346 | How To Be More Productive – Your Calendar
Would you like your calendar to be filled with the RIGHT stuff and at the RIGHT time? Would you like to learn how to be more productive? Would you like more time?
Your calendar should be where you keep your MOST important appointments. I could not function without my calendar being organized and ready to guide me through the day. When you think about your calendar, does it stress you or empower you? They say if you want to see what someone values, all you have to do is check their financial statements and their calendar. These two things hold what you value most. Think about it.
In this video, I share with you a simple way to look at your calendar and make intentional choices so that you don’t feel overwhelmed.
Discover how to be more productive in this crazy world of distractions and stress. When you listen to this video it will help you.
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How To Be More Productive: The Transcript
Have you ever felt like your calendar is just overwhelming with so much to do and you cannot get the most important projects done inside your business, inside your life? I know I’m not alone with this because I’ve talked to a client just a few hours ago where they were talking about being overwhelmed and I asked them a question about their schedule, how was it organized. And it just kind of, you show up, and you just do the work that you have to for that day. All sales were done Monday through Thursday, he’s trying to keep Friday free, and I totally get that. But what could you do differently to improve the way you work that will help you be the leader that you need to be?
Hi, my name’s Gene Hammett. I work with hypergrowth companies to help them understand the challenges of growth and develop leadership and culture to create growth in a consistent, predictable way. I love to talk about productivity because it’s something we all struggle with. There’s always something else to learn. Even the most productive person in the world probably doesn’t have it all figured out. And I say that with a smile because I certainly don’t have it all figured out. So who am I to give you insights around your calendar, your time, your productivity? Well, when I was growing my businesses over the years, I’ve had to get even more intentional and more focused about what is most important in my work.
Now, we can talk about many different things, but today I wanna talk about your calendar. Specifically, you know, how are you creating this? When I was talking to hundreds and hundreds of leaders of high-growth companies, they gave me some insights. And one person gave me some really cool stuff that really stood out more than anything else on how do you treat your calendar. And it’s called time blocking. I got this from Todd Herman.
Todd was on the show many months ago, I’ll conclude this and, you know, where you can find Todd Herman’s interview on Leaders in the Trenches. But let me tell you what time blocking is. Time blocking is looking at your schedule and being very intentional about how you group things together and not switching back and forth every chance you get. So for me, I do all of my marketing activities on Monday. Now, do I get everything done on Monday? I really try to, I really focus on how do I set the business up for success the first day of the week.
The second part of that is, you know, where are you doing sales? I do sales on Wednesdays. I block a big part of my schedule out on Wednesday to do sales. Do I do them other times? On rare occasions. But Wednesday’s the big day for me. And then Tuesday and Thursday’s when I serve my clients. Now, that whole system really helps me understand how to really lay out my calendar and really be productive.
Before we jump into content, let me just remind you that today’s podcast is brought to you by Audible. If you like to listen to podcasts, you’d probably like to listen to Audible books and I wanna give you a free 30-day trial. And all you have to do is use this URL, which is audibletrial.com/leadersinthetrenches. That’s the name of the podcast. Just go there, you can buy any book you want. I’d love for you to buy The Trap of Success. That’s my book that came out earlier this past year. And if you want to get that 30-day trial, just go to audibletrial.com/leadersinthetrenches. Now back to the show.
Now, I’m sharing this with you because I think you want to be more productive too. As a leader, you’re being pulled in many different directions, or as an employee, you’re being asked by your leader to do so many projects. But if you could get very intentional about your week, what would it look like? Would you be able to put time blocking in? Could you be able to organize your schedule so that you could have certain days? I call these theme days. All of this just really comes from experience at working in my own business and working with high-growth leaders about how intentional they are about how they show up every day and what they need to do to show up as their best and to get more work done.
Now, I created something that you can have for free. And it’s all about, the time block is one of those things, so this is not, this is a black and white copy of this, it’s actually in color. But there’s, that’s one of the things I’m sharing with you to be more productive. One of the strategies. I call this hyperproductivity.
It’s all about three strategies to supercharge your productivity. The other two are in other areas so that you can have a different strategy for different parts of being more productive. As a leader, I know that you feel the stress, feel the frustration, or maybe overwhelm of not being able to get it all done. Well, that’s the reason I create videos like this to help you be more intentional as you show up, be more proactive than being reactive every day because we know that that’s not the path to low stress and really figuring out how to get that life that you want and get all the work that you want done and make the impact in the world. Now, if you’re a leader, you could actually use this free download to share with your team about how they could actually be more productive.
Have a conversation about productivity, about what’s working. And you guys, try new things, because there’s three great things inside this giveaway that I’m gonna give you, the link is somewhere here for you, to go ahead and download. But you can absolutely use this to come up with new ideas because if you’re doing the same thing always and it’s not working out for you, you’ve gotta change what you’re doing. You know that. Normal is broken, according to Jesse Itzler.
I was listening to the video he was doing the other day and normal is broken. If you just go into doing everything as normal, every day, day in and day out, you’re not going to achieve extraordinary success and do extraordinary things. You’ve gotta be much more intentional and be willing to break the patterns. So if you wanna increase your productivity, be willing to try something new. And I think a great place to start would be with hyperproductivity, the three strategies to supercharge your productivity. And you just go to genehammett.com/productivity. And you can download it absolutely for free. This comes from, I think, two best-selling authors and one just genius as it relates to being productive. And those three strategies, look at them, use them all together, use them separately, however you wanna do it, but it will allow you to increase the throughput of work that you do and allow you to have a different kind of conversation with your team around productivity.
All right, my name’s Gene Hammett. I work with hypergrowth leaders. I love what I do, I love helping them grow. And if this helps you, make sure that you subscribe and make sure you share it with a friend that could really change their schedule. If you know they’re stressed out or overwhelmed, I’d love for you to make that introduction about the Leaders in the Trenches podcast, or this video, however, you’re seeing it. But, as always, lead with courage and I’ll see you next time.
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