Do you want to skyrocket your sales performance and achieve unprecedented productivity? Are you tired of struggling with time management skills that hinder your success in the sales industry? If so, I have the solution you've been searching for. In this podcast episode, I will reveal the key to unlocking unparalleled results in sales by mastering the art of time management and productivity. By implementing the strategies and techniques shared, you will experience a transformative boost in your sales effectiveness and efficiency. Say goodbye to missed opportunities and hello to a whole new level of success. Get ready to achieve remarkable outcomes and reach your full potential in sales.
Do you want to skyrocket your sales performance and achieve
unprecedented productivity? Are you tired of struggling with time
management skills that hinder your success in the sales industry? If so, I
have the solution you've been searching for. In this podcast episode, I will
reveal the key to unlocking unparalleled results in sales by mastering the art
of time management and productivity. By implementing the strategies and
techniques shared, you will experience a transformative boost in your sales
effectiveness and efficiency. Say goodbye to missed opportunities and hello
to a whole new level of success. Get ready to achieve remarkable outcomes
and reach your full potential in sales.
In this episode, you will be able to:
sales productivity.
supercharge your time management strategy.
for progressive improvements.
important model, enabling better decision making.
effectively utilize our time.
The key moments in this episode are:
00:00:05 -
Introduction,
00:02:04 -
The Two Hour Solution,
00:04:02 -
Weekly Review,
00:07:10 -
Prioritization and Time Management,
00:09:49 -
Failing to Plan is Planning to Fail,
00:12:35 -
Reconnecting with Your Goals,
00:13:55 -
Reviewing and Blocking Commitments,
00:15:29 -
Scheduling Excellence Time,
00:17:15 -
Scheduling Green Time,
00:20:40 -
Managing Red Time,
00:24:45 -
The Importance of Recreation,
00:25:38 -
Proactive Communication and Boundaries,
00:27:45 -
Maximizing Productivity at Work,
00:29:18 -
Recognizing the 80/20 Rule,
00:32:30 -
Planning for Success,
00:00:05
Welcome to the Live Better, Sell Better podcast with your host, Kevin Dorsey
of Inside Sales Excellence, the number one Patreon group and YouTube
channel for tech sellers and tech sales leaders, where we dive in deep for
tactical advice on how to book more meetings, close more deals faster, and
lead sales teams to success. But we don't stop there. We also focus on the
person in salesperson. We talk about mindset, goals, time management, and
so much more. So thank you for listening and if you're interested, head on
over to Patreon.com Inside Salesexellence.
00:00:42
Now with that, grab a notepad, get ready and let's dive into the good stuff.
What up, everybody? I guess I'll say good morning. It's early where I am right
now to record this. It's still a little bit dark, if you can't tell in the lighting.
00:00:54
But I'll say good morning because that's when I'm doing this. And so
regardless of when you watch this or not, good morning. So I'm excited to go
into this one because I think productivity and time management are not
taught very often. And this was something that has come up consistently in
my teams. When you go through and you dive in to figure out why someone
is struggling, almost always there's a time management issue.
00:01:18
And actually, it's funny, recently someone actually made a comment on one
of my posts on time management and they said, there's no such thing as
time management. It's all self management. And I loved that because it's so
true. We can't manage time. We can only manage ourselves during time.
00:01:33
And so I wanted to walk you through what I've been doing quite literally now
for almost the past seven years in terms of my time management and
planning process. It's something I now trained my team on, I trained my
managers on. And it's something we come back to consistently when
someone gets off track and isn't getting done. Not only enough things, but
the right things. So we'll dive in here, take notes, go through this, but I'd
strongly recommend implementing this type of process into your week to
make sure you're getting the right things done.
00:02:04
So I got this from a book called Train Your Brain for Success, which is, I think,
really underrated. I don't know many people that have read it and it's
phenomenal. It covers time management goals, memory, speed reading.
Definitely scoop this up. It's a great book.
00:02:21
They have videos that come with it, too, that you can go and watch and
download. Like really, really good book. It's also where I learned the keystone
goal from. So great book. I have some more recommendations at the end,
but definitely go grab this one because this is where it comes from.
00:02:35
So let's talk about the why. The two hour solution is not a trick to make you
feel good. It's not just something you can go talk about on social media. The
point of the two hour solution is to give you significantly better results. And
so if you think about it, would you be willing to invest 2 hours each week?
00:02:53
If that guaranteed, you'd get 10 hours back in the same the pretty easy math
equation to do. And it might sound like, wait, hold up. Spending 2 hours is
going to get me 10 hours back? Yes, and sometimes more. So you do this
when the week is done and you lay the foundation for the next week.
00:03:12
What it does, it helps tune your subconscious mind to attract success and
seek solutions. When you know what your week looks like going into it,
everything is better. Your brain is already working on solving some of those
problems. So you do it at the end of the week. The end of the week is when
you do your two hour solution.
00:03:30
Now, some people like to do theirs on Sundays. I'm not a big fan of planning
my week on Sunday because for me personally, if I'm planning my week on
Sunday, it means I can't really unplug on Saturday or Sunday because I know
I still have this task coming up. Whereas if I've done this Friday, I go into the
weekend feeling clear. And then Sunday night I can just review my plan
versus having to spend the time to do the plan. So when the week is done,
you start with a review of your week.
00:04:02
This is actually very important. So often we just go through life just cruising.
We never take that pause to see, how did I do this week? So here's what the
weekly review looks like. So first you go, was my plan effective?
00:04:14
Effective. Notice the question is not did I work hard this week? This is not
about working hard. This is, was my plan effective? Did I accomplish the
things that I want to?
00:04:27
How effective was I at sticking to my plan? So these are two totally different
things. If you didn't follow your plan, you don't know if the plan was good or
not. This is very, very important because so often people like, oh, that was a
bad plan or it didn't work, when in reality we didn't do the things necessary
to see success. This is so important to ask this because you need to say,
okay, was my plan effective?
00:04:50
Yes or no? How effective was I, yes or no? This allows you to start building
some momentum of like, okay, you know where you need to improve
because even if the results were not what you hoped for, now at least you
can assess the problem and figure out what's going to be different next time.
Because as people and as salespeople, we lie to ourselves all the time and
we say, something's going to be different next week. Next week I'm going to
do it.
00:05:13
Next week I'm going to stay on task. Next week I'm going to hit my dials.
Next week I'm going to clean up my pipeline, but then we don't plan
anything differently to make sure it actually happens. So it is very important
to review your week. Was your plan effective and how effective were you at
sticking to your plan?
00:05:28
There are absolutely weeks where I go, Jesus, I did not stay on my plan. Too
many fires came up. I didn't manage my time or I didn't manage my energy
properly, and I did not stick to my plan. Then there's other weeks where, like,
I stick to it and I still didn't get the results that I wanted. That allows me to
analyze the plan and figure out what I can change there.
00:05:46
So you end every week with a weekly review. I do this on Friday afternoon.
So this is where you need to give yourself now some self feedback. Okay, so
if the results were not what you wanted, was it process or result problems?
Meaning did you not do the right things or the things you were doing are
wrong?
00:06:02
Or did you just not get the results? Where did the problems occur and then
deciding how it's going to be different next time? If you wrote down that you
were going to clean up your pipeline and then you didn't, you can't just go
into next week saying, okay, now I'm going to do it, you need to figure out,
well, why didn't I where did the problem occur? Did I not block enough time?
Did I allow people to steal my time?
00:06:27
Was it not blocked? Did I not actually put when I'm going to do it? Did I start
to do it? But it took significantly longer than I thought? It's really important.
00:06:37
I don't want to rub this in too much, but we just don't review. We never look
to see why are we not getting the results that we want on a week to week
basis? So it's really important. If you did not get what you wanted, why? Also
true, on the good, if you had a great week, why?
00:06:53
What did you do that week? How can you do more of it? Because everyone's
probably seen these buckets, right? You've got these four areas of urgent and
important. And this is where if you do not prioritize, you're going to spend
most of your time in those bottom buckets.
00:07:10
Urgent but not important. Not important, but urgent. This is where you're
going to live, and this is where burnout comes from. And this is also why very
rarely do you ever hear me tell my teams that they're not working hard
enough. And the reason for that is working hard is a feeling.
00:07:28
Almost everyone feels like they're working hard. But if you're working hard in
these buckets, in these bottom areas, that's where burnout comes from
because it never ends. It feels like you're pushing against a wall all day long,
and so you end the day you're exhausted. Like, man, I worked hard. She
didn't do any of the things that actually were going to get you results,
actually going to get you the success you're looking for.
00:07:51
And oftentimes and salespeople. I'm talking to you all too. People
intentionally spend time here. It's a form of procrastination in itself, because
the important thing, the big things, tend to be scarier. So we'll bury ourselves
in phone calls and emails and slack things like that.
00:08:07
So it feels like we're working when in reality, we're just using work to not
work. Yes, that's what we do. We will use low value work activities to pretend
like we're working. If you don't prioritize, this is where you're going to spend
your time. Whereas if you do prioritize and you spend most of your time in
those top two buckets, this is where you can actually do less and get better
results, do less and get better.
00:08:34
I actually work less now than I used to. Seven, eight years ago. I was putting
in 65, 70 hours, weeks, every single week. When you get better at
prioritizing, you can actually work less because you're getting the results,
because you're spending them in the right area. Right.
00:08:51
A perfect example for someone like me, for my team, I used to spend a lot of
time getting involved in deals. If I'm involved in ten deals, that's 10 hours a
week, just like that in ten deals. That is not the best use of my time. That
does not scale, but it feels like I'm doing something right. So you're like,
okay, I'm in this.
00:09:08
I'm helping. Getting involved in that amount of time, that's 10 hours every
single week, gone. I don't do that anymore. That just saved me 10 hours that
I can apply somewhere else or just take better care of myself. So if you
prioritize, this is where you want to spend your time, doing the things that
actually get you results.
00:09:27
And we'll talk about the 80 20 rule a little bit later on as we go through it. So
the author says this in the book, a direct correlation between how the week
goes and whether or not you follow through both personally and
professionally, you're going to see actually a decent chunk of what we're
going to go through covers personal time spent too. Not just professional.
Failing to plan is planning to fail. It's cliche, but it's true.
00:09:49
It's very true. And if you take the time to do this and you do things
intentionally, intentionally, that's when you see the best results. Emotionally,
but also in the physical sense. If you're doing it with intention, so many
people will block their calendars and then not follow it, or so many people
will block their calendars and then follow it, but not with intention. They're
just doing it because it's on the calendar versus doing it with intention.
00:10:14
I am doing this right now. And a perfect example could be playing with your
kids, doing something special for your wife, calling your mom, calling your
dad calling your grandpa, like doing something with intention for ten minutes
versus trying to block an hour to do nothing with intention. So try this. Go
into this because I love this quote. Instead of saying, I don't have time, say
it's not a priority.
00:10:37
See how that feels? So when you say, I don't have time to exercise, when
you reverse it and say, it's not a priority now, it's putting the onus on you. I
don't have time for family. OOH. It'll hit you different if you start to say family
is not a priority, because that's really actually what it comes down to.
00:10:56
Because we have time. It's where we choose to spend it. Time is not our
most precious commodity. Awareness is. Tension is we all have the same
amount of time.
00:11:07
It's where we give attention that is the best priority sorry, the best place to
do so. So this is important. Never allow yourself to say, I don't have time
anymore. You need to say, I'm not making it a priority or it's not important
enough to me to do. When you take on that onus, you have to do it now.
00:11:25
What he says in the book, too, is that if you don't have 2 hours to block for
yourself to plan your week, then you need to do this even more because you
are a disaster waiting to happen if you don't have 2 hours to plan. That's
exactly why you need to do this now. Quick asterisk here, you do this
enough, it no longer takes 2 hours. If you do this consistently, I think I
normally get it done in about an hour, maybe hour 15, sometimes 2 hours. If
I'm really trying to plan out something differently or I have to revamp things.
00:11:51
But an hour, hour, 15 minutes, I'm able to get this all done and go into the
weekend feeling really good. There's seven key steps to this. The key to this,
though, is commit to this for four weeks, at least four weeks. Try this out.
Because nothing is perfect the first time that you do it.
00:12:05
But if you do it, then review it like we opened up with do it, review, do it,
review, do it review, you're going to start to find the system that works well
for you. There's seven steps that we're going to go through here, and I
encourage you to follow each of these as you go through. So here's the first
step. Right, so our week is done. I took 20 minutes to review my week.
00:12:24
How did I do in terms of my plan? How did my plan do? What were my results
this week? Like, I look at all of those things both personally and
professionally. Once I have that review done, it's okay.
00:12:35
How did I do? There. Step one of the two hour solution is reconnecting with
your goals. And I just did a workshop the other week on goals. If you haven't
seen it in the patreon.
00:12:43
Go grab it. There's a full hour on setting goals because you need to have
them. It's really hard to do a great job planning your week if you don't know
what you're planning that week for. So the first step is to reconnect with your
goals. Five to ten minutes of reviewing your goals, looking at your keystone
goals, visualizing the accomplishments, seeing the colors, the smells, the
sounds like going back into your goals of like, why am I doing this?
00:13:06
Why am I planning my week? Why am I working so hard? It's reconnecting
with your goals. Think about the good that comes from achieving your goals.
Also think about the bad that comes from not achieving your goals.
00:13:18
If you have your vision board, you look at like, get into this for a second. It is
such a great way and the week to reconnect with the goals. So this is the
first step. And if you don't have clear goals that's oftentimes, also why you
may not be doing a great job at time management because you aren't doing
it for or towards anything. So the first step reconnect with your goals.
00:13:39
Write them down, see them, be there. Okay? Next step is you review and
block commitments. So the commitments are the meetings or appointments
you already have planned to attend. And anytime you've agreed to meet
with someone, right, your commitments, they're blocked on the calendar.
00:13:55
If not, you have to put them there. This is important. If you're going to do
something, block it. But you want to review your commitments and also look
at it and say, what's the desired outcome of this meeting? Why am I doing
this meeting?
00:14:09
Is there an actual outcome? Are there agenda notes? Do we know why we're
having this meeting? Because if there's not a good reason to have it, you get
rid of it, right? And I will do this often.
00:14:21
Oh, here's a meeting. This does look like everyone will say something like,
oh, that meeting could have been an email. Then be the person that asks for
the email. Hey y'all, I see the topic here. I think we could just handle this
over email real quick.
00:14:34
Is the desire this you don't always have to have these meetings, but it's
reviewing those outcomes of every meeting. Do you know what the desired
outcome is? Because if you don't know what the desired outcome is, either
you need to find out or you shouldn't have that meeting. So after you
reviewed your goals, you review your commitments. So again, like, for me, I
know when I'm having my one on ones, my meetings with Finance, my
meeting with Marketing, CS, product, these are things that are just already
standing commitments.
00:15:03
I'm just looking at them and making sure I understand why I'm having it.
There's also times where maybe I've got nothing to talk about with Marketing
next week, so I will send them that note or message. Hey, y'all, I don't have
much coming into this. Is there anything urgent you guys needed to talk
about? No.
00:15:17
Boom. Just got an hour back. So you review your commitments first, then you
schedule excellence time. This is the time that you are investing to
strengthen yourself and your relationships. This is the time that builds you.
00:15:29
Lots of things can live here, but like, for me, this is when am I exercising,
when am I reading, when am I meditating, when am I doing my goal setting
time, when am I spending time with family and friends or community
service? Right? Like this notice this is coming before you're planning
anything work related. This is when you're scheduling your excellence time.
And this is really, really important that this lays the foundation of your week
of when are you getting better.
00:15:55
So, like, on my calendar every morning, there's a section. It says B-A-B-F-B-A-
B-F stands for Build a better future. That's my excellence time. That is when
I'm doing my reading. That is when I'm doing my meditating.
00:16:06
That's when I'm writing. That's when I'm working on side projects, right? It's
like, that excellence time of just kicking things off, but you have to schedule
it same time with family time, when am I playing with my kids? When are we
doing dinner? And this is an area that falls off for me all the time.
00:16:20
And I can always tell when I stop doing this because then I'm like, I just don't
feel that same connection because we got away from planning these things.
We are all so busy that if we don't actually plan the fun, we don't get to have
it. So you schedule your excellence time, and this goes on your calendar. Not
like, okay, I'm going to work out on Monday, or I'm going to work out. Like,
you block it.
00:16:40
When are you working out? If you have to drive to get there, how much time
does it take for you to get there? And you block it? So you schedule your
excellence time. This is so important, and I love that.
00:16:49
This is how it kicks off, right? You had your goals, commitments, then you get
into proactively scheduling. How am I going to get better this week? How am
I taking care of myself this week? So you get your excellence time.
00:17:00
Now we get into scheduling your green time. This is specific to your
professional. It's green time because the color of money. In your work, there
are only a small number of activities that directly make you money or that
you get paid for. I'm going to come back to this.
00:17:15
In your work, there are actually only a small number of activities that directly
make you money or that you get paid for. And if you don't know what those
things are, you need to go establish them, because if you're not clear, ask
someone who knows because if you are clear and if you're honest, you
probably are clear on what these things are. And for salespeople, it's the
things that we like to avoid our green time, things that directly lead to us
getting paid, opening deals, closing deals, that is it. Opening deals and
closing deals, that's what we get paid for. So how are you blocking time to
open more deals?
00:17:55
Aka pipeline? So these are the things like cold calling, cold emailing, lead
scrubbing, right? Like doing the action and then closing deals. This is an area
where often I'll hear it from closers, where I don't have time to prospect
because I'm focused on my pipeline, really, because I've seen so many
closers that are demoing for 8 hours a day, every day. Not the case.
00:18:16
But at the same time, proposals don't get set out on time. They're not
customized, they're not highly personalized. We're not landing and
expanding within an account. There's so many more things we could do with
our green time as AES as well, that oftentimes we don't because we get
buried in busy work. Red time, which I'll cover in a second, the schedule,
your green time, when are you making your calls?
00:18:36
When are you going through all of your pipeline touches? When are you
crafting those proposals? Like it's making sure that your green time is
blocked. This is very, very important. So for me as a VP, my green time, the
things that I truly get paid to do, you got to think about it's interesting.
00:18:52
My job is to bring in revenue, but I don't close deals. I also don't open deals.
So my green time is my managers, because if I can make them better, we'll
get to the results. Figuring out what we should be doing, going through those
metrics and understanding what strategic changes we have to make to get
more revenue, finding the holes, plugging them up, that's my green time.
What am I creating for my team?
00:19:14
What processes are we putting in place to do this? So you have to have that
green time on your calendar. Guard your green time or else it will be stolen
from you. I love this kind of like analogy because if someone steals your
green time, it literally means money is being stolen from you. That's what's
happening.
00:19:30
Someone's hitting you up during a call block. Someone's hitting you up on
YouTube, watching cat videos when you're supposed to be writing a new
proposal. You're stealing from yourself. If you remember, you remember that
green time is what makes you your money. Let it be stolen from you or you
steal it from yourself.
00:19:47
We avoid green time. We spend it in the red time. Because green time is
often the toughest thing. This is what's so interesting. We're not paid to do
the easy parts of our job.
00:19:56
We're paid to do the hard parts of our job. Y'all follow me here. Like the easy
parts. Anyone can do. You are paid the good money to do the hard parts.
00:20:07
That's why you have to prioritize it and guard this time. So often we just
avoid the green time. We don't spend time here and we don't do it
intentionally. So what is your green time? And guard it.
00:20:18
Then we get into red time. So red time is something you're not directly paid
for, but it supports your green time. These are the things that need to
happen technically before your green time. This is research prep work for
presentation, organizing leads, paperwork, performance reviews, et cetera,
things like that. If red time is not done well, it stops your green time from
being effective.
00:20:40
Red time is not green time. These are two separate things. And so often
salespeople, we will spend a lot of time in red time. Oh, I didn't make my
calls today because I was prepping. Oh, I didn't send that proposal over yet
because I wanted to touch it up a little bit more.
00:20:57
Oh, I didn't submit my pipeline report because I want to reengage with them.
Right. We spend all of our time in red time and never do the green time
that's supposed to come from it. Red time is the trap. Red time is when you
get pulled in.
00:21:12
Now actually, I'm going to back up here real quick. I just want to make sure
that I made this clear. Your green time needs to be blocked on your calendar.
I hope I said that everything we're talking about is blocked on the calendar. It
is blocked off.
00:21:24
Here is when I'm doing this task. This is really important. So same with your
red time. When are you scrubbing? When are you doing your research?
00:21:33
And by the way, you should be doing one thing at a time. Research all your
leads. Don't research and try to call and try to email all one by one. Research
them all, call them all, email them all, do one thing at a time. This is really,
really important, having that red time.
00:21:50
When are you going to do this? And setting the time accordingly. So I kind of
touched on it. It's really easy to get stuck here because it feels like you're
doing something. It feels like you're doing what you're supposed to be doing.
00:22:01
But the red time is what sucks us away from green time. I was just talking
about this. Emails, answer them all at one time. Salespeople literally think
back through your careers. How many emails have you gotten that were like
mission critical that you respond, had to respond to within an hour?
00:22:16
Like mission critical. It's very, very rare. Unless you are an inbound MDR,
inbound sales development rep, where that's where you're getting the
inbound leads. That's different. But now that's part of your green time
because you're responding to an inbound lead, it's very different.
00:22:31
Whereas if you're an Outbound or you're an Ae, it will be an email all day
long. There's no emails coming through that require your attention that very
moment. So email, block it off, do it at one time. Paperwork, do it all at one
time. Staying on task for one thing, one of the best things that you can do for
your productivity.
00:22:50
Because when we do a little here, a little there, red time takes up the entire
day. We feel like we did stuff, but we didn't come closer to our goals. This is
the next big one. Flex time. White space.
00:23:01
This is something where you have to know fires are going to come up,
meetings are going to come up. Things are going to surprise you in your day
and in your week. This is where it's so important. Say like, okay, when can I
put this? Hey, KD, want your help on this deal?
00:23:20
Cool. I have a gap at 03:00 P.m. Tomorrow. Can we dive in there? I know I
have some flex space built in and this is so important to do.
00:23:29
And do not make the mistake of scheduling your entire perfect day. Green
and it's minute, minute, back to back, back to back. Because you know it's
not going to work that way. 80 20 rule, right? Like make sure you have the
big things blocked, but leave space.
00:23:45
Leave space. This also helps your brain know, like, okay, I have room if
something goes over. I have room if I need to make a change. I have room if
a fire comes up or I have to move something over. But scheduling the flex
time is actually really important.
00:24:02
And if nothing takes over that flex time, use that time to think. Use that time
to go for a walk and come up with a creative solution. Like it doesn't have to
be filled. Because I'm telling you, when you start to plan your weeks focused
on only the high leverage actions, you'll be shocked at how much stuff starts
to fall off your calendar. This is probably one of the most consistent things I
have to talk to with my managers is get rid of the junk that isn't actually
helping you and your team get rid of it.
00:24:30
Tell me no. If I'm asking you to do too much or it's taking you away, like make
sure you're focused on the things that actually get it, then we get this. The
recreation or recreation. This is actually very important. This is your breaks.
00:24:45
This is the things that are just fun. These are the things that have absolutely
no value, but they're good for you to do. This is the video games. This is just
going out for drinks or grabbing a lunch, right? The recreation.
00:24:59
Recreation time, when are you going to do it? Because what's really
interesting is so often we will do nothing and think that's recharging us. If
you're doing nothing, you're not recharging your batteries. You're just doing
nothing. You're not just not spending energy when.
00:25:17
Are you doing the fun things? This is actually important in your days too.
When are you taking breaks? Especially for all of us working from home
nowadays, it is so easy. There have been days where I look up and I go, holy
cow, it's already noon.
00:25:31
I've been going since 06:00. A.m. I haven't moved. That's not okay. That is
not how we're supposed to work or live.
00:25:38
So you need to plan this when you're taking your break and just doing
nothing, or that's when you're going on Facebook, that's when you're going
on Instagram, whatever it is, but you actually plan it. This is also what's
really big for us focus is if we know we get to do it at a certain time, we're
less likely to get distracted while we're in the middle of something. But if all
you're doing is telling yourself, okay, I'm not going to go on social media, or
I'm not going to go on YouTube, or I'm not going to do this, your brain, that's
what it's thinking about. But if it knows, hey, at 11:00 today, taking a 20
minutes break, and I'm going to check my social media during that time. So
it's really important to plan this recreation, recreation time.
00:26:14
You have to take care of yourself. This is different from excellence time.
Excellence time is when you're getting better. Recreation, recreation. This is
when you're just bringing joy.
00:26:24
So I want to go through some tips and tricks here. So first of all, proactively,
you need to communicate this plan to two groups of people. The people who
mean the most to you and the people who often interrupt you. I will
communicate to my wife and to my family, like if it's going to be a longer day
or if certain things this week versus that week, proactively communicate it to
other people that they can get on board, because otherwise they don't know.
They don't know that you're trying to accomplish these things.
00:26:52
They don't know why you're doing your week the way that you are. You have
to proactively communicate to salespeople. Proactively, communicate this to
your manager. Managers. Proactively, communicate your schedule to your
reps and to your director and VP.
00:27:04
Like, communicate your plan. Office hours, and especially with slack and
things like this, slack's gone out of control now that we're not in the office
anymore. Like, the office was one thing. People come like, knock and see if
you're available. If they could see if you were working, they might leave you
alone.
00:27:19
If you're wearing headphones, if you're on the phone, they'll leave you alone.
But on slack, no one knows. So just people are pinging all day long. This is
where flex time comes up. I check my slack in burst.
00:27:29
I am not sitting in there. I mute my notifications every morning, and you
should too. I check it during specific times and get back to people during
specific times. I will not let slack interrupt me, because if it's truly important,
someone's going to call me. If it's truly important, someone is going to call
me.
00:27:45
This is a big one too. Write out your top three. It should be on your calendar,
but there's still something about going into that day, looking at the calendar
and going, these are the top three things that I could get done today no
matter what. And those should almost always be green time and excellence
time. This gets done no matter what.
00:28:02
I can get back to an email tomorrow. I can schedule a meeting for tomorrow,
but today I'm getting these three things done. Bonus tips. Technology. Set
boundaries on technology.
00:28:13
Cell phone, text message, email. They steal so much time. I think the
average American does anywhere from like four to 5 hours of phone screen
time a day. Four to 5 hours. Think about that.
00:28:26
That's 50% of a working day. I am notoriously bad at getting back to text
messages and missing calls. Even my friends, my family, they'll give me
some crap for it from time to time. It's like, yo, from 06:00 a.m. To five, I'm
working.