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If you are always busy but you never achieve your goals, do you really have a productivity problem

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or do you have a priority problem? I used to work 16 hour days and I would feel exhausted

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like nothing to. And now I run a business doing multiple hundreds of millions of dollars a year

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and I have learned exactly how to plan my day so that I make time for the most important things.

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You want to make sure that you have the right people that you trust can make decisions.

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Some of this you don't find out unless you let them make the damn decision so like you got to trust

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people but at the same time sometimes you know you're like you're not really going to use the

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noggin over there and so make sure when you hire people if I gave them this project and these

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decisions would I trust that they would make them? It's not just about taking tasks off your play

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it's about judgment so you've protected your decision making. Now you need to eliminate the thing

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that fragments it. The next principle is bachelor days okay the number one source of exhaustion

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amongst leaders is literally just switching between things. If you look at the job description of

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a leader they have tons of things on their job surface. I don't know why is it because they

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oversee a lot of things which means they have to constantly switch between tasks. I was the queen

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of this. I've been the queen of a lot of things I don't do anymore but at some point you've got to

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look back and be like do I want to be the queen of this? And I was like yeah no no I don't want to

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be the queen of switching between two years ago was when I really started doing this and I will say

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that this year has been a huge switch for me and going from operator to architect of my business.

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And so I have gotten ruthless with my batching meaning instead of doing a bunch of different

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tasks. I spend my time focusing on the few things that matters and my business has grown more in

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the last year than it ever has. Why do I do this? To be more efficient. I batch my tasks or projects by

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days. So I have themed days. For example today you see me on camera. I have a filming day today.

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The theme of today is like filming. What did I do this morning? I actually well I'm writing a book

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and so I started by writing the book. It like gets me into content mode. Then I go I do hair

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makeup then I'm going to film and then it's like I'll do something else. So I batched in tweets

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earlier too. So it's like I'm doing all that one day. Then I have a strategy day where I'm going

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through the strategy for 2026. Then I have leadership days where I'm meeting with my executive leaders

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and then I have creative thinking days for future. These all allow me to get deeper focus without

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pulling my brain in all these unrelated things that are going to steal my cognitive load. And so high

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quality output requires extended cognitive immersion. There was a study done at MIT that literally

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talked about how multitasking reduced the accuracy of decision making about up to 50%

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and here's the thing like nobody's going to protect this more than you. So don't expect people to

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think that like once you tell people you're batching your days like they don't give a fuck. You

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own this company they're gonna do everything. You train your team on how to treat you. Do not blame

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them if they interrupt you when you're batched. It's called don't respond to the later and then

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respond later when you're doing something else. The amount like this if you just worked on that one

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thing. How much faster would it be to get things done? A lot of times when people tell me that

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well that's going to take five months and I'm like well why? I'm like there's no way that takes

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five months. What it means that you have 17,000 other things to do and you can't get to it for

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four months. And so it actually takes a month. But if you did one thing at a time or a couple of

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things at a time and had more condention of your attention to do them, you would get things done

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faster as well. And with more accuracy. If you think about like task switching just like it literally

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scrambles your brain and then like people like on burnt out it's like well yeah it's not like you

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burnt out because the thing you're doing is because you're doing like 17 things in one day rather

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than going very deep and solving things. And like if you're constantly solving important problems

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and seeing them from start to finish you get a lot of gratification from that if you're spread

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across 20 and you never see them finish and they go wrong and they're constantly not accurately

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solved. Yeah you feel burnt out I get that. So what you want to do is look at everything you do

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over a week. Try to chunk your days. Just theme them so you can go really deep on one thing and

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I have to keep switching between multiple things or context of the thing. So now you've batched your

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work but there's still one massive thing hiding in plain sight. Okay meetings. The fifth principle

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is to make meetings the last resort not a rule and not a default. Okay if you understand this

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you can eliminate I'm not not with you 80 percent of meetings. I say this as somebody who had a

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tweet go viral of my calendar booked full to the gills with meetings. I have been there I get it

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and there's a better way. I remember when I first like started me on this journey was like

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besides being like I'm into many meetings. I read about how Jeff Bezos and Amazon did

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meetings. I how they did memos before meetings. I said you know about three years ago I switched

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acquisition.com and I said we're going to do memos before meetings. Literally now it's like

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through the culture we say no memo no meeting we've got all these cute little equippy phrases we

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use now but what I realized in that process because it created so much discipline around meetings

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is that most of the time when we do have to have a meeting it's because there's a large decision

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that hasn't been made and once we make them we don't need a meeting about it anymore so there's

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no action to be taken so we don't need another meeting and a lot of the time people think that

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meetings are leadership but oftentimes they're not they're like status updates or they're areas of

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clarity that should have been written down and should have had a system put in place and so a lot of

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times we throw a meeting on the calendar because we need to solve a one time problem but we make it

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a recurring meeting or we put a meeting on the calendar because somebody's lacking clarity when

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we could have used that time to create an expectation document that gave him clarity. Do you see what

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I'm saying? Most meetings are a band-aid for something else that's missing but we don't know what

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it is and so we just put a meeting on the calendar and a lot of the times it doesn't need to be

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recurring it doesn't need as many people in it that there are and it just doesn't in general need

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to keep happening and so if you're a leader with 20 or 40 meetings a week that does not mean

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you're leading in fact sometimes it means you're very reactive and you're not taking time to be

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strategic and this was very hard for me to realize because I used to think it was like a badge of

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honor that I had so many meetings that week and I see people now and I try to coach them on I'm like

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listen it's not cool that you have 50 meetings a week and I know it's exhausting because let's not

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pretend it's not it's exhausting I could have been working so much smarter in my first business

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where I did this so much smarter but I wasn't and most of the time that's all it is is that people

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they have meetings because they don't structure and you could use the time say like 30 hours of

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meetings that you could eliminate a week to be building the structure so you wouldn't need a meeting

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that's it this thing it's like we're just using them as mandates and the top 1% they don't do this

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so what's the thing you can take away from this instead of having a meeting ask for a memo first

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I mean half the time and I just say great I need a memo before the meeting it's like that just

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eliminates the meeting because they don't want to write the memo and for beginners I want to say

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this you might still need some meetings because you haven't built that muscle yet it's not a zero to

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100th thing to get where I've gotten where I understand the purpose and I can really see behind

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the requests and the agendas and stuff it's like it's taken me years to get here so there's

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some of it you can't skip but you can do a lot less than you think you might need to to get to where

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you want to go now that being said here is the principle that changed everything once you have

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the structure right you need to work with your biology not against it so you want to build your

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life around energy not time this is the last principle that I think a lot of the top 1%

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lip-by they think about energy more than they do time they don't manage their time they manage

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their energy because like you really can't manage time you can only manage the energy that you have

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during the time that you have given and this is what a lot of people get wrong when it comes to time

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management they book their entire day and they'll be like you know what I'm gonna do I'm gonna

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have 12 meetings and then I'm gonna work on this in the morning and then I'm gonna do the set lunch

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and I get home while I ride my bike and eat a PB sandwich I'm gonna go down to my wife I'm gonna

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do all of it at the same time it's like you know those people and I have said that to many people

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before I'm like it's not a bad diviner that you work out while you eat and while you're spouse

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let's not do that we don't want to result to that like when I have people tell me that I book time

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to have sex between I'm like what is happening here what they're not considering is this how good

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is it going to feel to do that when you've just been in 12 meetings seriously while you're riding

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your bike eating your stay on which having sex with your spouse what's your energy like when you're

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just had 12 meetings back to that people try to force productive activity when they're in a low

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energy state and then they get mad at themselves and they didn't get it done they're like I don't

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understand I put it on the calendar that after I had eight meetings today I was gonna work out and

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then I was gonna talk to my friends I was gonna go on that hike and then I was gonna have dinner

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with my wife but you know what I was exhausted by time we're supposed to have dinner definitely

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didn't want to get my freak on that wonder why comes with understanding your biology not working

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against it understand when do you have the most energy when is your peak thinking time when

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is your peak activity time when is it best that you meditate do breath work what are the decisions

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that you have to make and when should you make them during the day for me for example something I

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learned very early on is that past probably two or three o'clock I do not make big decisions if

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somebody comes me Alex probably to this day he hates this about me he'll come to me at like three

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or four o'clock and I'm pretty I can feel like I'm cognitively like my look it's low and he's like

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what do you think about this and I'm like let's talk tomorrow because okay why it's three o'clock

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and I'm like I know but I mean so many decisions and I already worked on this thing this project for

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six hours I don't have the mental load to make this decision right now I can just feel it it's not

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there I can't access it I'm like okay so instead of trying to push through that I say you know what

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I think I'm gonna go for a walk instead or maybe I'm gonna work out do something like fun or

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write cards or something it doesn't require a ton of thinking a lot of people look at their

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calendar and they say this is how many hours I've in a day I could be working all these hours but

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how many of those hours because you're doing them when you're in a low energy low cognitive state

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do you then have to take those hours and just put them on another day because you have to redo the

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that you did wrong you have to reverse the decisions that you made poorly you have to

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remand the conversations that you had that rapport because you just shouldn't have done it the first

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place you should have just said I'm tired I need to go do something that requires zero thought and so

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for me I think about it like how do I have to architect my day so that I can maximize my peak

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decision-making my clear thinking time and then how do I schedule things during that time that

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are going to maximize or I'd say take advantage of that and then how do I put other things at

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the time of not so like for me I wake up I meditate and then I'm like okay I'm gonna go I'm gonna

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have water I'm gonna do whatever and then I'm gonna sit down I'm gonna work I'm gonna work on

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the things that I know are most important to move my business forward I'm not gonna respond to

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slack I'm not gonna respond to email because I know now I'm in peak mental time and I know I've

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done my most important work when I'm peak cognitive bandwidth and then I say okay great I'm feeling

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like a little tired it's been three hours like I can feel my brain's like oh you need to pick me

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up I'm like all right now I'm gonna we're gonna walk I'm gonna work out then after that I'm gonna

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go in and I'm gonna do whatever else I need to do with my day we need to think about how our bodies

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how our energy affects what we're doing every day I've had to redo and undo enough decisions in my

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lifetime because I made them when I was cognitive bandwidth low but it's like we equate being tired

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with being lazy all the times in business and I think that that's why people are afraid to say it

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but it's just the truth like we only have so much we can get for not robots now a lot of research

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shows that most people have 90 to 120 minutes of peak focus doing any one thing and that's a good

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place to start is like chunk your peak productivity time just put two hours of the calendar and start

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there and like see do you have more do you have less except I think what I have learned is I have

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stopped trying to be switched on all day instead I create different zones of my days it's like my

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days are themed and then I have zones within those theme days of knowing when I want to make decisions

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when I have the emotional or cognitive space for something or when I just need to like let loose

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relax and like not be doing anything and I think what this does is it allows you to sustain

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high performance over long periods of time without feeling burnt out exhausted etc and ironically you

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get more done in a shorter period of time so if you try to sum me on this 10 years ago I've been like no

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but now I'm like this is how you get to the top 1% so what can you do what is the takeaway for this

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look at your day in terms of energy like look at what you have scheduled on your calendar and then

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like ask yourself how is that going to feel like think about it almost like a customer experience but

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for your calendar and for yourself what's the customer experience walking to that day oh she

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wakes up and then she has 17 meetings on her calendar and then she and now the cortisol starts to rise

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and she starts to feel anxious it's like let's not do that let's not work against the fact that we

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are humans and we have finite amounts of energy we can do things don't get me wrong there's so much

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that we can do to create more energy but first I just want you to understand it when is your peak

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thinking time when do you need to eat when do you realize you need to move design your day around

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those natural rhythms and take advantage of them rather than trying to fight them