See all Dr. Benjamin Hardy transcripts on Youtube

Speaker 1

00:00

The billionaire Gary Keller said that it's better to do a few things with great effect rather than doing many things with side effects. The challenge that most people have is that they're doing way too many things. It's kind of like taking 1 step in 20 different directions rather than taking 20 steps in 1 direction. And in this video, I'm going to share with you 7 simple habits that if you start applying, you will be able to save at least 20 hours per week.

Speaker 1

00:22

But far more importantly, your weeks, you'll be doing a lot less, have a lot more flow, have a lot more downtime even, and you'll be having a lot greater effect and a lot more mental health. My name is Dr. Benjamin Hardy. I'm an organizational psychologist and bestselling author of multiple books, including my third book with Dan Sullivan.

Speaker 1

00:38

10x is easier than 2x. If you're new to this channel, please like this video. Please subscribe. Let's jump into these 7 habits.

Speaker 1

00:45

The first habit is, is at the end of every single week, and you can even do this at the end of every single day. But at the end of every single week, just have a 10 minute review session where you review your week. I love the quote that all progress starts by telling the truth. So simply review your week and be honest with yourself.

Speaker 1

01:00

What were the things during your week that actually had a big impact towards your goal? Not towards just general progress, but towards your true goal, your true goal in life, the thing that you really want more than anything, what were the few things that actually moved that forward? If you're really honest and you review your week, chances are just a few things you did dramatically moved your progress forward. This fits with a lot of the research from Dr.

Speaker 1

01:19

Alan Bernard, who's a researcher in decision-making, who says that people waste their time in 4 fundamental ways. 1 is that they continue to do the wrong things. And the wrong things, according to Bernard, are the things that honestly don't have huge upside towards the goal. They're things that either are moving you backwards or just marginally moving you forward.

Speaker 1

01:34

This is being busy but not productive. The second thing that Bernard talks about is that people don't do the right things. There are a few right things if you have a really clear goal. This would be what would be called the bottleneck, But there's a few things that if you really focus on it, it's gonna have huge upside And then the third thing is is that people do the right thing those few those few right things But they do them in the wrong way either.

Speaker 1

01:54

They're multitasking. They're not in a flow state they're overly booked overly scheduled not getting support and guidance And then the fourth thing that Dr. Bernard talks about is that they don't learn from their mistakes and so they repeat errors 1, 2, and 3 over and over and over again. Lessons are repeated until they're learned.

Speaker 1

02:10

And so every week, most people are basically on autopilot repeating the same week over and over and over again because they're not learning from their mistakes and they're not doing these review sessions. So at the end of every week, step number 1 or habit number 1 is just simply do a review and be really honest with yourself and just examine what were the few things that you did that had massive effect. They could be a conversation with someone. It could be when you actually did some journaling or you actually sat and focused on that important work, not the urgent work.

Speaker 1

02:35

And you did do it for an hour or 2 or 3, and you actually made progress. And then write down if you're willing, if you're comfortable, the many things you did that didn't have a huge effect. Maybe those are the quote unquote wrong things that Dr. Bernard's talking about that you're repeating just simply because it's your habit.

Speaker 1

02:51

It's your situation. It's your context. And if you want to start really making progress, choose to eliminate at least 1 thing each week when you're when you're mapping out the next week, Choose what you're going to eliminate and redesign the week. This takes us to habit number 2, which will save you at least 20 hours per week, which is at least once per week, review your calendar, review your calendar for the next week, for the upcoming week, but also for the upcoming month.

Speaker 1

03:12

And just look at it and ask yourself, which of these activities am I already pre-committed to that I already know fits in that category of wrong things or using the 80 20 principle is part of the 80% of stuff that's not moving the needle towards your true goal. And this is where you want to apply what Greg McKeown would call essentialism, which is uncommits to some of those things that you're already committed to on commits to things in your future and focus your future on much higher standards do only those things that have big upside towards your true goals if you have more than 3 priorities you have none and just because it's in your calendar in the future doesn't mean you have to do it Some things you may have to follow through with to complete the commitment. But I'm guessing if you look at your calendar for next week and for the month ahead, there's a lot of things in there that you can just genuinely uncommit to because you now have a higher standard. And when you raise your floor, when you raise your minimum standard and you start saying no to things that you used to say yes to, that's how you get a massive upgrade to your subconscious, which signals to yourself and to the world that you are at a much higher level.

Speaker 1

04:10

It's how you build confidence. Habit number 3, which will save you at least 20 hours per week, is rather than trying to accomplish as much as you can each day, it's much better to optimize for the week. So optimize for the week rather than optimize for the day. When you optimize for the week, you can actually start catching much bigger fish.

Speaker 1

04:26

Rather than trying to complete a ton of small or minor tasks each day and knocking out your 10 step to-do list and being really busy, If you start optimizing for the week or even for the month and asking, you know, this week, what is the 1, 2 or 3 massive things I can accomplish that have the biggest upside for my future self? There's a great book and I've referenced it many times called catching the big fish in that book. He talks about how our consciousness is really like the ocean and how most people are up at the surface catching small fish. And that's where you're doing a lot of things.

Speaker 1

04:55

You're focused on volume, but not productivity. You're doing busy work. You're in the things that are honestly not moving the dial. They're things that are keeping you where you're at.

Speaker 1

05:04

And so if you redesign and you optimize for the week and just go for 1, 2, or 3 things max that you know are gonna be the biggest investment towards your future self, these are the few things that if you really focus on, do some deep work on, it could change your life, rather than just grinding away at the clock. When you start optimizing for the week and just accomplishing a few big fish during the week, rather than a lot of small fish each day, then each of your days is gonna start looking different. You also don't wanna do a ton of task switching each day. Most people, their days are thinly sliced, meaning they've got lots of different meetings, lots of different tasks, but they're also tasks switching.

Speaker 1

05:37

They may be trying to go from creative work to administrative work to meetings. And when you start going for much bigger fish and when you start optimizing for deep flow, not just for patches of flow, but for deep flow. You really want to optimize for the week and design your week for doing a lot of deep work. And what that would mean is that each day you're really generally probably just doing 1 type of task.

Speaker 1

05:57

I even wrote about this in Willpower Doesn't Work, my first book, when I was referencing Ari Mizell. You want to have environments that are related to the type of work you're doing, but also you want to do 1 type of work for a more chunked out, blocked out period of time. So as an example, if I'm filming this video, I'm much better filming 5 videos in a row rather than trying to film 1 video 5 different days. Because if I'm filming 5 in a row, I'm already in deep flow.

Speaker 1

06:21

Once you get the first 1 done, the next few are a lot easier, but also I'm in that creative space. And so that would be what we would call in this book a Focus day. So Dan Sullivan has a time system. He created after coaching world-class entrepreneurs for 50 years.

Speaker 1

06:35

And he's got a system that's really for high performance, which is what he calls free days focus days and buffer days free days are full recovery days. And if you want to get insanely good at what you do, you really got to start optimizing for recovery and having more literal downtime and playtime. But also you want to have those buffer or what he would call kind of practice or rehearsal days, thinking about like pro athletes or actresses. Like there are days when you're just practicing or preparing.

Speaker 1

06:58

So those are days where you're maybe just organizing, getting things ready. But then there are those deep focus days where you're just fully in flow, deeply focused, usually on just like 1 thing. If you're task switching from thing to thing to thing, trying to do creative work, administrative work, busy work, you're not gonna be doing any of them very well. That fits with what Dr.

Speaker 1

07:16

Bernard would talk about, which is doing the right things but in the wrong ways. You just didn't set yourself up for success. So each day you really should be ideally just doing 1 type of work. And this also fits with doing much deeper, more powerful work.

Speaker 1

07:27

Rather than just trying to get into a flow state for like 60 seconds or 60 minutes, rather than having a snap flow session, you wanna design for deep flow because you're going into deep waters. And so that's why you would optimize for the week. Have just a few big fish that you're catching each week that you know that those fish are gonna be worth way more to your future self. They're gonna have much higher impact leverage.

Speaker 1

07:47

They're gonna create much longer term effects. And it's really a true investment. As an example, me writing this book. This is something that I did some really deep work on, and I'm continuing to get paid for the work that I did on this a year ago.

Speaker 1

08:01

I wrote this book a year ago. And so I'm continuing to reap the rewards. But also when you just do that deep learning, there's 1 more great concept on this that I learned from Paul Graham. Paul Graham is a entrepreneurial thinker, and he says you should either have a maker schedule or a manager schedule.

Speaker 1

08:13

If you're a manager and you're doing administrative tasks, then that's fine. Like you can absolutely have meetings throughout your week, but if you're more of a creative, more of a like a leader and a visionary, you really wanna have more of a maker schedule where you have much bigger time blocks for thinking, for solving problems. So rather than having 5 different meetings or 5 different time cuts throughout your day, you want to have chunks of like 4 to 8 hours to solve big problems. If I'm deep writing a single chapter, as an example, or if a coder is trying to do some deep innovative work, you need to go deep.

Speaker 1

08:45

And it takes a lot of time simply just to get into the weeds and to solve those bigger problems. So you wanna have much bigger time blocks and then chunk, for example, your administrative tasks together. That would be what Dan would call buffer days. Like if you're gonna have meetings or if you're gonna do organizational stuff, have all of those blocked and chunked together.

Speaker 1

09:01

Habit number 4, which is gonna save you at least 20 hours per week fits with the quote from Jim Collins that I shared before which is if you have more than 3 priorities you have 0 this should fit with the week it also should just in general fit with your larger picture of life if you're if you're pursuing like 10 different goals in life you probably don't have a lot of focus. You're probably not that clear on what you value. Your priorities come from what you value. And if you get more and more connected to your future self and think about what your future self wants and the future self that you most want, not playing anyone else's game, but playing your own game, there's probably just a few things in your life that truly are in that 20% of things that really matter to you.

Speaker 1

09:37

Rather than pursuing 50 goals, rather than worrying about what everyone else is doing, just pursue the 1, 2, or 3 things that truly you value. Those are the important things, not the urgent things. And then apply that same concept to your quarters every 90 days. Don't go for more than 3 major results rather than accomplishing 20 small things.

Speaker 1

09:54

Catch 3 really big fish, 3 priorities. You could do that to the month, the week, and even the day if you choose. Have no more than 3 things you're trying to accomplish each day. And I would even argue you want to get closer down to 1 or 2 per day, but those are really big fish.

Speaker 1

10:08

Those are really important work that you're doing. Habit number 5 that will save you at least 20 hours per week is this. It's a book that Dan Sullivan and I wrote called Who Not How. Rather than asking yourself, how can I do this?

Speaker 1

10:18

You start applying who not how. This is something that most people start applying way too late, especially entrepreneurs. But the idea of who not how is that rather than asking yourself, how can I do this? Which is what the public education system trains us to do.

Speaker 1

10:31

Most people, they're doing many things with side effects rather than a few things for great effect. And our minds experience a lot of what's called cognitive load, where we've got too many things on our plate, and so we're not actually able to go really, really deep and solve amazing problems. And so to experience a lot more flow, not only do you want to design for the week, catching bigger fish and have very few priorities, but you also want to pass a lot of the things you're doing off to a who. The first 1 would honestly be like a digital or administrative assistant.

Speaker 1

11:00

As people, we have a lot of ego and pride. We think that we're the only person that can do this. I'm the only person that could answer my email. I'm the only person who can book my flights.

Speaker 1

11:08

I'm the only person who can do my dishes or even creative tasks. I'm the only person who can edit this video, as an example. The more you start applying who not how, the more you'll be able to focus on those few things that have extreme effect. Those few right things that have extreme effect and you'll be able to let someone else who can actually focus on those tasks do them well rather than you lackluster doing a lot of things with very low flow you doing 20 things or 80 things, you start to really tone it down where your mind and your attention are on higher quality, less quantity.

Speaker 1

11:37

That's how you start going really deep and catching fish that are worth 10X, 100X. And that's where you really start to get a lot better at what you do. That's when you start to become expert and world class at what you do and who not how is so underutilized. There's so many productivity experts out there who are honestly not very good leaders or entrepreneurs, and so they'll give you like 50 productivity hacks or they'll give you like 50 tools that you should apply when most of that doesn't even need to happen.

Speaker 1

12:02

If you just literally apply who not how, get an assistant, get someone who can organize you rather than you needing to organize yourself. And they handle a lot of the administrative stuff. They handle a lot of the busy stuff. That's what they're good at.

Speaker 1

12:13

That's what they want to do. And they're there to help you. Problem number 1 that people apply with who know how our problem number 1 that people have with it is that they think that no 1 else can do that they think that I'm the only person who's capable to do that the truth is is that you're not doing that great of a job on those things and if you would just pass them to someone else you and trust them and trust yourself more to go deep into the few things that matter. You'll find that you've just freed your mind.

Speaker 1

12:36

You freed your time. This book is actually based on dance for freedoms freedom of time freedom of money freedom of relationship and freedom of purpose and you can't start having higher amounts and qualities of money until you start optimizing and having higher qualities of time and your quality of time is based on your quality and depth of attention. And so in order to have deeper and higher flow, you've got to free up most of what you're doing to someone else and you just start small Start with 1 who start with a part-time employee who just starts to handle some of the some of the tasks some of the bookkeeping free 20 hours of your day of just that logistical busy stuff and use that to go into flow and then you'll get better and better at getting insanely good. Better at getting insanely good who's in fact there's a really good book that I recently read by Richard Koch he wrote the book the 80-20 individual and he talks about how there are few individuals that really do drive the growth of every organization even in Microsoft and I believe Microsoft has about a hundred and 30000 employees Bill Gates said that if you took away the top 20 people, that company would become mediocre or even cease to exist.

Speaker 1

13:39

Those top 20 are driving all the results. And so over time, you do get a lot better at who not how. You get better at partnering with the right types of people, even hiring the right types of people, where you start to team and partner with the people, those 80, 20 individuals that are worth 20 or 50. And I, even after writing this book, I wrote this book like 4 years ago, and I am still learning this skill, learning to partner with the right hoos, learning to value the right hoos, trust the right hoos, and finding those 80, 20 individuals that have massive upside.

Speaker 1

14:07

But you just have to start. A lot of times, and even in this book right here 10 X is easier than 2 X. There's a in chapter 6 of this book there is an full FAQ section frequently asked questions section on who not how. But 1 of the first questions is people just are afraid of hiring the wrong person or wasting their money.

Speaker 1

14:23

And you've got to go through that learning curve. You've got to get good at learning how to pass stuff off, trusting people and then learning to the process. And over time, you get better at filtering better people, giving them much clearer standards, and then honestly getting out of their way. Let the who do the how.

Speaker 1

14:36

And over time as your vision gets a lot bigger, you will not only attract, but you will find really great who's that can help you achieve your vision. And so you will not only save 20 hours of time, but you will multiply your time by 10X by just simply applying who not how, even just getting that first assistant. This is the second mistake that people make with who not how is they view it as a cost. They're thinking about, if you're getting that part-time assistant that's 20 to 25 bucks an hour or something.

Speaker 1

15:04

They're focused on the cost rather than seeing it as an investment. Seeing it as an investment, firstly in yourself, because now you can reallocate that time and your attention with less tabs open, with less cognitive load, with less decision fatigue. Decision fatigue, and this fits a lot with willpower is the notion that the more decisions you have to make especially in a given chunk of time the less quality those decisions become it really burns out your willpower having to task switch under times make a bunch of decisions and so If you can offload that to a who that is now responsible for it, and they handle that, and therefore no more do you have that cognitive load nor those decision fatigues, now you have a higher quality of flow, a higher depth of flow, and you can start achieving things in a day or in a week that you could not have achieved before in a month or in a year because you're now operating in deeper time, deeper flow. Flow is qualitative.

Speaker 1

15:53

It's not like 1 hour of flow is equal to 4 or 5 hours of flow. If you've designed for flow and if your mind is free from all that stuff, the quality of insights, the quality of work you could do in a single day may be worth 10 small crappy flow sessions. Flow sessions, I would say. I don't really think you wanna go for small flow sessions.

Speaker 1

16:11

That's how I actually used to think about flow, was how do I get into flow to write that blog post? Now it's literally about designing everything for flow. It's about being deep in the few things that matter, deep in focus flow and deep in recovery flow. All right, just 2 more habits that are gonna save you at least 20 hours per week, but more importantly, they're gonna make the hours you have worth 10 times more and be 10 times more enjoyable.

Speaker 1

16:31

So habit number 6 to saving 20 hours per week is actually taking more time off, having more recovery flow. Like recovery is just as important for high performance as focused work. If you study any high performer, any person who's world-class at what they do, they go really, really deep on, like on in their focus, but they also go really, really deep off. And there's research that shows that 16% of creative ideas happen when you're sitting at work.

Speaker 1

16:57

Often if you take more time for recovery, that could include walks, and recovery should be active. It's not just sitting on the couch, although that that can be fine too, but it's doing things that are novel or interesting or even moving your body, doing things that are fun and enjoyable and building relationships, building relationships and having powerful relationships outside of work, especially with those you love. I have 6 kids. And so me being a great dad and me optimizing those relationships, me caring about what my kids care about, spending time with them, having fun with them, turning fully off is essential for my best work.

Speaker 1

17:30

I actually learned this and I gave a TED talk on this a long time ago when I was a foster parent of 3 kids that it was actually hugely beneficial to my productivity to become a foster parent of 3 kids. I was in a PhD program, I had just gotten 3 kids and I was working on becoming a professional author and because I had those 3 foster kids and it was kind of a forcing function for me to focus on my family and not focus on my PhD work or even my writing work I was required to recover and spend time over there and it was honestly the best thing I could do because then when I did work I jumped deep into flow and there's a bunch of research on this in the field of what's called worker occupational psychology There's a subject called psychological detachment from work and basically what psychological detachment from work is is it's turning your your mind your attention and your Behaviors off from work-related anything Most people don't do this because they keep their notifications on, they're answering emails, they're kind of never fully on or off. I actually love the quote from Dan Sullivan. He said, wherever you are, that's where you should be.

Speaker 1

18:28

And so if you're not fully detaching from work, fully going off and having fun, exciting novel experiences outside of work, then your ability to go deep, deep into flow in your work will be diminished. You'll be very up at the surface, very lackluster in all that you do. I love the quote, how you do 1 thing is how you do all things. And the goal is that you're, rather than doing many things for side effects, you become more and more focused on less and less and less but better higher quality less quantity so that you're doing very few things but everything you do has a higher and higher floor everything you do has a higher standard and that's when you start really becoming expert and excellent at what you do habit number 7.

Speaker 1

19:03

And this is the final habit that will save you at least 20 hours per week is to remove every single week. I love the quote that says if you want to gain knowledge do more every week or gain every week. But if you want to gain wisdom remove stuff every single week remove information. I love I really do love the 80-20 principle that says that 80% of what you're doing is a waste of time.

Speaker 1

19:23

80% of what you're doing, 80% of the information you consume is noise. And so if you can even strip out 80% or even just strip out some every single week. That goes back to the Dr. Bernard stuff at the beginning, which is the 4 ways people waste time, which is they continue to do the wrong things.

Speaker 1

19:38

So every week back to habit 1, if you're doing a reflection or review, and if you're being honest with yourself, all progress starts by telling the truth And just being honest with yourself, not beating yourself up. There's no reason to be mad at your former self. You're not your former self. You're not the person you were even a week ago and you learned a lot.

Speaker 1

19:53

And that's awesome. And so you can have compassion and love for yourself, but you can also be honest about the things that are no longer moving the needle, no longer useful. And so if you start stripping things out, removing things every week, removing some of the inputs you're consuming, a lot of the inputs you're consuming are a distraction. There's a great quote, your input shapes your outlook.

Speaker 1

20:11

A lot of the scrolling you're doing is low quality. You want to start raising the floor and everything you're doing so that you're doing higher quality and less quantity of all things. You're consuming higher quality and less quantity of all things. You're spending time with higher quality and less quantity of all people.

Speaker 1

20:25

Habit number 7 is just simply, as part of that habit number 1 in the reflection review, is removing stuff every single week and just focusing on higher quality and less quantity. My name is Dr. Benjamin Hardy. If you apply these habits, you will not only start saving 20 hours per week, but your time will start being coming worth 5, 10, 100 X per week.

Speaker 1

20:44

And as you start applying as an example, who not, how you'll start building a, a more and more powerful team around you that can help you achieve results you could never achieve on your own. All the while your time slows down, you have more recovery, more play, more enjoyment, better health, and much deeper sessions, extended sessions of flow where you're doing few things with massive effect rather than many things with side effects. Please like this if you enjoyed it. Please subscribe to the channel.

Speaker 1

21:09

If you haven't done it yet, please grab 10x is easier than 2x. I'm Dr. Benjamin Hardy. Have a beautiful day.