Hey everyone, welcome back to dream achievement blueprint, lesson two, where we're talking about productivity. But first, how did the module one go? How did you like the lesson? How did you like the worksheets and the spreadsheet? Did you get a chance to fill it out? Did you get any new insights, any more clarity about your dreams and about what you want to achieve more insight into the obstacles you might face along the way, and the things you're gonna need to do to overcome them?

Did you get clear on your milestones, on the feelings that you want to feel when you get to that place of actually having achieved your dreams and really the feelings that you want to bring into your life? Now, if you didn't take the chance to fill that stuff out, please stop this recording, hit, stop and go and do it. Now. I go and do it. Now. Get down to the worksheet for module one, download the spreadsheet, fill it out, get that clarity, get that insight, and then come back here and watch this training.

Because really, that stuff is foundational to the things we're going to talk about today. If you didn't do that, some of the stuff We're talking about today, you're gonna have a hard time applying. So I'm going to assume if you're still watching, you've done the worksheets, and you're ready to go. And I'm so excited to teach you these productivity techniques and practices that have helped me become so much more productive. And they're going to help you to not only be more efficient, and get more done in less time, but they're gonna increase your energy, they're gonna help you feel better, they'll increase your stamina and your ability to do more and longer periods of time. Some of the techniques we'll teach will help you feel more balanced, and help bring more peace and more presence to your life.

In the midst of all of the productivity and all that doing, like we talked about in the first module, infusing your being into you're doing some techniques to help you reduce the risk of getting burned out or feeling resentful, and others will give you greater awareness to help you make better decisions about how you're going to move forward on your dreams and to make sure you're still aligned with the goals that are important to you along the way. Each one of these things I'm going to teach you today will make you more productive. But combined, putting them all together is going to make you like this powerhouse. We're just going to be moving through. And you'll see so much greater progress and momentum, and so much more overall life enjoyment as you work toward your dreams. And I'm super excited for you to have that today.

So there are three main practices I'm going to teach you today. But each one of these has several sub components, and they inter relate with each other in really powerful ways. So the first one is time tracking. Now a lot of people know me because of Tim Ferriss because he re posted a blog on his website that I had posted on mine about how I spend my time. This goes back to when I was living in Costa Rica, basically a four hour workweek. And I decided I wanted more clarity about how I was spending my time I wanted to know, am I really using my time in the most efficient way possible?

I have 24 hours in a day like everyone else. I'm only working like four or five or whatever, every week. So what am I doing with the rest of my time? Is Am I really making it viable? Is my life here meaningful? So I decided to start tracking my time.

I tried every minute of every day for an entire week. And then I posted the results on my blog all summed up into categories showing how much time I spent on work, how much time is spent reading how much time I spent with the kids how much time I spent having sex. Yeah, a lot of people commented on that one. Anyway, it was a really insightful and enlightening exercise for me to do. And it's one that I have since picked up again, but in a newer way, it's much simpler. And they continues to give me the awareness over and over again week after week to help me improve how I'm spending my time and make sure again, that I'm on track.

I'm on track and I'm aligned with my goals. When you track your time, it gives you the opportunity to self correct. Just like if you're tracking your food tracking everything. Eat, you know, you naturally just start eating healthier because you realize what you're eating and you realize everything you're eating isn't always the best choice for you. But if it's not written down anywhere, it just said, well just eat it and then forget about it. You know, but if it's written down and you're reviewing that log regularly, you're like, yeah, I gotta cut down on the m&ms.

It goes a little too much, I guess. So same thing happens with time. When you tracking your time you're like, Well, you know what, I spent eight hours this week, playing Angry Birds. I think something's got to change. And then you can make that commitment to yourself. Otherwise, it doesn't.

Yeah, I know. I'm putting Angry Birds a lot. But I don't know how much it really is. And it's probably not that bad. But when you can see the numbers, it helps. So I would highly encourage you to start tracking your time and I've made this really easy for you by giving you the spreadsheet that I use to track my time.

This is something I created because I wasn't very satisfied with the other tools that were out there that were like like counting timers that just went one second today. Second three seconds, then you have to stop it and remember what you did, and then start it and tell what you're going to do. This is all after the fact. So I'm writing what I did after I do it. And I can have the time intervals, whatever I want, categories of projects, whatever I want. And then it totals everything up into reports.

So I can see how much time I'm spending in each area of my life. And there'll be a separate video that you can watch after this one that will kind of walk you through step by step, how to use this spreadsheet tool, and all the different features that are available in it. So I'm not going to go into too much more detail here about how to use it. But I just want to encourage you to use it. There's one other type of time tracking that I found very useful and that I want to encourage you to do as well. It's much simpler and less time consuming than tracking your time, minute by minute throughout the day.

But it's also very powerful and giving you insight into how you spend your time and it's called I call it my daily summary. I write one of these every single night right before I get into bed. And I usually do it on my phone using an app called Dr. O. But you could just as easily use a paper journal, Google Doc, whatever you want. The idea is to write down just a quick summary of the main things you did today. how you felt about those things, and any specific things you want to work on or change or do tomorrow.

And by taking time to think about that, and to reflect having that those moments to just really be grateful for the awesome, wonderful moments that you had during each day. And also to look at maybe some of the mistakes you made, and maybe some things that you can improve. Just taking that time is so powerful to help correct and to help you improve and to help you to grow as a person and grow toward achieving your goals. So this is something if you're not already doing something like this. I want you to set an alarm on your phone to go off Around the time right before you go to bed. And this will remind you to write a daily summary.

Now this timer You can also on most of your phones, you know, most smartphones these days, you can set a timer, you can put a little note in about what you want it to say when the alarm goes off. So just put write daily summary. Or if you get the Dr. O app, that it has a timer, it has an alert like that built in that will remind you now once you're in the habit of doing this, you could probably turn the alarm off and and be fine. But when you're starting out, these types of reminders are real helpful because when your phone beeps, you tend to look at it right. That's kind of how we work these days. So those are the two types of time tracking that I want you to start track your time, on a an hour by hour or minute by minute basis, however detailed you want to get that's up to you, and then track your time with a daily summary.

At the end of the day. It could even just be a few sentences. It doesn't have to be a lot. But like most things, the more energy you put into it, the more you'll get out of it. And if it sounds like this is going to take a lot of your time, really, it doesn't take much time. It's a few minutes per day, it's all but the dividends it pays and increasing your awareness.

And giving you the opportunity to reflect and to improve are priceless. So I highly encourage you to invest this time in yourself to do this. Now, the difficult part the most people have is actually remembering to keep track of their time throughout the day, because they'll get lost in a project or they get strapped and they'll forget a few different tests, which is and then it will feel overwhelming to go back and enter it all. So if you think that's going to be your challenge, then you're going to love technique number two, for increasing your productivity. And this is so powerful not just for remembering to track your time but for a lot of other things we're going to talk about, and this is really one of my favorite productivity practices. I do it all day throughout the day, because it I found it so effective in helping me helping increase my stamina My awareness, my energy, and also just keeping me focused on what it is that I need to do.

It's so simple, but so few people do it. And the technique is to set a timer. Now there are a number of ways you can do this. Of course, you can use a phone, like I mentioned, in your smartphone, you'll usually have a countdown timer. You could set it for every 30 minutes, every 60 minutes, every 15 minutes, whatever feels right to you. And then when the timer goes off, it beeps and then you can start it again.

But when it beeps, what you do in the meantime, the routine and the habit of the practice that you build in when that timer goes off. Here's what makes all the difference. So there are several things that I like to do when my timer goes off. And I've included these on one of the handouts for you. If you download that you can print it out, stick it on your wall or on your computer screen, whatever you want to do, but every 30 minutes for me I'm currently doing every 30 minutes when that timer goes off. Here's what I do, I stretch my body, I stand up, I close my eyes, I move around a little bit, I dance, whatever it is I need to do to get my body moving, get my blood pumping a little bit.

Even if it's just for 30 seconds, you know, just something to shake up the body and help keep my energy going. It makes such a big difference for me. And if you're in a public place, yeah, you may look a little bit ridiculous, but you know, you can you can also stretch it a little bit less ridiculous, but you don't have to be goofy like I am and do all these crazy things. But, you know, even I even do this kind of stuff like on airplanes and airports, when I'm traveling. I do it out in public. I've done it in the middle of the road before I've done it and all sorts of crazy places.

Because it feels so good to me to do it and it gives me the energy to keep keep living my life and keep living my dreams, but it's good to get the heart pumping a little bit, get the blood flowing. Bring in some more oxygen into your body. Then I always take a big drink of water super important to keep rehydrating yourself. If you're feeling thirsty, it's already too late. You have dehydrated yourself. So keep yourself hydrated.

And that'll help give your body what it needs to keep your mental acuity sharp and keep your body healthy. So that's one thing I do, I get up and move I relaxed my eyes. I ever look at something far away, I close them, different things like that just to help move. Sometimes I'll dance. Sometimes I'll do leg stretches, I'll do Tai Chi, whatever I feel like doing in the moment, whatever my body needs. The other thing that this is really good for is that it gets you out of a rut.

It keeps you from getting distracted because let's say you find some article and then it links here to Facebook and then you're getting lost in your feed and then you link to another article and then another one in like two hours later you realize I've been I've been to Facebook and stupid articles all day and I've gotten nothing Done. If that's ever happened to you, what do you think would happen when that timer goes off after the first 30 minutes, or the first 15 minutes? If you feel like this is a big problem for you? Well, you'll probably say, Oh, I'm sitting here in Facebook, I'm supposed to be doing this. Alright, then get up and bounce. Get up and shake, get up and move.

And what was I supposed to be doing? It becomes clear to you. And then you can either make the decision Well, this, actually, this article really was important. And I really do want to finish it. I'll do that for the next three minutes. No could set a timer for three minutes or whatever you want.

Or you can say No, you know what, I can do this later. Let me get back to work. Or let me get back to whatever it is. It's important to me. So that timer becomes your opportunity to get back on track. And I can't tell you how many times that timer has caught me when I'm doing something that's less productive.

It happens all the time. And I recommend not beating yourself up over it when that happens to you treat it like a metal You know, if you've ever meditated before the point of meditation, well, some types of meditation is to focus on something, right, you're focusing on your breath, or on a phrase that you repeat over and over again, or on a certain sensation or spot in your body. And then if your mind wanders, and you start to notice you're thinking about something, you just drop the thought. And you put your focus back where it needs to be. Don't beat yourself up, just I thought that dumped out again, just like, Oh man, I wasted hours in Facebook. It's not helpful, really to beat yourself up.

But what's helpful is to get back into focus and practice. In fact, meditation is a great training tool for better focus in all areas of your life. So if you're not meditating, that's something else I'd encourage you to look into. Because it can make a huge difference in your ability to focus and to get your work done. And, of course, the other thing you should always do when the timer goes off, is consider logging your time. Now if you are working on the same task for like a two hour block, You don't necessarily need to fill it out every 15 minutes that you're working on the same thing, you certainly can.

I tend to wait until near the end of a period that I'm working on a project to fill it out. But if I'm, you know, if I did two or three tasks within that 30 minute period, in different projects, or whatever it is, then I will fill all of them out everything that I did not last 30 minutes, I'll just enter it into the log, and then it will be there. And the next 30 minutes starts over again. So the timer becomes a great reminder to fill out the log and to keep that going, and which helps focus me on my goals helps me remind me of what I'm doing helps reduce distraction, can you start seeing why this is such a powerful tool, and then after the break, whether it's 30 seconds or three minutes, or however long you decide to take a break for before you get back to work.

One less thing that I recommend to do is to close your eyes. Take a few deep breaths. Just recenter yourself release tension, release any thoughts you have? focus on your breath. And then focus on what it is that you're going to do next. What's the next task?

What's the next project you're going to work on? And what kind of energy? What kind of emotion Do you want to bring to that task? If you can take just a few moments, to visualize that and to feel into it, how do you want to feel when you're doing this task? Those types of questions can help make it so that when you end that short break, you're going to be revved up and on fire and ready to go so much more productively into what you're doing. So go ahead, set that timer.

Whether it's 15 minutes, 30 minutes, 60 minutes, I wouldn't recommend more than 60 it's important to keep your body moving after it's been sitting for a while and mind yourself to get in these habits and drink water and log your time everything in so that you can refocus. If you don't have a smartphone, you don't want to use your smartphone as a timer, you can use a kitchen timer. There are also several different apps you can download for free, that will do this type of thing for you. There's one for the Mac called timeout. That's really good. And you can set it for however many minutes you want, you can set the breaks to be however long you want.

And that can be really effective because it actually blocks your screen and doesn't let you do anything until you finish taking your break. So let's move on to the next important practice. That's going to make a huge difference in your productivity. And that is your morning routine. Everybody's got a morning routine, although not everyone has a conscious morning routine. Maybe your routine is just to get up and take a shower, eat your breakfast, and then go to work, whatever it is for you.

But it's such a powerful time of day because it's one of the easiest times a day to build in new habits. Because everyone brushes their teeth right everyone has something to eat at some point everyone takes a shower. So you could set those moments up as trigger points to say, as soon as I finished doing this, I'm going to do this. And you can start to build new habits into your life that way, every day, right after I get up right after you wake up, the first thing that I do every morning, drink water, I drink, you know, sometimes as much as a half for a full thing of ease. And because overnight, your body gets dehydrated, you lose a lot of a lot of liquid through sweat, and other things that just make it so that you need more water when you wake up. You don't give that to yourself, you feel a little bit more sluggish in the morning.

There are lots of really powerful practices that you can implement into your morning routine. However, I have to issue a caution not to try to do all of these at once. Because if you try to implement like 10 habits at once, you're much more likely to fail to not not be able to do any of them. But if you just build them one by one, try it for a few days or a few weeks until you get that habit then it's easier to kind of stop Another habit onto it until you get there. So here's some of the habits that I have implemented into my morning routine. I drink water, I take a shower, I exercise, which for me usually means stretching some Tai Chi and Qi Gong push ups, a little bit of cardio work or dancing, and that type of thing, usually part of my morning routine, I will read usually for 20 or 30 minutes, usually a personal development book or something that is going to kind of expand my mind and put me in a good mental or emotional state.

I'll do some kind of studying whether it's, you know, maybe one of the books I'm reading is more like a workbook, or I'll get ideas from it that I really want to write down and take notes in. So I'll spend time maybe researching or writing some of those things. I will meditate usually, sometimes it's for as little as five minutes, sometimes for as much as 20 or 30. And then I'll do what I call my 15 Minute Miracle. And this is a really cool practice. I've included a template for in the handouts that helps Me too, and more into myself and my feelings and what it is that I'm wanting to create in that day.

So there's four parts to the 15 Minute Miracle. There's a lot of different types of 15 Minute Miracle things out there, this is the one that I use. And I like it, you're Feel free to adapt it to however you want to do it. But the first part of the 15 Minute Miracle is gratitude. You've probably heard how a lot of people are now keeping a gratitude journal, because it's such a powerful way to put you in that state of gratitude, and help you actually be more happy throughout the day. And it is been scientifically proven that if you write in a gratitude journal and feel take time to feel grateful every day, you are generally more happy throughout the day.

So this is a practice that I do daily, every day, I will write down three things that I'm grateful for. And in addition to writing them down, I'll try to take time to actually feel that gratitude and just, you know, take a few breaths into it at least appreciate what it is that I'm writing. It's a powerful technique because it puts you in a state where you can actually feel that gratitude. And by being grateful, it helps you notice more things to be grateful for throughout your day. And it just keeps you in a more grateful state. And you could be grateful for something huge, or it could be a small thing.

It could be like, you know, the the beautiful green leaves outside my window or whatever it is. For you, that is bringing you gratitude. In that moment. I usually like to include some big and some small things in there. But this is a powerful practice that I would encourage you to do. The second step of the 15 Minute Miracle is feeling how do you how do I want to feel today?

How what emotions do I want in my body? What sensations do I What do I want to feel confident today? Do I want to feel energized today? Do I want to feel peaceful and relaxed today? You know, each day might have a different type of feeling. So write down how you want to feel.

But again, more important than just writing it down. Take a few breaths, and actually feel what it feels like. To feel joyful, to feel peaceful, to feel confident, you know, whatever it is you're writing down, take time to feel it, maybe move your body a little bit to put yourself in that state. And practice feeling how you want to feel just by practicing how to feel, or practicing feeling how you want to feel, it becomes easier and easier for you to feel that way. And to put that feeling into your body and into your life, which is really what you want, right? Remember yesterday, we talked about thinking about how you want to feel when you achieve that goal.

You can practice feeling exactly like that. Now, you could bring more of that into your life right now, every single day, you could be building that and increasing it until maybe you don't even matter if you accomplish your goals or just you already feel so good. You know what I mean? So this is a powerful practice. I highly encourage you, to put yourself into these emotional states that you want to be feeling now. I think it's truly amazing that as humans are capable of doing this, we're capable of feeling, how we want to feel we can change our emotional state.

Some people think, well, he made me mad. And so I met and that's just how I'm going to be today. And yeah, sometimes it can be hard to get out of certain states. But we have the capacity to do it. We can choose how we want to feel. How do you want to feel today?

And can you make yourself feel that way? Now, can you put yourself into that state, and sometimes to put yourself into some states, it might require more than just, I'm gonna close my eyes and put myself in the state. Maybe you need to play some a certain song or a certain piece of music, maybe you need to get up and move around, maybe need to go call someone or talk to somebody or write something down whatever it is. But once you have that clarity of how you want to feel, you can begin putting the practices into your life to bring it more regularly into your life. Alright, let's talk about the third step in this 15 Minute Miracle. That's doing.

So what do you want to do today? What are the main goals, the main tasks that you want to achieve? You could write down your entire to do list and just paste it in there. But I don't think that's effective. What I like to do is just think about, and I usually, again, take a few minutes to pause, breathe and think. Like, what do I want to do today that if I finished that, I would feel like this is an amazing day, I have crushed it today.

What are those? What are those two or three things for you today. And if you do that every single morning, then you'll have that clarity, and you'll have kind of the main things and then once you know what the main things are, you can prevent other things from getting in the way and distracting you from those main things. We'll talk a little bit more about that in a minute. And if you want to take this to another level, write down why you want to do those things. And then take a few moments to envision how you actually want that to unfold, kind of like we did with our vision exercise yesterday, but on a much smaller Scale of just what you're going to do today.

So imagine yourself having accomplished that goal, having accomplished that task that you want to do, how do you want to feel? Why are you doing it? What are the steps you're gonna take along the way, all of those things still apply. You can do this on a daily basis and achieve the same results. Just depends on how much you want to put in, and how much you want to get out. All right, the fourth step in the 15 Minute Miracle is inviting.

And this is where you ask for something, you put a request out there, that's beyond your control, you know, whether it's to God or the universe or to your higher self, whatever it is, you believe in, you're making a request that you just want to invite something into your life. You know, maybe you want to invite good weather today because you're gonna go out and play in the park with your kids and you want the sun to shine. You know, maybe, maybe you want some of the people on your team to have greater camaraderie. And collaboration, whatever it is for you write down something that you'd like to ask that you feel like maybe you have a little bit less control over than something that you directly influence, like you're doing category. And you're just opening it up, you're welcoming. It's like a gift, if it comes wonderful.

If it doesn't, that's fine. But this is just something else that can help increase your awareness and invite more into your life. All right after the 15 Minute Miracle. The next step in my morning routine is daily planning. And we're actually going to talk about this in a lot more detail in the next training. So I'm going to leave that for now.

But just know that the daily planning session is a huge and important part of having a productive day. And then after I finished planning, I do my most important task first. So when I have those three things that I said I'm going to do those today, the one that's most important, I do that now I don't check my email. Notice I have not checked my email at all yet in the day. A lot of people when they get out of bed, that's the first thing they do when new messages Do I have, if you do that, oh man, you just get sucked into other people's problems. And you don't end up working on the stuff that's important for your own goals.

So please, if you're checking your email in the morning, don't do it until after you've finished after you've finished, or at least worked on for the time you a lot of your most important tasks in that day. huge boost your productivity, if you can do that. Now, again, this routine is the one that I use, and I sometimes shake it up and do different things. And you'll come up with your own routine that works for you. And you may want to try at the start maybe just doing some of these things, but maybe just one or two or five minutes at a time. Don't do the full thing.

However you want to play with it. This is for you to experiment with. But I do recommend you get started with at least one thing, pick one thing on this list that you want to add to your own morning routine starting tomorrow. And then once you develop that as a habit, if you like it, keep it if you don't throw it out, try to add something else until you develop Something that you feel like has really helped you become more productive. And a lot of these are just the really small things. Some of them don't really take a lot of time others do.

But by combining them and putting them together, it can make a huge difference in your overall energy, your productivity, and your well being. And if you're saying yourself, Well, you know, I tried stuff like that before, and it didn't really work. I didn't really feel any more productive, and I couldn't really, I didn't really notice any benefit from it. Well, I would ask you, how long did you stick with it? If you tried setting a timer getting up and moving every 30 minutes? Did you try that for two or three times did you try for a week?

How about the gratitude journal? Have you tried writing a gratitude journal before? And maybe it didn't? You didn't really feel any benefit from it. Maybe that could be again, because you weren't putting in the energy to it. Were you putting in the time to really feel grateful for those things, really building that habit and drive and how long did you Do it did you try it for like two days and then give up because if so you probably didn't see the benefit that comes from from doing this on a long term basis.

So I would really encourage you to at least try these things for a week, ideally, at least two weeks before you decide to throw them out. Because there are some benefits here. Some of them some of the benefits, you'll see right away, like, man, I think when you start moving and bouncing every 30 days, you're gonna be like, Wow, this is amazing. And other things may take more time to really get in. Like, for example, if you meditate, you're not going to see a lot of benefits of meditation until you I mean, maybe just feel more relaxed in for a few minutes out of the day. But as far as helping you to focus better and sharpening your mind and making you more aware, that's the kind of benefit that comes only after weeks of practice.

So try these things out, give them a chance, build it into your routine, and see what it does for you. Now, you'll notice I've got a whole lot of different worksheets and checklists and spreadsheets that I'm giving you on this module. And there's a lot to go over but I want to encourage you To download each one of these and take a look and schedule some time to make the most of them, some of them, you can just print them out, stick them on your wallets, reminders, others, they're gonna have questions for you to go through and think through. Others are, like the time log, something that you can use regularly to help improve your life. And some of these things you may feel some resistance to maybe it'll feel awkward or it's just a new thing. And that's okay, just give it a try.

Just push through it. That's my request to you today. And if you do these things, I know you're going to see a big benefit in your life. And again, these are the tools that I use every day of my life to help me achieve my dreams, and I'm excited for you to give him a try. So check all that out. Remember to schedule the next time you're going to watch the next training so you don't miss out on that and we'll see in the next video.