From Busy to Productive

In this episode, Pete Mohr delves into the ever-elusive topic of productivity. It’s not about cramming more hours into your day; it's about making those hours count. Discover why the solution to your constant busyness isn’t more time—it’s more strategy. You're about to find out how you can work smarter, not just harder.

Here are a few things Pete covers:

• What productivity truly means for business leaders
• The three-step "O.A.O" formula for streamlining operations
• The concept of "Who, Not How" in productivity
• The importance of focus time and how to achieve it
• Tools that can automate your tasks and save hours

It's time to take action:

Stop multitasking and start time-blocking. Identify your peak productivity hours using Ari's "Peak Time" app, and schedule your most important tasks during those periods. Your next move? Delegate tasks that don't require your specific expertise. Let go to grow.

Download Link: If you found this episode useful, don’t forget to download Ari's "Peak Time" app available on Apple and Google Play.

Are you looking to make some changes in your business and your life in 2024?  Head over to speaktopete.com and book a chat with me to see if we're the right fit!

Transcript

Pete Mohr: 0:35

All right, today we are diving into a topic that's on every business owners mind. It's productivity, you know, the drill, you've got a mountain of tasks to complete? I know I certainly do. But you're wondering why you're not getting it all done? Well, if that's the case, this episode is for you. It's all around productivity. And it's one of the 10 pillars of leadership that we've been talking about here on the business owner breakthrough. And first, we really have to talk a little bit about what productivity is for you, as a leader in this not just about working longer hours, which most people sort of do, it seems in small business, it's about getting the most quality work done in the hours that you are working and your team, right? The truth is, you're not the most productive at every single little task in your business. Recognize that. And you're one step closer to optimizing your operations really remember our podcast a while ago, maybe a year or so ago with Ari Mizel. And if not, go back and check it out. Because it's really golden. It's the one called perfecting your processes. Our he is one of my coaches. And he came up with the Oh, a Oh, formula that we talked about their optimize, automate, and outsource. And it's really great way to think about systems and processes. And before you try to throw out more hours at a task, you might ask yourself, number one, can it be optimized? Oh, a Oh, right. streamline the process, this is where it all begins. Number two, can it be automated, there are so many API's tools, tricks, all sorts of apps, different things that can help you along the way here these days, use software and tools to get it done when you can. And most often it will take away a lot of the human error too, which is really can cause a lot of productivity problems down the road. And number three, if you can't automate whatever it is you're trying to do, you want to outsource it. And you can outsource in two different ways. One is within your internal team, outsource it off of your plate and on to somebody else within your team. And the other one is to outsource it to an outside professional that knows what the heck they're doing and can get it done for you. Right. Another great book, while back was written by Benjamin Hardy on Dan Sullivan's and Dean Jackson's idea around who not how you don't need to know how to do it, you just need to know who can do it for you. Right. So that's kind of an interesting way of looking at some of the stuff too, to get all of this stuff off of your shoulders, and let somebody else tackle some of the things you need to get done. Getting back to the O A O framework, it's very precise, and you can't change the flow of that you can't automate and then optimize, you need to optimize first, whatever it is, then try to automate it. And then if that doesn't work, go to the outsource side of things. Next piece of the puzzle here for productivity is really around focus time. And you've heard me talk about free time, flex time and focus time in the past. And really around focus time. Do you know how long it takes you to enter a state of flow or deep focus? Research says around 20 or so minutes, every time you get interrupted, it's like hitting the reset button on that countdown. So guarding your focus, like a hawk is so crucial, you can't afford to have your focus time interrupted by lower level decisions that can be made by others in your team without your involvement. And think about the dings and rings and rings of your phone, your computer, your iPad, people, you know, entering in and out of your office, all of those things that are taking you out of that state of deep focus. So take note of that over the next week, how many times you can get down into deep focus, because part of the whole structure here is time blocking. And if you sort of pause the podcast, grab a piece of paper, we're gonna map out sort of your ideal workday, you got to write down your must dues, your meetings and your tasks. But listen, don't schedule them back to back. This is one of the big pieces where people lose productivity by scheduling back to back meetings along the way where they can't get stuff done, they can't wrap up their thoughts. And in the deep sense of flow, it's hard to go back to some of those earlier thoughts, and be productive around that. So you need gaps. And you need the free time windows for contingencies or sometimes really just to breathe and get a little bit of downtime in between. And that's one of the definite focus and the time mapping that I'm seeing out there is that everybody seems to be back to back to back. And it's not allowing them for better productivity by having gaps in between 15 or 20 minutes between sort of focus times so that they can breathe even. All right. So first of all, you want to define those tasks, list out the tasks that you have to do. Number two is to prioritize which ones are the most important and do them during your peak hours. HOURS talk a little bit about peak hours in a couple seconds. Number three is to allocate the time that you think is going to be necessary. And then some assigned blocks to the time of each task. It's okay to give yourself a bit more time than you think is needed, because we often will run over time. And if you're back to back and running over time, that's going to cause a lot of stress, not only for you, but for the other people that you have promised your time to right. Number four is to share your calendar. Once it's all laid out, make sure you share it with anyone who needs to know your schedule, I love Google Calendar, whether you use Apple Calendar, Google Calendar, any of the different calendars, Microsoft Office, whatever the case is, the idea is have it in a format that you can share with everybody that needs to know. And anybody that's taking your time, right, because they need to know that you're in focus time, too. So getting back to that idea of peak time, which is when you are most focused in a given day. Everybody has different circadian rhythms, and you're up and down during the day where you naturally feel lols. Or you naturally feel like ready to go different times of the day. And one of the best ways that I've found to figure that out for people is by using Ari's app, and it's aptly called peak time, you can find it on Apple, or you can find it on Google Play for your iPhone or for your Android phones. And really, it's just a very simple app that will allow you to better understand when your peak times are throughout the day. And it may be very interesting to you, you may think your peak times are at given time. And then once you use this app for a couple of weeks, and really hone in on your peak times, you may find that it's quite a bit different than you think it is. And then you start time mapping in your calendar around those blocks where you think you're going to need your most focused time. And it will change the way you do your work and be productive, right. Okay, now you've got the basics down. Let's talk a little bit about some advanced strategies for maximizing some of the productivity and that of your team. There are tons and tons of tools that are designed to boost productivity. But don't get bogged down on all the options. Just pick a few that align with the needs of your team and your business. We use Trello for project management, for example, some people use Slack for communication or maybe Zapier to connect the various apps, the right tools can really save you hours. And that's where the automation side of things goes. So if you aren't familiar with a lot of this stuff, who on your team is and who can do some research and bring you back some of this sort of stuff. You know, delegation isn't a sign of weakness, it's a sign of a wise leader. And we're talking about the 10 pillars leadership here, right. So who knows where their time is best spent. Think about it, if an hourly rate of the owner, you the owner is 100 bucks, let's say it doesn't make sense for you to do a $20 an hour task, right? So delegate it, focus on the things that only you can do and you do best in your business. Think about those interruptions, right? You know, those times when you're deep in work, and someone just walks in your office, I'm gonna say it again, because it's so important set boundaries, make it clear that your focus time is sacred, put up a Do Not Disturb sign or set a status on your communication tools that says I'm not available right now. For years, people believed in this open door policy. But if you need to get focused time work done, you can't have an open door policy in that way. You can have open door policies at certain specific times. But you shouldn't have it all day, anytime, right? That's where people get into the problems here. Being proactive is super awesome, as well. But sometimes, you can jump the gun and make sure you're not acting on incomplete or incorrect information. A hasty decision can sometimes do more harm than good to your business, and can cause productivity issues along the way, not only for you, but especially if you've aligned and assign this to someone else in your team, it will take them out of some of the stuff that they need to do. So you really have to kind of watch that a little bit. One of the things that seems to trouble a lot of business owners around productivity too is this idea that they act too early on things. We want to get things rolling generally as entrepreneurs and being proactive is good. But sometimes you can jump the gun and make sure you're not acting on incomplete or incorrect information. Because a hasty decision can sometimes do more harm than good not only for you, but for your team. So now you've got some advanced strategies revisit your time blocking exercise from earlier, is there a way to optimize it even further? Can you fit in some planning and strategy time that so many business owners say they'd never have time to work on their business instead of in their business, right? It's that idea around being in the balcony not always on the dance floor, taking that global view of things. Sometimes that needs to be pieced in and time mapped in into your calendar or the week, right? All right now you're armed with practical strategies to be more productive without burning yourself out. And if all this sounds great, but you're still stuck in that operator mindset, you want to elevate to the owner mindset from operator owner, as we often talk about here on the podcast from frustrated to freedom right? Then just head on over to speak to pete.com and book an appointment to see if we're right fit that speak to pete.com. And let's make your business more efficient, and free up more time for you to do the things that you want to do within your business and outside of your business to because like we talked about businesses, Yang and our personal lives are ying and yang a lot of times stuck together, but we want to have the best of both worlds as business owners. So that's it for today, folks. Tune in next time for more insights to help you break through as a business owner subscribe to the podcast that they get into your phone every week seamlessly. Tell your friends that would be doing us a big favor for listenership and a big favor to your friend to help them take the journey from operator owner in their business. So until next time, take action stay productive, make it happen and most of all, make it a great day

Buzz Burbank: 11:56

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