Eben did a great video about time management at his gurumastermindvideoblog.com and you can check out his ‘Time Management’ Video if you want to watch. I believe it’s about 25 minutes long.

Bottom line, here’s the highlights:

1. Knowledge workers (yourself as an entrepreneur) are hardest to manage because it’s difficult to know what activities add the most value

2. Law of Value - value isn’t what you say it is, it’s what your customers say it is

3. There are common things which cause you to lose focus AND common patterns which you must get working for you to be successful

4. 3 C’s of Business - customers, conversion, content. How you should allocate your time to these different areas to insure maximum success.

Here are the full notes:

Peter Drucker - The Knowledge Worker

Hard to figure out what part of knowledge work creates the value; not like a tire maker where you can look in their bin and see they created 32 tires today and had a productive day

harder to manage knowledge workers - must manage self

Law of Value

isn’t what I say it is, what cust says it is

Use time and knowledge to create things cust. think are valuable.

————————————–

No one looking over shoulder to tell you, you are doing valuable money making stuff

Key Areas Where You Lose Focus

Multitasking - very bad, never do, tim ferris talks about how multitasking study showed multitasking lowers your IQ more than smoking marijuana; stop it immediately, focus on 1 thing at a time

distraction, interruption - when distracted it takes 20 mins to get back to the point you were at; stop allowing self to be interrupted & distracted

Friction - inefficiency caused by something not working smoothly or something not supporting you; ex: writing content and you had a fight with a family member earlier causes emotional friction inside you which hinders your ability to create & focus; where do you have friction in your life? where is it around you? eliminate those things; have a comfortable workplace; eliminate physical, emotional, psychological friction

Monkey Mind - most difficult to get rid of, monkey mind and monkey emotions; a thought inside of us triggers a domino effect about all these other things, your mind ‘runs away’ in a thousand different directions

Let go of these 4 things

There’s no time management — only self-management

Effective People Have Patterns

Create Desire within - allow it to fuel your perseverance; create your own faith in yourself, do the right things 1 step at a time eventually you’ll reach success; determination, persistence; am i going to really do this? yes. how long is it going to take? i don’t know but I’m going to see it through to success; waking up every single day and keep marching toward your goal, keep doing the things you know you need to do even if not seeing instant results

Clean Focus - The Effective Executive by Peter Drucker; most important point is ‘work in focused blocks of uninterrupted time…minimum of 2 hours’; if you don’t you’re making all the mistakes of ineffective people; critical to focus on 1 thing and 1 thing only without distraction or interruption

Human Rhythm - Tony Schwarz The Powerful Engagement talks about it; body operates in a rhythm (ex: day and night rhythm); have other rhythms happening subconsciously; the altradian rhythm every 90-120 mins we experience a bit of loss of energy & focus; have to chill out for a while then it gets refreshed for more focus; take a break and renew, don’t drink caffeine or shooter; work for a couple hours then take a break (breaks must be completely detached)

Create Routines for Everything Important to do - structure is paramount for humans; do important things at same time everyday; create on-ramp to the activity and an off-ramp for it; 99% of what we do everyday is a habitual routine; most thoughts, feelings, actions are the same everyday; take control of that and do a routine that gets lots of great results

Renew Yourself - John O’Neill The Paradox of Success; we get so overworked we become addicted to it and lose touch of who we are and why we got into it in the first place; unplug for a day or 2 at a time

Do these 4 things and all you do will be more valuable

3 Pillars - avg workweek 5 days at 10 hours per day

Customers - getting new customers, affiliate getting, traffic getting; spend at least 40% of time on this; 4 hours per day spent on this

Conversion - 20% of time spent here, 2 hours per day; everything which happens after the visitors show up

Content - products, promotion articles, press releases, blog posts, etc; 10% of time spent here, 1 hour per day

Spend the most time where you get the most leverage

Management - 3 Pillars, 30% of time

time

people

business

Stephen Covey “Time Management is a misnomer the challenge is to manage ourselves.”

Learn how to manage selves, thinking and actions

Most important time to manage is first hour or 2 of your day before you go to work; you are highest leverage in your business; must have strong, healthy body and mind

Bill philips Body for Life #1 selling fitness book of all time, the 1st meal is the key to your day; if you don’t eat a great, healthy meal you are going to think about cheating on meals the rest of the day; the 1st meal sets the context for the rest of the day; works the same way for exercise

Eben’s morning ritual: wake up, drink 1 liter of fresh, clean water; do some exercise for 30 minutes; does heart rate raising exercises which resets & renews emotions, blanks the emotional slate and makes you feel better emotionally; gets best ideas when exercising; 5 mins of meditation just sit down and breathe for 5 mins to calm mind; then have really healthy meal; reads for 10-15 mins of really inspiring stuff

this sets you up for a really healthy day

setup routine for the 1st hour of my day

#1 List all things in life and biz which create distraction, interruption, friction; list the things I do which create friction in my life & in others; figure out the top 3 friction and eliminate them; eliminate constant email checking, only check it twice a day

#2 List top 3 things which create value in my business; spend at least 1 hour per day in clean focus on that 1 activity

#3 Create a morning routine for the 1st hour of everyday; make self strong first