6 Habits to Make You Productive

0:06Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor podcast. I'm your host, Rob Dial. If you have not yet done so, hit that subscribe button so you never miss another podcast episode. For the last nine and a half years, I've been putting out episodes four times a week for you to learn about who you are so that you can grow yourself. Because if you can grow yourself and make yourself better, you can make your life better. So if you want to improve your life, you're the type of person that's focused on becoming a better person, hit that subscribe button and let's grow together. Today, I'm gonna be talking about six habits that make you more productive.

0:38Now, let's think about it for a second. Why would you want to be more productive? Well, it's quite simple. If you put an hour of work into something, let's say that that hour of work is into learning the piano or into studying or into growing your business, whatever it might be, wouldn't you want to make sure that for that input, you get the most output as possible? Of course. And so there's a big difference between being busy versus being productive. Busy means that you're just doing things. You ever had a day where you're busy working all day long and at the end of the day you get home and you're like, I feel like I got nothing done.

1:16Well, it's usually because you're not working on the most important things. You're just working on keeping your brain, body, whatever might be moving. Being productive means that I'm sitting down and I'm focusing on my most important tasks. in that time that I'm sitting now to work on my most important tasks, I am knocking them out as quickly, as efficiently as I possibly can with as much brain power as I possibly can so that for every minute of input into that, I'm getting the most output as possible. And so that's the reason why you wanna be more productive. So let's dive into the six different things.

1:48Number one, I really recommend, this is super, super simple, but it's to start with small wins first thing in the morning. Now, is this something that's required for you to be more productive? No. Is it something required to be successful? No. But here's what I have found is that action creates more action. So if you wake up and you get some really small wins in the morning, you start to get momentum on your side. And one of the fundamental laws of physics is that an object in motion tends to stay in motion. And so this principle also applies to your productivity as well. Momentum is so hard to get, but once you have it, it's so much easier to keep going.

2:35Like even yesterday, my wife was making a puree for the baby and she had never used this machine. And she's like, I just noticed myself like the past three days, I've been resisting making this thing because I have to read about how to actually make the puree. and we had this whole conversation about like, yeah, the first step for anything is always the hardest. Getting momentum on your side and getting moving in the right direction is the hardest. But once you've got that momentum, it becomes a lot easier. I was saying to her like, yeah, like I noticed that if I'm gonna do the dishes and I'm thinking about the dishes, I'm like, oh my God, I gotta do the fucking dishes.

3:12And I'm like beating myself up over the dishes. I don't wanna do the damn dishes. And then if I get myself to do one dish, I'm like, you know what? I might as well finish them. And it just becomes so much easier because I got a little bit of momentum on my side. And so momentum is so hard to get. And it's very hard to get in physics. It's also really hard to get in life. And so when you start your day with a proactive task, even if it's small, you start to get positive momentum on your side for the rest of the day. And completing one task often leads to the motivation to actually tackle the next task.

3:46And that starts to create a domino effect. And so action creates action. inaction creates inaction as well. When you procrastinate on something, it usually causes more procrastination. And so you just want to develop this get it done attitude. You know, don't ever say I don't have time, just figure it out and get it done. And so if you're saying, okay, in the morning, I want to start off with like just a simple win. As soon as you wake up in the morning, make your bed. For the longest time, I heard people talk about this and I was like, I'm not making the bed because I'm just going to sleep in it tonight.

4:16It doesn't make any sense. And then I noticed that I actually started to feel a little bit of positive momentum them on my side. So I was like, okay, first thing I'm going to do, I'm going to make the bed. Pretty simple. Okay. You know, the next thing that I'm going to do, I'm going to brush my teeth. The next thing that I'm going to do, I'm going to drink a glass of water with salt in it and a little bit of lemon. Cool. These are all little tiny things that don't seem like it's not going to change my entire life. But what happens is because of the fact that I'm knocking something off, that's kind of like on my to-do list, I'm starting to get a little bit of momentum on my side.

4:50And because I'm starting my day off proactive, it makes it really easy to be more proactive throughout the day. So because momentum is so hard to get, I recommend trying to get it as soon as you wake up in the morning. Next thing, number two, I recommend that you learn as much as you can whenever you can. So there's this idea of micro learning. Micro learning means when you have these little tiny pockets of downtime, instead of going on Instagram, instead of going on all of the different social media platforms instead of checking your email. In these pockets of downtime, try to turn them into learning time.

5:26It's just this, if you're traveling and you're in your car, well, I love listening to music and sometimes we definitely should listen to music, pump ourselves up, whatever it is that we want. But if you're traveling in your car and you got a 15 minute drive to go somewhere, why not listen to a podcast? Why do you guys listen to a podcast right now? Why not listen to an audio book? When you're in the shower, why don't you listen to something when you're in the shower, when you're brushing your teeth? Why not listen to something? When you're driving, why not listen to something? Learning is really important because it starts to make you feel like you're progressing.

5:56And when you feel like, as Tony Robbins says, progress equals happiness. When you feel like you're progressing, you feel like you're getting, once again, more momentum on your side. And when you learn something new, one of the things that I found is that you start wanting to do something with that knowledge. And so it's like, maybe you're in sales and you're starting to get better at it. you are following some book that's on sales. You're reading Influence by Robert Cialdini, right? And you're learning that. Well, then when you get to the office and you've got to pick up those phone calls, you might be a little bit more excited to pick up the phone and start making some cold calls to try out the stuff that you learned this morning on the way to work.

6:35And so I recommend whenever you have these little pockets of downtime, why don't you add to your brain instead of just doom scrolling until your name gets called at the doctor's office. One thing that I recommend, I think it's really good too. I like physical copies of books, but this is a hack that I've learned and I've started using recently. Actually, I started about 2017 when my wife and I went and traveled for six months is I started finding books on Kindle and then listening to them on what's called WhisperSync, or at least it used to be called WhisperSync. I think it's called Audible Narration now.

7:10And I would listen to the books while reading it on Kindle. And then I would highlight them. And so I've got tons and tons of books with all of these highlights. And so when I find myself with like 15 minutes of downtime and I'm at the dentist office or whatever it might be, I'll actually pull out my Kindle on my phone because I have the Kindle app on my phone. I'll look at a book that I really enjoyed and I'll read all of my highlights from that book. And we will be right back. And now back to the show, which makes me feel like I'm reading the book again. It's reminding me of the best parts of that book.

7:44And now I'm basically like, in essence, rereading an entire book and the most important parts of it. And when I got from it the most in 10 or 15 minutes, and then I've also got all my notes that are in the Kindle as well. So I can see what I highlighted and how I took that information. I just recommend that you just have these mini pockets of learning whenever you can do it. So that's number two. Number three, focus on energy throughout the day and do something that I like to call energy planning. For me, my energy moves and shifts throughout the day. And I've said this before on the podcast, but like for me, I know what actions are best for me to take depending on what type of day, what time of day it is.

8:23And so for me, like I know that my creativity is at its highest in the morning. Like my team knows on the days that I'm recording podcasts, don't reach out to me because in the morning I start to plan them. I start to work for them. And then usually, you know, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. is like planning and scripting and my creativity and my stuff I want to create for reels for Instagram. So from 10 to 1 is usually like my planning and scripting time from 1 to 4 p.m. is usually the best time for me to do my recording, for me to do my Zoom calls, my live coaching calls, for me to create this stuff.

9:02And then from four to six is usually like my cleanup time, my finish up time. I'll do some Zoom calls, I'll have some meetings with people because my creative time is in the morning. My action time is in the middle of the day. And then at the end of the day is like the things that just need to be done, a couple of Zoom calls that I need to do in order to check with the team, check in on the team, check in on the sales team, all of that. And so what I would recommend for you is figuring out what's your energy like in the morning, you know, from 9 to 11. What's your energy like? Maybe I should do from 7 to 9, from 9 to 11, from 11 to 1, from 1 to 3, from 3 to 5, from 5 to 7.

9:38I would recommend that you figure out what your energy is like and then start to realize like, what should I do in this time? Like I said, with my creativity time, I've noticed that if I turn on my logical brain, if I turn on my business brain, if I turn on my brain where I'm just thinking about the business and the numbers and how to, you know, market better and X and Y and Z, once I turn on that business brain, my creative brain's basically like done for the day. And so on my creative days, I don't do it until later on in the day. And so that's what I recommend for you with number three is plan out your day, depending on what your energy is like.

10:11Okay. Number four, have a cutoff time. People tend to work better when we have boundaries. When you know that there's a definitive cutoff time. It tends to make you more focused, efficient, and productive. If you say at six o 'clock, I have to start working. I have to stop working because I'm going to spend the rest of the day with my family. But you know, you've got some stuff. It's four o 'clock and you got some stuff that's got to be done. Well, now you're not going to be scrolling and wasting time. When you have a deadline, usually it makes you more efficient and more focused to actually be more productive and take the right actions.

10:47This is the reason why before you go off on vacation, the week before you go on vacation is like your most productive week because you don't really have any other options. You're like, I don't want to work from Mexico. I'm going to get all of this stuff done. It's using the exact same mindset, but every single day. It also really ensures that you have time to recharge, which is essential for sustained productivity over the long term. For me, I made this mistake for years where I would work from like seven, before I, when I was single and I was younger, 7 a.m. to 11 p.m., I was just work, work, work, work, work, work, work.

11:24And then what happened? Of course, I burnt myself out because you can't stay that way for a long time. So I burnt myself out. And then I realized that when I put boundaries on my work, I actually was way more productive in less time because I had to get it done in that time. And then in the time that I was not working, it's like resting and recharging. It's like you can't work, if you look at your muscles, you can't work your muscle out all day every day. You work out, you break the muscle apart, and then in the rest time is just as important as the actual workout itself because your body needs to rest in order to grow.

11:59Your brain works the exact same way. And so that is what I recommend for number four. Have very specific and very clear cutoff times, right? Number five, try to help yourself for the next day, the night before. One thing that I recommend for you is before you check out at work, let's say six o 'clock is your cutoff time at work. What I would recommend is do a thing that's called look back, look forward. Close out your day at work with a little bit of look back and look forward. Okay, what did I do well today? What did I not do well? What did I get accomplished? What did I not get accomplish. And then what I recommend is you do something called stop, start, continue.

12:38Based off of how today went, what do I want to stop doing tomorrow? Based off of how today went, what do I want to start doing tomorrow? Based off of how today went, what do I want to continue doing tomorrow? Stop, start, continue. And basically what you do is you look back on how today went and then you look forward and then you do the exact same thing tonight. And so tonight, let's say that one of the things that you're going to look forward into tomorrow and you're going to say, okay, what do I want to do tomorrow? Well, you know, what's really important for me is I want to wake up in the morning and I want to make sure that I, I want to make sure that I do my workout in the morning.

13:11And so what I'm going to do is right next to where the sink is, right next to where I brush my teeth, I'm going to put out my underwear, I'm going to put out my workout clothes, I'm going to put out my workout socks, my shoes, so that I don't even have to think. I just have to get up and get dressed because even like picking out clothes is just a little bit of resistance. You know what else I'm going to do? I know that I'm going to be pretty tired. So I'm going to go on Amazon and I'm going to buy a coffee maker that has a timer built on it. And I know I have to wake up at 6am. So I'm going to make sure my coffee is done at exactly 6am.

13:46So therefore I wake up in the morning. Think about this for a second, how much less resistance there is. I want to work out. I don't want to wake up. Nobody wants to wake up in the morning. Some of actually some of you weird people have energy in the morning. I don't, I wish I did. Most people usually like, just let me sleep in. So if you know, okay, I've got to wake up and I've got to work out. Damn it. I don't want to do that. But if you go, I got to wake up. All I got to do is brush my teeth. My clothes are already waiting for me. And then I've got to go to the kitchen and my coffee's already waiting for me.

14:16I just got to put in, you know, your milk and sugar, if that's what you want. Just makes it a little bit less resistance. All right, cool. Yeah. I think I can do that versus like, oh my God, I've got so many things I've got to do before I get to the workout. okay also another thing that's really good as well in your mornings prepare for your for your next day so visualize what you want your day to look like prepare every single morning for the day that you want prepare every single week on sunday for the week that you want and so it's just about being more intentional and more proactive with everything that you do the night before you prepare for the morning the morning you prepare for the day on sunday you prepare for the week.

14:56At the end of the month, you prepare for the next month. And it's about just being more ahead of your schedule versus being like, oh my God, I forgot I had to do this today. Okay. So that's number five. And then number six, please go on a digital detox to enhance your focus. The notification black hole is just too much. Like I was, even this morning, I'm not even kidding. This is a real thing that happened this morning. My wife and I are downstairs and I'm like, whose phone is going nuts right now? Cause it's like, and I was like, is that my phone? Like I could hear it, but I had the baby and she's like, Oh no, it's my phone.

15:31The girls are all talking right now. They're planning, I don't know, they're planning some, someone's birthday or something like that. She has like 20 friends in one friend group. And I was like, is your phone always going off? Like for me, I don't get, if you send me a text message, my phone does not light up. If you send me an Instagram message, my phone does not light up. If I get a like on Instagram, my phone does not light up. The only time that my phone lights up and goes from black screen to lit up is if somebody calls me. And the reason why is because I want to make sure I'm productive as possible.

16:01And the other thing that I know is that every single ping on your phone or your computer derails your focus. And so research actually shows that it can take up to 23 minutes to fully regain your concentration after distraction. What that means is like, if you're really focused in something that you're doing, and then you get like a notification on your computer while you're, you know, maybe you're, you're typing up your new book and you're really in the zone and oh my God, it's just, you're in flow and you're, everything's amazing. And you get an email and a little notification comes from the right side over, says you got an email and you just click the X button.

16:34It can take you up to 23 minutes to fully regain that concentration again that you were just in. What? I would recommend that you turn off as many notifications as you possibly can during work hours, during your time, all of that stuff. Pretty sure after my conversation this morning, my wife was like, yeah, this is getting intense. I need to turn off my, my text message notifications. I'm not, I'm not even being sarcastic. It was literally like,

17:05because all of these 20 women were trying to plan someone's event. And I was like, this is, this is nuts. Like, is this, is this always derailing your concentration throughout the day? And she's like, yeah, it kind of is, I guess. And I think she turned off a notification for the text messages. So I would just recommend that you go on this like digital detox. You remove all the notifications you possibly can. Your digital detoxes have some tech free times, like allocate specific times in your day where you are entirely offline, where you're entirely away from your phone, where you're entirely away from the TV.

17:37Read a book. Go outside. Meditate. you know have a nice sparkling water outside while you're next to your fire and this could be so many different times you could be moments when you first wake up in the morning it can be moments when you come home from work it can be moments throughout the day it can be during meals it can be many different times but the reason why you want to do this is because it not only boosts your productivity but it also really improves your mental health so many studies are finding that people who are just on their phones all the time, and there's studies around like even children who have been on their phones since they were two or three years old, their mental health is not in a good place.

18:19And the people who keep their phones away from themselves and people who keep their phones away from their children are usually in much better mental health space than people who are just constantly on their phone throughout the entire day. And so I recommend if you really want to be more productive, give yourself some time away from any technology you possibly can. And so those are the six different habits to make you more productive. If you love this episode, please do me a favor. Share it on your Instagram stories. Tag me in at Rob Dial Jr., R-O-B-D-I-A-L-J-R. Also, if you want to make this the best year of your life, if you want to start taking the right action, stop procrastinating, create really good habits to make this a great year, join my two-day workshop, which is going to be January 15th and 16th.

19:02That is absolutely free. I'm going to be running it live. So you and I are going to be face-to-face with everybody else on Zoom. And if you want to join us, it's going to be habits2025.com. Once again, habits with an S2025.com to register for free. Can't wait to see you there. And with that, I'm going to leave you the same way I leave you every single episode. Make it your mission to make somebody else's day better. I appreciate you. And I hope that you have an amazing day.