How to Manage Your Time | Warrior Notes

Chris Albert 00:00:01 (link to this point)

The Warrior Soul podcast is written, edited, and produced by me, Albert. Our mission is to provide tools, tactics, strategies, and ideas that help The US military veteran community to show up as the wisest, strongest, most capable versions of themselves in the civilian world. If you're not a veteran, stick around because anything we talk about will most certainly apply to you as well. This podcast is made possible with the help of F Bomb Nutrition. They make delicious packets of fats that you can carry around anywhere with you in little portable packets.

They make macadamia nut butters. They mix them up with chocolate. They mix them up with sea salt. They mix them up with coconut butter. They're absolutely delicious, and they're really good for you.

They don't have any sugar. They also make a lot of cheese snacks. They make meat sticks, and it's just a great company. These guys send packages of this stuff to the troops who are on the front lines overseas to supplement their MREs, and we didn't ask them to do that. They just did that on their own initiative.

Really great company. If you wanna get 20% off your first order of f bombs, head over to www.dropanfbomb.com and use the code Warrior Soul at checkout. This podcast is also brought to you with the help of Save the Brave. Savethebrave.org is a five zero one c three charity for veterans. They run camaraderie events that include fishing, golfing.

They also do a lot of work with gold star families. And unlike a lot of other organizations, their board doesn't take a salary. Really great organization that is doing amazing work. So go and check them out at savethebrave.org. With that, thank you guys so much.

Let's get into today's programming.

This is Chris Albert, and I'm here to remind you of one thing. Someday, you're going to die. Now that's not some morbid statement or scary idea. It's solid fact. Your time here on this earth is limited.

And we need to be reminded of this as much as possible for one simple reason, to live your best life while you can. This is the Warrior Soul podcast.

What is going on everybody? Welcome to Warrior Soul podcast. This is Chris Albert. I'm your host. And man, we've gotten thousands of new listeners just over the last few days.

And a lot of that has to do with my guest appearance on the Order of Man podcast with my friend Ryan Michler. And I am eternally grateful to him for giving me that platform and being able to tell my story and the story of the Warrior Soul podcast. And I can't tell you how much I appreciate those of you who've come over here to check us out. A little bit about the show. The Warrior Soul podcast is meant to empower US military veterans and anybody else willing to listen to live their absolute best lives.

And we do that by delivering tools, tactics, strategies, and ideas to help them to show up as wiser, more capable, stronger humans in their lives in the civilian world. And if you're not a veteran, stick around because honestly anything we talk about here is going to apply to you as well. And today I want to talk to you about what I think is one of the most important subjects. I talk a lot about health and fitness, but I think this is something that if you get right, you'll be able to get everything else in your life right. And what I'm talking about is time.

Managing your time wisely. You know, your money, your material possessions, your car, your house, those aren't the most valuable things you have. The most valuable thing you have is your time. But we waste time so frivolously. Think about it.

How many minutes a day do you spend on your phone looking at stories about people who really wouldn't piss on you if you were on fire? How many minutes a day do you waste just procrastinating, Not doing anything productive? How many minutes a day do you waste on worry? Putting out fires that just came up in your day because you didn't think ahead and you didn't plan. Here's the thing, I've said this before and it's kind of a crazy analogy, but in life you could be like a leaf or you could be like a bird.

You think about a leaf, a leaf that's falling from a tree, when that leaf falls, it doesn't get to control where it ends up. It doesn't get to control where it lands. Right? It just ends up going wherever the wind carries it. A bird on the other hand, it flies from a branch, determines where it wants to go, and yeah, the wind might blow it off course, but if it works hard enough, then it's gonna get to the exact place it wants to be.

And that's the real choice you have here, whether you want to be a leaf or you want to be a bird. I've been a leaf throughout my life many many times. And like I always say, that's one of the reasons why I do this show. It's not because I'm so good at this stuff or so naturally accomplished, it's because I've screwed up a lot. I wasted an entire decade doing things that really weren't moving me forward, doing things that were actually destroying my life.

And so what I want to do today is I want to talk to you about tips and practices that you can use to manage your day because that's where it all starts. It starts with small actions. Small actions to plan out your day and living your day with purpose. Right? Living your day with purpose and focus that is going to get you to work on the things that are most important to you.

And none of these things are are, like, earth shattering or anything like that. None of these things are are, you know, crazy tricks or secrets. They're they're things that we all know and understand, but we just don't apply in our lives. So the first thing is this, go to sleep early and wake up early. Go to sleep early and wake up early.

And it sounds like common sense but so many people don't do it, right? They stay up at night watching Netflix, trying to unwind in front of the TV, trying to turn their brains off, and they stay up hours longer than they should be. And what happens is, you end up waking up the next day, And if you wake up the next day when everybody else wakes up, what happens is the world has already woken up before you. You wake up to text messages, you wake up to emails, you wake up to a bunch of things, bunch of fires that you gotta put out. And you don't have any real time to yourself.

You know, as an entrepreneur, one of the big things about my life is that I've got a million things to worry about. I gotta put this show out. I gotta I gotta see to my clients. I gotta make sure that I'm creating programs for them. I gotta make sure that I'm taking care of all my managerial activities, make sure the finances are straight.

There's literally a million things I could worry about at any point in time. And one of the big secrets that's allowed me to stay on top of everything, that's allowed me to create this show, that's allowed me to create products that are gonna move my business forward, that's allowed me to do the things that are going to help me to grow is waking up early. I wake up every day at zero four thirty. And what that does is it allows me at least an hour of my time before the rest of my household wakes up. I get a time of quiet, a time of peace.

I could spend a little bit of that time reading. I've been reading quite a bit and doing this podcast requires me to read a lot of books. And so, you know, for about a half hour when I'm waking up in the morning, I sit down with one of the books I need to read for this show and I work on my own self improvement. Right? I get some of that time to meditate, to get my time right.

And then what I do is I get some of that time to work on creative things, creative ideas that are going to push the business forward and allow it to grow. Right? Now you might not be an entrepreneur. Maybe you've got a job. Right?

And and you work eight to twelve hours a day. And here's the thing. Think about this. Most of your day is spent doing things for the company you work for, for your boss, and that's that's awesome. That's what you should be doing.

But there's a lot of other things that you need to be doing for yourself. Maybe that's fitness. Maybe that's reading. Maybe that's educating yourself so you can get better at your job. Maybe that's organizing yourself so that you're you're task oriented when you get to work.

Whatever it is, if you just wake up an hour earlier and you spend some time getting yourself straight, getting your mind straight, listing out the things that you need to do for the day or preparing for the things you need to do for the day, you can get on top of that. If you need to work on your fitness, can find time early in the morning to be able to do so. Right? And and yeah, does it suck initially to get up an hour early? Yes, it does.

But what I'll tell you is that when you start doing it, and you start making it a practice, it can be absolutely magical. Having that just an hour to yourself to think, to invest in yourself, to invest in growing, it allows you to see more of the possibilities in front of you. That's one thing you think about in the military. If you're in the trenches constantly and you're constantly battling, it's it's impossible to see the terrain. But if you take a step back and Jocko Willink talks about this all the time and detach yourself and and get up on the higher ground, can you can see things.

Right? And that's what waking up earlier does. It allows you to see things out there. Now if you absolutely can't wake up early, if you can't find that that hour of extra time in the morning, you gotta find it somewhere else. Because otherwise, all you're going to do is you're going to sit there and you're going to put out fires.

Right? You're to sit there and you're to put out fires. So my advice is that if you can't find that extra hour in the morning, find it somewhere else in your day. Maybe it's in the early evening, maybe it's it's before you go to bed. Though, you know, I think that when you're going to bed and and it's toward the end of the day, if you put too much thought into all the things that are gonna drive you crazy, then that's gonna inhibit your sleep.

So that's why I choose to do that in the morning, alright. Just that simple thing could could completely change your life. The other thing is, alright, the night before I mentioned, okay, maybe you want to find that time the night before but one thing I do do the night before is I journal about my day, I list out the things that I enjoyed about my day that I accomplished and I also list out the things that I could have done better. And then the final thing I do is I list out what my priorities are for the next day. What are the tasks that I need to do?

And doing that beforehand, what that does is it allows me to get into a position to where I am able to kind of see the day before it happens. I take a look at my schedule. I I see what types of appointments I have so nothing's a surprise. And then I list out what I need to do to move forward the next day. Right?

And then what I'll do for each task on that list is I'll actually schedule it out on my digital calendar so that as I'm moving into that next day, every minute is accounted for. Right? And then if I find myself jumping on my phone or looking at social media or anything like that, and that alert comes up on my calendar, it says, that's that's my reminder, put that phone down. Get off of social media. That's not helping you right now.

That's not going to allow you to move forward. You need to be working on this other thing. Right? So those three things, waking up early so far, listing out the things that you need to do the day before, and scheduling those tasks on your calendar. The next thing is this, and this is something that I think we need to do more of.

I limit my time with my phone from the start of the day. So I work from home, and there is nobody here watching over me, telling me what to do with my tasks. And and a lot of my work actually does involve my phone because I've gotta be on social media. I've gotta put things out for marketing. I've got to make phone calls.

But what I do is I actually schedule those times out. I have times in my calendar that say, okay, this is your phone time. This is when you gotta post on social media. And what I do otherwise is if I'm not working on my phone, I take that thing, I put it on silent, I put it on do not disturb, I put it in a drawer in my kitchen far away from me so I'm not even looking at it. And that's really, really important because if it's just sitting on my desk, the temptation to just ram that phone, to pick it up, to see what's going on on Twitter, to see what's going on in the impeachment scandal, to see what's going on in politics, to see...

To check Fox News, that temptation is so great that I can't overcome it if I'm if I'm sitting here. But if I have it in the kitchen, if I have it in a drawer where I can't see it, then that phone's not there. So again, what I would say is schedule times if you know you're gonna get phone calls. Schedule times when you gotta pick your phone up. Schedule times when you gotta post on social media.

Schedule times whenever you gotta do anything on your phone. But don't keep it next to you all day long because that will eat into absolutely everything. Okay? The next thing is this, and this is something I think that we need to do more of as well, and that is you should schedule your time that you're going to spend with your family. You should schedule your time that you're going to spend with your family.

And during that time, show up, be present, turn everything else off, Get rid of your phone. Get rid of any any work. Set it in your mind that you're not gonna think about work. Be present for your partner, for your kids, for whoever's important for you at that time. And that's because if you're sitting there and you are not present, well guess what?

Your wife, your spouse, they're going to notice that. And when you're not present, is one thing that will drive spouse, a female spouse, absolutely insane. Right? If you're not actually paying attention to them. So take that time.

Schedule that out. Schedule the time that you're going to spend with them. Schedule out your dinner time. Turn all that rest of that stuff off and then get into it. And then when you got to come back to work the next day or maybe after that, you can come back with a fresh mind, knowing that you spent some quality time.

And here's the thing, and Ryan Michler said this on his show, I think it was last week, he did an amazing field notes edition of his show. And he said, one of the things that you're not gonna regret when you die, you're not gonna regret the amount of the amount of time you spent with your loved ones. Right? You're not gonna sit there and you're not gonna wish, hey, I wish I worked more. Hey, I wish I I I spent more time on my data sheets.

My dog's sneezing down here so that's her. You're not... Piper. You're not going to sit there and you're not going to regret, you know, you're not going to wish you worked more. You're going to wish you had more time with your loved ones.

You're gonna wish you had more time with your kids. You're gonna wish you had more time, you know, the things that that make you human. So use that time, make it sacred, and don't put yourself into a position where you're not present during those time periods. The next thing is this, and this is setting up your day. One of the things that I do with my day is I separate my time between maker time and manager time.

Maker time and manager time. So I have periods of my day where my brain is more sharp, where I'm able to do the harder tasks, the more creative tasks. Right? Like creating this show, like writing out blogs, like working on products, creating new products. For you that might be other things.

That might be, you know, there might be a harder task at your job that you gotta do. So my advice is to set your day up so that you're doing the hardest thing first. Do the hardest thing in your day first and work on that. And then toward the end of the day, switch, have a set time. Whether you're done, whether you're finished with that hard thing or not, have a set time that you're gonna switch to your more managerial tasks, the tasks that don't require as much of your brain power.

Right? Those are tasks that you could do when you sleep, that you could... You don't need a lot of brain power to do. Alright? And if you make that, that is another thing that is...

Will provide exponential growth, exponential productivity growth for you. If you're doing that hardest thing first, alright, using the best of your brainpower to do it, and then doing those other things, those little menial tasks that don't require much brain power, save those toward the end of the day. And you'll be able to set some time aside after that to really wind your brain down so that you're not super stressed at the end of the day, that you can go into that family time without you know, being all tense and wound up. Alright? Few other things here that I've incorporated in my life that have really helped me and I've talked about these a lot before.

Meditation, I meditate ten minutes a day every single day. I utilize the Sam Harris meditation app, the waking up app. And I like him because he has a way of explaining things for those of us who are not natural meditators, who don't naturally gravitate toward that kind of stuff. And he's just really good in the type of instruction he gives. So that's really helped me to understand my brain, to observe myself.

It's not it's not a spiritual thing. Alright? I'm a I'm a religious person, but meditation for me is not a spiritual thing. Meditation is more of a way of understanding my brain, understanding those thoughts that come up. Understanding why I get angry, why I get stressed.

Being able to recognize when I'm angry or stressed, that's a huge thing. And it'll be a huge thing for you guys too. And it's a practice, it's not easy at first, but that's something I do toward the beginning of my day when I have that extra hour. The other thing, obviously, I talked about this a little bit early, but I read. I read every single day.

And the thing about reading is this, you can go through life and General Mattis said this, you can go through life and learn from experience or you can learn from the experience of others. And what I found, and again this is another thing that General Mattis says, is that when you learn from experience, well, you're going to pay the price. You're going to get burned. But if you're learning through reading, then you'll ask somebody else to go through that experience and educate you on it. And I've been reading quite a bit about history, historical biographies.

I'm reading Battle Cry of Freedom right now about the Civil War, because I find reading about those tumultuous times in history helps to set my mind at ease about some of the things that are going on in our country right now. I read a lot about business, being an entrepreneur, you've got to. But whatever your field is, you should spend some time developing yourself in that field. Trying to push yourself forward, trying to extend your knowledge. If you're still in the military, pick up some of that...

If you're in the Marine Corps pick up the Commandant's Reading List. There's a reading list for every rank, literally. So spend some time doing that. And again, that is a force multiplier Right? That will help you in so many ways.

So those are my tips today. That's about all I've got, guys. I hope that that all makes sense. I'm gonna put... I'm gonna list this stuff out on the show notes as well so that you guys have it.

And if you've got any questions about it, you know, don't be afraid to reach out on me on social media. I'm on Instagram at at Warrior Soul Agoge. That's Warrior Soul, a g o g e. On Twitter I'm WarriorSoulGear and on YouTube, some of you are watching on YouTube, but the channel is called Warrior Soul Agoge. For those of you who have been listening to this podcast, who have been following along, I just wanna extend my gratitude to you.

You know, we've been doing this for three years. There's those of you who are here with me at the very beginning, and I can't tell you how much I appreciate that, how much I appreciate you in sticking by me. And, you know, I don't ask for anything in return for this show. All I really ask from you guys is that you let other people know. Share these episodes out.

Alright? Give it to somebody who could really be helped by it. And another thing you could do that's absolutely free, you don't have to buy a thing from me, but if you could write me a review on iTunes, that helps so much to spread word about the show. I know that not all of you listen to the show on iTunes, but iTunes is what drives the algorithms for the podcast. So if you can get over to iTunes and write a rating and review, that helps so much to get this information to the ears of more veterans and more people who can use this information.

Beyond that, if you want to support the show in other ways, we've got an amazing clothing store up at warriorsoul.shop That is really really awesome way of supporting the show because we've got some partners up in Santa Barbara, US Marine Corps veterans who design and print our shirts. There's graphic design shirts. There's skivvy shirts up there that you can get. Really great stuff, you could find that up at warriorsoul.shop. I'm also creating another store right now and that is going to house all the information products.

I've got some of my ebooks about bodybuilding, about fitness, about lifting weights, about health, about hormones, those are going be up. I don't have a web address for that yet but it will be up on our main website and you'll be able to link from there by the time this show comes out. And then if you want to support yourself, we've got the Warrior's Obituary Society. That is our mastermind group. It's meant to empower all of its members to live epic lives worthy of epic obituaries.

And the way we work that is it starts with an eight week development program that all of our members go through. You start by writing out your vision by specifying your goals, meaningful goals, not just goals that you're going after because everybody else wants you to go after them but goals that actually mean something to you. And then we work on specifics. We help you to devise your own customized fitness and nutrition plan. We help you to devise your own finance plan so that you can start investing in your dreams and knocking down debt.

We help you to start to assess where you want to go in your career or your business, how to get that moving forward. We help you to work on your relationships. We get together for live calls each week. We hold each other accountable to the goals we're working on and we've got our own private forum over Slack. And that forum is there because I don't want to run something over a private Facebook group.

The thing about Facebook groups is there's a lot of distractions there, right? I'm trying to keep people off of social media. I don't want you to be trying to work on your goals and then get a million messages and get a bunch of alerts. And I also don't want you to feel like somebody's looking over your shoulder, alright? I want a place for us to be free.

I've kept the price on that mastermind very low because I want people from this community to be involved. So if you're interested in that, check it out at www.warriorobituarysociety.com. That's warriorobituarysociety.com. And then I just want to give a shout out to our amazing sponsors, F Bomb Nutrition. They make delicious packets of fats, they make keto snacks, macadamia nut butters, they make meat sticks, they make cheese snacks, they're absolutely awesome and they're super portable.

You can carry them wherever you want to go. Great supplement to MREs if you're still in the military. You can find them up at www.dropanfbomb.com. Use the code Warrior Soul at checkout to get 20% off your first order. And also my good friends at Save The Brave.

Savethebrave.org. They are a five zero one c three charity for veterans that creates camaraderie events around the country. Fishing events, golfing events, really great people. The board on this organization does not take a salary. A 100% of the money donated to Save the Brave goes toward helping veterans.

And with that guys, I want to thank you. We've got some great content lined up for you over the next few weeks. I've got Michael Franzese, the former caporegime of the Colombo crime family coming on. I've got my good friend Mike Ergo, Ironman Triathlete and Marine Corps veteran coming on. I've got Captain David Marquet, a leadership expert coming on, and a few others.

We've we've had some great content coming up, and we got a lot more coming to you. So we'll be back at you soon with some more awesome episodes. Get out there. Live your best life while you can. And this is Chris, and I am out.