Start With A Win - Productivity Hacks with Laura Stack

Episode Date: May 1, 2019

Our guest on this episode of Start with a Win is The Productivity Pro, Laura Stack. Laura’s father was a Colonel in the US military, so she grew up in a very regimented and structured environment, and since her friends were all living in similar households, there was actually peer pressure to be productive so then you could go have fun. By the age of 21, Laura had earned her MBA. Her local Kiwanis club asked her to speak about her motivation to complete her degree so young, and it sparked in her a desire to share with others who had not had productivity engrained in them from birth how they could jumpstart their productivity.During her years as a consultant and speaker to businesses and entrepreneurs, she has found some common themes about the way people have organized (or not organized) their lives and barriers to productivity. When it comes to distraction, many people know exactly what they need to be doing, but they are looking for any excuse to be distracted. Sometimes they are being lazy, but sometimes distraction creeps in because of the lack of systems and organization to keep them on task. It is a proven fact that it takes 7 minutes for people to gain back their attention after being distracted, and the average person gets one email every 4 minutes, so if you do not have a structure telling you not to check your email every time you hear the ding, you will go through entire days and weeks without being truly productive.Time blocking is an excellent way to combat this and is very easy to do through an Outlook or Google calendar. Then it will just require the discipline to stick with the times and tasks you have set out for yourself. Perhaps you can’t block every moment of every day for specific things, but at least you can block off 1-2 hours every day that is dedicated to working with no interruptions. You will be amazed what you can accomplish if you are not receiving alerts of any kind. Finally, being productive today means preparing for today yesterday. At the end of every work day, take a look at what you didn’t get done. Transfer those tasks to the relevant to-do list – by taking an honest look at your priorities as well as the “soft” time you have in your schedule coming up, you can properly schedule when tasks can be completed. Honestly evaluate which tasks provide you with the highest ROI of your time and do them – even if you don’t want to.Laura relies heavily on Microsoft Outlook Tasks to keep her organized. This is also a reliable method for maintaining a record of what needs follow up. For more information about Laura’s tips and strategies for productivity, check out the content on her website.Connect with Laura:https://theproductivitypro.com/https://twitter.com/laurastackhttps://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYlWxFWalwouknQpizSPM6Q Connect with Adam:https://www.startwithawin.com/ https://www.facebook.com/adamcontosREMAXCEO/ https://twitter.com/REMAXAdamContos https://www.instagram.com/REMAXadamcontos/ 

At top of the 12th floor of the REMAX World Headquarters, you're listening to Start With a Win with CEO Adam Kantos. And top of the 12th floor of REMAX World Headquarters here in Denver, Colorado. Welcome to Start With a Win. I'm Adam Kantos. Here with us today we have producer Mark. How are you, Mark? I am so good.

How's your productivity level? You know, I would say it's strong to quite strong. Strong to quite, okay. Yeah. Could be better. As we've talked about in other episodes, I have no leakage problems. No productivity leakage. That's right.

Awesome. Well, today we have a very special guest with us here, eight-time author, productivity pro. We have Laura Stack in the house. How are you doing, Laura? That's right. Hi, Adam. Thanks for having me. Hey, so glad to have you here. Tell us a little bit about yourself. Well, I am a Denver resident. I have lived in Colorado all my life. I grew up in Colorado Springs on the Air Force Academy. Excellent. My dad is a retired colonel. Wow. So I grew up in a very structured, militaristic type of environment.

So you like productivity. I grew up that way. Loved it. I really don't know anything different. So that's a good foundation. How did you decide Productivity Pro was Laura's stack? Well, growing up, everything was incredibly regimented in terms of when you got home from school, you did your homework, and then you did

your chores, and then you got ready for dinner, then you walked your pets. So the adage you've heard, work before play, that 100% completely applied in my world. But I didn't think it was odd because all my friends were being raised that way too. Oh yeah, that's right. So you're on a military base where everybody kind of has the same mindset. Same mindset. And so there was a built in peer pressure, I would say, Adam, to be productive because everything had to be done before you could go out. And so your friends would actually be pressuring you, you know, come on, get going, get moving. And so that really, I think, laid the foundation for who I am. And by the time I was 21, I'd received my MBA. So not because I'm smarter,

believe me, than anybody else, but because I am incredibly disciplined. And that I attribute to a military lifestyle. That's amazing. So you, I mean, you grew up with the built-in accountability there. Absolutely. And my dad did not take any flack. I mean, you know, he would come in with his white dress military gloves on and run his finger across our dressers to see if he saw any dust. I mean, it really was the traditional environment that you hear about. And you think it's just a joke. Oh, people don't really bounce quarters on your corners of your beds to see if your corners are tight enough. Do they? Yes, they really do. Oh yeah. But there's a lot of love in that. And he is a very gentle man, but you know you know, you did everything you needed to do.

And you checked your list off every day. That's amazing. I didn't get exposed to that until the Marine Corps when I was 18. So you know all about it. Oh, yeah. Well, you got a jump start on a lot of us with that. So it's already instilled in your mindset and your culture and your upbringing there. That's amazing.

So you've carried that on to your professional life. And that's really what you do. You're a consultant for businesses, for entrepreneurs, for leaders, things like that. This just wasn't easy. It just didn't come to you, hand it to you, whatever it was. You've had some challenges in your life also, I'm sure, though, getting to this point, right? Can you tell us a little bit about that? Well, and for 27 years now, I've been going around and talking about performance and productivity and discipline and time management. And yeah, it started with a talk at Kiwanis Club, actually,

asking me if I would come talk about how I got my MBA at 21. And that's what I talked about because that was all I knew. And today, 27 years later, that is still what I'm talking about. But things have changed. Technology, email, tools, devices, apps, all of the ways that we organize and the things that prevent us from being productive, all those things have changed. But the foundations in terms of the discipline and the structure,

all of those things are exactly the same. And I'm like anyone else. I am human. Right. I love to procrastinate. I can think of a whole bunch of other things I would rather do than pick up a phone and talk to a prospective client, for example. Let's unpack that a little bit because, you know, we look at where we're at

today in society with iPhones and technology and the shiny thing. And then there's so much disruption and that word that, you know, kind of gets overused in business disruption. But ultimately what it is, is I guess, interruption more than anything. So do you think we're dealing with more distraction and opportunity to do things other than what we should be doing now than we were before? Or is it the same? I think we know exactly what we should be doing. I don't think that's changed in the 27 years I'm doing this. Everybody knows how to work hard.

They know how to make a list. They know how to check stuff off. They know what they're supposed to be doing. They know exactly what it takes to be successful. So why aren't they doing it? Because they're lazy. They're either not knowledgeable. They don't have the right systems. They don't have the right skills. They are disorganized. Adam, there are so many different reasons why people don't do what they know they're supposed to do. And that's often why I'm called in to take a look at what might be going on with a certain team or a leadership group, what might be some of the challenges. But that's the real obstacle for all of us, isn't it? Because I think

we know exactly what we need to do. And that is the essence of discipline that I was taught. That discipline is doing what you know you need to do, even when you don't feel like it. So you're not just the productivity pro, you're like the productivity doctor. Yeah, there's a lot of analysis and kind of trying to figure out what's going on with someone. Yeah. It's getting them to realize that they need to go on a, you know, wasting time diet or something like that. Right. Well, our technology to your point, um, you know, when we studied Pavlov's dogs in college, you learned Pavlov ring a bell, gave the dog a treat. The dog would salivate.

Pretty soon, all you had to do was ring the bell. Interesting. And the dog would salivate without the treat. So what is this? This is called a learned response or a conditioned response. And so what we are dealing with today is Pavlovian email. It's obsessive, compulsive kind of email addiction. Ding, you hear the bell, ooh, got to check. There's this innate, ooh, what is it? It's a present. It's a curiosity.

But it's also a form of procrastination because many of us are hoping, oh, dear God, I hope this email is something more exciting than what I'm working on. And it makes us feel busy, makes us feel like we're doing something. And so most of us today are being controlled by our devices. So we get this false sense of accomplishment. Absolutely. So you talk in, I've watched some of your speeches on the videos and they're amazing by the way, your keynotes. So if you're looking for a great keynote, Laura Stack is the way to go. But I'll tell you, I found it interesting when you're talking about this seven minutes to get back your attention. Tell us about that. Well, I mean, for example, if we're talking about distraction specifically, let's say the average person in America gets one email every four

minutes, which is fairly typical. And if it takes the average adult seven minutes for them to be able to ramp up to a full state of focus or concentration, and you're checking email as they're coming in, by definition, you aren't doing things in order of priority, and you never will be able to focus on a larger project, or something that requires more than that four minute window. So some people just kind of leave their inbox up. And so it's a constant state of distraction, Our brains were not wired. And of course, email doesn't come in in priority order. Right. Right. So you're never able to actually get some time to work on what's critical. So you're always behind then based on that theory, which I mean, I can tell you, how do you define behind? You never get focused on actually doing something

to accomplish, right? Well, no, I mean, I purposefully block out times, for example, to work where all the technology's off, right? Everything's minimized. There's not even vibrate. I mean, no notifications on the cell phone. And you have to really understand what works for you in terms of your structure, in terms of your day, in terms of your energy. Everyone has a bit of a different bio clock. So that hour may be different for me than it is for you. In fact, it probably is. So every day from about 11 to 1230, I am at my best. And so that's the time that I don't check email.

I want to talk to clients. I want to be on interviews. I want to do things that require creative thought that are difficult, marketing types of projects. Because the rest of the time, my brain just doesn't function as well. So you have to be very tuned in to your day and to your schedule. And if you're not a big morning person like me, you have to do some things early on to get those big wins so that you can start your day with a win. So it's just going to vary by person. That's a great, great thought. So really,

I mean, it's important to understand yourself,, your body and your brain operates so that you can focus that most productive time of the day when you are operating at your maximum capacity. So what, you know, if, if just a, just a ballpark here, if you were to say, you mentioned an hour and a half of your day, Let's say it's just an around number eight hour workday. Hour and a half of that, we'll give it 20% of the day is your most productive. How much, you know, is this taking us back to the Pareto principle, 80-20 rule? Do you get 80% of your productivity done during that 20% of time? Well, there's still a lot of things that have to be done during the day. A call has to be made, return a text, order this product, whatever it is.

So there's still little things that must be done. I'm talking about larger windows of time that you can actually sit down and do things that require more than four minutes of focus. Okay. Because if you just think, oh, well, I'm going to find time. You time never materializes in your day. There will always be another call, another person, another place to go, another thing to do. There never will be a block of time that we can get to concentrate on things that require longer focus. So those peak high, high, those that's my maximum peak energy. Um, that's when

I want to write my weekly blog articles. That's when I want to practice my next speech. That's where I want to do an interview with the wall street journal, right? That's when I would prefer to do things like this. So when you look at timing, you have to look at what your brain is capable of doing. So in that peak energy period, we can do what are called higher order activities. So anything that requires focus, concentration, analysis, problem solving, like looking at numbers, budgets, anything that you find hard, don't attempt to do that when you feel like putting your head down on the desk and taking a nap. It's not, it's going to be counterproductive. That's when I would do my email. I can be brain dead and do email. So we procrastinate because we're in this high energy, our bodies are practically vibrating with energy and we're sitting there messing around on our

email. What a waste of time. No kidding. So is that a temptation that people have is during that high productivity time to waste it? Yeah, because we feel great. It's like your best mood of the day. You're like, woo, I love my job. My life is great. You get these really high energy levels. And what do you want to do?

Nothing productive. You want to do all the fun stuff. That's when we're like on our social media, surfing the web, talk to our friends, go see our mom. You know, we just do everything that is not productive because our emotion is high. So when you feel good and then all of a sudden you can, you can sense your energy coming down. We all have those, you know, kind of lulls like after lunch or in the afternoon, you know, then you feel it coming down and you go, Oh, I guess I better get to work now. Right. And you just, now your energy. So in other words, something that might've taken you

30 minutes when you're in that time, now it might take you two hours or what most people do. They just go, Oh, I don't have the energy. I just, I'll do it tomorrow. And the end of the day comes and they never get anything. And then tomorrow and I'll do it tomorrow and I'll do it tomorrow. Right. So it's not that some people say, Oh,

I don't know what's wrong with me. I'm just so lazy. I just procrastinate. And I, if you don't do, if you don't consciously match the energy and the task to the time, right, you're going to have a mismatch. Some people get to work,

their first thing in the morning is their most productive time. A ton of people are morning people. You better chain yourself to your desk and knock out those calls and do those marketing activities and the things that later you're going to go, Oh, I just, I don't have any energy to phone this prospective client. You just run out of steam. I love it. I love it. I love the, uh, I mean, this high level of self-awareness creates a high level of productivity and, and it just, it tells you where to put your day.

And a different routine for every person. Okay. But you've got to have that structure. And I learned that from the military. I mean, I get up every morning, every morning and make my bed without fail. So let's transition to that. I will never not make my bed. I like that. I think everybody should make their bed every day. So that is actually one of the Navy SEAL commander that gave the speech at the college on graduation.

He talked about making your bed. All us military brats, we had to make our bed. And it was because it instilled a sense of accomplishment. And if nothing else, you made your bed. And it gives you an early win. It kind of checks something off. Right. You know, you can go, all right.

So we like starting with a win around here. Yeah. So how do you, obviously, you know, besides making your bed, how else do you set up your day for success? How do you start with a win and get that day prepared for success? Well, the day, if you're asking yourself that question in the morning, you're already cooked. Right. The day has already started. It's too late to be preparing for the day. Let's say the listeners, let's say our listeners are looking for tomorrow.

Yeah, no, you should be planning tomorrow today. Okay. So how, how, how would, should our listeners think about tomorrow? So before you, whatever you, however you do it, again, I don't judge. Some people have kids. Right. And they got to put the kids to bed before they can think about tomorrow, and they're back in their home office at 9 p.m. That's fine. For them, that's balance. Everybody has kind of a different blurring

of the boundaries. Maybe it's five o'clock before, maybe you have an office, you know, a traditional office. Not everybody does anymore, but you know, whatever for you is this symbolic end of your day, right? That's the time that you should be thinking about tomorrow. We really need to look at what didn't I get done today and why, you know, if you were productive, you got the most critical things done on your to-do list, right? There will never be enough time to do it all, but there's always enough time to do what's important. So if you plan, if you execute it on your plan correctly,

you did those most important things. And then everything that's left was a, I would like to do, right? So you look at what didn't get done and you look at what you have going on for tomorrow. And some of the things that you hope to do today that you didn't get to, and now you look at what's going on tomorrow and you're like, that isn't going to happen. And that's part of why people are challenged with their plans because they're not organized. Okay. So they don't have a way of saying, I'm not going to get to this tomorrow. I'll do it in two weeks. Okay. So they don't have a systematic way to change their plans quickly

and change the start dates and change the due dates. So when you leave that planning period, you should have a good to-do list that is a realistic reflection of how much you believe you can get accomplished given that you've got email, you've got a phone call at 1 o'clock and 2 o'clock and 3.30, right? You have to also look at your calendar. That's what I call the hard landscape of your day, right? So if you look at those blocks on your calendar, that's the hard landscape of the day. And the soft landscape is all the squishy stuff in between. The time that now your to-do list has to fit in there. So if you're hard landscape, you've got five hours committed on your calendar to do things. And you've only got three, four, five hours of soft landscape to do the work.

Right. Because you're not going to be working while I'm doing this podcast with you. Right. And I look at my to-do list, and I add up the number of hours, everything on that to-do list, and I've got 17 hours of work on there. Well, I know by definition that's not going to happen. So what people do is they make these massive to-do lists that are incredibly unrealistic. Right. And then when they get a little block of time, just randomly pick something.

Don't they usually pick the easiest things to do on their to-do list? Sometimes. They might pick something that fits. Okay. They might pick something fun. They might pick something quick. Sometimes it's just this desire to knock something off the list. To accomplish? Yeah, because we get a little squirt of dopamine in our brains when we check

something off. Physiologically, you get a squirt of dopamine. So we really do, as humans, derive a great sense of accomplishment from checking things off. We are driven to accomplish things to our credit. That's why we do so well. But if you check stuff off, and let's say you had 10 things to do and you got nine done, at the end of the day, you got one thing left. What is it usually? The hardest thing. Yeah. And it's the one you've been putting off for how long? Right. Yeah. It keeps making it on the list. And it just keeps rolling. And then you don't feel good. Right. You feel crappy. You

feel a sense of dissatisfaction with yourself and your own performance because you go, I did it again. I can't believe it. Look how busy I was. I was so, I got, I got all these things done. I can't believe I didn't get this. And then you go home and you tell your spouse about it. I didn't get this done again. Oh my gosh. Right? So the things that you don't do are the things you stress about, are the things that really would yield success. And you know they would yield success. So you feel like beating yourself up about them. So instead, you know, when you look at that list for the next day, I'm more focused on if I got three things done instead of nine.

So you want to get the productive things done, not the busy things. Yeah. And what's going to have the biggest impact on my business? What's the highest level of profitability? What could I do that is a quick return on my investment of time? So I look at it like in finance and having an MBA, you have to save more money than you make. That's all it is. That's how you succeed. Save more money than you spend. Save more money than you spend. And so when we look at return on investment, everybody's always worried about money. I'm worried more about how the time makes the money.

So what's my P-R-O-I? What's my personal return on my investment of time in doing this activity? That's how you know if something is more productive because there's going to be a greater outcome, a more solid result. Wow. And usually attributes some sort of revenue line.

That's, I'll tell you, that was an incredible series of thoughts. They're really kind of aligning how to get these things done in order to create the productivity. It's, you know, it's something that everybody should reflect on every day in their business and say, am I maximizing this? Yeah. And the problem is the things that have a real high PROI that are going to yield the best results that are the most productive activities. They're the hardest and they're not the most fun. And we don't wake up every day going, oh boy, I can't wait to whatever yours is. Mine is writing. I have eight books now. I don't like to write. I don't like it at all. I don't like to write, says the lady who wrote

eight books. Says the author of eight books. Well, I don't enjoy it. It's not my most exciting activity, but I know that if I can get a hundred thousand books out there that people read and I never met and they go, wow, this is pretty smart. Let's call her. I know that there I can get 100,000 books out there that people read and I never met and they go, well, this is pretty smart. Let's call her. I know that there's a very high return on my investment of time in writing books that are going to yield the results that I want in my business. And so that's what the military taught me. Nobody really cares if you don't like to write books. I'm sorry. I really don't care. Yep.

I love it. You know, and that gives you that sense of accomplishment. That's what really drives the satisfaction in leaving. My dad always used to say, and it's repeated a lot, I think in old Jim Rohn, you know, you'd rather have the pain of discipline than the pain of regret. I love that quote. Yeah, I love it too. Pain of discipline versus the pain of regret. Walking out going, oh, did it again. I've also heard a, I wish I had versus I'm glad I did. Love that one.

Or a to done list instead of a to do list. There you go. Yeah. Lots of good stuff there. So some amazing, amazing thoughts here. What, do you have one key productivity tip? You know, you're in an elevator with somebody or you run across somebody and says, okay, you're the productivity pro. What, what key thing can you tell me to change my day today? Gosh, I mean, and again, it's so individualized and I have so many assessments and I'd be happy to share them. But basically, I think the number one reason today that people are so unproductive is they are disorganized. So get organized. They don't even have a system where if they say, I'll get that to you on Monday.

Where does that go? People don't have a follow-up system. Someone tells them, I'll get that to you by Friday. And Friday passes. What triggers them to say them, I'll get that to you by Friday and Friday passes, what triggers them to say that I didn't get that? If they say, I'll get back to you on Tuesday, what tells them on Tuesday that now that's something that they need to do? This is the biggest problem and it's not difficult. There's just too many options, too many apps, too many software, too many ways that people can order their lives. I use Microsoft Outlook Tasks.

99% of people have no idea how to use Tasks. And if they've tried it, they're using it incorrectly. But I think that's the most powerful feature in Outlook and everybody's using Outlook, but it doesn't matter what you use. You can use Todoist, you can use paper, but the problem is that most people do not have a reliable capture and task method that is driving their lives. So when someone tells them to do weekly planning, they have no idea what that means. Wow. Yeah. Because they can't see it and they aren't proactive. So instead they end up going, Oh crap, I forgot to, you know, they wake up in the middle of the night and Oh, I never heard back from her, you know? And so everything is just a series of panic because there isn't any sort of follow-up

that reliably triggers things outside of their brain. So most people are using the most horrible organizing system in the world, which is their head. Winging it. Oh my gosh. Some amazing, amazing points here, Laura. Thank you so much for sharing these with us today. My pleasure.

Check out one of Laura's eight books. Her latest book, Faster Together, about accelerating your team's productivity, just came out January 2018. And we're a big team industry here in the real estate space. In fact, everybody's on a team in some way, shape, or form. So a great look into increasing team productivity. But Laura, you've dropped some huge value bombs on us today with how to really accelerate our productivity, how to focus more, how to find that time where we can execute at our highest level. So thank you so much for joining us today. Thanks, Adam. Don't forget to look for Laura Stack on social media as well. She's got a blog that she puts out on a regular basis. It is awesome.

Hey, everybody. It's Adam. Hey, check out our new segment coming out this Friday and every other Friday after that. It's called Quick Wins. It's a little segment, a little success tidbit for you from me. We'll see you then. Thank you so much for listening to Start With A Win. We hope you enjoyed today's episode. Don't forget to go onto iTunes and subscribe, write a review, or rate the show. It helps us get the word out and reach more people. You can follow Adam on Instagram,

Facebook, and Twitter. And remember, start with a win.