WFN001: Finding the Time to Do Things

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

What is going on everybody? Welcome to this edition of Warrior Friday Notes. This is a shorter episode where we go in-depth on a specific subject matter. And today, we're going be talking about time management. And it's a funny thing because we all say we lack time, but we all have the same twenty four hours in a day.

And I'm going to get into some tips and tricks for helping you to master your time management in a second. First, I want to give you a few different announcements here from Warrior Soul. Number one, I want to tell you about the brand new Warrior For Life program. This is something I've been wanting to work on for a while, and the idea was to create a community around Warrior Soul. What I wanted to do was create a community for men who are looking to take charge of their fitness and take charge of their health.

Where we're starting with this is with testosterone optimization. This is one of the most important subjects I can think of because testosterone is literally your lifeblood. It's the hormone that's going to allow you to feel good. It's going to allow you to be in a good mood. It's going to allow you to do all the things you want to do in this life and take action to make your life even better.

And so, there's a lot of things that we don't realize that could be cutting into our testosterone production. Things like poor digestion. Things like poor sleep. And what I've done is I've created a testosterone optimization checklist. It's a checklist that's going help you to get everything done, get everything in order, get your body to the point where you can get back to secreting testosterone like you should be.

And my goal for everybody involved with this and everybody out there in general is to help them to feel better into their older years. I want you to take more advantage of these years that you have in your life because we only get one of these and you might as well live it to your fullest. So if you're interested in signing up for the Warrior for Life program, it's completely free. Just head over to www.warriorsoulagoge.com. There's a link over there on the main page.

And when you sign up, you get that checklist. You get a free twenty one day testosterone optimization workout. And then, you also get membership in our private Facebook group, the Warrior Soul Fitness Academy, where we talk about fitness. I'm delivering tips every single day and running Facebook Lives. And, it's going to be a lot of fun in there.

We've got about 600 members already and we are growing. The other thing I want to let you know is from our sponsors, F Bomb Nutrition. If you haven't heard of these guys, they make delicious packets of awesome fats. And they're well known for their macadamia nut butters. They've macadamia nut butter mixed up with coconut butter, macadamia nut butter mixed up with, sea salt, mixed up with chocolate.

These things are awesome. They're low in sugar and they're a great snack on the go anybody who's looking to include healthy fats in their diet. If you want to check them out, head over to www.dropanfbomb.com. Use the code WARRIORSOUL on your first order at checkout, and you'll get 20% off of that first order. So with that, let's delve into this subject matter: How to get more out of your day and how to stop saying you don't have enough time.

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.

So a lot of us are trying to lose weight. We're trying to build new businesses. We're trying to start new things with our lives. Maybe we're just trying to spend some more time with friends and family. And it's a funny thing because whenever we're trying to start something new, it seems like we're always out of time.

Like, we don't have time or we don't have time for anything else. And in general, that feeling makes us really unhappy. Makes us feel like, you know, we're kind of painted ourselves into a corner and we're not gonna be able to get out of the situation we're in ever, and we're never gonna be able to start the things we really wanna do. And if I were to say that there was one thing that really caused unhappiness, it's it's that feeling. That feeling that you're trapped in your job, you're trapped in whatever state you're in in life and and you can't make any changes because you feel like you don't have any control.

Well, thing is this, when you think about not having time, not having time is a misnomer. Because we all have, you know, the same twenty four hours in a day. And when we think about that, it's not time that we lack. We actually lack attention. We actually lack the ability to utilize those twenty four hours wisely.

And so, you know, in this modern world where our focus is all over the place, it's on our phone, it's on our computer, it's on the different websites or the 30 different windows we have up in our browser, a lot of times it's really, really difficult to focus on what we need to get done so that we can do the things we really want to do. So what I wanna do today in this Warrior Friday notes is I want to go through some tactics that I've used to try to use these twenty four hours that we all get a day a little bit more wisely. And, you know, each of these are different types of practices that you can keep to yourself, different things that you can instill in your life, but they're all meant with one specific reason and that that is to allow you to get the most out of this time that you do have because we all have it. Have we have to stop telling ourselves that we don't have time. So the first thing is this.

Number one, wake up early and go to sleep early. Now, I know we're all supposed to I I've made this excuse to myself in the past where I would wake up at like 4AM. Right? And I would get like through four or five hours of sleep a night and I would say I was fine. And I know that that that is not something that's healthy to do. It really actually was burning a hole in me and I didn't even realize it.

And it was actually eating up a lot of my later time in the day because what I would find is like after 01:00 I was worthless or after 02:00, was worthless. My brain would be fried because I wasn't getting enough sleep at night. So I definitely don't recommend, you know, killing your sleep or anything like that. But I do recommend not necessarily staying up to watch that Netflix for the extra hours up until like 11PM. You know, you want to try to get to bed between the hours of like ten, nine and ten, latest possible eleven.

And that way you can wake up at a decent hour. You can start to work on some of the things you really want to work on before you get to work. And that could be prepping meals for your diet. It could be, you know, going doing a gratitude journal. It could be spending some time with their with your kids before they have to go to school.

Could be spending some time with your wife or or even just getting a workout in or maybe even getting a, you know, an hour or forty five minutes work on that side business you're trying to do. But wake up early with a refreshed mind. I guess that is the first item. Right? You want to make sure you are getting eight hours of sleep, but you want to make sure you are getting up at a time where you have at least a few hours before you are forced to do anything else that's outside of what you really want to do in the day and that includes work and whatever your boss has got for you.

The second thing is this, focus on one thing at a time and it's like I said before, we have all of these different things out there that we could pay attention on. Right? We have our phones. We have our computers. We got the television screen.

Pretty soon, I'm pretty sure that there's gonna be like other contact lenses that have a computer screen on the inside of them or something that attaches inside of our brains that's gonna, you know, link us into social media or something like that. But what you really want to do when you're really focusing on what you want to do is turn off your phone. Turn off those messages that you're getting every second. Turn off Facebook Messenger. Turn off all your notifications on your phone.

Just focus on one thing at a time and give it your deepest focus that you can. If you do that, you're going find that you get a whole lot more out of the hours you are spending working. You're going to be a whole heck of a lot more productive. Don't keep more than one window up on your computer. Right?

Maybe you keep a window up to play some music, some background music or something like that and then one window on what you're working on. But besides that, down all your computer windows. And I know I'm the worst at this. Sometimes I'll look at my computer and there'll be 20 or 30 things up there. But I know that when there are 20 or 30 things up there, that's when my attention becomes really fractured.

And that's when I really feel like I'm not getting anything done during the day because I'm cruising between those windows trying to figure things out, trying to remember what I was focusing on in the first place. So get your phone away from you, shut down everything but one window and, you know, really focus on what you're doing. Do one thing at a time and schedule that time out. And this gets me into the next thing I want to talk about. Make sure you're planning beforehand.

So plan what you're going to do the night beforehand, set your schedule out and be disciplined about that schedule. So when the time comes, if you're working on one thing, let's say you're working on, you know, doing some phone calls or anything like that at certain period of time. And let's say somebody doesn't get back to you within that period of time or you get somebody on the messaging service and the hours up that you were supposed to be spending on that phone calls and now it's time to move on to to writing up memos. Well, focus on writing up memos. Right?

Set some time aside later on in the day to get back to whoever's leaving you that message so you don't have to take your focus off of writing those memos because that's just gonna add time to making that task of writing memos so much more complicated. Alright? So make sure you're planning this stuff out the night before and be really disciplined about it. You don't want to plan it as you're going because as if you're doing it as you're going, you're in the stress of the moment and that's really going to cloud your judgment on what you should be doing. You want to be as detached from your day as possible while you're planning it out and that's because you're not going to be able to be, you're not going to be planning that schedule with stress.

If you're planning that schedule under stress, you're going to be spending too much time on some things and not enough time on others and you're going to start missing things. Next thing is this, and this is something that I do. I carry around a notebook wherever I go and that is so that I can keep lists. And the reason why I do that is because let's say you're out and about or maybe you're spending some time with family or maybe you're you're you're you're you're in a meeting or anything like that or you run into somebody or something comes up in your mind. The reason why I keep a notebook there, maybe it's in a backpack or something like that is so that I can write down whatever comes up that I have to pay attention to later.

And that way I'm not pulling my phone out and I don't have to pay attention to the notifications or anything like that if an urgent message came in. When I say urgent, I mean urgent usually means that somebody else is trying to impose their urgency on you. It's not something that's necessarily urgent to you getting your day done. But having a notebook there to write things down allows you to keep a record of things you need to pay attention to later without having to run into any potential, you know, rat traps or anything like that that are gonna take up your attention and fragment what you have to do. And so that's one big trick to that.

And then the other thing is keep lists. Make sure you're keeping these lists of things to do. And every day, in addition to writing out my schedule, what I'll do is I'll write out the the the stuff in my schedule in my notebook, and I'll keep a checklist for each hour that I'm supposed to spend. So those are the things that I need to get done during that hour. And I'll it's not like a fancy notebook that I'm carrying around.

It's just a blank notebook. I'm basically writing the square next to it, and I'll write those things down while I'm while I'm planning out my day for the next day. So the next one is this, and this is particularly going to be true for those of you out there who are business owners and and that is to build the team. And this is the thing, I'm I'm a solopreneur and I am slowly starting to realize that there is no way I'm gonna be able to get done all the things I need to get done in a day to make this business as successful as it could be. And that's because I'm only human.

And the thing is, played that that lone warrior for for so long. I was the the quintessential guy who didn't like to hang out with anybody else or or do business with anybody else. And that's because I've been burnt in the past by people a lot of times. But I'm really realizing that there's a lot of stuff that I do that I shouldn't be doing. And that includes things like web design or logo design or t shirt design.

That includes, know, certain emails that I have to answer and certain things to do with customer service. And so one of the things I'm on the lookout for right now is searching for team members, building a team. Now that team would be easier to build in this day and age than any other time, right? So we have virtual assistants, right? And you could go to places like Upwork, you could go to places like Zirtual, you can get yourself a virtual assistant to handle some of those emails that you really shouldn't be be handling.

And so one of the things you really need to do is you need to look through your list of items that you're doing each day, figure out what you're spending your time on that you shouldn't. Right? So are you spending all your time on putting together SEO for your website? Are you put spend are you spending all your time putting together or writing copy? Maybe you're good at writing copy, but you need to be the visionary of your business.

You need to be the creator of your business. You can't be the creator and you can't be the visionary if you're focused on writing a headline for your new landing page or if you're focused on what a single sentence should look like in your email. And so it's best to really build a team of people that you who are gonna help you to do the things you should be doing. And many times, those people in that team, they could probably beat you hands down in writing copy or graphic design or all these other things. So even if you're good at it, you you probably need to bring somebody else on.

And then, you know, the next thing, and and this is a really big thing, is prioritize what's important to you. Right? As I said before, it's not that we lack time. We all have the same twenty four hours in a day. We all lack attention and keep yourself from allowing your attention to become fragmented, and that comes by prioritizing everything that you're doing.

Right? When you are doing something and it's your time to be doing that on your schedule, that is the most important thing. When it's time to spend time with family, that is the most important thing. Don't treat them like your mind is somewhere else. Don't treat them like you are basically tolerating them and and that, like, they're getting the way of the rest of your work.

Use that time to be happy. Use that time to be present with them, and use that time to really live your life because those are the moments we really live for. We don't wanna be handcuffed to a computer all day long. We don't wanna be handcuffed to to whatever power tool we're using all day long. We wanna be in front of our friends and family.

So when it's time for that, you spend time with them and don't fracture your attention with them. So that's what I got for this week's Warrior Friday notes. I want to thank you guys for listening and we've got some great episodes coming up for you this week. We have the Kaiser Sose of trainers coming up. This is a guy that's worked worked with a lot of top athletes from the NFL, people from Hollywood, people from, you know, all over the place.

And he's one of the most influential trainers in the world, in my opinion, but he's also doesn't have a website, and not many people know his name. Gentleman's name is Will Chung, and he is a really great guy, and it's the show's gonna be packed with tons and tons of information. So with that, guys, I want to thank you for listening to this episode. The show notes will be up on the Warrior Soul Agoge website, and we'll be talking about it over on the Warrior Soul Fitness Academy private Facebook group. And that's where we all gather together as a community and discuss episodes, talk about fitness, help each other out.

And so if you're interested in checking that out, head over to www.warriorsoulagoge.com and, we'll get you signed up for free. Talk to you guys soon.