THE TRUEST FORM OF PRODUCTIVITY AND WHY YOU NEED TO MASTER IT
From a binary-thinking perspective, productivity is either something that moves you forward measurably toward your goals or something that kills your momentum. If you’re like most people, you probably do a lot of different things simultaneously and call it multitasking. In most cases this is not being productive, because you can’t do two things at once effectively—and therefore it doesn’t move you forward. If you doubt that, answer this question: If you’re meeting with someone and the other individual is talking, and you glance at your phone to check a text, do you really remember everything the person shared? Maybe a few sentences or a few key points here and there. But let’s be honest, your brain can’t focus on two things at once. That’s a proven scientific fact.
The truth is that we spend a lot of time doing things that don’t matter. If you don’t believe me, start documenting what you do hour by hour for a week. Note whatever activities you’re engaged in—from online activities to phone conversations to meetings to paperwork to lunches to picking up the laundry at the cleaners, et cetera. After you have completed your list for the week, use binary questioning and ask yourself, “Should I be doing this? Or is it a waste of my time?” “Are these things moving me forward toward my goals or keeping me stuck?”
Once you’ve completed this exercise, I promise that you’ll look at your supposedly busy, crazy life and say, “Wow, what the heck am I wasting time on these things for?” Suddenly, you’ll find that a block of time will open. This is time you can use to take action toward your bigger future!
Another thing that truly slows people down is the idea that “everything has to be perfect.” We all think we’re being perfectionists, but our obsession with dotting every “i” and crossing every “t” prevents us from focusing on what truly matters to move the needle forward. It causes us to overanalyze to the point of paralysis.
Let’s say you’re contemplating starting a real estate–investing business, but you’re on the fence. You say to yourself, “Well, let me think about that. Is this the right time? Could it really work for me? Am I going to have to figure out every contract and every deal before I start? And then what if the regulations in my state don’t allow me to invest in real estate this way? I’ll just decide next week.” It’s official: you have overanalyzed, and you probably will never take action on the steps you’d need to take to make a real estate–investing business a reality.
Whether you have ever thought about real estate or not, I hope you see how clear this can be in any business or venture in your life. Let’s take it a step further for the sake of a deeper example. In real estate investing, here are some of the tasks that new investors engage in: Surfing online, asking friends advice about it, browsing social media to see what other people in the field are doing, driving around looking at properties, visiting The Home Depot or Lowe’s to purchase equipment and materials, getting logos and business cards made, and overstudying contracts.
However, the only main things a new investor should be focused on are: creating unique marketing to attract the buyers and sellers, making offers, building a buyers list, and selling houses.
Those last four tasks in italics are the only things that really matter if you want to get momentum and profits from today’s real estate investing. Again I’m using real estate as an example because it has been a key moneymaker in my life and something I train other people in. But this applies to every single business in the world. There are lots of moving parts in any company, but only a handful create the kind of impact that leads to success. Concentrate your time and energy on what is crucial to making money. You can hire people to help you do the other tasks. If you’re starting a software business or an online training company or anything else, boil down the top three or four things that most of your focus should be on and just do those things. As simple as this sounds it’s what most people do not do.
For me, marketing is a crucial activity in every business I own. If I’m not a good communicator, especially on video, then it doesn’t matter how great my products and trainings or methods might be, they won’t sell. If I got in front of an audience and said in a monotone voice, “Hi, everyone, my book is really great. You should get it,” not a single person would listen to me! If I acted like a robot, who would pay attention to what I had to say no matter how good my book was? I’ve focused on improving my video performance and on creating the best training courses possible. Consider this book you’re holding. Would you have bought it if I hadn’t gotten you motivated to take action through a video or my marketing? Maybe not, and I wouldn’t have the chance to positively affect your life.
You may be thinking, “Well, Dean, you have a gift to motivate and sell.” Let me simply say I was the shyest kid growing up, deathly scared to talk in front of anyone. The fact is I wasn’t good at a lot of things. I suck at contracts, I hate filling out receipts, and I hate all the organization it takes sometimes to complete real estate deals. There are so many things I’m terrible at and quite frankly hate to do. I used to think I had to get good at all these things or else I was doomed. For instance, I was sure I couldn’t succeed at real estate because I didn’t understand all the terms people were using. However, I did 500 real estate deals before I understood many of those terms! For quite a while, I felt inferior because I was so focused on getting good at something that I truly hated and really didn’t matter. There are great car salespeople who don’t understand the first thing about engines yet they are still crushing it! So why would I let something as minor as real estate terms slow me down?
I realized that to be productive, I just needed to get great at a few things. If I could do these things at the highest level, I could be successful. I became highly proficient at finding deals others couldn’t. And I became adept at finding buyers who have cash and wanted to buy my properties. And those were the only two things that mattered. In fact, those were the only two things I had to know to make my first million. I stopped getting distracted by things I sucked at or that didn’t have the most potential to make me more money.
In fact, you need only do a couple of things really well to become ubersuccessful. So what should you be doing? Pour your time and energy into high-priority tasks that are absolutely essential for success. If your business will live or die based on the team you assemble, dedicate yourself to assembling a dynamite team. If you need to generate x dollars in six months to make your business a “go,” make marketing and selling activities the ONLY THING you focus on. Everything else can be done by others or ignored until you have time to address those issues.
Remember: Productivity is about doing. To get good at these activities, you need to schedule them. How? Here are three things I want you to do right now:
The first two are self-explanatory, but what do I mean by “chunk big things down”? In other words, don’t give yourself big, vague activities: “I’m going to go out and find cash buyers to buy houses I find.” When things are too big and vague, they’re not actionable. When you chunk big things down, you’re breaking the actions into smaller, more doable components. For instance, instead say, “Post unique Facebook and Craigslist posts to find buyers.” This is something you can plan, schedule, and take immediate action on.
Like we discussed earlier, you must dedicate hours during which you will do nothing but work on these tasks in their proper order. Using this real estate example still, you would decide you’re going to put ads on Craigslist and Facebook and you’re going to do it next Tuesday at 11 A.M. while taking a two-hour lunch. You’re going to spend an hour on each one, and you’re turning your phone off and eliminating any other distraction so you can get your most important things done in record time.
This is such a huge component of being massively productive. You chunk activities into bite-size tasks. As you do, you’ll start getting phone calls. You’ll get a buyer. And all of sudden, you’ll be like, “Oh my gosh. This is real. This really can change my life! What’s next?” Then you pick the next activity and follow the same process.
Remember: setting dates and deadlines are crucial because doing so creates a sense of urgency. When do entrepreneurs and successful people work best? Under pressure. It’s not about waiting until the last minute. It’s about providing yourself a tight but reasonable window in which to get important stuff done.
PRODUCTIVITY HABIT #4: IT’S GOOD TO BE SELFISH
Now that you have a sense of what true productivity is and is not, let me share a habit that took me a while to learn. And this is going to seem completely counterintuitive, so bear with me a second. We believe that we’re being our best selves when we’re doing things for others. And while doing things for others is truly amazing, it isn’t the quickest way to the best version of ourselves. In fact it actually hurts the people you love and want to help the most. Let me explain. We’re at our best when we’re being selfish. But not with the way we act or the way we talk—with our time. When you are able to look at your time and become selfish with it, ultimately, it’s what benefits those we care about most.
In order to accomplish this we have to think of selfishness from a different perspective. Rather than looking at it as a negative, we have to spin it to a positive. If you take your income to another level, if you’re able to pay off debt, if you’re able to write checks to solve life problems, if you can help a loved one retire, if you can save enough money to send your kids to college—how are any of these things selfish? Imagine if being a bit more selfish with your time could allow your income to increase and your problems decrease. What if it allowed you to spend more quality time with the people you love?
By selfishly reducing distractions, you can have it both ways—great success and a great balanced life.
Here is another anchor to help this thinking: If you choose to allow yourself to be distracted during work hours, you lose your ability to create a legacy for those you love. Rather, by being strategic and taking more of your time back now, you’ll soon be able to give even more of you back to those you can impact most.
And to reduce distractions, you must decide who gets your attention during work hours and commit yourself to the people and tasks that can help get you to the next level. You must work on the ability to stay focused in a world full of distractions. You can’t control the economy or your competitors or the stock market, but you can control how you spend your time. Remind yourself that distractions will cost you millions.
Consider how much time and money distractions cost you. If you spend 30 minutes daily messing around on social media, that translates to three and a half hours weekly—time that could be devoted to next-level objectives. Talking on the phone, texts, e-mails, and social media notifications all add up and eventually cost you more money than you could ever imagine.
Do you feel like you should be accessible at all times? Don’t! Only desperate people are accessible every hour of every day! Don’t be that person who when your device beeps or chimes or vibrates, you immediately look to see who liked your Facebook post or commented on your Instagram. If you’re dedicated to becoming highly productive, become stealthy at it. People will soon notice that you don’t text back immediately or respond to e-mails instantly. The smart ones will recognize that you’re busy and committed to your next level.
You also must make sure you never live in a reactive mode but rather a proactive mode. This is especially good advice when it comes to computers and phones. Use your computer to get the information you need to learn, not because you’re bored or want to be entertained. Promise yourself that you’re not going to go surf or look at negative news headlines. Don’t go check your bank account, then end up watching 100 YouTube videos on how to pop a huge pimple.
I truly believe that e-mail is one of the biggest distractions that you’ll encounter on a daily basis. When people e-mail you, they are asking you to jump. And our usual response is, “How high?” But the truth is that you don’t have to jump. You can reply when you want to. You can use an autoresponder that communicates: “I reply to e-mails every day at 2 P.M. and at 7 P.M. Other than that, I’ll be working on my bigger future.” This is something I have seen people do, and I think it is brilliant!
And it’s not just digital media that distracts you. It can be anything! People will call you up to have coffee, lunch, or drinks multiple times throughout the week if not every day. And if you want to see them, great! Say, “You know what? Tuesday I’m working all day, but I could do Wednesday at five. Do you want to do that?” It is about picking out the time for nonwork activities strategically. Learn to say no more than you say yes and you will thrive!
And please, never try to rationalize your distractions. Never tell yourself that you don’t think you’re making much progress, so you might as well spend an hour on a social media seeing what your friends are doing. This type of thinking will lead you down a negative spiral right out of confidence and back into the life you are trying to get away from. You will never reach your full potential with this type of thinking.
PRODUCTIVITY HABIT #5: IF ONE MAN CAN, YOU CAN
Don’t fall for the lies. In many businesses, one of the biggest challenges is finding good deals. And people look at the great dealmakers and say, “Well, they’re the lucky ones, and I’m not lucky like them.” When they look at others who have made it, they attribute their success to where they live or who they know or sometimes just plain luck. Or they believe they’ve been successful because they’re smarter. Or they’re convinced that they’ve hit it big because their parents gave them money to get started.
The truth is that all of these are lies. You know how you become successful at dealmaking? By making deals! This means you do the work, testing and tweaking your approach until you get it right. Dedicate one hour per day to selling and by the end of 30 days, you’ll be so good that the lies will no longer possess the power to derail you. It doesn’t matter what you’re trying to achieve. To get good at it, dedicate yourself to the task and don’t get distracted. It’s like anything else in your life. It’s one step at a time. You just have to decide to do it.
Related to lies are the money barriers—the things that stand between you and making the income you want. They include:
So how do you overcome money barriers? By using a super-simple binary checklist. It’s a list of a few questions you need to ask yourself weekly. Here’s the one I offer to real estate trainees:
You can adapt this type of checklist to any business venture. It’s a way to hold yourself accountable for being productive. Be aware that if you’re new to a field, you may have doubts. For instance, new real estate trainees will tell me, “I haven’t done a deal yet. I don’t know why it’s not working.” And my first question to them is, “How many offers have you made?” Inevitably, the response is something along the lines of, “Oh, I haven’t made any offers. I’ve been spending my time going over the contracts.” Or “My friends tell me now isn’t a good time to do real estate.”
Start saying no to all the crap that doesn’t help you get to where you want to go. When you eliminate the extraneous, you have more time to focus on mission-critical matters—the stuff that will lead you to your better future. I hope the message is getting clear to concentrate on your list of the mission-critical tasks and prioritize them.
Next, let’s look at what you’re worried about. Let me put this in context. As you know, we’re driven by two things: pain and pleasure. As a result, we make decisions that help us move away from pain and toward pleasure. If we’re in pain because we’re poor and can’t afford to send our kids to a good school, we naturally want to generate more income so we can afford to send them to the best school—that gives us pleasure.
But something stops us from making the transition from pain to pleasure, and that is worry. Worry can stop you in your tracks, and it can keep you stuck for a week, a month, a year, or even longer. It can prevent you from taking a good relationship to the next level or it can keep you trapped in a toxic relationship. It can stop you from leaving a bad job to start a business that you’ve always dreamed about. It can prevent you from telling your parents hard truths, and it can keep you locked into a self-destructive pattern of behavior like drinking, gambling, or doing drugs.
The good news is that we don’t have to live with this worry. I can’t tell you how many people have told me that they’d like to follow my suggestions and make more money, but then they add, “I just have so much stress and worry in my life right now. I have to wait for a better time.”
No! Again, you don’t have to live with this worry. When I’m teaching and I present my materials for how people can make money from real estate, I know exactly what questions are on people’s minds: What if it doesn’t work? What if I fail? What if I find a deal, but I don’t know how to close it? What if my spouse thinks I’m an idiot for doing something like this? And in many cases these worries go back in time; they are rooted in our child psyches. They may not even be conscious, but when we try to do something ambitious, it triggers an old childhood fear and we get stuck.
Let’s say you’re contemplating making a big change in your professional life—you’re thinking of starting a business or switching companies or even switching fields. Imagine what you might worry about as you consider making this change. If there’s a financial risk, you might say to yourself, “If I do this, I may end up going broke, and I’ll lose everything.” If you are considering taking an exercise class, you may think, “I can’t do this, I’m too old. I’ll embarrass myself.” Or if you’re trying to decide about ending a toxic relationship, you worry that “It may be a bad relationship, but at least it’s a relationship—and who knows when I’ll ever find someone else.”
Yes, those worries are oppressive in the moment, but you have to think beyond the common immediate fears and imagine if nothing changes and you have the same worries a year from now or five years from now. Nothing new has happened, you’ve refused to take any action, and you feel as stuck as you ever did. You’re still not making the money you’ve always dreamed of, you’re still 30 pounds overweight, and you’re still bored to tears by your job.
If you’re honest with yourself, you know how this feels—it feels like crap. Let yourself experience it now, because that’s exactly how you’ll feel if you keep allowing worry to control your life.
You’re worth more than your worry. I’m sure you don’t want to be enslaved by it, but that’s what’s happening. Perhaps this is because of some traumatic past experience that is affecting your behavior in the present. Whatever is causing you to get stuck in worry, it’s not worth it. A bigger, better version of yourself exists on the other side of that worry.
There’s a great book by Ryan Holiday called The Obstacle Is the Way that addresses this issue. Its premise is that your paradise, or what I refer to as your next level, is on the other side of your worry, but you can’t see it because you’re letting the worry get in the way. You may believe that you can find your way around your fear and anxiety, but you actually have to go straight through it.
Byron Katie, who is tremendously insightful about relationships, has a terrific approach to managing worry. She maintains you need to subject that worry to the following four questions:
This last question requires some explanation. If any of you are familiar with the Harry Potter movies or books, you may recall that Dumbledore had an instrument that could extract memories from people’s heads for viewing. Think about extracting your worry-story and then banishing it from your mind. Or what if you could reverse it? Instead of saying, “I don’t think this can work for me; I’ve tried in the past and failed,” you said, “Yeah, I tried in the past and failed, so I now know what not to do, and this time I will crush it.”
You don’t need to worry that the time isn’t right, that the economy has to change, that you need to wait until you receive a loan, that you can’t move forward until you save x number of dollars. You control what you do, not your worry.
I get worked up about this subject because I allowed worry to waste years of my life. I worried that I wasn’t smart enough to get to the next level. I have dyslexia, and I didn’t go to college. Who am I to think I can write a book? I remember struggling in reading class, so it’s quite a leap to consider writing a book. Who the hell do I think I am to even contemplate such a venture? I should be grateful to have what I have, right?
Wrong. I got rid of the story where I worried about whether I was smart enough. Once I did, the worry was gone, and I was free to write, to excel at public speaking, and to reach the next level.
PRODUCTIVITY HABIT #6: PAY YOUR SUCCESS TAX
Have you paid your success tax? Wow, I sure know I have! And I would bet you have too in many ways—you just haven’t looked at it this way. Okay, I know you’re probably thinking to yourself, “Dean, what the heck is success tax?”
Well, before I give you my definition, let me tell you a quick story.
As many of you know from reading this book, watching me on social media, and simply following me for years through Weekly Wisdoms and other things, you know that growing up, I wasn’t the smartest kid in school. I wasn’t born into a wealthy family. I barely graduated high school, and college was never even a question.
But luckily, at a young age I knew I was going to push, scratch, and claw my way to success. I knew that if I worked hard, never gave up, and always dreamed big, I would accomplish more than any teacher ever thought I would. It’s why I sold bubble gum in middle school. It’s why I sold firewood in my early high school years. And it’s why when all my friends were going off to college, I was working with my dad at his collision shop in Marlboro, New York.
In fact, I was working so hard that my dad renamed the shop Paul & Dean Auto Body. Wow! I guess I officially made it right? I wasn’t even out of high school yet and I already had my name plastered on a business right downtown! Some friends were off to college, some were joining the military, and others were doing construction, but I had my name on a successful business. In my mind I was crushing it.
But then it all changed. Shortly after I graduated high school my dad went through a divorce that really hit him hard. So hard in fact that he mentally “checked out” of the business and kind of checked out of life. I remember getting a call from him, and he said, “Dean, I’m sorry, but I’m getting rid of it all. I’m closing the shop. I’m letting the bank take our house. Do yourself a favor and go see if you can find a job up at the Triple R Industries”—the only factory in our little town. And just like that, my world stopped.
Whereas a few months ago I’d felt like somewhat of a big shot for having my name up on a building, I now felt hopeless. The future didn’t seem as bright as it had earlier. Friends were still working construction and thriving in college, and I had just lost what felt like everything.
I took as many supplies as I could from the body shop and moved them to an old broken-down barn that was on the property where I was living. I put in a woodstove for heat and installed the compressor along with my tools and went to work.
I remember thinking at the time that I was finished. I was a fraud. Who was I to think I could be a success? The business is done and now so am I! I may as well just give up.
Have you ever felt like giving up? Have you ever felt like the moment you are in or were in was the hardest thing you’ve ever faced and that you would never come out on the other side? Well, did you come out the other side? If not, I’m here today to tell you that you will.
Looking back now, I realize that the moment I moved into that shed may have been the lowest part of my entrepreneurial life, but it was the start of me paying the success tax I needed to pay to be where I am today.
So let me put success tax in a way that is easy to understand. And this is something I truly believe. What if all the crap, all the struggles, and all the BS we go through are actually designed to show us if we are worthy of success? What if, when you go through those trials, you’re actually “paying your success tax”?
As silly as it may sound, what if there is a success auditor in the universe that is keeping tabs on all the crap people are facing and rewarding those who face it, learn from it, and come out on the other side? I truly believe that it is those people who grind when no one is watching, who hustle in spite of what others say, who persevere and push on through all the worst of days who are rewarded with the success they desire.
Then what if all your struggles were designed for you, there to show that you are worth the success you crave? What if it all happened exactly the way it was supposed to, and the “Success Auditor” was checking off all the boxes that said, “Hell yes, she deserves success”?
I paid my success tax that year. And in many years to follow. I worked hard, I dug deep, I hustled, and I came out as a better version of myself. This could have never happened without those roadblocks along the way. So why don’t you take a step back and look at all the rough parts of your life. And look at them as they really are: nothing more than you paying your success tax.
I tell my kids all the time that they have to honor the struggle. I believe that is how the world rewards people with success. Right now my daughter is practicing like crazy to be the best pitcher in her softball league. While everyone else is out enjoying summer break, eating unhealthily, not working, my daughter is practicing three days a week to be the best pitcher she possibly can be. What is she doing? She is paying her success tax!
Here’s another way to look at this. I want you to take a second and write down on a piece of paper or on your phone, “I Want Bigger Problems.”
“What the heck, Dean! I definitely don’t want bigger problems!” Well give me a minute and let me see if I can change your mind.
If I were to give you the choice of having one of the problems below be the biggest problem in your life, which would you choose?
A. I ordered chicken, but the waiter brought out steak.
B. My accountant messed up, and my real estate deal only profited $60,000 instead of $70,000.
Which one would you choose?
Norman Vincent Peale said the following about problems: “Problems constitute a sign of life. The more problems you have, the more alive you are.”
If your biggest problem in life is that your server brought you the wrong meal or that someone cut you off in traffic, then you aren’t pushing yourself to the point of becoming the best you possible! If my server brought me the wrong meal, I would simply say thank you and smile. I know this is a silly example, but it’s a serious point. I want to encourage you to desire an upgrade in your problems.
The bigger your problems are, the more risks you are taking, the more you are thriving, and the bigger results you are getting for you and your family. If your true desire is to reach the best version of you, then you have to want bigger problems.
Now I’m not saying to go out and cause problems. I’m simply saying that when you start to upgrade your life, upgrade your risk-taking, and upgrade your business, health, wealth, et cetera, you have to expect—and actively desire—an upgrade in problems.
Spin it and throw a positive message behind it! “I am going to pay my success tax and take on any problem this world throws at me no matter how big!” You should write that down somewhere! Put in your journal or on your phone and look at it every day! Make it your new mantra!
And instead of feeling defeated when things aren’t going your way, look to the sky and say, “Oh, I see what you’re doing, Mr. Auditor! I am going to pay this success tax, and I am going to thrive!” Because when we choose to consciously stop self-suffering, we are able to experience life the way it was meant to be. And how long does Tony Robbins say it takes to make a decision or to make a change? An instant! So decide right this instant that you are going to stop viewing your downfalls as the lowest part of your life and start viewing them as the success tax you have to pay to enter the land of true potential.
When you start to look at the events in your life in this way, you will experience a level of freedom and release like never before. It can feel as though 100 pounds have been lifted off your shoulders and you can finally unleash your true self.