One of the obstacles to consistency is the perceived “lack” of time.
Everyone says they’re “busy” or they “don’t have time,” but the reality is that you do have time.
People know that “time is money,” but not many people actually treat time as real cash!
Time is your most precious asset and the only thing you can’t get back.
You can get money back and, in some cases, thanks to modern medicine and proper nutrition, you can even get parts of your health back. But time is the one thing you can never get back.
Here are the 10 Rules of the Consistency Productivity Regimen that will help you get more done in less time.
Rule 1: Be a Defender of Your Time
Success begins in the mind, and having a productive day is the same way.
You must make a conscious decision to battle against the nonstop distractions and win the day.
You can’t just wake up and have a carefree approach.
If you do that, you’ll be sucked in to different things and end up not achieving anything you want to accomplish.
Rule 2: 95% of Time Management Is Attitude
Most people think it’s the tricks and things you do that create more time, but it’s all about your attitude and how you perceive things.
You know how you don’t have time to follow up with 10 people?
If someone told you that they’d brutally attack your loved ones if you didn’t follow up, you’d magically find the time to do it!
That’s an extreme and unpleasant example. Of course, no one will ever brutally attack your loved ones, and that’s why you find excuses to say you don’t have time.
There are other examples that are less severe.
If your boss told you that you would get a 5% decrease in pay if you didn’t make those follow-up calls, then you’d magically find the time to make them.
If the consequences are severe, you’ll always find the time to make something happen, and that makes you realize that, in the end, it’s all about excuses.
Rule 3: Plan Your Week
“If you fail to prepare, you are preparing to fail.” (H.K. Williams)
All top achievers plan out their days, weeks, and some even their years. Tom Brady, arguably the greatest NFL quarterback of all time, micromanages every activity in his days. He has every workout, practice, treatment, meal, and rest time all scheduled three years in advance (www. SI.com, 2014).
The best time to plan your week is on weekends and before the new work week starts. My favorite day to recap and plan is on Sundays.
Rule 4: Plan Your Day the Night Before
Every night, before you go to bed, list the three most important things you must do, rank them, and then schedule them into your calendar.
Rule 5: Plan Out Your Prospects
Most new entrepreneurs waste mental energy and the small amount of time they have on deciding who they should reach out to.
They finally have the time to work on their businesses, but waste it by scrolling on their newsfeeds or filtering messages to find people to reach out to, and then time runs out.
Every second of your time should be spent on sales- generating activities on your checklist.
To increase your productivity, spend time on the weekends and especially the night before to plan out your prospects.
Here are some ideas for what you could do:
– Go to my biking group on Facebook and meet five new friends.
– Follow up with five college friends who I haven’t talked to in
months (Terrence, Kevin, Bob, Kathy, Joe).
Be intentional and start each day knowing exactly what you have to do—otherwise, you’re going to waste tons of time and never get anything productive done.
Rule 6: Always Have an End Time to Every Task
As you schedule your tasks, always set an end time where the activity must stop. This prevents things from taking too long and ruining the rest of your planned day.
Use a timer and other tools and, once the time is over, you must move to the next task on the calendar.
This creates urgency, making you stay focused and work faster.
It also decreases the chance of you wasting time with overthinking and the endless drive for perfection.
Rule 7: Two-Second Rule
The Two-Second Rule prevents overthinking and gets you to take action fast. It has helped many people I’ve coached to overcome fear.
Here is how it works.
The moment you think of someone you “should reach out to,” you need to reach out to that person ASAP—in under two seconds.
That is really easy to do with smartphones today. You just need to take your phone out and send that person a message.
By taking fast action, you prevent yourself from talking yourself out of it.
Rule 8: Avoid Multitasking
Our brains work better and become more efficient when we’re doing the same type of activity over and over again.
Every time we start a new thing, it takes our brains a few minutes to warm up and adjust.
A good example is exercising and reading.
It’s much easier to exercise for 30 minutes than it is to exercise for five minutes and then read for five minutes, and then go back to exercising, and to keep doing this back and forth!
You won’t have a good workout and you won’t remember what you read.
Here’s a common mistake that many new entrepreneurs make.
They want to create a good social media post, but, while they’re in the middle of writing the post, they reply back to someone who messages them.
When they go back to finishing their post, they’ve lost their train of thought and have to take minutes to read and think back to what they were going to post.
Another example is when you’re replying to someone’s message, but then all of a sudden you get a notification that someone commented on your social media post.
You look at that notification and then, when you go back to your message, you have to reread what you wrote and spend a few seconds to remember what you were going to say.
In both examples, you’ve wasted 20–30 seconds or sometimes even minutes on getting your thoughts back, and that is time you’ll never get back in your life.
You would have done much better if you had focused on what you were doing first and then paid attention to the second task later.
This happens to most people throughout the day—so it’s no wonder people don’t have time!
Rule 9: Batching
Instead of multitasking, learn to batch tasks. Do the same type of activity at the same time.
Our brains have to “warm up” and get used to every new activity.
This is a reason why multitasking doesn’t work.
You probably do this all the time already.
You run all your errands at once.
You don’t run one errand and go home and then go back to run an- other errand and go home.
Rule 10: Learn to Say “No” More Often
Component 2 of The Consistency System talks about how you have to say “no” and stop do- ing some things you’re currently doing so that you can create the time to work on your checklist.
You also must say “no” to new opportunities and distractions that come up. Stop looking at shiny new objects!
You have limited time and energy, and everything you pay attention to sucks it up. It’s like your phone battery.
Everything you do drains it little by little.
If people approach you to look at different things, say “no!”
Not “maybe” or “send me the info and I’ll take a look at it.” Just say “no!”
Saying “no” will let you focus on your business and will give you the freedom you want.
You can say “no” in a friendly manner. This is what I say all the time.
“Thanks for thinking of me. Right now, I’m working on a major project and I need to focus on it. But please check back with me six months from now. Thanks for your understanding.”
This script is also a test to see if the person is wasting my time.
If I don’t get a follow-up in six months, that means I’ve saved myself valuable time. It means that the person is not successful (because of the lack of follow-up) or that the opportunity was never that good to begin with.
This was an excerpt from my best selling book, The Consistency Pill.