The Stronger Revolution

On this episode, we are talking about being productive.  In order to reach our goals, we have to be productive during the day in ways that move us forward.  But, what does it mean to be productive?  Being productive isn’t about getting lots of things done during the your day. We can mark a lot of things off of our to-do list, but never actually achieve anything important.  Productivity is the intentional application of our energy toward tasks that will move us more toward our goals.

Productivity requires good time management.  Time management is the intentional use of our time to complete intentional action.  Thus, we need to have control over our time and then use that time to complete the tasks we need to do.  All of this requires us to plan and act with intention.  If we have no intention to our actions, then we don’t know what the end result is of those actions.  Our energy may be applied to our goals, or it may be wasted on something mindless.

In order to be productive, we have to control our environment.   There are constant distractions around us all the time.  Every one of those distractions will block us from using the time we have available to us to complete the tasks we need to complete.  In order to be as productive as possible we can do the following:

There are millions of productivity hacks out there, but they all try to achieve this list.  We cannot multitask, plain and simple.  You have to do one thing at a time.  When you are at work, be at work.  When you are at the gym, focus on your workout.  When you are at home, focus on your family, friends, or relaxing.

When you act with intention, there is space for things like social media and watching TV.  Those distractions should not be used to keep you from being productive.  They should be used to help you relax for a few moments, turn off your brain, and allow yourself to refocus.  If you don’t want to use technology to do this, great.  You can go for a walk, go for a hike, read a book for entertainment, practice a hobby, whatever it is your enjoy.  You don’t have to be working toward your goals 100% of the time, but when it is time to work on your goals, be productive with your time and energy.

To learn more on this topic, check out the podcast:

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Recently, on The Stronger Revolution, we have been talking about mastering the basics on our day.  We started with sleep.  Next, we talked about diet.  On this episode, we are covering exercise.  Exercise is important to our life, but really isn’t necessary nor urgent.  In other words, we can survive without exercise.  Exercise will directly impact our day, our life, and how we function.  However, even exercise can’t guarantee that we will live healthy forever.  All exercise can do is give us the best chance to live a long productive life.  And, a long productive life means more time to live our purpose and achieve our goals through the aggregation of marginal gains.

When we are approaching an exercise program, we need something that will help us become well-rounded humans.  That means we need to focus on weight training, gymnastics, and cardiovascular movements.  The combination of these three modalities will give us the greatest benefit in the least amount of time.  Functional fitness programs, like CrossFit, will hit all three elements in a short workout duration, like one hour.  You want to do this 3-5 times per week to see the real benefit.  The best thing you can do is get up and get started.

For more information on the importance of exercise in our lives, and the ten skills improved through an exercise program like CrossFit, check out the episode:

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There are four areas of your life that are basic to everyone and that you should be putting energy toward mastering:  Sleep, Diet, Exercise, Putting First Things First.  Once you have sleep under control, your diet will have the next largest impact on your body.  Your diet is your primary energy source.  Put in good food, and you will have good energy.  Put in bad food, and you will have bad energy.  However, diet is a really subjecting topic. EVERYONE has their opinion about what is healthy, or ok to eat, and what is not. Recently, those opinions have even started to include when is a good time to eat vs when you should be fasting.

Regardless of your opinion, it has been shown through study after study that there are three necessary principles to a good diet:

Simply following these three principles will improve your diet.  These three principles will probably improve your diet enough that you don’t need to modify your diet more.  Getting these three principles of a good diet consistent on a daily basis takes some people a long time.  Once they have decided enough time to getting this consistent, they are good to go, and don’t need more modification.

However, if more control and modifications to your diet is desired, next start to clean it up.  Back in Episode 2 of The Stronger Revolution Podcast, we talked about putting every aspect of your life on a scale of sick to well.  The more you could move your life toward “WELL” the better you off you will be.  However, the choice is yours.  So, once you have a consistent diet, if you want to take the next step, try to move your diet from processed crap to healthy home preparations.  From there, more control looks like Macro counting and then into specific portion control for fats, proteins, and carbs.  We always recommend a diet/nutrition coach if you want to take a lot of control of your diet.  It is always good to have a neutral third party looking at what you are eating.

For more information on the steps listed above, check out our episode:

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Sleep is one of the most basic and necessary parts of our life.  We cannot operate forever and must sleep at some point.  Think of your body as any other mechanical object with an energy source.  Eventually, the energy runs out and must be recharged to continue.  Like a cellphone, your car, or your computer, you will be forced to recharge.  In order to optimize your life, you need to master the basics.  Sleep is one of those basics.  If you aren’t maximizing your sleep, everything else will suffer.  That doesn’t mean you have to get the max recommended 7-8 hours of sleep each night.  However, you need to maximize as much as possible.

Lack of sleep will adversely impact your life in multiple ways. It will affect your health, your diet, your heart, your hormones, your attention, your emotions, and more.  Lack of sleep will slow you down.  You will lose concentration, be unable to absorb new information, and have a hard time in social situations.

There is even a concept with micro sleep that comes with lack of sleep.  Think of micro sleep like short blackout periods during the day that you don’t process what is happening.  This could be during a car ride, in an important meeting, or some other time that you cannot control.

There are multiple strategies that can help you maximize your sleep at night.  It is recommended that a health adult receives 7-8 hours of sleep each night.  However, sometimes, it is more important to get a restful night of sleep, even if that means less than 7-8 hours.  A night time routine that helps you wind down can be a good start.  Controlling your food intake, alcohol, nicotine, and caffeine intake within an hour or two before bed can help.  Make sure your bedroom is dark and cool.  Finally, remove electronic devices like TVs, phones, computers, and tablets from the bedroom.

For more information about the importance of sleep, and how to get a good night of sleep, check out the Podcast:

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Chances are, when you grew up, you found yourself following one of two paths to success:

I have a real problem with the first path.  We should strive to do things others cannot.  We should want to challenge ourselves.  As Ryan Holiday would say, “the obstacle is the way.”  This mentality of “anyone can do it,” means either you aren’t special or the task at hand isn’t special.  It you aren’t challenged, you won’t progress.  Since we are trying to grow and progress by 1% every day, difficulty is a necessary element in our lives.

The second path, is better, but still not perfect.  This path usually starts with, “You can do anything you want.”  This creates an environment that raises children believing they can do anything they want, right here, right now.  However, it’s not that simple.  We have to understand that you can do anything if you try hard enough and put in the work.  Thus, the second part of the phrase, “if you work hard enough,” certainly helps to add something clarity and reality to this path.  However, it still leaves us asking questions.  Like, “What kind of work should I be doing?”

This is a question I struggled with personally for a long time.  Work to me simply meant being busy.  The busier I was, the more successful I was.  However, before that tower of busyness came tumbling down; and, before I got stuck at the top of the sky scraper miserably trying to hold on to prevent it form tumbling down, it finally dawned on me what hard work is . . . working on the basics.  No matter what your desired master craft is, you have to work on and master the basics.  When I was trying to climb the financial ladder to success in my legal practice, I wasn’t spending any time on the basics.  I wasn’t building a strong foundation.  I took the basics I learned in law school and shot from the hip hoping no one would notice my amateur nature.  When I opened the gym, I spent a long time on the basics.  I still come back to them today.

When we are talking about our lives, we need to master the basics of living a good life before we can/should add any more layers (like work or a family).  I believe there are four basics that need to be mastered in everyone’s life:

When you start to focus on the basics, things you can control, it’s amazing how your goals will start to accomplish themselves.

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When we are trying to live every day better than the day before, habits are the best way to make sure we are optimizing our time in the best way possible.  Habits are regular consistent actions, performed on a regular consistent basis, without thinking.  So, if we can form habits that improve our lives 1% every day, then we know we are always improving our lives without even thinking about it.  Additionally, we all have bad habits that we need to break.  The best way to break a bad habit is to develop a good habit to take its place.

To form habits, you have to follow the 3 R’s as set forth by the Habit Guru, James Clear:  Reminder, Response, Reward.  First, set a reminder to perform an action.  That response action is the habit you are trying to create.  Then, reward yourself for carrying out the action.  Everyone loves a reward and your brain is more apt to make a change that brings it pleasure.

For more information on habit forming, and some examples, check out our latest podcast episode:

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On the latest episode of The Stronger Revolution, I discuss the difference between Self Awareness and Introspection.  This was a listener request, but fits with out theme for the show.  When we are trying to improve our lives every day through the aggregation of marginal gains, we need some awareness of ourselves.  Self-awareness is being aware of the image you are portraying to the world.  Are you aware of your body language, responses, or facial expressions.  Do you do things that annoy you when other people do the same things?  Can you see yourself from a third party prospective?

Introspection, by comparison, is what happens on the inside.  What are you motivations and why are those your motivations?  What is your purpose?  Do you have core values?  What is happening on the inside that causes your external expressions?  Most people have a hard time with true introspection because it requires some deep thoughts and you risk experiencing some tough emotions.  It is much easier to live in a world of constant distraction where you never have to face these true feelings.

In a world of the internet, tv, and social media, we never have to worry about self awareness and introspection.  There is constant external distraction, constant media to consume.  We can live through the lives of other people.  However, if you are ever going to improve yourself and improve your life, you have to take the time to look at yourself and look inward.  Your values drive your decisions.  Your decisions drive your actions.  Your actions drive your life.  Improve your values and you automatically improve your life.

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For highly creative people, and highly productive people, burnout is a reality.  Most of the time, burnout hits after a long, multi-month, period of hard dedicated work toward a goal.  Without proper rest, or some decent down time, burnout can kill continued productivity.  When it hits, it hits, and will slow you down dramatically.

I believe burnout happens to most people not only on a long term project basis, but also weekly.  The first step is recognizing it. Burnout can show itself in the form of loss of motivation, an irritable response to simple things, and the feeling of just wanting to give up.  You need to develop a level of introspection that will allow you to see yourself in an unbiased manner.

Once you recognize weekly burnout, start to prevent it week-to-week by sticking to your weekly structure.  Scheduling your week, and your to-do items, will allow you to space out your work.  This is guarantee that the tasks get accomplished, and prevent you from front loading your week with so much work that you burn out by the back half of the week.

Finally, control your controllables.  Get sleep.  Any sleep, as much as you can.  We can’t all make time for 8 hours of sleep.  But, make it a priority to get as much as you can.   Clean up your diet.  A bad diet means bad energy and messed up hormones.  Keep it clean so the engine can run smoothly.  Finally, give yourself space from the creative process and technology to rest and recover your brain.

For more information on this topic of burnout, recognizing it, and preventing it, check out the full episode of The Stronger Revolution:

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On this Episode of The Stronger Revolution, we talk about The Process.  There are a lot of different definitions for The Process. However, for our purposes, The Process is how we approach the tasks that will lead to our 1% daily gains.  Basically, there are three steps:

Improving our lives on a daily basis through the aggregation of marginal gains requires us to embrace change in our life.  After all, if we do everything tomorrow the same way we do it today, there won’t be any improvement.  Change can be hard to embrace, especially for those of us who really like our structured routines.  Additionally, that change is going to take many different forms.  Change might mean a new morning routine, different diet, adding a new daily task, having to learn something new, or performing a regular task in a different way.  If we simply accept the change, and go through the motions, then our opportunity to advance won’t be fully realized.  We would stop at step two of the The Process outlined above.

Instead, we have to embrace the change, welcome the change, and take it on in its fullest.  If we are trying to gain a new certification, it’s not enough to just read the book and memorize the material.  We have read it, contemplate it, consider it, challenge it, and fully understand it.  At the gym, it isn’t enough for me to simply teach someone to do a squat.  I have to learn and know how to teach the best air squat possible and then continually convey that message to my clients.  It isn’t enough for me to stand in front of a fitness class and tell them what to do to get from point A to point B.  There may be more efficient ways to run a class, better ways to convey the message I am trying to deliver, or better ways to train people in my class.  The Process is the constant pursuit of doing “it” better.  The Process isn’t what we have to do.  We’ve already talked about that in previous episodes of the Podcast.  The Process is how we do it.

Henry Heinz describes The Process perfectly, “To the a common thing uncommonly well brings success.”

For more information on The Process, check out the The Stronger Revolution Podcast Episode below.

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When you are organizing your day, you want to put your important things first.  That means you are accomplishing a task that will move you closer to your goal before anything in your day has a chance to distract you.  We see this happen so much.  You get to the office with all intention to get to work and bust out that To-Do list.  However, the phone starts to ring, you get a text message, someone walks in your office, etc.  All of the sudden, your To-Do list is out the window and you are lucky if you ever get to come back to it.  When I work in my corporate job, I hear about this problem all the time.  Other attorneys say things like how much they love to work on the weekends because no one bothers them.

To help us decide what is important, and what can be delegated, we can use an Eisenhower Box.

Everything we need to do in a day, week, or month should be dumped into one of these boxes.  The items that will help you accomplish your goals will likely be in the upper right box (important, not urgent).  These are the items you want to make time for and the important things you want to do first.  Once you have an important, but not urgent, item or two accomplished, you can turn to your important and urgent items.  These are items that you need to do right now.  These may be emergencies that need your attention.  I’m not telling you to ignore these emergencies when you walk into your office.  However, use your judgment.  If you think it can wait, accomplish your important, but not urgent, item first.

The rest of your To-Do’s can be placed in not important, but urgent, or not important and not urgent.  If the item is at least urgent, delegate it to someone who is paid to do your work. For those of us who are self-employed, These are items you schedule for one specific time during the day around everything else you have to get done.  For the not important and not urgent items, try to disregard those all together.

Once you have everything dumped into this Box, schedule an important, but not urgent, item first in your day.  Start with important things first.

I hope you love the show!

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