The Skinny Confidential Him & Her Podcast - How To Boost Productivity And Stop Procrastinating By Taking Massive Action with Lauryn Evarts

Episode Date: August 27, 2019

#211: On this episode Lauryn is solo on the mic discussing how to stop procrastinating and how to start taking massive action. Lauryn tangible tips and advice for anyone who feels like they are stuck in a rut. In typical Lauryn fashion these tips are quick, easy, and efficient. To connect with Lauryn Evarts click HERE To connect with Michael Bosstick click HERE Read More on The Skinny Confidential HERE For Detailed Show Notes visit TSCPODCAST.COM To Call the Him & Her Hotline call: 1-833-SKINNYS (754-6697) This episode is brought to you by Athletic Greens If it’s time  (and it is) to focus on your health and feel your best, getting into a daily routine with Athletic Greens really will be the single best thing you can do for ​yourself this year. We have a special offer is you jump over to www.athleticgreens.com/skinny ​and claim our special offer today. Get 20 FREE travel packs valued at $79 with your first purchase. This episode is brought to you by one of our favorite skin care lines of all time ELEMIS. Elemis is offering all TSC Him & Her listeners the opportunity to purchase the Pro-Collagen Cleansing Balm travel size for just $5.00 to cover shipping and handling. Visit www.elemis.com/skinny to get your balm and 15% off additional items at checkout using promo code skinny15 at checkout. This episode is brought to you by Tradesy. Tradesy is the hottest online luxury fashion resale marketplace, where you’ll get the styles you can’t live without – all on your own terms, and all at up to 90% off. Forget the overpriced pieces you’ll find in stores, forget the lines. Visit Tradesy.com to save fifty dollars on your very first Tradesy purchase when it’s four-hundred dollars or more. Use code SKINNY at checkout to redeem this offer.  Produced by Dear Media

The following podcast is a Dear Media production. shipping, and handling. If you have been consuming the Skinny Confidential content, and have not tried this, you are missing out. I'll explain within the episode. But all you have to do in the meantime is visit elemis.com slash skinny. That's elemis.com slash skinny to get yours. And remember, use the promo code skinny15 at checkout to get 15% off your first order of Elemis. She's a happy Tuesday. You have only me today. It's a solo episode. Michael has stepped out and allowed me to have the mic, which I'm kind of into. We're going to be focused a lot on solo episodes and doing episodes with just Michael and I. So we have some fun ideas. But this episode is all about how to stop procrastinating. I have been seeing a lot of excuses. A lot of excuses that say I don't have time. A lot of questions on procrastinating. So I figured I would do a whole episode. And I've talked about this so

many times on the Skinny Confidential blog. but I thought doing a podcast episode where we really niche down and get into tactics and habits that you can apply to your own life that will help you stop procrastinating would be very valuable. I'm just sharing my journey. I'm going to share with you what works for me. Everyone's different. If you can take a few tips out of this episode and apply it to your own life, I'll feel like I've done my job. Okay, so I want to get right into it. So how many times do you catch yourself saying, you're going to do this? I'm going to launch this. In two years, I'm going to do this. I am a huge fan of not talking and just doing. It's how I've been since I was little. It just feels good to me to take action rather than talk about it.

I feel like when I'm talking about things, it's wasting time, if that makes sense. So I like to do, do, do. So if you start to hear yourself telling your mom or your dad or your sister or your brother or your boyfriend what you're going to do and you're not actually taking steps and systems to get to that goal, I would recommend checking yourself before you wreck yourself. And this is probably something that you're just going to be really super hyper self-aware about. Your friends aren't going to say, yo, stop talking about what you're going to do. Go do it.

If they do, I mean, that's a really good friend. But a lot of people aren't going to say that to your face. I think that if you really find yourself saying over and over, I'm going to do this, I'm going to do this, and you're not acting on it, you got to check yourself, like I said. So self-awareness is really, really key here. I like to take all the energy, like I said, that I waste talking about things and actually doing things and taking action. So we're going to get into how you can take action. The first step is, and we'll go back to when I wanted to start a blog just to give you a really micro example. So I used to talk to Michael about what I was going to do. I was going to launch a

blog and create this community and connect women from all over the world. And after about six months of talking about it every day, I started to become self-aware to the fact that I was just telling him what I was going to do and not creating systems. So he called me out. Thank God. I remember we were having oysters and martinis. And he said to my face, yo, launch and adjust. So after that conversation, I was a little hungover the next day, but that's okay. I went and I took a huge pad of paper and I say huge because you want it as big as you can get it. And I sat down and I wrote a game plan. There were big bullets. You know, it said, I want this pink blog. I want to design my own logo. I need a graphic designer. I need a web developer. You know, I want to create this brand. I need a tone of voice. I need to write the blog post, take the

pictures. I need a camera. And then I wrote under each step how I was going to get there. So let's take the web designer, for example. Underneath the web designer, I wrote, go on Craigslist and search for at least a half an hour a day for someone that's affordable. And then I wrote cold email 30 people a day and see who can get the best rate. Then I wrote see examples of resumes and make a decision based on what's going to fit the brand. So I actually sort of created a checklist and underneath each to-do, I wrote another checklist, if that makes sense. So I see a lot of people just writing down their goals, but they don't have a very clear picture on how to get there. So write down the systems underneath the goals. Then I'm a very, very visual person. And I've told this story many

times, but I think it's important if you have an idea to really hear this part because the visualization is important. I went to Rite Aid. I got a huge poster board. On the poster board, I drew out the Skinny Confidential blog. So I essentially built the blog how I wanted it to look so I could show a web designer exactly what was in my head. We spend so much time having this picture-perfect idea in our head but not being able to communicate it to the people that are creating it, like a graphic designer or a web developer. So it's so much back and forth that's wasted. So what I did is I said, okay, I want the font super skinny. I drew it out. I want the logo really bright. I want a cherry coming down, cascading on the header. I want this to be on the side. I want the pictures to be this big. And I drew it in front of me. And what I did is for the next six weeks, every day, I

started building the website in front of me. And what I mean by that is I would go to the fabric store and find textures. So I found like this really pretty sequin glitter that I loved. It was like a fabric. And I pinned a piece of that to the poster board. Or I went to Home Depot and I got paint swatches. and I actually found the swatches that I wanted for the colors of my website. So that as you can imagine, that was a lot of different kinds of pink, light pinks, dark pinks, whites, blacks. And I think there was a little teal in there when I first started. And I put that on the board in front of me and I started building this real life Pinterest board. And I'm a huge fan of writing things down and having that real-life

Pinterest board in front of your face. Because if you go online and pin a bunch of shit and take some notes on your phone, it's not going to be in front of your face every day. If you're walking by a huge fucking poster board or waking up to a huge fucking poster board every single morning, it's going to be smack dab in your face and you're going to constantly be inspired to continue to add to it. So having, you know, my larger than life, a website in front of me when I was dirt poor really got my gears going. And then with that, I had my list of my, you know, my, my checklist and then underneath the checklist, the micro list of how to get there. So I was checking things off every day. And what I like to do is I don't like to look at everything at once.

So here's just like a side note. If I have to clean a room, I can't look at the whole room. I have to start in just one space. And that's how I approach my business too. I think when you are building something big and meaningful, instead of looking at the whole picture, just do a little bit every single day. So when I wrote a book, for instance, I wrote 30 pages a day, seven days a week before 10. And that makes it less stressful. So after I had this Pinterest lifeboard and my steps to get there, I started really checking them off. And how I did that was I used, and this is moving into the next step, time batching. Time batching is amazing. This is so good for everyone that is putting something off.

Learn to time batch. It is your new best friend. Now, here's the trick. Well, let me just explain what time batching is if you don't know what it is. So basically what it is is it's doing one task for a certain amount of time, and it's putting that task in the computer and holding yourself accountable to that task. Usually, and we'll get into this too, I like to have someone else to hold me accountable if possible, but if not, it's in my calendar and I have an alarm. So I would say, you know, write five blog posts for my new blog on a Wednesday. And I would sit down, you know, before I went to the bar to bartend and I would write those five blog posts for three hours. So in those three hours, that's all I did. I didn't send a text to a friend. I didn't pick up my phone. In fact, I put my phone on airplane mode and I just focused in on writing for three hours. I had my

coffee. I had my computer. I was ready to write and I was ready to dedicate those three hours just to writing. And again, that was in my calendar. I had an alarm of when to start and I had an alarm of when to end. Then I discovered this method and I'm probably going to mispronounce this. It's like the Pomodoro method. It's basically this tomato method where you set a tomato timer for a certain amount of time and have the timer on your desk. And you don't do one other task, like I said, other than that task. And the reason the tomato timer is so valuable is because when you use your phone as a timer, you sometimes get distracted by the phone. And let me give you an example. You're typing and then you have to go to the bathroom and you get up and you grab your phone, right? Okay. No, your phone's away. You got your tomato timer. I now use a time block like a cube. You

can do you whatever you want to do. But having that timer on your desk, holding you accountable to those full three hours of just writing is super helpful. Before we get into that, I'm going to tell you all about my green smoothie I've been making. If you follow me on Instagram stories, you already know this, but I just thought that I would tell you about it here too. I am doing a green smoothie every day in effort to get more greens into my diet.

This has been something that I've actually put in my calendar. I've made it a priority to have one green juice, one green smoothie a day. I put everything from magnesium to kale to spinach to artichoke, sometimes I do arugula, and then I do berries and obviously one date. And then I want to add something super nutritious and full of vitamins, which is why I've been adding athletic greens to my smoothie. So I first started using these for travel because they have this 20 travel pack situation. So you get 20 little packets that you can just throw in your handbag. And what I was doing when I was traveling is because I was feeling so jet lagged or hungover or whatever it was, is I was just taking a little pack and I was putting it in water with ice, stirring it up and just drinking it down.

So what I've done now is I'm using these packs at home every single day when I make my smoothie. And why I'm obsessed with them is because I just feel like no one has the perfect diet and your body's daily nutritional needs change due to stress or jet lag or sleep or the hangover, whatever. And to have a little packet of nutrients and knowing it's going straight into my bloodstream every day just feels good. If you want to get into specifics, Athletic Greens Ultimate Daily, it's like this all-in-one supplement. So it has 75 proven vitamins, minerals, and whole food sourced ingredients to help support your body's nutritional needs. As always, we do a lot of research on each product we have on this show, and this is vegan, paleo, and keto friendly. It also has no harmful chemicals, no artificial colors, no sweeteners, no added shit, you know, no GMO, it's gluten-free, dairy-free.

So if it's time to focus on your health and feel your best, getting into a daily routine with Athletic Greens really will be the single best thing you can do for yourself this year. I mean, why not try it? Just jump over to athleticgreens.com slash skinny and claim our special offer today. So you're going to get 20 free travel packs valued at $79 with your first purchase. That's athleticgreens.com slash skinny. Start your day right and good things will follow. You should also know that listeners from the UK or the EU can obtain this offer too, which is fun. With that, let's get back to the show. Let me give you examples of tasks that you can time batch that will make you more productive. Returning emails throughout the whole entire day is not productive. In fact, I only do an hour and

a half in the morning and an hour at night. That's it. And I set an alarm and time batch it. Okay. So back to when I was building my blog, like I said, I would write for three hours and then the next day I would shoot pictures for an hour and a half and that's all I would do. And then the following day after that, maybe I would return an hour of emails in the morning. And then at night I would focus in on editing. I just picked one task and I really laser focused in on that task. That's called time batching. And what time batching is going to do is it's going to really reduce your start and cleanup time. Okay. You're doing your one task, the time it takes to set up, break down, rinse and repeat. When you're doing like a photo shoot is obnoxious. You don't

want to do two photo shoots a week. You want to do two a month. It also, it gets rid of unnecessary clutter. So like I said about email, if you're checking your email a hundred times a day, it's too much going on. It's too chaotic. Even with text messages, I've talked about this before, you guys, I time batch my text messages. If I know that I have a half an hour in the car where Michael's driving and I can just return all my text messages at once, it's so much more productive than having these notification text messages pop up all day long and me reacting to it. In fact, I feel like time batching is incredibly proactive. It's not reactive and I do not like to be a reactive person. So time batching is just, like I said, it's going to get rid of start and clean up time. It's going to get rid of the unnecessary clutter and it's going to help you with focus. So just like when

I was building the blog, I was focus. So just like when I was building the blog, I was focusing down on one task. I was laser focused on that task for a certain amount of time. I used my timer instead of my phone so I wasn't distracted. And then I could check it off my list and move on. I see a lot of people making mistakes where they'll take an hour block and they'll mix up so many things in that hour that it becomes overwhelming and your brain's switching. And then they'll simultaneously check their phone, check their Instagram. It's too much of a clusterfuck. So pick one thing, add it to your calendar. And this brings me to my next tip. Live, eat, and breathe. Die by your calendar. Okay? My calendar, and you could do a

calendar anywhere, is in my phone. And I wish I could show it to you over audio. I can't. So I'll just explain it to you. It is broken down in such a gnarly way to keep me productive and efficient. I actually hired Emily, shout out to Emily, to come on board and really manage my calendar. And it has been such a game changer to my business. And it's added so much value to my life because every sort of second of the day is managed. And I feel like I have control over my day. Now, before you say, Lauren, you're a fucking psycho.

This is too much. Hear me out because there's time in my calendar where I have time to myself. So it's not like I'm doing something at every single day. It's just mapped out so I can be as productive as possible. And what's great about utilizing your calendar is you're doing time batching within your calendar. So you're mixing all these methods together to make you hyperproductive. So an example would be, and just to go back because we are talking about the micro, I have managed a calendar like this since I started the blog. So I had my checklist and I would implement my checklist

into my calendar. So not only did I have a checklist, I had a micro checklist. I had my entire blog built in front of me on a poster board. And then I had my calendar showing me where I needed to be and when and what I was working on. And one of my favorite things to do is do this on a Sunday night so I have control over the entire week. If you can't get to it Sunday, I would recommend it's the first thing you do on Monday. So here's how I like to do my calendar. I have a wake-up time. In the wake-up time, it says 10 minutes of meditation. Obviously, we don't get to this every day, but when we do, we feel great. So that's in my calendar. Then I have something I do called the morning pages where I brain dump for three pages. Again, don't always get to it if we do great. And then I have my wake up time in my calendar.

Then I usually have an hour and a half to myself in the morning. And this is when I like to light my candles, do my oils, make my coffee, clean the house, clean the kitchen, do the laundry, make the bed, walk to get coffee, work out, kind of just all of the stuff that gets me grounded for the day. And that's actually in my calendar. And it shows, you know, I'm busy at this time. So Emily doesn't schedule any conference calls because I got to have my coffee before I'm talking, you know, business. It's like I got to get my coffee before I'm talking, you know, business. It's like I got to get my personality on. So having that time to myself is super important. And then after that, we're off to the races. So around 10, it says exactly what I'm doing. I'm just going to

pull up my calendar right now and give you guys randomly a day in the life. So yesterday it says I woke up, I meditated, I did the morning pages, and then I had Pilates at 9 o'clock. I did that. I came home, and I had a 10 o'clock Skype call where I had to be camera ready. And after Pilates, it wasn't great, so I threw some foundation on my face on the way home in the car. Immediately after that, I have in my calendar, shower, change, look presentable because I had a podcast and the

podcast was at 1130. So I had to be at the studio. When I am in a hurry, I tend to take an Uber because it's down the street and I'm able to post Instagram stories while I'm in the Uber or answer a really important email. Having that 10 minutes in an Uber is really valuable. So once I got to the studio, it's go time. I walked in and did a podcast from 1130 to 1230. Then afterwards, it actually says in my calendar, I'm not making this up. I'm reading it from my calendar. It says post an Instagram and that takes about 20 minutes. I have to get the photo, make sure I like how it looks on my feed. Then I like to do a very long form caption lately. So, you know, that takes 15 minutes. I want to make sure that it's bringing the audience value and that it's all edited and ready to go. And then I had a solo episode that I was recording

immediately after that. It says lunch. So with lunch, if I am going to be more efficient by ordering Postmates, I do, or I bring my own lunch. Those are usually my two options. I spend a half an hour eating lunch because I want to take my cortisol down. I want to chill for a minute, you know? So I eat my lunch, and then it says meeting, and that meeting was a half an hour. And after that, it's shoot a YouTube. And again, these are all things that are time blocked in my calendar. So YouTube is like two hours. It's just dedicated to YouTube. And then since it was a Wednesday, I did a bunch of calls and Wednesday is a day that I do my calls. I've told you guys this before. It's kind of like time batching on a macro level to do all your calls on one day.

I noticed I was taking calls throughout the whole week and it was totally fucking up my schedule. I would be doing something like writing a blog post for two hours and then take a call in the middle of it. It was not productive. That is the opposite of time batching. So all my calls are on Wednesday. Yesterday I did all those calls, got it all done. And then it even says in here, get your nails done. And while I get my nails done on here, it says, try to return emails. We're going to procrastinate for a second and talk about skin, specifically Elemis. This is a brand that I have talked about for the last two years. I am such a fan of the cleansing balm. It's not even funny. I probably use it five days a week. I like to

use it when I'm wearing makeup. So that's, again, like five days a week. And what I do is I put it all over my face and let it sink in. And I'll do this for like 10 minutes. You know, maybe I'll get the bed ready, turn on my salt rock lamp, white noise machine, turn on the TV, open my book, whatever I'm going to do, get the bed all ready. And then after 10 minutes is up, I wash it off very gently, lifting the face up, doing a little facial massage. And my skin feels like butter. There's nothing worse than removing makeup with something that's pulling the skin down like a wipe. This balm is just like delicious, buttery balm that gently removes your makeup. I mean, think about it. If you're removing

your makeup five to seven days a week, that's a lot of wear and tear on your skin. So make sure that you're using something that's gentle, okay? Very excited because Elemis, like this is one of my favorite partners ever, is offering all TSC, him and her listeners, the opportunity to purchase the Pro Collagen Cleansing Balm Travel Size for just $5. And this is going to cover shipping and handling. All you have to do is visit elemis.com slash skinny. That's elemis.com slash skinny to get yours. And remember, guys, use the promo code skinny15 at checkout to get 15% off your first order of Elemis. You can't go wrong with the balm, the mist, and the superfood oil.

You will become addicted to this line. In fact, I've never felt more confident in saying this. This is one of these brands that you will use. You will tell 10 of your friends and they will tell 10 of their friends. That's how good it is. So again, enjoy the balm. That's elemis.com slash skinny. And you're going to get the pro collagen cleansing balm travel size for just $5 to cover shipping and handling. Okay. Back to procrastination hacks. So I just really, really plan the day out. So it's as productive as possible. I even have time that I, you know, spend with Michael or I put, you know, bake cookies or make dinner in my calendar. And I think what that does is it creates space in my

life to focus on self-care, my husband, my friends, if I want to go out with my friends, family, whatever it is. And then it also really maps out the strategy to take my business to the next level. I think that if I didn't have Google Calendar, things would be bleak. You should also note that with my calendar, and this has helped a lot, I have things color-coded. So for working out, I make it in yellow. It's always yellow. That's like the color. I think that yellow is just, it feels like a workout color, you know? So every day of the week, I have a workout on each day. Now, I probably make five out of seven of those because sometimes things come up. But sometimes I make seven and that's great because it's all my calendar.

And then I have like my blog posts going live and that's all in blue. Conference calls are in green. Things that are deadlines are in red. Writing is in purple. So whatever it is, is color coded. So my brain, when I look at my calendar, can like automatically recognize it, if that makes sense. Another thing that I like to do that's been extremely helpful to my calendar, can automatically recognize it, if that makes sense. Another thing

that I like to do that's been extremely helpful to my productivity, and I really would recommend it to every single person on the planet, is the Ivy Lee Method. The Ivy Lee Method is a total productivity hack, and it's something that, if done right, will take your business and your life to the next level. Now, I'm going to tell you about it, and then I'm going to tell you the way I do it because I kind of manipulated it and refined it, if I'm being honest. And you can do either way. It's up to you. You got to do what works for you.

Just because this works for me, maybe it doesn't work for you. Just try everything out, you know? Again, self-awareness. Okay, so this is what the Ivy Lee Method is. Basically, at the end of each workday, you write down six of the most important things that you need to accomplish tomorrow, okay? In order, okay? I like to prioritize the six items.

Now, you're only supposed to do six. I do six for business on one side and six for personal on the other side. Business could be anything from plan shoot to return 50 emails to work on that work project that you've been putting off, whatever. And then personal could be anything from pick up dry cleaning, make it a point to work out for an hour, whatever it is.

So I do a little pad of paper. I do business on one side, personal on the other, six things. And then when you wake up in the morning and you're ready to work, so for me that's about 10 a.m., you only concentrate on the first task. Now this sounds easy, but it's not. It's so weird. It's not. It's actually a discipline. You have to look at that piece of paper and really zone in on it and be like, okay, I'm just going to do number one. I'm not going to get caught up in my email inbox and I'm not going to be reactive to what everyone else needs from their to-do list.

I'm going to be proactive. I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to do what I need to do to move the needle, not what everyone else wants me to do. Very different things, which just a side note is why I don't check my text messages in the morning because I don't want to be reactive to what everyone else needs. I need to be proactive. Being proactive just feels more productive. So then you approach the rest of your list in the same way. So you're going to go one, you're going to finish one, you're going to cross it off. It feels so good. It's like an orgasm to cross number one off. Then you're going to do two and you're going to cross it off. Then three, cross it off. You're

going to go all the way down to six. Now for the personal, that's kind of throughout the day for me. Like I'm not going to go pick up my dry cleaning at 930 in the morning, but maybe I'll pick it up, you know, at six o'clock after work. So you just have to like kind of feel out what works for you. And you repeat this process every single day. I am telling you, this is one of the things that will really move the needle if you are putting priorities on the list. So you don't want to put things that aren't priorities on the list. It's got to be things that you really need to get done to scale your business.

You're working on your business, not in it. It's a very different thing. And we'll do an episode on that. The Ivy Lee Method, it's genius. It was invented by Charles M. Schwab. If you want more info on it, you can Google the Skinny Confidential Ivy Lee Method, and I really broke it down for you. Another little tippity tip is to have an accountability partner. So for me, Emily, working on my calendar, the way she does, she's really, really making sure everything is streamlined. We're being efficient, that I'm telling people I have hard stops. Hard stops, by the way, are very important. Conference calls, in my opinion, shouldn't take longer than 15 minutes. It's like straight to

the point. Conference call longer than 15 minutes, it's got to be something big. So having an accountability partner, if you have someone in your business that you can say, can you focus 30% of your energy towards really helping me get my time under control? That's powerful. An accountability partner could also be with a workout. So what I do is I know that I am distracted with 5 million things with my work and that having someone to keep me accountable to work out is powerful. So I do Skype at my house and I do this with Kim Kelly Fit in San Diego. She is the shit. Or I do it with Ingrid. You guys know, you've met her. And we do the method. So those are the two Skype people I meet with. And we have a calendar

of when we're meeting, what time we're meeting, what the Skype number is, everything streamlined. If we want to talk for an extra 15 to 20 minutes, it's in our calendar. So, you know, sometimes we'll do coffee talk for 15 minutes and then we'll work out for an hour. It's an hour and 15 minutes then. Don't put in an hour. That's an hour and 15 minutes. So having that partner, that person to meet makes you get it done. It could also be a date in the calendar with someone. So having that partner, that person to meet makes you get it done. It could also be a date in the calendar with someone. So Mimi and I like to meet at a coffee shop and say, okay, we're going to focus on the new website design and that's all we're going to talk about. So we bring our computers and for an hour, that's what we discuss. Taylor and I,

for instance, my producer, we have a meeting after this to go over the body guide video. And for 20 minutes to 30 minutes, that's all we'll do. We won't do anything else. We'll focus on that. And it helps to have that meeting in calendar. I like to send invites to people. I'm like that annoying bitch that's sending invites to like my dad and my sister and my nephew who's three that can't get them. I just like having the address or the plan in the calendar broken down. Just makes me horny or something. I don't know. So having an accountability partner when you work out, even if you're just meeting a friend, you're like, yo, let's go to Pilates tomorrow. And you wake up in the morning, you're like, oh, I don't want to go. Well, having that person that's going to meet you there, shout out to Faith,

at Pilates, you know, you're going to get your ass up and you're going to go. I'm a huge fan of someone holding you accountable. So whatever, however that works for you, get creative with it. There's not one way to do this. An accountability partner could be any, I mean, you could say, listen, I have this huge fucking project that I need to work on and I need you to meet me at the coffee store for an hour and I'm going to sit here and work on the project and you can work on something else. Just having someone keep you accountable is super important. Setting alarms.

Okay, this is another one. I set alarms in my phone. So now we're going even more micro. We're going back to when I started blogging. And we're going to go back. And I have the huge visualization of the Pinterest board in front of me. I have my to-do list underneath each to-do. I have a micro list of how I'm going to get there. I have everything in my calendar.

And now I'm going to take it a step further and set alarms in my calendar. And alarms are just not for conference calls. Alarms are for, you know, yo, it's time to start writing. Yo, it's time to start editing. It's like kind of just like another reminder. And setting alarms in my phone takes me five minutes in the morning. To have those alarms, I get very distracted very easily, is an accountability partner in itself. And the last thing that I recommend to be a productive bitch Barbie is creating a strategic future by design.

And this was taught to me by my friend, Steve. He's my mentor. I met him while I was a Baroque bartender and he taught me how to create a compelling future and how to create and design your own future. And I actually made a worksheet on the Skinny Confidential. You can just type in compelling future and how to create and design your own future. And I actually made a worksheet on the Skinny Confidential. You can just type in compelling future by design, the Skinny Confidential. It's a free printable. It's really cute. It's pink and it goes on your

desk and it has different columns. There's three columns. It says, where am I now? Where do I want to be? And how do I get there? We're going to take a quick break on execution and we're going to talk about TradeZ. First of all, did you know I have a store on TradeZ? It's under Lauren Everett's. I have so many sick pieces of clothing on there. You have to check it out. But you should also know that TradeZ is the hot place to shop, okay? It's known as the hottest online luxury fashion resale marketplace. You get all the styles that you can't live without on your own terms and you get them at up to 90% off. So right now I have my eye on the mini backpack. It's Louis Vuitton and it's the little one and has the long straps. I actually saw it on Dorit on Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. I'm obsessed

with it. And so I looked at the price on the normal site and it's astronomical. And then I looked on TradeZ and they have all these different options for you at different price ranges. So I think I'm going to get it. It's like too cute. Anyways, you can also shop all these trends. If you head to tradezy.com, you'll be able to score new with tags. And I mean like new. The backpack that I want is like, it looks brand new. It's crazy. Here's the best part of everything. There's no fake shit. This is kind of a plot twist because a lot of sites are selling fake stuff. Tradesy's not. Everything on tradesy is guaranteed authentic or your money back. And when I'm

shopping for a Louis Vuitton backpack and I am going to invest in something like that, I want to know it's real. And I also want to know when they say it's gently used that it's actually gently used. So another thing that we love, I mentioned earlier, is you can sell what you have and then fund for your next shopping spree. This is what I do. So I have my online store. And if I sell something, I will keep the money in my account and just keep building on that until I can get my Louis Vuitton backpack. You can shop the hottest Dior bags, Gucci shoes, Chanel accessories. Don't buy my Louis Vuitton backpack.

I think there's only three. And designer clothing. Visit Tradesy.com to save $50 on your very first Tradesy purchase when it's $400 or more. You can use code SKINNY at checkout at tradesy.com. That's promo code SKINNY at tradesy.com. And yes, I will be applying my own promo code for my Louis Vuitton backpack. All right, back to the show. So let me fill just the top one in for you and how I would do it when I first started out. So I said, you know, goal one, where am I now? Well, I'm a bartender. I'm teaching Pilates. I'm going to school full-time. Where do I want to be? I want to be a full-time content creator. How do I get there? Now this is, you know, tons of different steps. It's all the steps we talked about. You're going to write that in the column. And then you're actually going to go and take those steps and put

them in your calendar with alarms. And that is how you're going to be the most productive person in the world, okay? And again, this post really breaks it down on this worksheet, and I think it will really, really help anyone who's struggling with being productive. Ultimately, I think people say they don't have time because they're not prioritizing the right things, or I think they're just using it as an excuse. And, you know, they say that it's so important to, you know, read all these books and consume all this knowledge and learn all this stuff and go to school before you do anything. But I actually think that's getting in the way. I mean, I consume content and gain knowledge all the time while I'm passively multitasking, while I'm driving,

while I'm cooking, while I'm doing my makeup, but I'm also actually applying the knowledge. And I think that that is something that we should all look at. Like, we can consume all this content and hear all this stuff all day long and say, well, I'm going to do this. And when I'm ready to do this, and after I've read this book and done this course, I can go out and execute. No, execute now. Execute today. Launch fast and adjust. Fall along the way.

Fail along the way. Learn from the failures along the way so you can be a better business person, so you can be a better person in general. If you think that you're just going to go out there and be perfect and you're never going to fail and it's not part of the game, I mean, I have news for you. I'm failing on a daily basis. I'm just continuing to throw myself out there, rinse and repeat, practicing every single day and trying to get a little bit better. It's like James Altucher said, he tries to be 1% better the next day. So if you find yourself telling yourself, I'm going to do that in a year, I'm going to do that in six months, I'm going to do that after I graduate college. No, do it now. Be productive. Make a plan. Visualize

it. Rachel Hollis was kind of an inspiration behind this podcast because she always talks about productivity. And she says, knowledge is not power. Did you guys hear that? Knowledge is not power. Applied knowledge is power. And I thought that was genius, right? It's like, it doesn't matter that you know all this stuff and that you've consumed all this content. It matters what you do with it. It matters the actions you take. It matters that you're being productive with it. Ultimately, I'm a huge believer that tiny habits and the things you do every single day make up a big success. I know I'm nowhere near where I want to be. I'm definitely playing a long-term game. And I think that if I continue to really look at each day in a singular

way where I'm setting alarms, I'm adding to my calendar, I'm doing my Ivy Lee method, I think that will continue to grow slow and exponentially as opposed to being impatient or not getting anything done or not being productive. And I'll just leave you with a quote to be extra basic. You don't have to see the whole staircase. Just take the first step. It's just the first step. Okay, guys? So just don't look at the whole week. Don't look at the whole year. Don't look at what you haven't done. Just take one step in the right direction. Just one day. Look at Monday. Plan your day out from the minute you wake up to the end of the night and make sure that

within that day, you're creating systems. So I'm going to challenge you after this episode. I want everyone who is putting something off, including myself, because I'm putting stuff off too, okay? I could work on a lot of these too. After this episode, put your phone away. And you got to put it away. And do one thing, just one thing that you've been procrastinating on for too long.

So if you want to write a book, go write 10 pages of it. And then after you're done writing 10 pages of the book, put it in your calendar for tomorrow when you're going to write another 10 pages. And then you'll write 20. And then after those 20, rinse and repeat. Okay? With that, I am so happy I didn't procrastinate on putting this episode out. It's out. It's out in the ether. I hope you guys like it. If you like my solo episodes, let me know on my latest Instagram what you want me to dive into. And just to give you some examples, we can talk about everything from Instagram aesthetics to wellness routines to skin, anything. And I really like doing these episodes that are really, really specific and niched. So give me some ideas like

that. You know what I mean? Like, don't say, you know, let's just talk about wellness. Give me specifics. Do you want to see a supplement routine? And do you want to see what I take and why I take it? Let's get so, so specific and detailed. Let me know on my latest Instagram at the Skinny Confidential. And as always, we will drop into a couple of your DMs and send you guys pink sparkly pop sockets. They're so cute. There's one on my phone. And that's that. I will see you guys next week. This has been fun. I like hanging out with you guys alone. Don't tell Michael. This episode was brought to you by Elemis. Elemis is offering all TSC him and her listeners the opportunity to purchase the pro collagen cleansing balm travel size for just $5 to cover shipping and handling. All you have to do is visit elemis.com slash

skinny. That's elemis.com slash skinny to get yours. And remember to use the promo code skinny15 at checkout to get 15% off your entire order at Elemis. Guys, the cleansing balm is the best.