Latest / The Efficient Advisor: Tactical Business Advice for Financial Planners / 170: My NEW Favorite Focus Hack for Increased Productivity (& a Few Other Tools!)

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170: My NEW Favorite Focus Hack for Increased Productivity (& a Few Other Tools!) · The Efficient Advisor: Tactical Business Advice for Financial Planners

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: If I can find a way to increase my focus and efficiency, of course, I am going to share it with you guys.
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: So I have got a couple of ideas for you today, one that is just totally brand new to me and has honestly been so unbelievable I hate the phrase, even though I use it all the time, but it's a game changer.
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: It's just giving me no joke From an extra 90 minutes to a couple hours a day of major focus and crushing through my to-do list like a boss.
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: But this one I'm going to share it, but it's a little unusual.
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: And I've got a few other tips and tricks that I use as a business owner with ADD that genuinely help me prioritize and crush through the things that actually move the needle in my business.
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: So if you want to get more out of your time, let's dive in.
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: Before I dive in, I want to invite you to hang out with me live and in person.
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: You know I have partnered with Retirement Tech Services on some tools and things in the past, but I am excited to announce that I am going to be giving a killer keynote on creating processes in your business around tax planning for your clients at the RTS summit this September 26 and 27 in Tempe, arizona.
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: Early bird pricing is crazy cheap, you guys.
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: I think it's like 875.
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: I've got a link for you that has the pricing.
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: If you grab them now, it makes it a very, very, very, very, very reasonable conference.
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: I'm also going to be hosting some sort of hangout while I'm there for my listeners.
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: Not sure what the format will be just yet.
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: We have been playing around with ideas like some free speed coaching, just some one-on-one time together, some sort of small group discussion.
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: I'd love to know actually what you would like to see, since I get to do whatever it is that I want.
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: So it'll be two days of amazing tax planning lessons to really level up your financial planning offering.
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: And if you're not doing tax planning for your clients right now and yes, even if you're with a broker dealer where you can't say that you do it you are putting yourself at a huge competitive disadvantage.
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: This is one of those things that, even working for a broker dealer, we were able to execute for our clients and it really did give us a huge competitive advantage.
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: So there are some conference ad huns and some other cool things that you can do in addition to whatever it is that we'll be offering, but plan on hanging out with me in Arizona this September 26th and 27th.
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: Check out the link in the show notes and out on the aficionadvisorcom.
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: You'll see a banner up at the top and I'd love for you to join us.
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: And look, I know you're here listening, because you know it is possible to have energy left over for your family and still have your dream business.
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: You know the business that you are running instead of it running you.
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: If you're new to the aficion advisor, welcome.
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: I'm Libby Graywee.
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: I started from scratch, built and sold by age 37, eight 100% referral only planning practice that I grew to seven figures as a solo advisor, all while working just three days a week and taking off 14 weeks a year so that I could lean into being a mom, a wife, a friend, a sister, a daughter and, frankly, a travel obsessed human who loved taking vacations and wanted to live a full life outside of the office without sacrificing success.
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: And these teenagers that I have.
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: Now my boys are 13 and 15.
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: They are home today.
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: So if you hear lots of banging around in the background, that is because I am a working mom and it feels like my kids never actually go to school anymore, so, but I'm here just to walk alongside you and to show you how to do exactly the same thing and to help you take immediate action on the most important strategies for scaling, organizing and creating less stress and overwhelm in your business.
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: We are about to transform your practice, so move over exhaustion and get out of the way.
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: Advisor ADD.
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: It is time to take that one right next step to build a business and a life that you love.
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: So let's get into these productivity hacks.
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: So it makes sense to do another episode on productivity.
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: I did one back in early 2022.
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: So it's been a minute back on episode number 16, where I walked through eight productivity hacks that I just absolutely love, and every single one of those still holds true.
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: I use them when I was running my advisory business.
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: I use them running this business.
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: So if you haven't go back and listen to episode number 16 for some really tactical productivity hacks that you can implement super easy.
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: And then I also talk about like the absolute number one time management productivity thing for myself being model weeks.
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: There's a whole episode, episode number 12, all about model weeks and how I really genuinely transformed my business from an 80 hour a week, crazy person business down to three days a week, 24 hours, and really I could not have done it without having a very structured model week.
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: Now I want to like just dive all into the model week stuff because it's my absolute number one thing that I cling to.
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: That structure is actually what gave me the freedom.
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: So if you're like me and you're like, oh, the structure sounds terrible and I don't want to repeat myself and I don't want to have like groundhog day at my office, I know I hear you and that's not what a model week is, but it is, hands down, the number one thing that I did to really dramatically reduce my time and to make it so much more effective, so much more efficient, and I know everybody wants that.
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: Okay, so this episode today I'm going to focus on a couple of actual like tactical tools, things that you can put your hands on.
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: So not so much time management, but also time management, if that makes sense.
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: So the first one okay, hear me out.
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: So I'm going to start sharing and you're going to be like I was.
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: You're going to be super skeptical, but I'm just telling you to listen all the way through.
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: I wasn't originally going to share this productivity thing with my podcast listeners.
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: I mean, it feels a little funny telling 5,000 plus of you that listen about this.
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: I feel a little silly, but I have been conducting this experiment since November 26th and I'm absolutely loving it.
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: And somehow it came up in one of our group coaching calls.
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: We were kind of yacking before we got started and I was sharing about these things that I'm taking and everyone was like, ooh, wait, what can I do?
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: That you know?
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: So here I am sharing it.
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: It feels a little weird, it feels a little woo-woo, but, like I said, just just hear me out.
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: So let me give you a little background on what this is.
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: So one of my best girlfriends was having some major and I mean major sleep issues, major focus issues, and she was really, really struggling and was seeing all the doctors, right, sleep specialists, you know, psychiatrists, anxiety experts, experts for TMJ I mean like literally all the people and her husband is a physician at the Cleveland Clinic, so access to the world's best doctors and they could not figure out what was going on with her.
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: She was never getting into REM sleep.
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: She was waking 95 times an hour, which is just bananas, right, like that takes like if you go back to when you had newborns, and that is like newborn life on steroids.
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: So, long story short, she was completely miserable.
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: She was trying homeopathic methods, she was trying, you know, western medicine.
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: She was literally doing all of the things and a few months had gone by.
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: I mean, this was probably like a year long battle for her.
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: And a few months had gone by and I got a message from her and she was like a completely different person.
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: And so I called her and was like what in the world?
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: You sound like a totally different human.
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: And she was like Libby it's the craziest thing.
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: And she said the same thing.
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: Like I'm kind of like embarrassed to tell you it feels a little woo-woo and it feels a little whatever, but it has absolutely alleviated the vast majority of my problems and all of a sudden I'm sleeping well, I'm getting so much more done, I'm being so productive and so efficient and so effective and I just can't even get over.
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: I can't even get over it.
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: And she started to share with me what she was doing and I have to tell you, okay, I am a absolute skeptic.
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: Okay, so I'm just gonna say it because I don't know another way to do it without sounding like a complete weirdo.
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: But she had started taking these focus gummies.
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: And I laugh because right when I was sharing this with the group coaching people, they're all like so you're talking about drugs?
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: And I'm like, no, nope, they're all natural, not drugs.
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: And of course, like I start continuing to describe them and they're all like these sound like drugs.
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: And I'm like look here, people, I am in Loveland Ohio, not Loveland Colorado, and I can joke around that because we have a couple of Loveland Colorado folks in the group coaching program and they were all like mm-hmm, yep, feels right, but they are these focus gummies.
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: So of course, katie was telling me about this and I'm like that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard.
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: I'm such a skeptic.
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: And she just went on and on and on and I'm like you know what, having seen her before and having seen her now, and the fact that her husband, who is a cardiologist at the Cleveland Clinic the most skeptical of woo-woo stuff in the history of people, right, even he is taking them and was like oh, my goodness gracious, I, as a physician, as a cardiologist who works like a gazillion hours a week, I'm noticing a significant difference in not just my energy levels, but my ability to actually focus and accomplish more.
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: So I was like, well, okay, how about this?
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: I'll try anything twice.
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: So I'm gonna give this a go and see if I have similar results.
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: So I ordered this stuff and, of course, I came into it beyond skeptical, beyond skeptical, and I really approached it pretty methodically.
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: Okay, this is going to be an experiment.
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna document what I'm doing every day, how I'm doing it.
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna play around with it, see if it's truly working.
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: If it's not working, is there a difference on the days that I take the gummies versus the days that I don't?
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: And so they're filled with all kinds of things, right?
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: So I get the gummies and I'm like, oh, these actually don't taste like crap, they're actually quite delightful, and they're filled with all of the stuff that's known to be really, really good for brain health, like alpha, gpc, lion's mane.
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: I'm looking at the back of the thing here.
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: All of these funky extracts, ginseng, green tea, all of the woo, woo stuff.
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: Okay, so I get the package and I'm like, okay, they don't taste terrible.
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: So okay, here we go.
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: And the first day, november 26th, according to my notes.
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: Holy cow, I was a maniac.
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: I had just gotten back from being out of town For Thanksgiving.
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: I was gone for a week and I needed to get a lot done, like all the things laundry, bookkeeping for the businesses that I have.
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: I needed to respond to all of my advisors.
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: I needed to prep for all of my coaching sessions.
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: You know, I'm a mom and there's 100,000 tasks that are on the list all the time.
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: In this first day I was an absolute like I said, absolute machine, but because I'm a skeptic, I choked it up to coffee.
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: I had a Coke Zero that day, don't judge me and I was like, okay, I just am feeling all of this pressure because I had to get a bunch of stuff done.
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: So the next day I tried the gummies again and I decided today I'm like, okay, I'm not gonna have any form of caffeine, so no coffee, no Coke Zero.
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: I just wanna see if this was a placebo effect.
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: Same thing my kids were at their dads and I had the day to get all the things done and holy smokes, you guys.
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: Normally I can go for a little while, but then the ADD kind of kicks in and I start to peter off.
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: Or my toxic trait is that I am a project starter.
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: If you know anything about Colby, I am a nine on the quick start.
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: Like I love, love, love starting and I need an implementer to actually follow through on all of the things.
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: So this is how I've always operated in my businesses I've always been kind of the visionary idea person and then I need a really, really strong operational person to actually help me execute all the things.
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: So starting things is my strong suit, finishing things not my strong suit, especially if it's a project that takes hours and hours, and hours and hours.
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: I love getting into it.
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: So, like you know those people that will like, oh, I need to clean out my closet, and they go in and take everything off the shelves and make these huge piles all over the floor and then they walk away from it and just leave it like that.
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: That's me and I'm like I'll come back to it later Versus a lot of my girlfriends, neagram threes of the world are like nope, I'm just gonna keep going until I finish this project.
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna do it.
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: Start to finish.
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: That is not my strong suit and I share that, because I was like a maniac.
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: From eight am until like midnight I started projects and I saw them all the way through.
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: I finished things.
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: I started things that were like three, four hour long brain intensive projects and I finished them.
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: I did them start to finish through fruition.
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: And I was like, well, because I'm a skeptic, I'm just gonna keep experimenting.
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: So I tested taking these gummies in the morning versus these gummies in the afternoon.
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: I tested them with coffee, I tested them with no coffee and I had all of these questions that I wanted to ask myself before I could determine okay, are these things actually working for me?
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: I'm never gonna share anything with anybody unless I feel really really confident.
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: So here are a bunch of the questions that I kind of started asking myself and really analyzing or experimenting with to see if these things were a total farce or if, like, there was actually something to it.
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: So one of the questions I asked myself is Do I get an energy drop around 2 pm Like normal?
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: So, a normal day around 2 o'clock, all of the sudden my energy Falls off, my focus falls off, my attention falls off, the quality of work goes way, way, way down after 2 pm.
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: The other question I asked myself is okay, I get 2 to 4 gummies a day.
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: What if I take one in the morning versus, well, like one in the morning and one in the afternoon, versus two at once.
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: How am I doing with distraction?
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: How did it do with the actual focus?
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: How did so?
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: Sometimes, when I'm really overwhelmed, it shows up as anxious.
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: You know, was I feeling anxious?
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: How was I feeling when I woke up?
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: How was I feeling throughout the day?
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: And you guys, it's Bananas town, so I and I even was like laughing with myself, right, like even this if this is a friggin placebo effect and there's nothing in these gummies besides color and you know, some, some flower, I don't know whatever, there's no flower in them.
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: But you know what I mean.
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: Like, if I can get more productivity done in a day, even from a friggin placebo effect, totally worth it.
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: So I started doing the math and I was like, oh, my goodness, I'm getting so much more productivity done, not only during the workday, but even like later in the day, post dinner, with all of like the mom tasks.
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: And I was realizing, like, even if I'm getting one to two hours a day of work, if that equals, you know, 10 hours in a week, which equals 40 hours in a month, holy smokes.
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: And I don't mean just like, oh, I found more time in my day.
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: I mean this is like Productivity, like mad, checking things off the list, doing stuff, creative work.
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: So if I can get 40 extra hours a month of productivity, yes, please.
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: I mean try putting a monetary value to that right.
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: So I bill out at $500 an hour.
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: So if I bill out at $500 an hour for 40 extra hours, I mean holy smokes for me to have a $40 pack of gummies every month and that's, that's what they cost.
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: It's $40 a month from a supply.
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: This is Amazing.
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: So, of course, because I'm a skeptic, I made some girlfriends try it right, because I don't want to rely just on my experience and Katie's experience, because we actually have very similar enneagram, similar personality styles.
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: So I asked a bunch of my girlfriends to try them.
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: So a couple girlfriends that are enneagram twos and enneagram eights and enneagram threes.
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: And I'll tell you this, it didn't work for everybody.
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: The girlfriends that I have well and I say that loosely right the girlfriends that I have that don't have focus problems, so my enneagram three friends that check stuff off like these, like I'm like, oh my gosh, is this how they feel every day?
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: Are there people that are that just like start stuff and finish it like that's amazing.
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: Those women Definitely didn't have as much like change on the focus standpoint.
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: But what they did tell me is they all felt and I thought this was really interesting that they felt like they woke up more refreshed than ever before, like they weren't groggy in the morning.
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: They, when they got up, they just got up.
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: There was no snooze, there was no like oh gosh, rolling around eating coffee before I need to get going, and so I started just kind of testing this with different friends.
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: Then I had some male friends that I was like okay, let's test us on the dudes to and see what happens, and the results were all kind of similar.
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: So if you have actual focus issues, like where you get distracted easily, I would totally recommend these from a productivity standpoint.
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: If you are likely to be I don't have focus issues and maybe these would not be for you unless you need better sleep.
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: And my friend Katie, her physician husband, is like hey, even if you're not seeing, like all the crazy productivity and follow through and all of the other stuff, all of the ingredients in here as woo, woo, as they sound are so good for your overall brain health.
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: So that's my weird productivity hack.
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: I, like I said, I felt kind of dumb sharing that because it's so out there.
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: So I wanted to be very, very clear.
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: I'm not getting compensated to sell the gummies, like there is no monetary benefit to me other than the fact that if you use the link so I'm obsessed with these if you use the link I get points that I can use to get more gummies.
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: Okay, so there is the quote unquote compensation to be totally transparent and open with you guys.
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: But I wouldn't share it and I wouldn't want more gummies if I didn't think they worked brilliantly.
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: So I will drop the link in the show notes, also the link on the webpage for this episode.
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: So the webpage for the episode just go to the efficient advisorcom backslash and then you type in the number episode that it is and I'll have the link there for you as well.
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: But you guys, I know this sounds so weird and so woo woo and maybe even a little like salesy, but I don't even care, because for me they worked.
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: Will they work for you?
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: I don't know.
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: But they do come with a money back guarantee.
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: So if you try them it is a subscription, you can cancel it at any time.
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: So you have to sign up, like as a subscription for them, and I'll have some directions in the, in the show notes for you as well, like how to find them and how to set up the subscription.
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: But you can cancel it at any time and they are money back.
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: So if you don't like them, so if you're like my girlfriend Amy, who tried it and she was like, yeah, I slept better, but that's not worth in a $40 investment month, you know, per month for me, cool, no worries, return the things.
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: So, like I said, has it worked for everybody that I've quote unquote, tested it on?
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: No.
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: For my friends that are a little bit more like me, a little bit more ADD, a little bit more easily distracted, a little bit more project starters, not project finishers, if you're an Enneagram seven per se, then you might have some success with them.
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: So for me I was like, hey, it's worth a try, for $40 bucks I'm getting.
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: Even if you only get one extra hour of productivity in a friggin week because of them, that alone to me is worth $40 bucks.
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: But, like I said, I am seeing anywhere from like one to two hours of real intensity, productivity, quality of work being really, really high.
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: Since I've been taking the gummies and I do notice a difference on the days that I don't take them or I forget them in the morning, or I don't take them till late in the afternoon, the productivity doesn't kick until much later.
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: So they take.
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: For me they take about an hour to really kick in, but so I take them in the morning.
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: I take them before I drink my coffee.
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: I'm back to caffeine because I just love coffee.
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: Like I love coffee, I love sitting there with my cup of coffee doing my morning routine.
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: So the gummies are now part of my routine and I do promise they are not drugs, okay, so let's get into another productivity hack that I wanted to share.
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: So for those of you that have been following me for a super long time, you may or may not remember when the Efficient Advisor was a video show and I did a video episode on my day planner that I use and how I use it to really impact productivity.
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: Now you can certainly purchase the day planner that I use.
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: It's the best self journal.
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: I'll link it in the show notes for you guys as well, but the kind of the tactics that I'm going to share with you.
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: You can use in any planner.
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: You don't need to buy anything specific, you don't even need a planner at all.
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: You can do this on a piece of paper and all of the principles will apply.
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: Now I appreciate the best self journal in a lot of different ways.
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: It's got a great goal setting section in the beginning.
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: It's got habit trackers.
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: It's got you know weekly objectives that you can set when you actually use it in totality.
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: The way that it's designed to be used.
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: It's amazing and I absolutely love it.
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: I will say that the goal setting piece I am maybe 80% proficient at.
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: There are a lot of days that I don't check all the habits off, like I just kind of forget.
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: But it's the day portion of it that makes the absolute best difference to me.
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: So every day it starts off with you know, I write three things that I'm grateful for in the grateful column and that's, you know, all nice and warm and fuzzy.
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: But then here's where it kind of changes for me.
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: So there's a section called today's goal and what I write down there is what I am working towards that day.
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: What is the goal, what is the transformation, what is the feeling, what is the project, what is the thing that I'm wanting to do that will actually make a difference in my life in some way, shape or form?
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: Then I've got three targets and I write down the three big things, the big ideas of what needs to happen for that day.
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: What are the three things that I absolutely no holds bar need to accomplish?
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: Then it's got, and this only takes me maybe you guys seven minutes to do.
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: So it feels like a lot while I'm talking through it, but it's actually a pretty quick, a pretty quick, you know, go of it.
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: So it then it has, you know, a little skinny column that has all of the times for your day, and I actually sit down and map out my day, like what are my appointments that I have?
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: So if I'm coaching advisors, or we've got our group coaching, or I've got a podcast recording, or I'm doing a discovery call with a company for speaking, I put all of the hard calendar items in there first.
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: Then what I do is I go in and I take those three targets and I block the time in for those tasks and I actually put them in in a little square, you know, on the calendar, at a set time.
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: So I have a very specific time that I'm going to be working on it.
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: And so my my best friend, jen, who's also an advisor it was so funny because, you know, we were just talking about this and she's like I finally took your advice.
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: We've only been friends for like I don't know 14 years and she was like I started doing my day like you, like you, like you told me to where I actually start blocking in what I'm going to do and when I'm going to do it and how long it's going to take me.
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: And she's like Libby, it has completely changed the way that I get projects done.
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: You know, there's that, there's that principle, that idea that you know Parkinson's law, that the amount of time that you give a task is amount of time that you're going to take it.
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: So if you don't have deadlines, you just have kind of a loosey-goosey like, oh, I need to work on this thing today.
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: You know, instead of saying, like I have a podcast record on my crazy boo boo gummies and some other productivity hacks, I need to do it in 45 minutes, I need to start at this time and finish by this time so that I can have that shipped off to Francesca to go ahead and compile the show notes and get it loaded and do all the post-production tasks associated with it so that it can be aired, you know, on the content calendar on the day that it's supposed to right.
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: So, by giving myself those hard parameters and giving myself a very specific allotted amount of time, that really helps me with my attention deficit, because I'm spending the time in the morning going through and saying I'm going to do this, then this, then this, then here's how long it's going to take me.
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: So I do all of that at once and then that way the rest of the day there isn't a lot of extra decision-making.
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: So the decision-making for me is what causes my distraction.
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: So if I'm sitting there and I'm like, ooh, I have a block of time between, you know, 10 am and 11 am, and here's all of the tasks that I could do, ooh, I could start here, I could do this one or what's involved with that.
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: You know those are the things that I end up then dinking around and doing nothing.
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: But if I have very specifically listed between that 10 and 11 am time slot you know, from 10 to 10, 15, I'm going to look up this thing and send the email to so-and-so From 10, 15 to 10, 30, I'm going to create the contract for a speaking engagement for that company for the April conference.
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: From 11, you know, from 10, 30 to 11, I am going to write out a, you know, an outline for two podcast episodes.
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: You know, getting very specific and giving yourself specific timelines on how long you have to do stuff between hard stops in your calendar is absolutely so unbelievably effective for me and I would suggest that you try it.
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: And I love using my best self journal.
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: I love kind of sketching it in there.
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: It has a blank bullet journal kind of page where it's just, you know, like the almost like the grids, and I can write the task and the actual steps associated with the task and put a little arrow pointing to where I have it blocked in so that when the time comes there's no question as to what it is, what I'm doing, how I'm doing it, how long I have to do it.
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: So that's been really helpful for me.
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: So I think for me it's really about using something that sets intention for the day and having it be part of sort of my work.
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: You know, startup ritual.
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: So I have a pretty strong morning routine that I attempt to do most days.
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: That gets me kind of centered.
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: For someone who has attention deficit, I have found that by starting my workday with one or two small tasks that I can easily accomplish versus eating that frog.
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: So I used to be a big fan of that idea of eat the frog first.
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: Right, eat that frog.
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: It's a Brian Tracy concept.
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: You know you want to get the big hairy ugly project done first, so that way the rest of the day you know it's not looming over your head and waiting to be done.
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: I found for me that that actually doesn't work the best for my brain.
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: I found with my brain that when I eat the frog and I get that done, then I'm kind of like well, I got my big project done and look at me Now I can kind of mess around the rest of the day and I wasn't nearly as effective.
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: So I found for me and this trick might work for you too that starting off the day with a couple smaller 10, 15, 20 minute tasks that you can definitely accomplish gave me the runway and like the sense of accomplishment early in the day to keep that mojo going right.
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: So like, oh, I did that, I checked that off.
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: Oh, I did that.
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: I checked that off and I get an absolute dopamine rush from crossing things off my to-do list.
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: So by getting a few of those small tasks done first and immediately in the timeframe that I've given them, I am then set up for success the rest of the day and the gummy power will carry me through.
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: But even with the gummy power, you still have to be focused and have the tasks outlined and be intentional about what you're doing, when you're doing it, how you're doing it, how long it's going to take you to do it, and prioritizing.
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: What are the things that are actually going to move the needle in my business, not just the busy work.
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: So go back to that episode, number 12 on model week, where I talk about rapid fire power hours and how to wrap your week around, your energy levels and your focus levels, your best times to do the best types of work.
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: So there are definitely times of the day where deep work makes more sense and small light, more brainless tasks are easier to accomplish.
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: But really it's being intentional, it's setting priorities for the day.
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: So for me it's creating that overall goal for the day and then the three major targets of what I'm trying to accomplish so that if I do get off of my time blocks, I can recenter and know okay, these are the things that are most important getting the podcast done, doing the follow-up emails for all of my coaching, whatever the task is, I'm looking at my projects for today.
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: So that's what's on there.
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: So these are the things that are most important, and then I can see all of the other small tasks that I've got built in.
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: So I love it because I know, if I stay on track, that I'm going to get all that stuff done today.
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: And does it all happen every day?
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: No, it does not.
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: It does not.
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: There are definitely days where I'm like, oh, I got.
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: I was a little aggressive on my aspirations of what I was going to accomplish and the stuff will dribble over into tomorrow.
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: But again, it's.
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: Is it important?
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: Is it prioritized?
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: What's the stuff that's dribbling over?
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: If it's the frog, right.
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: If it's the big project, the podcast that needs to get done, that's where then you need to rework your calendar and rework your prioritization and how you're going to do those things and get yourself some gummies and Really, it's making sure that, whatever your model day is or your model week.
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: I didn't have the same day every day.
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: I had a model week that I worked off of.
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: Now, being a single mom, I have my kids every other week, so I have two different model weeks.
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: I have an A week and a B week, and they are A weeks are always the same, b weeks are always the same, but they look very different from each other based on what is happening in my life and where my priorities and focus need to be.
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: So, anyways, I hope that was helpful.
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: Ooh, I was gonna go into a third one, but, man, this episode's getting a little long.
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: I'm looking at the clock going.
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: I talked about my gummies.
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: Well, I'll go ahead and share it.
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: So I use a task management tool called ClickUp and I absolutely love it.
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: I'll just give you a really brief, really really brief overview of how I use it.
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: But I started using it professionally inside of this business as a way to, you know, manage tasks amongst my team, right?
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: So I've got my director of operations and she can oversee all of the things and assign me tasks and I can give her stuff and we can see where everybody's at doing all the things, kind of like a CRM and some of the task management software that you have inside of there.
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: But something that I would encourage you to do is I created a whole ClickUp board for my personal life and making sure that I have got all of the little reminders of things that need to happen.
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: You know, setting tasks in advance, giving myself deadlines all of the things that helped me run a business so successfully.
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: Making sure that I'm doing those things in my personal life as well, and building time into my daily calendar.
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: I have an entire day every single week that's dedicated to the personal life stuff that needs to happen, but even little stuff like reminders that I need to start thinking through Christmas presents.
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: I have that kind of listed in early to mid-October that I'm gonna start creating a list so that when Black Friday comes or Cyber Monday that I'm really uber-prepared, I'm gonna go ahead and time block a day that this is the day that I'm gonna do my Christmas decorations, this is the day I'm gonna do Christmas cookies with my kids these things that take all day.
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: Or I plan one-on-one time with my boys.
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: I have a reminder at the beginning of every month to plan the following months one-on-one activities with each of my kids.
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: So, whatever your personal life looks like little stuff, like I need to call the guy to come do the lawn treatment and get him set up for the summer, I need to have the sprinkler guy come blow out the lines or all the things that need to happen that I used to think of in the moment and then they'd be gone, right.
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: I'd be like, oh, I need to call the sprinkler guy, I need to write that down, and then I would usually forget until I thought of it the next time and I felt like I was definitely doing everything just in time.
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: And now using a tool like ClickUp and it's totally free.
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: It's totally free and I love it.
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: And no, I don't get anything.
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: No points, nothing, nothing.
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: This is free, 99 for you, just because it's worked so well for me.
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: But setting all of these tasks in there, so little things like reminders to do all of my payroll at the end of the month, to do my personal banking, to do my P&L stuff for my like, all of the stuff that needs to happen on a reoccurring basis, because I get this dopamine hit by being able to check it off the list.
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: But things that need to reoccur, even stuff like adding salt to the water softener and changing the air filter in my HVAC every six months, all the things are in there.
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: Quarterly taxes, like giving myself plenty of advanced notice.
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: So creating a task and giving it a deadline so that I have this window of time to accomplish stuff.
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: So I'm not always like, oh crap, I gotta get that done, oh shoot, that's due tomorrow.
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: Oh no, I need to make sure that that thing happens.
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: But giving myself a runway so that I have a little bit of flexibility and it can go into the time blocks in my best self journal.
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: Okay, so that was ClickUp in a quickie.
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: But feel free to reach out to me on the Efficient Advisor community over on Facebook or over on LinkedIn, and I would be happy to share more details.
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: But check out ClickUp, check out the link for the best self journal that I use.
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: And definitely, if you wanna give the gummies a go again, not drugs, okay, not drugs.
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: I'm just gonna keep saying it not drugs.
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: If you wanna give the gummies a go, I've got the link for that in the description as well and, like I said, it may or may not work for you, but it has done an absolute, it's made an absolute difference for me, so I just wanted to share it.
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: Even if it's weird, I've decided I'm just gonna share it.
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: So don't judge me, don't think I'm all woo-woo, but when you see the amount of content that we're putting out now and all of the things, not only is it getting a great team with the right people and the right roles, with the right culture and getting the right organizational structure in place inside of the business, it's also having the energy as the CEO to do all of the things, to get them done, to be able to do above and beyond, to have that extra creative energy has been just an absolute blessing to me.
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: And again, I don't even care if it's not real, I don't care if it's a placebo effect.
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: If it's working for me, it's working for me, and don't judge me.
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: All right.
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: Thanks so much.
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: I hope you guys have an amazing rest of the week and don't forget to check out the RTS tax summit happening in September of this year.
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: I would love, love, love, love, love to meet you and hang out in person.
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: Talk to you soon, doc.