quarter, your week, and your day. So here's how I think of it. I call it the three by three by three strategy. Okay. So I encourage all leaders to have three big goals for the quarter. Okay? So you really can't do more than that because you've got your current workload you've got to manage,

both at work and at home. So three goals that are outside of business as usual, three new initiatives. That's about as much as you can focus on if you really want to move the needle. And I talked about in this in my book, Your Best or Ever, why that's important. Then to select three priorities for the week.

So I advocate a system that I call the weekly preview. I do mine on Sunday night. It only takes me about 30 minutes where I preview the week and I decide for myself what are going to be my three priorities this week. Now the Pareto principle, which says 20% of the work, produces 80% of the results. So what are the three tasks, the three projects that if I were to complete in this next week would be really significant. Then, and this is where it gets interesting, and I do this with a full focus,

planner, my daily big three. What are the three tasks that I need to do today that if I were get to the end of the day and I completed those, I would say, this has been a good day. Here's what most people do. They get up in the morning. They got 20 things on their to-do list. From the get go, they're overwhelmed. Right. You know, and they go, oh my gosh, there's no chance. I'm going to do this. So they start defeated. They're playing a game. They know they can't win. Then they get to the end of the day. Let's say they complete 10, 11, 12 of those tasks and they still got 8 to 12 left. they go to bed going, I'm a failure. Absolutely.

You know, I didn't finish everything I needed to finish. Well, the reality is all those tasks were not equal to begin with. Only 20% of those tasks, really, we're going to produce 80% of the results. Right. So identify them in advance. What are your daily big three? That's a game I can win. It's rare for me to get to the end of the day and not complete my daily big three.

Right. Now, I'd go ahead and list the other tasks. I have a place in the full focus planner for this. I think of it as my task junk drawer. If I get some of those done fine, but they're not mission critical. So I'm at least getting three things done every day. You do that every day for 250 days a year, you know, 750 days a year. Yep.

You know, 750 tasks, that's pretty significant. Yes, it is. Wow, that's really good. All right, and then let's go into activate. So we've designated now, how do we activate? Okay, so in a sense, consolidate and designate are really the offensive posture. Right. So I'm going to design my week.

I'm going to design my days. I'm going to go in with a good plan. but then life happens. Right. Right. And so we get interrupted and we get distracted. And so this chapter is all about practical strategies to keep yourself from getting interrupted, because I hear from leaders all the time, they say, I can't get to my own work.

Right. Because I'm constantly interrupted by my people or my, you know, my colleagues. And so I talk about interruption strategies. And we can come back and talk about that if you want. And then distraction strategies. Interruptions are mostly external. Yeah. That's people that are, you know, coming into our world, impinging upon our world,

keeping us from doing the work. Disractions, those are mostly internally driven. Yes. You know, when we go check Facebook or Instagram more than we should, that's a distraction. And we can blame Instagram and we can blame Facebook and certainly they've got a lot of resources trying to keep us distracted. But at the end of the day, it's us. We have to cooperate with that for that. That's right. It's really good. Good stuff there for Michael Hyatt. Again, the book is free to focus a total productivity system to achieve more by doing less.

of productivity. Antre leadership has a free resource for you. To my knowledge, this is one of the most popular resources we give away. So why not give it away now? Because I'm a man of the people. That's what I do. I'm constantly driving these guys nuts. Give them free stuff. So we got a seven-day plan to triple your productivity. This is going to help you get so much more done every day. Fill out the included Entree leader time tracker this week and then listen to this episode again. going to allow you to really capitalize on what Michael Hyatt told you and you can track your activities and you're going to really see what an ideal week will look like for you. Get the guide and start improving your productivity right now. Text triple. Just one word, triple to 33444 or click

the link in the show notes. Text triple to 33444 or click the link in the show notes. All right, we got some bonus content for you. After my sit-down interview with Michael Hyatt that you just heard, we asked him some of your questions. You submitted these, and so we wanted to get answers to your questions. Here is that bonus session. Let's talk about a couple questions we've got from our audience. Now, we've kind of covered these, but I love these. He came in from our listeners, and this one here seems like a common question. I have tracked time, but I still don't know where to start with retaking control. What do you suggest? I think he's like. like looking at this or she's looking at this going, all right, I've tracked it, but I don't know

where to fix it. Yeah, exactly. I would start, and this is kind of the quickest win, by doing the daily big three, identify three tasks every day, look at your entire list and say of this list of 20 things. Right. What are the three that really need to be done today? Because not everything has to be done today. Right.

You know, this is one of the secrets of air traffic controllers. Yeah. You know, thankfully, not every plane that's in the air has to land at the same time. Right. What's important now? Right. What's important today that I get to? done. And this kind of goes back to something called the Eisenhower Matrix. Stephen Covey made it

popular. But you look at urgency and importance. Things that are urgent and important, those are the first things I'm going to do. Things that are important are the easy things to procrastinate. You know, getting that physical, working on writing that book. These are the things that are easy to push off, but they're the important things. Those are going to take the second priority. And then everything else probably is not going to make it into the Daily Big Three. This reminds me, of some of your content you've shared before on many blogs, you've written about it, you shared on this podcast, Slaying the Dragon.

Yes. You talk about it. So let's say that, and I'll let you teach on this, but if of those three, like on a Tuesday, one of them's that dragon. I want you to teach on it. Is that something that you, does it fit into what you're teaching with the big three? It does,

but it actually goes back to the chapter on automation. Okay. One of four types of automation that I teach is self-automation. Ah. And this involves rituals. Okay. And I encourage every leader to have four basic rituals. They need a morning ritual.

Okay. So what prepares you for game day? Put you in the best frame of mind, physically, energy, everything else so that you can win. Second ritual, your workday startup ritual. So for me, that's like email, social media, checking in with the team. About 30 minutes, but how can I get that stuff out of the way so that it doesn't distract me later on? then a workday shut down ritual so that at the end of the day I can put everything to bed, button it up and leave, and go home and be fully present with my family.

And then the fourth ritual is the evening ritual. How can I prepare myself for great rest so that I really sleep and rejuvenate overnight? So what I do is I start my day with that morning ritual. It's not part of my daily big three. It happens before the daily big three. And it's the same every day. And for me, it's, you know, I get up. First thing I do is I read the Bible.

I've done that for years. I read through the Bible every year. I pray, I meditate. I journal. Then I go to the gym. Come home, shower, get dressed, and I'm off through the races. That's my morning ritual. I love that.

All right. Another question comes in. How do you gauge measure your personal productivity in a season of business growth? Basically, how to know if you're, in fact, using your time as wisely as you should as the CEO. Yeah, well, I think that goes back to the Freedom Compass. First of all, what are the things that you're uniquely gifted to do? And I love this quote from Dawson Trotman, who was the founder of The Navigators. He said, I purposed early in my career that I would never do anything of importance that others could or would do when there was so much of importance to be done that others could not or would not do.

So what are the things that truly you can't delegate that nobody else can do? And so for me, it's creating content, it's delivering content, and it's casting vision. That's staying in my lane. Right. And so for me, those are the things that I know are going to be the most productive for the company. That's why we've grown like we have. And everybody in my company is doing that. That keeps me from engaging in fake work or busy work or sideways energy.

I'm doing the stuff that really advances the cause. Okay, another question. What habits did you break? And how did you build good habits after you break those bad habits? Well, I just went through this. You'd think I would know better. One of the things I found with the advent of the smartphone is little by little, like the frog in the kettle, I was being boiled. And I found myself picking up my phone every time I got a little bored,

a little frustrated. I would pick it up. And, you know, the Apple devices have something called screen time. Yes. They can literally tell you how often you've picked up your phone. Oh, yeah. I get my weekly report. Oh, man. It's brutal, isn't it? It's brutal. Yeah. The average person picks up their phone 150 to 200 times a day. Now, for people listening to this, they may not believe that. I'm telling you, look at screen time. It tells us the truth. Absolutely right. So just recently, I said, I am tired of this. I do not want to be compulsively checking my phone. So I have this $1,000 plus iPhone, right?

And I turned it into a dumb phone. I can do two things, actually three things. I could receive phone calls. I could receive texts, but I took off email, Slack, which is our internal communication system. I took off all social media with the exception of Instagram, because I'm trying to build my Instagram following. Right.

But through screen time, I limited Instagram to 3.3,000, to 30 minutes a day, I gave my phone to my wife, Gail, and I said, I want you to pick a password that only you know. And I want you to get that password to my assistant, but I only want you to have it so that I'm not tempted to cheat the system. Oh, that's good. Because the screen time thing, like I run out my limit on Instagram and it comes up and it says, do you want to ignore this for the rest of the day, or do you just want to take a 15 minute, you know, add 15 minutes on? And so I was always punching that thing. Well, now I can't do it. I cannot defeat the system now. Great. So I found after about three or four days, I stopped sort of this compulsive checking

in my phone. But what we have to understand is that dopamine's at work there. You know, dopamine is a neurotransmitter that gives us a small sense of pleasure or reward when we do certain kinds of activities like checking Facebook, checking our phone. No question. And it takes work to defeat that. That's true. So that's just something I just dealt with recently. That's really good. Well, the book is fantastic, free to focus, a total productivity. system to achieve more by doing less. Before I let you go, I'm going to take you to a topic off of the book because I think it would be great for our audience to hear. One of the things that we are hearing and seeing more and more is just some natural fear there with people with leaders, you know,

whether it be fear of, you know, letting a person go that they're killing it or the results, but they're the Tasmanian devil with the culture. Whether it be fear of expanding, you know, into a new product line or fear of investing in an assistant or not. investing into fear. I've asked you this before. I've always loved your approach to fear, but I think it's always relevant. And so even if it's something that you, you know, you're doing great, but how do you step into fear and how would you recommend our audience deal with whatever fear that they deal with as leaders? Well, I think the key for breakthrough as a leader, the key for really accomplishing something significant is you've got to get really comfortable

with the discomfort zone. Yes. All discomfort is, is an indication. that we're moving in the area we need to be moving in. So if I stay in my comfort zone, nothing good is going to happen there, right? I'm going to be a couch potato. I'm not going to exercise. I'm not going to meet those new clients. I'm not going to do anything to expand my business. So we've got to realize that when we move into the discomfort zone, we're going to feel fear,

uncertainty, and doubt. But those are three uncomfortable emotions that are actually signposts that confirm to us that we're on the right path. And so fear is one of those things that we have to realize this isn't original with me, that what we really wanted life is on the other side of that fear. Every time I've confronted a fear, I've had a breakthrough.

And usually when I named the fear and when I acknowledge it, I realize that it's a whole lot smaller when I get it out into the open than when I keep it in my brain. So to just be able to talk to somebody about it and say, like my daughter just went through this with public speaking.

In fact, our podcast that we released today was on this topic was her speech that she gave at the Best Year Ever conference and it was called a year of facing fear. She'd never spoken publicly till last year. Oh, wow. And I put her in front of a thousand people. She killed it.

Well, then she did it again, but she spoke on what it was like to confront that fear. And mostly it's just, you know, we've all heard this, doing it scared. Yeah. You know, I used to have such a fear of public speaking that I would have to wear two t-shirts. Is that right?

Because I was afraid I would sweat through the first one and give myself away. That's funny. My hands were ice cold. I wanted to throw up before I got on stage. But one of the things that helped me in that situation, I know a lot of people listening probably have that fear because most people fear public speaking. They fear that more than they fear dying. Do you know that Jerry Seinfeld joke?

Oh, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. You know, he says if you're at a funeral, he said, what that means is that most people would rather be in the casket than giving the eulogy. That's absolutely right. Right. That's one of the things with public speaking. For me, it was focusing on the audience. Right.

Once I stopped thinking about myself and stopped and really got in touch with what was at stake. Right. And I think that's the key. You know, to really ask yourself the question, are you going to let fear control you? What's at stake? What are you saying no to or what are you saying later to because you're afraid to confront it now? And if you can get in touch with your why, you can overcome any fear. That's right.

But when people lose their way, it's because they've lost their why. That's good. Mike Hyatt, thank you so much for being a friend, Dave, to Entree Leadership and coming by. We're really excited about the book. Real quick, tell people you've got a lot going on. Obviously, we've talked about the book, but hey, they want to connect with you online. You've got different courses. Tell us. Yeah, well, if you want to find out about the book, go to freetofocusbook.com, free to focusbook.com.

And there's a whole bunch of bonuses by the time this airs that are going to be available to you. And my other website, my main website is Michael Hyatt.com. Incredible amount of resources there. Follow him on Twitter, social media. Instagram. He's trying to build it. Instagram. So let's go get, what's your handle? Michael Hyatt.

There it is. Very simple. Michael Hyatt. Check him out on the gram. Hey, always fun to be with you. Thanks, Kim. Appreciate you. Now, make sure that you follow us on social so that you can get your questions to us and subscribe

because your question might get answered on a future episode. So all of the links to our social media following are right there on our podcast page at entreleadership.com. Okay, we've got a great resource from our friends at Belay. Five ways a virtual assistant can change your life and how to hire them. Now, you heard Michael talk about his Belay virtual executive. assistant and I remember when he hired him. He was blogging about this. It was like a very public hire and it was a game changer for him. You heard he mentioned just a bit of that transformational season in his life in our conversation. So you got to check this out.

This might be a game changer for you financially as well as maybe with your schedule and how you're on the go. You need to kick the tires. Get this free resource. Click the link in our show notes. It's going to tell you five ways a virtual assistant can change your life and how to hire them. You'd be crazy not to look into this if you feel like you might need some additional help. Well, big thanks to Michael Hyatt for being with us. And as always, on behalf of the entire Entree leadership team, thank you for listening. We'll talk with you again very soon. Hey, folks, I want to make you aware that we have other great podcasts from Ramsey Solutions. Here's a sample of the Ken Coleman show. According to a recent Gallup poll, nearly 70% of Americans are

disengaged at work. If you dread going into work every Monday morning and you're just trying to make it to the weekend, the Ken Coleman show is for you. Everyone has a sweet spot. Your sweet spot is at the intersection of your greatest talent and greatest passion. We will help you discover what it is you were born to do and then will help you create a plan to make your dream job a reality. You matter and you have what it takes.

Join the conversation on the Ken Coleman show. To hear full episodes, just search Ken Coleman in iTunes or go to Ken Coleman Show.com.