The 5 systems that changed my productivity & my life forever

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0:42Grace Beverley: what is up i'm grace beverly and welcome back to working hard the podcast shape guidebook on how to improve your own life and achieve what you actually dreamed of doing because life's too short for boring podcasts and bad advice what is up and welcome back to working hard so i'm a firm believer that the thing standing between most people and a calmer, more productive life is not a lack of discipline. This might be controversial because discipline is very important. But even more important than discipline is systems. And I realized recently that obviously I do these videos every single week where we deep dive into a theory or a topic, but I don't know if I've ever just sat down and gone through what we need to do every single day, the kind of unglamorous, boring, repeatable things that hold everything together to mean that you can live a higher achieving successful, productive life.

1:30Grace Beverley: So that is what we're going to go into today. And to be clear, none of these things are overly complicated. I can promise you there is absolutely no 5am wake up, there is no cold plunge, there is no three hour morning routine. But I genuinely think that these are the things, the things that we're going to talk about today are the things that move the needle most, both in terms of how much I get done and how I actually feel every day when running multiple businesses and staying on top of a number of different things. And before we get going, if you're not already following the podcast wherever you're listening to it on, please do.

1:59Grace Beverley: This will mean the episode drops straight to you every single Monday without you having to go looking for it, which given that this episode is literally about removing unnecessary effort from your life feels very on brand.

2:12Grace Beverley: So when I was putting this episode together, I realized that most of these systems that I rely on every single day came from things going wrong. There was a period a few years ago where I was working more than I ever had and I somehow still felt behind on everything. I can't tell you how ridiculous the hours were I was working. What that meant is that my friendships were slipping. I was the bottleneck in my own companies. And every Friday, I would sit down at the very beginning of the day, like 7am, and I would sit and try and get through absolutely everything. I was still there at 10pm, and I wouldn't have even finished.

2:45Grace Beverley: And so I'd go into the next week with this absolute massive anxiety for Monday. And I think each of these systems, in some way fix one of those specific things, which is why I still use all of them and why I feel like they are so important for living a productive and successful life. So system one is automations. And I will say up front that this one's a bit of a cheat. Yes, it's system one, and we're already cheating because it's actually a lot of little systems bundled into one. But the idea behind all of them is the same. Anything in your life that is predictable and recurring should not require a decision every time it happens.

3:17Grace Beverley: For me, this falls into two areas. the first is financial. My investing and savings go out on a standing order on payday. I don't decide what I'm investing in that month. It just happens in an automated way before I've even looked at my account. And removing that decision removes the negative friction entirely. And it means that all of these habits that I've realized that are important parts of my life happen every single month without me having to motivate or discipline myself into it, or have a to-do list where I actually remember everything, or think about all of the other things that I might want to buy with that money when I've already said that that's how much I'm setting aside.

3:51Grace Beverley: I also do this with all of my bills and it just makes sure that on the first day of the month I am not having to have a whole extra to-do list for things that could just be automated. The second side of this automation is physical stuff and other things I consume. So my razors are on subscription, my skincare refills are on subscription, my regular food shop is a saved template that I can reorder in about 40 seconds. And I think when you're a busy person you don't realise the time that you end up fritting away on small little errands that don't actually need to be thought through every single time.

4:21Grace Beverley: I know that sounds minor but I personally think that decision fatigue is a massive thing when you are doing a lot of different things and if you are trying to succeed in a lot of different things you do not want to be thinking about whether you're succeeding in ordering your razor or your skincare. You want to be able to focus your effort on the thing that's actually going to move the needle in your life. Every small decision you make uses a bit of precious brain space and energy and automating the predictable stuff frees up that time for the things that actually need it. In order to do this I'd really suggest writing down everything you buy or do on a regular basis and first of all ask yourself if you need all of those things but second of all ask yourself what could just happen automatically.

4:57Grace Beverley: You'll probably find more than you think. System two is a weekly night with friends and I know this doesn't sound like it belongs on a productivity list so bear with me but a few years ago I noticed that my close friendships had started to become what I call catch-up friendships. Like you love each other but you're so bad at actually seeing each other and you're both super busy. By the time you do, the whole evening is just trying to get through all of the life admin of what's happened since you last saw each other. You're not really present with each other. You're just kind of downloading. And I realized that this meant that I didn't feel like I had friends but I didn't feel like I had those friendships.

5:30Grace Beverley: I didn't feel like I had those relationships. So what we actually did as a friend group is we set up a standing Monday night with my friends and it is not glamorous. Most of the time it is turning up and sitting on someone's sofa, eating dinner with your hair wet and you're in your pyjamas. Sometimes we'll go out for dinner, but honestly, I'd say that's been about two times in the past year. Like that can be on another night at another time. But the point is that it's in the diary every week in the same slot. And the thing is that once it's a standing commitment, you stop negotiating with yourself about whether to go or whether something's a priority in your life.

6:01Grace Beverley: You just go. It becomes a habit. And over time, what that's given me is something I really think is underrated as a pillar of actual happiness, which is just continuity and conscious time with the people I love. We're not catching up on three months of life. We're just living weeks alongside each other where we know about actually what's going on. And I feel like that's a completely different experience and it genuinely makes me happier as a person. And I really think that closeness with friends doesn't come from big gestures. It comes from those little regular moments where you hang out like you did with your mates after school.

6:30Grace Beverley: Anyway, this is the system that makes that happen without it ever requiring too much effort. And I think if I was prime minister, I would make it a legal requirement. System three is a daily approvals document. This is going to be the least sexy system I'm going to talk to you about today. And honestly, the one I don't really mention that much. This is going to be particularly important to you if you are a manager or a freelancer or you run a business or a team of any size. I personally think this might be the most useful one. I honestly couldn't live without it. it massively helps to solve the problem of being a bottleneck in any situation, but it also massively helps to solve that feeling of constantly feeling like you need to be on this, on this, answering this, running to this place, and constantly dealing with everything all the time due to this constant instant communication.

7:13Grace Beverley: So every single day with any direct report, anyone who feeds work into me or has an approval or some information that I need to see, they send it my way. But rather than trying to deal with that all the time throughout the day running like a headless chicken around from this one to this one to this one I have a block every single day to go through all of those things at once because realistically a lot of them only take five ten minutes but that's going to ruin your entire day if you are constantly being dragged in all of these different directions and that is literally the whole system now I'm very lucky to be in the position where my assistant collates it for me but when I haven't had any support I've done the exact same thing myself the discipline and is just making sure that everything goes into that one dog and you have approvals time blocked for every single day rather than being sent to me across five different channels at 20 different times a day.

8:01Grace Beverley: What this does is it takes me out of a reactive mode completely. Instead of my attention being pulled every single time something needs sign off, I have one intentional window where I deal with all of it. So nothing gets stuck, nobody's waiting on me and I'm not carrying the mental load of knowing that there are some things piling up somewhere I haven't checked. And if you don't have team the principle still works. One place where decisions and approvals live rather than scattered across your entire inbox and message threads. It's essentially pulling everything into one to-do list that actually has the piece of work in the to-do list and it has made a massive difference to my life.

8:35Okay hold up what is that? It's new Tide Evo. That little white tile is laundry detergent? Yep Tide Evo is a super concentrated laundry detergent that's built different because it's packed with six layers of cleaning power that fight odors, stains, dinge, and extra work. And it smells so good. New Tide Evo. Love it or you're money back. Money back guarantee issued via prepaid card by mail. See tide.com for details.

9:05Grace Beverley: System four is the productivity method. So this is one that if you've been around these parts for a while, you will already know. The whole idea is built on one theory, which is that not all tasks are the same and treating them like they are is one of the fastest ways to feel overwhelmed without actually needing to be overwhelmed. So for example usually you would have a to-do list right? Your to-do list would be one big thing of all of the different things you need to do where replying to one email and doing a launch plan for a product and writing the presentation that's actually going to get you a promotion are weighted as the same thing and they shouldn't actually be on the same list.

9:40Grace Beverley: They take different amounts of time, they are different urgency, they are different importance and yet so much of the time we just do a big old to-do list. Well, that's not what needs it. You don't need a big old to-do list. You need it to be split up. Every single day, I split everything I need to get done into three categories. Things that take under five minutes, things that take five to 30 minutes, and things that take 30 minutes plus. Now, I call these quick ticks tasks and projects. Quick ticks might be replying to a message or reading an FYI or a short email. They don't get scheduled. They get done in the gaps while you're waiting for a call to start or in a 10-minute window between meetings.

10:14Grace Beverley: Then tasks are the medium-weighted items that take 5 to 30 minutes. So writing a brief, reviewing a deck, having a conversation that you've been putting off. These get a proper scheduled block into my day. Projects then are anything that need breaking down before you can even start. And I think this is where most people get stuck. If launch campaign, for example, is sitting on your list as one item, of course you're not doing it because your brain can't process something that big as a single item. And I know from experience that the moment you actually break it into its actual parts, so the different quick ticks and tasks that make it up, It stops being as scary and just becomes a list of different quick tips and tasks.

10:46Grace Beverley: So once I've got my three categories all written down, out of those, I choose three non-negotiables for the day. Those three things are the things that if they got done today and only they got done today, it would be an okay day. Like, yes, I want to get some more things done, but those are the key things that need to get done today. Then I put those in my calendar, blocking them actually in around my fixed commitments. It might be that I've got three calls. It might be that I've got another meeting. It might be that I've got a doctor's appointment, whatever it might be. The non-negotiables are going to be blocked in there first and then I'm going to start blocking the rest of the list in wherever I can.

11:17Grace Beverley: This structure means that nothing is sitting in a list in your brain in a format that can't be processed and it also means that from the beginning of the day you know exactly what matters, you know exactly what's being prioritised, you can communicate that if you have any stakeholders that are waiting for something that you are going to be doing and you know what to expect out of that day. I have done a full bonus episode on calendar management that goes much deeper on how I schedule all of this and how it works in my calendar with every other thing and personal things and birthdays and all of that which I won't go into now but I will link it in the show notes but if you are feeling overwhelmed I promise you this sounds complicated it takes literally five minutes at the beginning of every day and you are probably feeling overwhelmed because you're not doing this rather than because this would overwhelm you more system five is my newest system and this is the Friday closing shift I've not really talked about it on here before but it has kind of changed my life.

12:06Grace Beverley: I won't take you through every single detail of my whole Friday routine or we would need a separate episode for that but the bit that's genuinely changed my weekends is what I call my closing shift which starts at around like 3 30 p.m every Friday but for context for me Friday is a work from home day. I would do this if it wasn't but I think that it really works within my work from home setup and I think it's really easy to let Fridays particularly if you're working from home to become a bit of a drift day which obviously sounds nice in theory but actually just means that you hit the weekend with loads of unfinished business sitting in the back of your head and in your inbox.

12:37Grace Beverley: Like no wonder you have the Sunday scaries. Come on, look at what you did on Friday. So at 3.30pm or around then, dependent on my commitments, I go into closing shift mode, which means I do the following things. Number one, I clear anything that's still sitting on my list or in my approvals. Number two, I do a proper check-in across the businesses and make sure that nothing is stuck or waiting for me that hasn't made it into my approvals. It might be that I just send out a message to the team or just to some direct reports and say am I still expecting this today or is there anything that's going to be coming in for the rest of the day whatever it might be just to get really clear on where my effort should be spent for the rest of the day.

13:10Grace Beverley: Number three I review my calendar for the following week so there are no surprises on Monday morning and no days look completely unachievable that I should have noticed earlier and maybe rejigged some things. Number four which is the big one I actually write my Monday to-do list. This is actually what kills the Sunday scaries. You'd maybe think that it would create them because you're looking at your next week but it is genuinely the opposite. I always find that when Monday already has a list it stops being this daunting unknown and it's just a plan and a plan you've made on Friday means that your brain can genuinely rest over the weekend.

13:40Grace Beverley: You're not like lying on the sofa thinking about this massive unknown of Monday with everything you didn't deal with on Friday too because you've already dealt with it and you know what's going to be coming your way. Honestly if you introduce one thing to your week from this video I would really suggest it be this one. It is worth the effort 10 times over. It is a tiny thing on a Friday afternoon that will massively increase your productivity for the next week and massively increase your happiness for the whole weekend. Okay, and I will say I had a list of five and I'm going off plan because I would be doing you a disservice if I didn't mention that I also rely heavily on my goal setting framework.

14:10Grace Beverley: The most important part of it is that I split my goals across six different life categories, which are health, career and business, relationships, personal development, finances, and mindset. The reason for this is that without deliberately looking at your life as a whole, you will almost always over-index on work and let everything else slip. Having these categories forces you to notice when an area has gone unattended and they make sure that your goals actually reflect the full life you want by really forcing you to think about all of these different areas. Anyway, I've done a whole episode on this with a much deeper walk through, which is the plan with me episode.

14:43Grace Beverley: It's for the beginning of the year, but you can obviously do it anytime. Time is arbitrary and it will be helpful year round, but I will link it below because I really think that this framework is one of the most useful things I have put out ever on this podcast and it's a system that can't go unnoticed. Right, that is today's episode. I hope there is at least one thing, I mean, I hope five, maybe six things in there that you can actually take away and actually use. I will be linking all the episodes I referenced today in the show notes. I'm putting lots of articles in the Working Hard newsletter this week to help on this particular topic.

15:10Grace Beverley: So if you want to go deeper into any of them, then that is the place to find them. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you have the best week and I will see you next Monday.

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