How To 10X Your Time & Productivity | EP 900

0:00Hi, my name is Lewis Howes, and welcome to The Daily Motivation Show.

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0:43We call them a multiplier because most people are trying to manage time, right? Like you even hear this, you go, I need to be better at managing my time. But you know, what's funny about that is there is no such thing as time management. There is only self-management. You cannot manage time. Time ticks on second by second. I can't fast forward time. I can't stop it. I can't pause it. What this conversation really about is managing ourselves, managing our decisions, managing our use of time. But even that is a first shift that needs to happen. It's not like I'm this helpless victim that is subject to the world around me who is unfairly blasting me with all this stuff.

1:29No, you're in charge. everything that exists in your life you said yes to it in some way so it is your responsibility and and you created the problem but that also means that you are in charge of fixing it that you have the power to change it but what we started to realize is that most of what people have learned and think about time management is wrong it's wrong because we have been taught to think about time in a very linear way. What we started to notice in these adult performers that we now refer to as the multipliers is that they are doing a different type of thinking. It's like evolution, like their thinking has evolved.

2:13And it's all based on what we call the significance calculation. Urgency is how soon does this matter? Most of us live in a world of urgency. It's all about what needs to be done right now. Importance is different. Importance is how much does this matter? But significance is even different still. Significance is how long is this going to matter? So what is the impact of this activity in the future? 10 years out, 20 years out, even 10 days out. Yeah. It is breaking free of the paradigm of one day and instead thinking about tomorrow and the next day. And the significance calculation changes everything because this is how it's possible to multiply time.

3:03The way you multiply time is by giving yourself the emotional permission to spend time on things today that create more time tomorrow. There's certain things you do right now that create more time in the future. That's the significance calculation. So one day is finite and we're all limited by the same 24 hours. I don't have control over time, but that's exactly the problem is most of us think about our activities in the paradigm of one day. We wake up and we say, what's the most important thing I can do today? And it's not that that's a bad question. It's just not the question that multipliers ask.

3:43Multipliers don't say, what is the most important thing I can do today. Multipliers ask, what are the things I can do today that create more time tomorrow? What are the things I can do now that make the future better? You're literally breaking free of the urgency paradigm of just what matters right here, right now. And you're introducing the significance paradigm of what is going to have impact over the long haul. Right. If you were to picture a funnel, all of the stuff there is to do comes into the top. And then the focus funnel is our attempt to create a visual illustration that codifies the thought process that multipliers go through intuitively in their own brain so that the rest of us can kind of like see it and follow it.

4:26So the very first question is, can this be eliminated? Check to where you're spending your time the most. That's right. And Nielsen says... If it's six hours on Instagram a day and you're not being, you know, you're not creating something of significance and you're just browsing, or if you're 20 hours a week on TV and I'm overwhelmed and tired and exhausted, then just look at where you're spending your time. Yeah. Even if you just cut half of that down and you watch two hours a day of TV and you spend two hours on your side hustle or something else, your health, your relationships, imagine the benefits you would have down the line.

5:00eliminate is the first opportunity to multiply because anything I say no to today creates time in the future. How? It's preventing me from doing something that I would have otherwise been doing had I not given myself the permission to eliminate. Like, had I not said no. So basically, this is saying no. And people really struggle with saying no. In businesses, this happens all the time. By saying no to some things, you power your ability to focus on the few significant things that will multiply times. So you have to say no. But this is something that people struggle with. I struggle with it. When we're profiling all these people, I was doing interviews and I told one of the multipliers, I said, I don't like this one.

5:48I got to where I am by being a yes man by like doing a lot of things and doing them well and like saying yes to meetings and meeting people all the time. And they said, Rory, that is the dumbest thing I've ever heard. They said, you're trying to go through life without saying no, which is admirable because you're a nice, you're a nice guy. But what you failed to realize is that you are always saying no to something. Anytime you say yes to one thing, you simultaneously are saying no to an infinite number of other things. So even when you think you're saying, yes, everything is important to me. No, nothing is important to you.

6:26Nothing is important enough for you to focus on. And you don't have a method for focus and focus is power. Most of us are losing because we're wandering, we're meandering through a bunch of insignificant, trivial tasks, feeling productive when really we're just diluted. Now, if you can't eliminate the task, then it drops down to the center of the focus funnel, which is automate the permission to invest. Anything you create a process for today saves you time in the future. Yes. If I set up a process for it or a system, or if I write code, you know, there's a lot of automation, like actual technologies and things that you can deploy.

7:08Then tomorrow the system or the process is doing the thing instead of me. So It's multiplying time. It's so ironic because the two excuses we would use for why we haven't automated things is we would say, I don't have the time or the money. Those two excuses we would use for not automating something are exactly the opposite of how it is when you make the significance calculation. Automation is to your time exactly what compounding interest is to your money. Just like compounding interest takes money and it turns it into more money. Automation takes time and it turns it into more time. Right.

7:58Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of The Daily Motivation, and I hope you have an amazing rest of your day. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to click the link in the description. that will take you to the full episode of our main podcast on the School of Greatness. And if you are loving the daily motivation, please follow us over on Apple Podcasts and Spotify and leave us a review over on Apple Podcasts right now. And if you want more exclusive content and ad-free listening experience, make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel on Apple Podcasts right now. And if you want to get even more inspiration from our world-class guests and learn how to improve your life and take it to the next level, then make sure to sign up for the Greatness newsletter and get it delivered right to your inbox over at greatness.com slash newsletter.

8:55Again, have an amazing day and I'll see you tomorrow with another episode of the Daily Motivation Show.