Real World Productivity

Joining me for this episode is Andrew Hartman, a seasoned operations leader and the founder of Time Boss, to uncover his insights into optimizing productivity.

With experience working with clients, teams, and more, Andrew developed his own systems that he shares freely with others. Drawing from his experience as both a founder and fractional COO for an IT provider, Andrew emphasizes the importance of habits over tools in achieving sustainable productivity.

Andrew and I share many common thoughts when it comes to productivity, and we touch on several such as being honest with yourself, making your time count, and the importance of a daily routine.

Join us as we delve into Andrew's approach to leveraging digital tools for tracking and journaling, reflecting on experiences for growth and pattern recognition. Learn how habit stacking and a strong sense of identity play crucial roles in effective time management.

Books, Resources, Tools, or URLs mentioned:

Tags: #productivity #timeboss #adammoody #andrewhartman #timemanagement #productivityacademy

Joining me this time on the Productivity Podcast is Dr. Don Davis, author, and established coach & consultant for businesses in the healthcare and life sciences industries.

A big proponent of daily routines and time blocking, Dr. Don starts off his day by meditating and journaling to close out the previous day and prepare for what’s coming.

While it may sound weird to you to close a day in the morning of the next day, this is what works for him and it’s something that everyone has to take into account when building up a daily routine.

There are a lot of different routines that big names like Cal Newport follow that work for them, but that doesn’t mean that they will work for YOU—trust me on this one, I’ve tried...

You need to find something that works for you instead of trying to force yourself to follow a routine that was not meant for you.

Dr. Don shared several great methods to deal with over-commitment, focus, and goal setting in this episode of the podcast.

My personal favorites are the “DARE” method (listen and find out more!) as well as time blocking with color coding to show how much time you’re putting towards your goals.

There are many great actionable nuggets in the episode, and with all of his experience helping others, I highly suggest checking out Don’s book (link below), website, and more.

Books, Resources, Tools, or URL’s mentioned:

Check out the full post and more here: https://productivity.academy/news/episode-48-focus-to-avoid-overcommitment-with-dr-don-davis/

Joining me today is David Salib, Associate Product Manager at Lyft and a man with many cool side-products...one of them being Momento, a podcast app that I’ve been using a lot lately (check out more on the app in these videos here and here).

As usual, I asked him about his daily routine.

Like many of the guests of the Real World Productivity Podcast, David’s days begin with an early visit to the gym, followed by time for reading; then he starts working and after that, he devotes his free time to side projects.

Some of these side projects are Momento, a podcast app that lets you transcribe audio on the fly (and add your own notes), and Catena, a bible app.

David was interesting to me because I don’t know that many people that manage to work a full-time job and then spend their free time working on long-term side projects with consistency.

Another good note from David was his saying that you have to build your downtime to avoid burnout. The way he does this is by organizing his day in a way that allows him to go for walks or having breaks.

Listen to this episode and learn:

+Why you should have days when you don't work on your side projects and don't feel bad for not doing it

+Why having more responsibilities make you have more time

+When to scale and add more people to a project

Resources mentioned:

In this episode of the Real World Productivity Podcast, I interviewed Jeroen Corthout, CEO and Co-founder of the CRM system Salesflare.

Before founding Salesflare, Jeroen worked for several companies and started many others that weren't long-term successful before settling into Salesflare and beginning the long-term push for success.

We covered a lot of areas, and on top of those, Joeren shared a lot about his routines:

After a morning exercise routine that involves running, situps, and pushups, Jeroen begins his working day with a standup meeting.

This is just a short meeting where everyone says what they worked on the previous day and what are the plans for the current day.

This helps a lot when you're planning out your day and let everyone else in your team know what you'll do and vice versa.

Having effective short meetings like this gets everyone on the same page quickly and helps projects move forward.

Jeroen also shared some advice on how small businesses or solopreneurs can and should operate their prospecting so that they always have a pipeline.

Listen to this episode and learn:

Books, Resources, Tools, or URL’s mentioned:

Check out the full post and more here: https://productivity.academy/podcast/episode-46-the-varied-path-to-routine-excellence-jeroen-corthout/

Joining me this episode is Pauline Malubay, Small Business Operations Expert, & Business Growth Strategist.

I like to start these podcast episodes by asking about morning routines.

Although it may vary, Pauline says that she can't start her day without coffee (and I totally agree!), following this comes reading, and 5-minute meditation using the Shine app.

Meditation has been a constant these past few episodes and I agree with that. It is very important but it doesn't work the same for everyone.

You have to do it your way - some do yoga, some do visualization, affirmation, and many other styles and types.

If you're starting and don't know what to do, there are a lot of free apps and Youtube videos that can help you with this and we both agree that starting this way can save you time and money.

Moving into the business realm, Pauline noted that she didn't like startups where everything was "messy" and was given no other reason than "That's just the way things are".

Now, after applying processes to her own side hustle, she works with CEOs to make their ideas turn into processes and implement them throughout the company to make things run smoothly.

One thing that she mentioned and I find to be true is that you need to "slow down to speed up".

What this means is that you need to slow down and implement processes and make sure team members understand and put them in place before you overload your system and it just gets harder to fix.

Pauline is active on several platforms like Linkedin, Instagram, Facebook, and many more.

The way she finds the time to do this is by looking at what needs to be done and see if she can Automate, Outsource, Delegate or Delete them. I love this - reminds me of my weekly reviews which are super effective and over time help identify areas to improve.

Favorite Books

The Alchemist https://productivity.academy/thealchemist

Millionaire Mind https://productivity.academy/millionairemind

12 Week Year https://productivity.academy/12weekyear

Mentioned in this episode:

Slack https://productivity.academy/slack

Joining me this week is Neha Naik; Entrepreneur & Founder of RecruitGyan and several other businesses.

We covered a lot of ground in our conversation - including Neha’s daily routine with the importance of doing what matters first:

Neha’s also a strong believer in balance - having started several businesses, built teams, and helping run the family she knows the importance of avoiding burnout.

We also talked about perfectionism and how it can stop you from reaching what you really want. In her words, it’s better to take imperfect action and get results that you can iterate and improve upon. This can apply to yourself, outsourcing, just about anything, really, and is great advice for anyone that finds themself getting hung up on the details.

Listen to this episode and learn:

Mentioned in this episode:

Find Out More About Neha Here

Check out the full post and more here: https://productivity.academy/podcast/episode-44-imperfect-action-for-real-results-with-neha-naik/

Joining me this week is Sydney Wong; Entrepreneur & Co-Founder of VenturX, and author of “How to have a good day.”

We talked about her daily routine - she has very specific routines for both her mornings and evenings and these involve things like setting the most important tasks for the day, weighted blankets, and bubble baths! (She is the second guest to mention bubble baths so I’m gonna have to try this out).

Sydney’s also a strong believer that success comes from your systems, the stronger your routines are, the more successful you’ll be.

Listen to this episode and learn:

Mentioned in this episode:

Joining me this week is Robby Slaughter, workflow and productivity expert.

With a background in technology and mathematics, Robby discovered that he liked best helping people overcome their problems rather than finding a solution to the problems themselves.

One of the things that he focuses on is not only the “how” of productivity (that next cool to-do list that claims to help you master everything) but on the “why” of productivity.

Robby thinks that human beings are at their best when they’re doing one of two things:

And that by mixing the two troubles arise.

Productivity is about making the decision to do something or deciding not to do something and embracing the power of choice and not the mandatory nature of output.

If you decide to relax and manage to do it, you’re being productive.

Another thing that Robby believes in is to write down with pen and paper what’s on your mind so you can take it out of your head, focus on what’s on hand, and then address it when you need to.

This is backed up by the Zeigarnik effect.

Listen to this episode and learn:

Mentioned in this episode

Check out the full post and more here: https://productivity.academy/podcast/episode-42-exploring-the-why-of-productivity-with-robby-slaughter/

Joining me this week is Zeb Evans, founder, and CEO of ClickUp.

Being an entrepreneur from an early age, Zeb taught himself how to code, dropped out of college, and created a social media firm. A lot of frustration from productivity software at the time was what inspired Zeb to create ClickUp.

If you haven’t heard of it, ClickUp is a project management & productivity app I’ve been using for the past 6 months that has tons of integrations and lots of features built into it that aim to reduce the number of apps you need to use.

I asked Zeb about his personal routine and the first thing he does right after waking up at 4:30 AM surprised me a lot: Taking a bath (if you wanna know his reason, listen to the episode 😉).

One of the things that make ClickUp and its team stand out is their core values, one of them being “Urgency and consistency.” Having had 4 near-death experiences, Zeb puts a lot of emphasis into doing the most you can do now and not leaving things for later.

We discussed a lot of topics, one of them was leadership. Zeb’s principles involve encouraging growth, sharing knowledge, and reducing red tape.

Listen to this episode and learn:

Mentioned in this episode:

Joining me this week is Dr. Frank Buck, productivity speaker, author, and time management coach.

His efforts towards being an organized person began back in his high school years and went on through his college years and his almost 30 years in the public education system, and now beyond.

Even though Frank has been going mostly paperless and managing his organization digitally since 2001, he still uses a paper journal that’s always with him for note-taking.

Of note, Frank’s days actually start the evening before when he reviews his goals for the day, checks what was done, what wasn’t done, what needs to be rescheduled, and then what’s in store for the next day.

One thing that prevents people from being organized is not having a system - I’m in complete agreement with Frank here. You don’t need to have an overly complicated system, just by having a place to write your to-do’s instead of relying on your memory you’ll be way ahead of the majority of people.

It’s a “stepping stone” to systems that people like Frank and I put to use and adapt over time.

But, if you want to go even further, Frank shared with me the system he uses and has helped people go from an email inbox with 52,000 emails in it (this is not an exaggeration) to only 2.

Listen to this episode and learn:

Mentioned in this episode:

Check out the full post and more here: https://productivity.academy/podcast/episode-40-organized-for-success-with-dr-frank-buck/