The School of Greatness - 438 Master Your Day with John Lee Dumas

Episode Date: January 27, 2017

If you enjoyed this episode, check out show notes and more at http://lewishowes.com/438

This is 5-Minute Friday, episode 438. You've got to master your day. This is 5-Minute Friday. And hello, my friends. Johnny Dumas here of EO Fire, Entrepreneur on Fire. And I'm subbing in for my main man, Lewis House, for this five-minute Friday. And I am honored to be sharing this moment with you. And I'm pretty fired up because we're going to be talking about productivity, about discipline, about focus. These are three skills, three traits that I've been able to acquire over the last four years of building EO Fire into a seven-figure-a-year business. And I want to share why I think these three skills are so important and how you can acquire

and master these skills as well. Now, of course, I could do a whole episode on my weaknesses, but that wouldn't be a five-minute Friday. That would be a 500-minute Friday because like everybody in this world, my weaknesses far outnumber my strengths. But this is the point of this five-minute Friday. We need to know our strengths and focus on our strengths and amplify those strengths. And if you can acquire the strengths of productivity, discipline, and focus, you will take your life, your business to the next level. So let's talk about productivity first.

So productivity, I like to kind of break it down into the roots of the word, which for me is produce. You can be a productive person by producing content, but are you producing the right content? So productivity means you are producing the right type of content for your audience. It's going to move your business to that next level. Now for me, I know that doing a daily podcast, writing emails, doing things like Snapchat and Instagram stories, that is producing the right content that is worth my time. So I am being productive when I'm doing these tasks. So you need to sit down, you need to say, what are the things

that I can and should be creating that's going to be providing high value, high quality content on a consistent basis? And then you make sure that you produce that content on a consistent basis. And then you make sure that you produce that content on a daily basis. And guess what? Then you will be productive. Now, I'm not saying you have to do a daily podcast or daily this or daily that. I'm just saying every single day, you should be producing some form of content that's pushing your business to the next level that's connecting you with your audience in a meaningful way. Okay, now let's shift over to discipline. Now, I am an army guy, spent eight years as an officer in the US Army, did a 13-month tour of duty in Iraq. So let me tell you that discipline was drilled into me at a very young age, and I was able to acquire that as a skill, master that skill, and then apply it

when I launched EO Fire back in 2012. Now, what is discipline? Discipline, specifically to me, is setting a plan of action and then executing that plan in a very aggressive manner. Now, what's that gonna look like? Well, it's gonna look like waking up in the morning and saying, these are the tasks that I need to accomplish today for this day to be a success.

Writing those tasks down, coming up with a plan, coming up with a formula, coming up with your steps to success, to achieving that plan, and then having the discipline to sticking to that plan, executing on it, and then accomplishing it in the end. Now, of course, you're not going to bat a thousand. So look back at the end of the day and see where you struggle, see where you came up short so that you can learn from that and move forward in a strong direction day two, day three and beyond. And now let's move on to focus because focus is harder to achieve now than it's ever been before. We live in this day in this age where the bright, shiny object syndrome is everywhere, where weapons of mass distraction will sink our ships. If we let

it, we can't let it. We must focus. Now there's a beautiful acronym for the word focus that I love, and I believe it originates from rich dad, poor dad, and that is follow one course until success. Focus. Because my friends, if we are able to focus, if we're able to put those blinders on and know exactly what we need to do, not be distracted, not go down that rabbit hole of a Facebook news feed or any number of the hundreds of distractions that are pinging and pulling at us all day long. We will achieve meaningful things. And there's a great book on this topic called The Slight Edge by Jeff Olson that just shows you if you just do the small things right every single day over time, you will win. And what does

that come down to? That comes down to you focusing on doing the right things, not getting distracted, not getting on OPA, which are other people's agenda. You need to be on your agenda. You need to dictate your day. And when you do that, you win. So kind of let's back up here. Productivity. Are you producing the right content on a day-to-day basis? Are you creating quality content at the right quantity? If yes, you are being productive. Now, discipline. Are you setting up a plan of action for the day? Then are you aggressively executing on those steps?

Yes or no. And again, if you get to the end of the day and you made some mistakes, that's good. Have an AAR, as we would say in the army, an after action review. See what you struggled with, make the necessary adjustments and drive forward stronger than ever.

And last but of course not least, focus. Follow one course until success. Don't live your life on other people's agenda. Get your agenda straight, knock it out of the park, and then have some fun. Then go into your email and your Facebook news feed and check your text messages and WhatsApp or whatever it might be. But only after you have taken care of yourself and your business with the focus of taking your life, your business to that next level.

So my friends, I hope you enjoyed this five-minute Friday. And once again, my friends, this is John Lee Dumas of Entrepreneur on Fire, subbing in for my main man, Lewis Howes. So big shout out to Lewis. Lewis, thanks for letting me step in here. And you, my friends, can master productivity. You can master discipline. You can master focus. And when you acquire these three skills, you will be prepared to ignite. Thank you guys so much for listening to this special five-minute Friday on Mastering Your Day with John Lee Dumas. And if you like what you heard about productivity, discipline, and focus, then my man John Lee Tumas just launched a Kickstarter campaign for the Mastery Journal. The Mastery Journal is a stunning guide that will help you in mastering productivity, discipline and focus in 100 days.

He's also partnered with a charity that is near and dear to my heart, Pencils of Promise. So if you support the Mastery Journal campaign, you'll be helping build schools in developing countries. To learn more, visit themasteryjournal.com to get your Mastery Journal right now. Again, go to themasteryjournal.com for more. And as always, you know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great. Thank you.