We live in a world where so many people are hooked on distractions. They’re hooked on social media, the news, notifications, endless meetings, and saying yes to every social engagement.
So many business owners I meet spend their best hours caught up in trivial pursuits, chasing shiny toys that, at the end of the day, amount to nothing.
If you want to build a successful business, you have to be one of those elite performers who are absolutely focused on doing important work and pursuing activities that get you closer to the business and life that you want.
Your days are your life in miniature, and as you calibrate and consistently build excellent days, you create a great business and a great life. Excellent days become excellent weeks, and excellent weeks become excellent years. The key is to become a master of building great days, and the starting point of building consistently great days is time mastery.
So, think right now about how you are spending your days. Are you spending your days being really creative and productive? Or are you busy being busy? So many I meet say they have no time whatsoever, yet they waste the time that they do have.
You can build a great business or play with your device, but you can’t do both!
With that context, let’s discuss an advanced model that I share with my clients. It’s called ‘How super producers master the time’.
1. Early Rise
The great novelist Stephen King gets up early. Nelson Mandela got up early. So many of successful business owners & CEOs I’ve coached over the years get up early. The way you start the day dramatically determines the way your day unfolds. The Spartan warriors really said it well, “Sweat more in training and your bleed less in war”.
You want to get up early and give yourself a victory hour of practice. Practice becoming the person you want to be. Practice building a stronger you. A smarter, fitter, more focused you. Most people get up in the morning, run out into the day, and then spend their days catching up on the hours. If you’re not a member of the early riser’s club, build the practice. You know you can do it. You have a neuroplastic brain, and once you’ve mastered this habit of getting up early, give yourself this one hour of victory of working on yourself.
2. Master the Polite No
Most people say yes to everything. Do you want to go to dinner tonight? Yes. I know you’re busy on that new project, but would you like to have a coffee? Yes. Do you want to take a trip with me? Yes. Would you like to watch the TV show? Yes. Would you like to join our social group? Yes.
Many people say yes to things they know really won’t move the needle and get them to the business or life they desire. The great CEOs, the great business owners, great entrepreneurs, the best of the best, the people who consistently achieve creative and productive days don’t really care about what people think about them. I’m not saying they’re rude. Some of them are and I don’t advocate that. But many of them are masters at the polite no. They are clear on their vision. They are clear on their priorities. They are clear on their strategy and the habits they want to live by. They’re so clear on consistently delivering consistently great days that they say no often. Start practicing, no!
You might ask why so many people are excellent at saying yes to trivial things. It is because we are tribal. It is because we have a neurobiological instinct to fit in. Because thousands of years ago, we lived in primitive times on the Savanna, and if we strayed from the herd, sabretooth tigers would eat us, or we would die of starvation, or we would be captured and killed by warring tribes. And so, we developed the instinct to survive where we just fit in. You have to hack that instinct. You have to say no to what you don’t want.
3. The 5 Great Hours Rule
Most producers spend an entire week to get five great hours of actual work done. Think about that. Most people spend a whole day at work, say eight, ten, sometimes 12 hours, and they might only get half an hour of valuable work done.
I’m encouraging you to start working only five hours a day. Because I believe the way our world works doesn’t work very well. The way most people work is based on the industrial age. When people were working on factory lines producing widgets, the more time spent on the line, the more widgets they produced. We’re not in the industrial period anymore; we’re in the cognitive period. You’re paid to create great ideas. You’re paid to do masterwork and push magic into the world.
So, I’m encouraging you to work only five hours a day. But, during those five hours, you do real work. Your work is creative, productive, and magnificent. You don’t chitchat; you don’t play with your devices. You don’t check your notifications. You don’t have coffee with people when you are in a flow state. Five hours of world-class work, 4 to 5 days a week, will completely change the game for you and allow you to do the best work you’ve ever done.
And you might say, Okay, let’s say I start at 8 am and finish at 1 pm. What do I do after that? I’d say go on a mountain bike ride. Take the family to lunch. Take a nap. Go get a massage. Go for a nature walk. Read a book. Go to an art gallery. Go watch a film. Try some new food. Have some fun. Active recovery is so vital to exceptional performance. The great producers work in bursts of intensity. When they work, they really work, and then they recover. Regenerate and refuel; their ideas will be incubated during rest and recovery. Then, they return the next day and do five more hours of great work.
4. Find Your Menlo Park
Thomas Edison had a powerful tactic to become one of the greatest inventors. He would get lost from the world on an almost daily basis. The challenge and the reason why most people are not masters of the craft is because they never spend enough time in solitude. All great geniuses had two things in common. They spent a lot of time alone and when they were alone, they spent a lot of time immersed in solving their big problem.
That allowed them to go to flow state. That’s a term created by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi of Chicago University, which is the ability to get out of our logical brain and pre-frontal cortex and, go into a deep place of reasoning and come up with amazing ideas. That happens in a flow state, but a flow state only happens when you’re alone.
That’s why Winston Churchill had Chequers. All great entrepreneurs and producers have their Menlo Park. Menlo Park was Thomas Edison’s lab in New Jersey. It was away from his family. It was away from the distractions and complexities of the world, and he would go there with his team and work. And he would actually work for a few hours, and then nap. Work for a few more hours, then nap. He would do that around the clock.
Find your Menlo Park. It could be a spare bedroom in your house. It could be a wonderfully lit space in your home. It could be part of a public library that no one goes to. Find a place where you cannot be found and get lost from the world for at least a few hours every single day. You will find you will be doing the best work of your life, and you will start consistently building much more inspirational and much more productive days. You can’t do great work when you’re surrounded by all the people and all these interruptions.
5. Work in Blocks of Time
Time blocking is a powerful approach to time management. It involves allocating specific time blocks for essential tasks, projects, and priorities. This ensures that you have designated periods for each activity, preventing distractions from derailing your progress. The key to time blocking is a digital or written weekly schedule—a default calendar.
By dedicating uninterrupted time to each task, you can delve deep into your work, maintain concentration, and complete tasks faster and more efficiently. The result? Enhanced quality and increased productivity.
The key is to include all tasks. Both business and personal tasks. From when you get up in the morning to when you sleep at night. This includes, for instance, a chunk of time for your morning routine and family breakfast, which you can write as blocks of time. Then you have your five great hours, chunks of time for your team meetings, writing a blog or report—you write that in as a chunk of time. You might do that for times a week. You might take Friday off if you’re an entrepreneur. You might go for a nature walk in the evening to get refuelled. Your family dinners. Your family nights. You build your week on chunks of time. This will allow you to live your days on your terms. It is incredibly important to work on chunks of time. Commit to it, then run it, and that’s one of the keys to being so productive.
Conclusion
So that is how super-producers master their time. If you want to build a successful business you have to be one of those elite performers who are absolutely focused on just doing work that is important. To pursuing activities that get you closer to the business and life that you want.
The key is to become a master of building great days. And the starting point of building consider great days this time mastery. Start practising the ideas and tactics I’ve offered so you wire them into the point of automaticity, and you will make your days phenomenal.
If you’d like to take the fast track to becoming one of the best business owner’s, you can consider business coaching. To find out more, you can book an initial complimentary 15-minute call with me at www.TimeWithShane.com.
