Everyone has goals but they have no idea how to get there.
They admire the success of their mentors and feel like a failure for not being on their level.
They want the money, the house, the relationship, and the freedom, but feel like they’ve been spinning their wheels for years.
A writer sees authors selling millions of books. New entrepreneurs see business influencers with thousands of customers.
Everyone wants to get there, so they look for the answer to their question, “What do I need to do,” and quickly fall into the trap of hustle culture, believing that if they work a little bit more and build the perfect productivity system that they will eventually get there.
They fail to see the dark side of this belief. They trade peace, happiness, and accomplishment for stress and self-doubt.
But there’s a way to do more in less time while living a happier life.
Your Time Bank Is Finite
Your savings account can always grow, but your time bank is always shrinking.
How should you spend your limited time? What creates efficiency? Where is the path I should follow?
When I opened my business, I fell into that same trap. I wanted to be a mogul, a retail owner by day, and an online brand by night. I discovered the productivity world and spent all my time trying to build my perfect system.
There were two problems
A system is useless if it’s impossible to follow consistently.
Being busy is not the same as being productive.
I would wake up at 5 am, go to the gym, make a complicated breakfast, journal, read for an hour, spend multiple hours bouncing between tasks until I had to leave for work, and then obsess over everything I hadn’t finished until I could make it back to my desk.
It took me 8 years to find the missing link of consistency and the path to accomplishment.
If you want to be more productive while feeling accomplished and happy, the “Less is more” system will get you there.
Define Your Goal
The first step to building a system is understanding what we are trying to achieve.
Are you building a business? Are you writing a book? Do you want to be in the best shape of your life?
You have to answer these questions before you can build a system to get there.
A puzzle always comes with a drawing of the finished product, but that puzzle is put together one piece at a time.
Break It Down To The Smallest Steps
Goals are not the story, goals are the ending.
Writing a story is a multi-step process.
1. Find an idea
2. Research
3. Outline
4. First draft
5. Edit for clarity
6. Write the final version
I spend at least 10 hours each week building this newsletter, creating social media content, and looking for new ideas. I used to believe that to achieve success all of this needed to be done at once, but believing that never created something I could be proud of.
Breaking tasks down to their smallest parts shows us a map. Following a map gets us to the destination. Getting to the destination is reaching your goal.
When you focus on taking one step at a time you will always be moving forward.
Find Two Good Hours
There are only so many hours in the day, but not all are created equal.
Some hours are $100 bills, some are $1’s.
When you wake up, you immediately go to the time bank ATM to collect your daily allowance.
The two hours after you wake up are the $100’s.
The 8 hours you spend at work are the $20’s.
The 2 hours after you get home are $10’s.
The time before bed are the $1’s.
Whether you consider yourself a morning person or a night owl, you can’t fight science. The most successful people you can think of all have one thing in common, they are careful with how they spend their $100’s. They know they only get two, so they spend them on the most important things for daily success.
80% of my writing is done in the morning, it’s when my best ideas are present. I spend those hours reading, journaling, and turning those ideas into words on the page.
The morning is when your brain is fresh and you can use that to your advantage, tackling the biggest tasks of the day while everyone else is asleep. So get to work, exchange your $100’s for one hour of personal development, and one hour of focused work dedicated to one piece of your larger goal.
Clock Out
You can’t write about a book in a day and attempting to do so will give you one good chapter, and 10 that need to be thrown away.
1. You feel like you’re always behind.
2. Your relationships suffer because you ignore everything else in your life in pursuit of your goal.
3. The quality of your work is subpar at best, meaning your results are going to be poor.
Hustle culture tells you that the only way to reach your goal is to give up everything else, but if you aren’t enjoying your life, are you even living?
Putting time to relax on my calendar boosted my productivity more than long hours of busy work ever could.
The answer to productivity is simple.
1. Spend the first two hours of your day on the most important task, the thing that excites you the most.
2. Save your busy work for when your energy is low.
3. Set a time to Intentionally step away each day and do something fun for the sake of doing it.
When you disconnect, you give your brain time to recharge and prepare for your next trip to the ATM.
Spend today wisely, and do it again tomorrow.