The Mindset Mentor - 3 Ways To Get More Done
Episode Date: May 9, 2024In this episode, we’re going to debunk the myth of busyness versus productivity. Ever felt like you’re working non-stop but not making progress? Trust me, you’re not alone! I’ll be sharing thr...ee powerful techniques to help you break free from the busy trap and start crushing your goals with laser focus.First up, we’ll explore the renowned 80/20 rule, also known as the Pareto principle. It’s all about identifying those vital few tasks that yield the most significant results. I’ll show you how to zero in on these game-changers and skyrocket your efficiency.Next, we’ll dive into the magic of batching. Picture this: tackling similar tasks in dedicated blocks of time to supercharge your productivity. I’ll walk you through my own batching rituals and how they’ve transformed my workflow.But wait, there’s more! We’ll tackle the multitasking myth head-on. Spoiler alert: it’s not as effective as you might think. I’ll share some eye-opening studies and practical tips to help you stay focused and crush it like a productivity pro.Want to learn more about Mindset Mentor+? Join the waitlist to be the first to learn about it here 👉 http://mindsetwaitlist.com/My first book that I’ve ever written is now available. It’s called LEVEL UP and It’s a step-by-step guide to go from where you are now, to where you want to be as fast as possible.📚If you want to order yours today, you can just head over to robdial.com/bookHere are some useful links for you… If you want access to a multitude of life advice, self development tips, and exclusive content daily that will help you improve your life, then you can follow me around the web at these links here:Instagram TikTokFacebookYoutube Want to learn more about Mindset Mentor+? For nearly nine years, the Mindset Mentor Podcast has guided you through life's ups and downs. Now, you can dive even deeper with Mindset Mentor Plus. Turn every podcast lesson into real-world results with detailed worksheets, journaling prompts, and a supportive community of like-minded people. Enjoy monthly live Q&A sessions with me, and all this for less than a dollar a day. If you’re committed to real, lasting change, this is for you.Join here 👉 www.mindsetmentor.com My first book that I’ve ever written is now available. It’s called LEVEL UP and It’s a step-by-step guide to go from where you are now, to where you want to be as fast as possible.📚If you want to order yours today, you can just head over to robdial.com/bookHere are some useful links for you… If you want access to a multitude of life advice, self development tips, and exclusive content daily that will help you improve your life, then you can follow me around the web at these links here:Instagram TikTokFacebookYoutube
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Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor Podcast. I'm your host, Rob Dial. If you have not
yet done so, hit that subscribe button so you never miss another podcast episode because I put
out episodes four times a week to help you learn, yourself, grow, and improve. Because if you can
improve yourself, you can improve your life. So if you want more of that go ahead and hit that subscribe button
today I'm gonna be teaching you how to be more productive how to get more done
in less time and how to stop being such a busy bee I guess you could say you
know I've I've worked with a lot of people over time and I have this day
that kind of pops up and is told to me all
of the time. And you've probably felt this way before, which is, Hey, I work so much, but I don't
feel like I'm getting anything done. You ever had one of those days where you're just working,
working, working, and you're slaving away and you're doing something at the end of the day,
like, man, I'm exhausted, but I don't feel like I did anything. If so, you are probably being busy and not being productive.
So there's a massive difference between busy and productive. Busy is just doing things.
Like being productive, productivity is conquering the most important things. And let's be real.
You waste a lot of time, don't you? Like we all do. It's funny because I'll talk to people and
they're like, I'm so busy. I'm so busy. I'm so busy. I'm like, show me your calendar. And they're
like, well, I don't really keep a calendar. I kind of have like a little bit here. Most people that
I have found are absolutely terrible with time management. So it's not that they don't have
enough time. It's usually that you're not really good at managing their time. We all want a perfect life. We all
want to make money and travel the world and have fun and buy some cool things and, you know,
donate a bunch of money to the world and have great relationships. We all want a perfect life.
But what's really interesting about being a human is that you only get 24 hours every single day.
You and every single person on this earth gets 24 hours.
That will never change.
You cannot control time.
The only thing that we can change
is how productive we are
when we want to get something done.
Now, this is not an episode about hustle culture
and working your ass off all day long.
I used to be that person,
and I'm telling you, don't be that person.
Learn from my mistakes.
That's not how you get to success.
Let me say that again.
You can get to success,
but you're gonna hate your life on the way over there.
And so what I recommend is having a time
where you click on to be productive, to get stuff done,
whether that's your business, whether that's work,
whether that's helping the children get something done
with their schoolwork, whatever it might be.
When you click in, you're in. There is nothing else that you're doing.
When you click out, you're out. You're not thinking about it. You're not going back into it.
So today we're going to dive into how to get a lot more done in less time.
Because when you look at the average person that works an eight-hour day, they only usually get about two to maybe three hours of productivity done, which means that they're wasting time or trying to
multitask or trying to do a whole bunch of other things for five hours out of the day. And so we're
going to talk about some stuff about how to get more done based in psychology, based in studies
to teach you what has actually been proven to work. And I'm going to teach you
these different techniques to kind of help you do more in less time. The first one, the one that a
lot of people don't know about, you've probably heard about it, is something called the 80-20
rule, the Pareto principle. And so you have to understand our brain is a very energy consuming organism or organ is what it is. Your brain
consumes more energy per pound than any other organ in your entire body right now. Digestion
takes more energy throughout the day, but as far as the actual brain itself and for how big it is,
it actually takes the most amount of energy. And so what I think about is how can I use every bit of energy
to be as productive as possible when I'm trying to be productive? Because our brain has limited
capacity to process information. We have limited energy throughout the entire day. How can I bring
as much of my brain power to what matters most? And so the way to kind of really think about that is to realize what am I
dedicating my time to? In the 80-20 rule, the Pareto principle is basically this. 80% of the
results that you get in your life, this could be your business, this could be the company that you
work for, this could be your clients and the revenue that comes in, your relationships come from 20% of your
actions. So like for instance, if I run a business, which I do, and I help a lot of people who do run
businesses, right? If I run a business, there are a million things I could be doing every single day,
but 20% of those actions are the most important actions. 20% will usually give me 80% of the results. They might
even give me 90% of the results, but 20%, and you know, it doesn't have to add up to a hundred
because I'm talking about 20% of my actions and which is actions. And the other side, I'm talking
about results. 20% of your actions that you do on a daily basis in your business are the most
important things you should be doing. So if you're a CEO and you've got employees, you should find a way to delegate everything except for those 20%
of your actions. If you are a salesperson, usually your commissions and you look at your commissions
throughout the entire year, usually 20% of the clients are the majority of your
commissions. If you're in relationship, 20% of the things that you do are going to bring the majority
of the connection, the happiness, the joy between you as well. And so what we want to do by looking
at this is we want to identify and concentrate on the tasks that are going to give us the most
significant results. It's crazy to me when I work with business owners, how much time they waste doing stuff
that does not matter because they either are afraid of taking the big action because the
big action could yield some failure and that would make them feel bad about themselves
or because they have problems delegating.
This happens all the time. And so
when you're focusing on the most critical task, what you want to do is you want to minimize as
many distractions as you can so that you can really optimize your cognitive resources and be
in it. As Cal Newport says, you want to be able to do deep work on those things. And you really
want to start putting a whole lot of deep work into that.
And so the thing that I've shared, which is a very simple thing that I recommend that everybody does every single morning, is you make a to-do list every single morning. If you're a business owner,
if you're a mother, if you're a father, if you are somebody who is a high school athlete,
whatever it might be that you're doing. If you're a college student,
write down all of your to-do list. And then what I want you to do to make it very simple,
because you probably won't get your entire to-do list done today, is you find and you circle the
three most important tasks. This is what I do every single morning when I'm with my team,
is with my energy, I want to put all of my energy or the majority of my energy into the biggest, I call it, I always
tell my team the biggest levers that I can pull.
What is the biggest lever that I can pull right now?
I could be working until midnight, 1am every single day, but I don't.
And so with the time that I have, if I'm going to get done at five, six o'clock, what's the
biggest lever that I can pull right now that can make the biggest impact in the business? So you make your to-do
list and you circle the most important, the three most important tasks. Then you get a three by five
card, an index card, and you write down number one and you rank them. Number one, number two,
and number three. Just work on number one. Don't do anything else except for number one. This helps you
identify the biggest needle moving, lever pulling task that you could possibly do for today.
And what you want to do is you want to just write all of them down, the three things.
And if you don't do anything else except for get number one done, it's a pretty damn productive
day. If you get number two done as well, and number three done as well, you had a really great day. But all of the other things,
you can either delegate, you can eliminate, or you can do another time. That's it. You delegate
them, you eliminate them, or you can do another time. And that's really what it comes down to is
identifying what are the most important tasks that I could be doing. So that's the first thing is the 80-20 rule, the Pareto principle. The next thing that I
recommend people do is to batch. Batch as much as you possibly can when you're doing stuff.
And so for me, like I'm creating content today. Today is one of my content creation days.
And so I woke up in the morning and I did, you know, I checked in with my team after 10 o'clock because in
the morning is when I am the most creative for me.
And so I looked back and I was like, okay, I know I need to plan episodes today.
I need to record episodes today.
And so what I'm going to do is I'm going to look through all of my ideas.
I have this massive list of ideas that I've been putting together over years and years
of recording this podcast.
And I just see which one hits home with me this morning. And then I find the one. And then what
I do is I start writing them all out. I start putting bullet points and starting to make a flow
of the podcast. And I'll do two episodes in the morning, morning, late afternoon-ish, late,
excuse me, late morning as well. And then I come to the studio and I record two or three podcast
episodes whenever I come to the studio. When I first had the podcast, this is not even me lying. And the
podcast used to come out only three times a week. I used to record the episode the night before.
Sometimes majority of the time I'd record it, record that. Oh my God, I got to put an episode
out tomorrow. What should I talk about? And I just plan out real quick and I put it up.
It's way easier to, to plan in, and record and to batch them. I'm in the
flow of writing. I'm in the flow of writing. I'm going to go ahead and get them done. I'm in the
flow of recording. I'm going to go ahead and get them done. So like yesterday, I planned two
episodes. I recorded two episodes and then I planned six reels for Instagram and then recorded
six reels for Instagram. So that over a few hours, I'm doing the biggest needle moving thing that I can do. And that is, you know, have more people aware of the brand,
more people aware of the business. And so what can you do to batch what it is that you do?
You know, instead of saying, oh, I'm going to do an email here. And then 20 minutes later,
I'm gonna check my email here. I think the average person I saw a study that says they
check their email 32 times a day. Holy shit, that's crazy. What if
you just checked your email in the morning and you got emails done and then you didn't look at
them again until four o'clock and then you got emails done from four to five, right? Like how
can you learn to start batching things that you're doing often? And then what you do is you look at
your schedule and you schedule and batch the most important tasks. And I do this every single
Wednesday and Thursday I record. And then do this every single Wednesday and Thursday I
record. And then sometimes Wednesday, Thursday, and today is Friday. Three days in a row,
plan, record, plan, record, because I'm trying to get ahead. Because if you listen to episode
two or three episodes ago, my wife is pregnant. So I'm going to take some time off from recording.
So I'm actually trying to get ahead so that I could take some time off recording once the baby
comes. So that's the next thing is to batch.
So 80-20, which is called the Pareto principle.
There's batching.
And then the last one is if you've been listening to the podcast for a while,
I love getting messages from you guys saying that you never did this before.
You started doing it and it completely changed your productivity
because it completely changed my productivity as well.
It is called the Pomodoro Technique. I have an entire episode on it if you want as well. It is called the Pomodoro Technique.
I have an entire episode on it if you want to go back and listen to the Pomodoro Technique.
But really what it comes down to is it is impossible for a human to multitask.
There are many studies that show that multitasking is just single tasking and you're switching
between two things at one time.
When you switch, there is a little bit of a delay in time. It could be up to
15 minutes for you to get your brain into like fully be in that thing. And so multitasking,
they showed it makes people dumber. It also makes the quality of your work worse. Google it. Just
check is multitasking good or bad. But you know, there a study, just to kind of give you an idea, that was done at Stanford that found out that heavy multitaskers performed worse
on tasks that required attention and memory than those that were focused at one task at a time.
And so the research really supports the idea that prioritizing your high impact tasks and
avoiding multitasking makes you more productive. And so with the
Pomodoro technique is you, you basically identify one thing that needs to be done
and you shut out the rest of the world. You put on your headphones, you put your phone in another
room so that you don't accidentally go for it. You turn off all of your notifications on your
computer. You put a sign on the door that says, don't bother me because I'm getting shit done.
And literally you take 25 minutes and you put 25 minutes. I wrote about this in my book,
Level Up, of how to do the Pomodoro technique and how to do what I call Pomodoro Plus,
which is a whole other technique that I've kind of built over years. And so you do the Pomodoro
technique. It's 25 minutes on, five minutes off. And in those 25
minutes, you only do one thing and you bring 100% of your brain power. And that's like,
as Cal Newport would say, that's where you actually put in the deep work. And so you put
in deep work for 25 minutes. Now, if you get done at those 25 minutes, you can then go to your next
task. But if you don't get done, you just go
back to that task again until that task is done. And so it's 25 minutes on, five minutes off,
because in those five minutes, you need to give your brain a full rest. When I say full rest,
that means you don't look at your phone, you don't do much. You can go outside, you can go for a walk
for five minutes, or you can just sit at your desk, close your eyes and breathe for five minutes.
You're giving your brain a rest. It's like lifting really heavy weight. You got to take a rest for
a few minutes and then you go back into lifting really heavy weights. And the Pomodoro technique
will absolutely change your life and your productivity. It's so damn simple, but it works
so well. One thing, one thing only, 100% of your brain power to this one thing. And so if you really start to think about it,
if you can figure out a way to start using the 80-20 rule
to identify the biggest tasks that need to be done today
that will be the most productive things that you could do,
you batch out the things that can all be done,
like, oh, I need to record three episodes,
four episodes this week.
Well, I can just get all of those done
in one day or two days.
You batch them.
But then when you sit down to work, it needs to be, I have an entire chapter in this, my book, you can read about it and level up, but it needs to become a ritual.
It needs to become a thing where it's like, oh shit, I got to sit here and get work done.
It's like, it's a ritual, not a habit. Habits are know, routines are routines, but a ritual like feels important.
It is important that I bring a hundred percent of my brain power to this task.
You will get more done and you will be light years ahead of other people years down the road
because most people, as I said, only get two hours of productivity done, maybe three hours
of productivity. If you can get five hours done, you're light years ahead
of people in a year and you're in a completely different universe five years down the road.
And so what's most important is to stop being busy, start being productive, and to start focusing on
the needle moving tasks and getting those crossed off your list every single day. And then bringing
a hundred percent of your brain power when you're doing those things to bring the best of yourself
and everything that you do.
So that's what I got for you for today's episode.
If you love this episode,
please share it on Instagram stories,
tag me in it, Rob Dial Jr.
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And with that, I'm gonna leave it the same way
I leave you every single episode.
Make it your mission to make somebody else's day better.
I appreciate you and I hope that you have an amazing day.