[00:00] Don’t ever get caught in the trap of thinking, I don’t need any kind of goal. I don’t need a destination. You do need that in order to figure out what the process for you will look like. So have goals, have micro goals, track them, track your progress, and you will be more efficient. You will get more done.

[00:21] This will help you manage your time. Welcome to another episode of Success for the Athletic Minded Man. Real talk on harnessing your athletic drive for clarity, consistency, and focus in business and life. This is your host, Jim Harshaw, Jr. And today we’re talking about time management. And listen, we talked last week in the episode about the difference between efficiency and effectiveness.

[00:45] Okay, so today we’re going to talk about efficiency, but efficiency only matters if you’re doing effective work. Let’s get started. And the analogy that I used was, if I have to dig a hole in my yard, a big, huge hole, I can go to Lowe’s and get the best shovel ergonomic grip. I don’t even know what an ergonomic grip on a shovel might be like, but I’m sure there’s an ergonomic grip.

[01:07] To some shovel out there, right? It’s like the XT 2000 shovel or something like that, right? Really sharp blade, ergonomic grip, and I’ve got my new boots and I’m ready to go. And man, I am going to be so efficient. I’ve got my water bottle lined up. I got hydration, everything. I’m ready to go, man. I’m going to just, I’m going to crush it, digging this hole and it’s going to take me all day, but I’m going to be very efficient.

[01:28] Or you can make a phone call and have a guy come out with a backhoe, right? So there’s a difference between efficiency. And so everything that I’m talking about today is predicated on the fact that you’re working effectively. That you’re doing work that matters. Your highest value work. And if you don’t know what I mean, go back and listen to last week’s episode, because that talks about the difference between efficiency, Indefectiveness.

[01:57] We go deeper on that and how you can actually figure out what those things are for you that are effective. And once you figure those out, then it’s about working efficiently. And here’s why we’re talking about this. So many people are Get to the end of the day and they don’t get nearly what they thought done on their to do list.

[02:19] And they find themselves bouncing around from task to task, aimlessly working all the while they, they know that their inbox is filling up and they go back and they check their inbox. Constantly, and they always feel like they’re wishing they had more time in the day, time to get to that real work that they know will move the needle.

[02:37] If they could, they could just get this minutiae done. If they could just get through these few fires that are burning. If I can just get these done, then I’ll be able to get to the big stuff, the stuff that really matters. And then that never happens because you never, ever run out of minutiae. You always will have emails in your inbox.

[02:55] You always have a to do list that is full. And so how do we actually get time to work on the most important stuff and be efficient whenever we’re doing it? Now, I’m not going to share with you a lot of the tried and true things that you’ve heard about before. You know, time blocking, the Pomodoro technique, eat the frog.

[03:20] Listen, I’m a fan of all of those. Actually, I don’t do much time blocking. That doesn’t seem to work for me. I know it works for some people. I get it. I always struggle with it because I might have two hours blocked off for a task and it’s like, wait a second, I 30 minutes in, I realized there’s this thing I need from somebody on my team or there’s some other roadblock or maybe, you know, get into it and it’s like, gosh, I’m really rolling.

[03:40] I’ve got two hours blocked, but I don’t want to stop because I’m deep into this. Let’s keep it rolling. So I don’t really use that, but I know, I know a lot of people enjoy that. Like I do some version of that, but you know, Pomodoro technique, that’s great. That is just generally this idea of blocking off 25 minutes.

[03:55] You do 25 minutes of Undistracted work, and at the end you get a five minute break. I find myself, I can go a lot longer than 25 minutes. You know, I go 45 minutes to an hour, a lot of time, if I have that, that amount of time blocked off. But I love the idea of a, a focus block and a break block. Eat the frog is just simply the idea of.

[04:14] Doing the hard thing first, getting the hardest, ugliest thing, eating the frog, right? That would be the hardest thing to do. If you got a frog to eat, man, get it done. Do that first thing in the middle of the first thing of the day. And then you can, uh, the rest of the day is easier. Right? So there’s all these tried and true techniques.

[04:29] And I’ve talked about a lot of that kind of stuff over the years, but I’m going to talk at a higher level for you today, because when it comes to being efficient, a lot of people get caught in the efficiency trap and I address this a little bit. Last week, they, people were trying to optimize the low impact task, but neglect the higher level, bigger, more strategic tasks.

[04:51] You know, and the example I used was the, the idea of spending hours formatting a report when that time could have been best spent, you know, making a phone call that could really move the project forward. So what am I talking about today? I’m going to give you seven Actually, these are less techniques.

[05:08] These are more strategies because there’s plenty of techniques. Some of these are somewhere in between a tactic and a strategy, but I’m going to give you seven things that you can do to help you manage your time better, to help you get more done, help you be more efficient on the effective tasks that you’re working on.

[05:26] Okay. So I’m going to start with number one here. Have goals. Actually have goals like, Oh, Jim, I was waiting for the, the magic pill. Nope. It’s having goals, but here’s the crux. You have to have micro goals as well. This is something we work on in our coaching program. We take the goals, the bigger goals.

[05:46] These might be a year. Two, three, five year goals. And then we break them down into monthly goals. And you don’t have to know every month, right? We, you know, a lot of us in the program go month to month. I go month to month on most of these, right? I don’t even know what my micro goal is going to be for next month.

[06:00] I know what the larger goal is, but at the end of the month they go, okay, I’ve made this progress, this worked, this didn’t work. Now I’m going to set the micro goals for the next month. Like you hear sometimes. Some people who are pretty popular online. I’m going to mention a couple of James Clear, Ryan Holiday saying they don’t set goals.

[06:19] I don’t want you to get caught in that. Okay. So if you Google it, you’ll find blog posts that they’ve written about setting goals. Okay. So sometimes you see them, people like that saying you don’t need to set goals. Listen, I totally respect these guys. These guys are freaking full of wisdom, but sometimes they say things like this, that they’re just saying something.

[06:38] In a different way. Okay. They’re talking about focusing on the process. That’s what they’re talking about. Now, if we go back to maybe the original or one of the original influencers, Stephen Covey, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. If you’ve not read the book, it’s a must read. You got to get that one.

[06:54] But one of the habits is start with the end in mind, start with the end in mind. That is a goal. You reverse engineer the process. You focus on the process, not the outcome. This was something that I learned the hard way in my wrestling career, had focused on the outcome of every match that I ever wrestled until my senior year, when I realized that’s not working.

[07:15] So I let go of the outcome and focused on the process. Okay. This is what Ryan Holiday is talking about. This is what James Clear is talking about. Focus on that process, but you still have an outcome in mind. For them, it might be publishing a book. For me, it was winning. A wrestling match or getting onto the podium at the national championships.

[07:32] You have the goal, then you let go of the goal and you focus on the process. What is the process that is going to get me to where I want to be in life? And you would never go on vacation without a destination, right? You wouldn’t just get in the car and start driving. Go, yeah, I don’t know what direction we’re going to go.

[07:48] Now. I did a vacation like that once. Actually it wasn’t a vacation, it was a three month adventure after college. I bought a one way ticket to Houston, took a bus to the border of Mexico, and took a cab across the border. I literally had three months and zero plan. But even with that totally open ended vacation, I still had some general ideas of where I wanted to go.

[08:10] I wanted to go meet my buddy in Guatemala. And I did that. He was staying at a meditation center. That’s a, we’ll have a beer over that one sometime, but crazy trip. But even with a no goal vacation, there was still a destination. There was still an end in mind. And so don’t ever get caught in the trap of thinking I don’t need.

[08:29] Any kind of goal. I don’t need a destination. You do need that in order to figure out what the process for you will look like. So have goals, have micro goals, track them, track your progress, and you will be more efficient, you will get more done. This will help you manage your time. Okay. Number two, plan your day in advance.

[08:52] This is based on a productive pause and the productive pause is this, the long time listeners, I want you to say it with me. The productive pause is a short period of focused reflection around specific questions. That leads to clarity of action and peace of mind. I could hear you. I could hear you saying, I could hear you saying that while, while I was saying it, because I’ve talked about this for years.

[09:14] This is the secret to success. If there is such a thing, it is not doing, it is hitting the pause button, identifying what is the process? What is the goal? What are the, what are the things I need to execute on in order to get where I want to get to today? And planning your day in advance. Will help you manage your time better when you identify what are the things that I need to work on today in order to have a successful day, you will be more efficient, period.

[09:39] If you just sit down at your desk, you and I both know what’s the first thing. If you don’t have a plan, what’s the first thing you’re going to do? Say it with me. You’re going to check email. And that is the opposite of the concept of making your bed. You’ve probably heard of this term. Speech by Admiral McRaven, or you’ve read the book possibly about make your bed.

[09:59] And it’s just this, generally this idea of starting with something productive at the beginning of the day, so that you’re going into a, the day with a mindset of productivity and at the end of the day, at least you have a maid bed to come home to, right? Just puts you into a different state. It’s the same with this planning your day, right?

[10:17] Doesn’t have to be. Complicated. Literally for me, I just write down, what are the three things I’ve got to do to win the day? Now, I also have a to do list and kind of work off of a brain dump place where I always dump my thoughts and things that I need to do into Asana, which is the app that I use, but I transfer that to my to do list on paper for the day.

[10:34] But even before any of that, I just turn away from my desk, open my journal, and I write down the three things they’re going to make today. Great. Sometimes these are to do list items or action items or sometimes it’s just how I want to be today. Maybe around my family or things like that. All right, so plan your day in advance.

[10:51] What are you going to do today to win the day? Another thing that I do is I review my micro goals. I’ll look at them because I have them printed out. Every month I print out my micro goals and I review those that gives you clarity so that you can manage your time better Be more productive get more done.

[11:08] All right, that’s number two So number one was having goals and micro goals number two is planning your day in advance. Number three is Reverse time management. What is reverse time management? Reverse time management is what do I want to avoid? What are the things that I don’t want to do? Now I referenced episode 471 in the last episode.

[11:29] I was talking about effectiveness versus efficiency. And now I said, this pairs well with, with these two episodes. Episode 471 is about. This 14 day time audit that I did and what I learned. And there’s a template in the action plan for that. If you go to jimharshawjr.com/action, you can get access to that template so you can do your own 14 day time audit, but I learned so much.

[11:52] And I learned a lot of what I don’t want to do, right? If you feel exhausted at the end of the day and you’re not really seeing progress, it’s because you’re doing minutiae and email, and it’s not the real work that lights you up. And that helps you actually advance the ball. So there are certain things you want to avoid.

[12:09] Certain meetings you want to avoid. Certain emails you want to unsubscribe from. Or notifications that you want to turn off. So that you can do the things that actually matter. Alright, so that’s number three. Number four is related to number three, but this is the four D’s. Do it, delay it, delegate it, or delete it.

[12:30] Alright, do it, Delay it, delegate it, or delete it. So do it, right? Just peel off, pull off the bandaid and do it. Delay it. This is like minutiae for me. This is what’s really worked. Saving the minutiae for when I have short time slots between meetings, 30 minutes or an hour in between a meeting that I’m not doing the minutiae when I have a four hour block of time.

[12:54] I’m not going to do the minutiae. I now move that to the 30 to 60 minute windows in my calendar, because that’s when I can, I can get the small stuff done. I can fill it, I can take care of the minutiae, but those big blocks are saved for the big rocks. All right. I think I just came up with a saying there.

[13:10] All right. Yep. Somebody get a tattoo and text that to me. Big blocks. For the big rocks, right? And when you have that minutia, it’s going to chew up the big blocks easily. So put that in, into the, the smaller windows of time. I save those bigger tasks for the, when I have those larger time slots. Delegate, always be thinking of who else could do this.

[13:33] And this might be somebody on your team. You’re like, Jim, I don’t have a team, hire a team, hire, you know, I have this amazing assistant, Paulyn from the Philippines, uh, and Xenar from Bangladesh. These guys have been with me for. Ages. And they help me and you can hire people as well, right? You can hire virtual assistants in the United States or overseas.

[13:53] Uh, you might have a team, you might have somebody you can bring on an intern. I’ve had interns work with us and I’m able to delegate to them, right? Delegate is a key one here. And then delete. What should you flat out not be doing? We already talked about that in the prior one. What should you not do?

[14:07] That’s the reverse time management. All right. Now these last four are a little bit different. You’ve probably not heard these on a time management podcast episode or in a book or blog posts, because these are a little bit different. These are absolutely critical to time management. Here’s the first one.

[14:26] Exercise. Exercise. If exercise were a drug and a pill you could take, you and I could go into business and make billions of dollars. It puts you in a different state. We don’t, you and I don’t need to read the research. We can look it up and it’ll tell us all the chemicals and hormones and all the great things it does for us.

[14:44] You know that, you know how you feel after you exercise. You are more energized. You are more focused. You are more productive. You are more efficient. You are more effective. Now, what you do when you exercise period, full stop exercise is a time management hack. Next one, eat healthy goes right along with exercise.

[15:04] This is one of the core habits, eat healthy, eat well. When you eat a low carb diet, high protein breakfast, you don’t have the blood sugar crash. You’re more focused. You get more done. Eat healthy. The next one. Get to bed on time. This is the absolute critical habit. If you focus only on one thing, getting to bed on time, you will wake up on time.

[15:31] You will probably do your morning routine, which probably, hopefully has some kind of hydration and or exercise and or eating right or meditation or prayer. All of those things set you up for having a well executed day. You will manage your time well. If you get to bed on time. And the last one is mindset.

[15:52] Do you see yourself as the next version of you? Like, do you actually see yourself as that next version of you? Do you feel like you can overcome the obstacles? Like, do you believe in your mind and in your heart and in your gut and in your soul that you can overcome the obstacles that are in front of you?

[16:08] Right? What are those obstacles? I don’t know. They’re going to be different for you than they are for me. But back when I was wrestling, uh, I actually posted a tweet on this recently where I shared how when I was wrestling, I would always visualize three different scenarios. Scenario number one was I dominated the whole match.

[16:22] Scenario number two was I would go out and get thrown to my back and I’d be losing right from the outset and have to battle my way back the whole match. And number three, the third scenario was, Uh, back and forth, back and forth, you know, I’d be winning and I’d be losing. I’d be winning. I’d be losing those back and forth match and I would pull it out in overtime or at the end of the match.

[16:40] And it’s the same now. Like I visualize myself getting distracted. I visualize myself losing, failing, making mistakes in addition to like, uh, obviously visualize success and dominating. So. But when I visualize those, those setbacks and failures, I visualize myself rebounding, bouncing back, learning from it, valuing the experience, and succeeding.

[17:05] Regardless, despite it, you have to prepare your mind. Another tweet, a matter of fact, I’m just going to reference another tweet here that I posted was imagine two athletes, identical athletes, identical talent. One visualizes success every day. The other one doesn’t put them on a 400 meter race, put them both on the starting line.

[17:25] Who’s your money on? Who’s your money on? The person who visualizes every day or the person who doesn’t you and I know the person who visualizes every day is going to win. And it’s the same with you. Do you have a mindset practice? Right? Do you believe? That you can win. All right. So I just gave you seven time management practices.

[17:44] You want to call them hacks. You want to call them tactics, wherever you want to call them. Number one, have goals and micro goals and track them. Number two, plan your day in advance. Number three, what can you not do? Right? Reverse time management. Number four is the four D’s do it. Delay it, delete it, or delegate it.

[18:02] Number five is exercise. Number six is eating healthy. Number seven is sleep, getting to bed on time, setting up a bedtime alarm as opposed to a wake up alarm. And number eight is mindset. That belief that you can actually find success, that you can actually be productive, that you can be not just efficient, but also effective.

[18:21] Here’s the crux. None of this works unless you actually do it. Unless you actually do the things that I’m talking about, it just doesn’t work. So my hope for you is that you take action and here’s a great way to take action. Go over to jimharshawjr.com/free. And join me in a community where you and I can have a discussion about this podcast episode and every week we go in there and we have a discussion about the new podcast episode.

[18:47] So join me over there. There’s also a free course titled seven days to clarity. I look forward to working with you over there. Look forward to getting to, to know you. This is a new platform, relatively new for us. And I’m super excited because we have dozens of people already in there that I’m interacting with and it’s growing by the day.

[19:05] So I look forward to meeting you, getting to know you in there. So head on over to jimharshawjr.com/free until then take action. Good luck.

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