← Success Story with Scott D. Clary
Success Story with Scott D. Clary
Lessons - Master the Art of Time-Blocking to Eliminate Distractions | Nir Eyal - Behavioral Design Expert
00:10:48
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- [00:00]
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Lingoda is a partner of Success story. Look, I'll be real with you. My French used to be solid. I learned it in school. I even had decent pronunciation. But when I booked a trip to France last year, it was a total blank. I could barely order a croissant without sounding like a tourist. So I jumped into the Lingoda Sprint challenge and man, it changed everything. I'd take live classes late at night after podcasting. Only five students max. Real teachers, real, real conversations. And in just two months, I went from bonjour to holding full conversations at a Paris cafe. Confidence unlocked. Now here's the play 30 or 60 classes in 60 days and if you finish them all, you get 50% cash back. That's basically €4 or $5 per class. That's insane value. Go to try.lingoda.com successsprint and then use my code Scott Sprint for an extra €20 off on top of their current deal. Registration closes May 5th. Classes start May 12th. Let's get fluent this podcast is brought to you in part by Stash. Are you still putting off saving and investing? Because you'll get to it someday? Stash turns someday into today. Stash isn't just an investing app. It's a registered investment advisory that combines automated investing with dependable financial strategies to help you reach your goals faster. They'll provide you with personalized advice on what to invest in based on your goals. Or if you just want to sit back and watch your money go to work, you can opt into their award winning expert managed portfolio that picks stocks for you. Stash has helped millions of Americans reach their financial goals and starts at just $3 per month. Don't let your savings sit around. Make it work harder for you. Go to get.stash.comsuccess story and see how you can receive $25 towards your first stock purchase. And to view important disclosures, that's get.stash.comsuccess Story paid non client endorsement, not representative of all clients and not a guarantee Investment advisory services offered by Stash Investments LLC and SEC Registered Investment Advisor Investing involves risks and investments may lose value offers subject to T's and C's. In this lesson's episode, discover how time blocking becomes powerful when rooted in your core values, not just task lists or urgency. Learn how applying the Regret Minimization Framework helps you protect your time like money, how scheduling for self care, relationship relationships and reflective work builds a regret free life and how mastering internal triggers is the foundation for true productivity. Just a quick question on on time blocking because I don't I want to. I want to sort of move on from that. But just as I'm thinking through how to implement this, and people that are listening are probably, I'm assuming, thinking the same thing. When you time block your day out, because before time blocking, you had this list of things you had to get done. How do you decide the allocation of time for certain tasks? I mean, is it an urgent, important, matrix Eisenhower, matrix esque thing that you apply, or is there some other framework? Because again, I still have to get through these things. It's important. There's a timestamp and a date that it has to be done by. So how do I sort of break up my day?
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So what's the big goal here? Like what? What's the purpose of figuring out productivity and how we spend our time and time management? What's the big picture here? Why are we doing this? Big picture for me, at least, and what's worked for me is I really was inspired by Jeff Bezos, has this regret minimization framework. The whole idea is that when we make these decisions with how we spend our time, how we spend our money, we want to spend it in ways we don't later regret. And so when we think about our money, right? People are very stingy with their money. They put their money in banks, they keep it in vaults, they split checks, they clip coupons. We do everything we can to save a buck, but when it comes to our time, we give it away to whoever wants it, right? You need me to do this, this stupid thing in the news that doesn't involve me, this war thousands of miles away? Oh, yeah, sure. I'll give that my attention.
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Whatever.
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Whatever stupid thing take my attention, right? But it should be exactly the opposite, because while you can always make more money, you cannot make more time, right? Time is a limited resource. I don't care if you're Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk. You have the same 24 hours in the day, right? And a limited time on Earth. So we should be very stingy with our time, but generous with our money. And so the way we do that is by turning our values into time. It has to start with your values in order to minimize regret, in order to look back at your day, your week, your month, your year, your lifetime. My goal and the reason I did this research and wrote this book was so that I can look back on every day, week, month, year, lifetime, and say, you know what? I spent that the way I wanted to, not the way a media company wanted me to, not the Way someone else wanted me to, but the way I wanted to. And so to do that, I start with my values. And so here's what you do. You look at these three life domains. These three life domains start with you. You're at the center of these three life domains. If you can't take care of yourself, you can't take care of other people. You can't make the world a better place. So it starts with asking yourself, how would the person I want to become spend time taking care of themselves? And you look at your calendar. In the week ahead, you take a blank calendar. Whether you do it on paper or Google calendar, it doesn't matter. Just any tool where you can see your week ahead. And you ask yourself, how would the person I want to become spend their time taking care of themselves? So for me, it's time for proper rest, right? I used to tell my daughter, oh, it's past your bedtime. And then one day she looked at me, she said, daddy, do you have a bedtime? And she was absolutely right. I was being a hypocrite. Now I have a bedtime time to take care of myself by going to the gym. People say, oh, health. Health is very, very important. That's super important. They'll spend too much money on vitamins and pills and potions and powders. But when it comes to spending time in the gym, do you have that time scheduled? Have you made that commitment to yourself to do that thing that you said you want to do for your personal health? So it comes down to first scheduling the time to take care of yourself. By the way, it can include time for fun. It should include time for fun. You love playing video games. Awesome. Put in your calendar. You like social media? Put it in your calendar. That's the most important thing. Then the next life domain is your relationships. And I think part of the reason that we have a loneliness epidemic in the United States is because we have lost these institutions that used to hold time for relationships on our calendars. You know, we used to have the church group and the Kiwanis club and the local events that now, as society became more and more secular, people don't have those. Those institutions that brought in. And I'm not saying you have to be religious per se, but we need to bring back those regular places in our calendar to interact with our relationships, especially men. Men in particular. We let our best buddies kind of go. You know, they move away, they. They drift away. And our relationships kind of starve to death. So put that time in your calendar for your Most important, friends, your family, your. Your kids, your wife, your spouse. Right. Whoever it is, if there's someone important in your life, then fill up your calendar with a time that you ask yourself, how would the person I want to become spend time with their most important relationships? That's the second life domain. The third life domain is work. Okay? Most people start with work, and I actually think we should end with work. And then work subdivides into two kinds of work. Okay? This is where we spend most of our waking hours. Work can either be divided into what's called reactive work. Reactive work is reacting to emails, reacting to notifications, reacting to taps on the shoulders from colleagues. That's reactive work. And then we have what's called reflective work. Reflective work is the kind of work that can only be done without distraction. Planning, strategizing, thinking, for God's sakes, requires us to work without distraction. Most people spend their entire day doing reactive work, right? They look to their email inbox to tell them what they do. They look at their to do list to tell them what they do. They ask their boss what they should be doing. As opposed to planning at least some time in your day for that reflective work. Right? That can only be done without distraction. And if you're not planning that time for reflective work, I promise you, you're running real fast in the wrong direction. So that's how we build that calendar. So when you look at you, your relationships, then, your work, now you've filled out what your ideal week would look like, is it going to be perfect? Are you going to follow to the T? Of course not. You're always going to fall off track from time to time. But now, as soon as you fall off track and you're doing something else, even if it sounds important in the minute, you can always look back on that calendar and say, wait a minute, wait a minute. Is this traction? Is this what I said I was going do? Or is it distraction? Is it anything else?
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Hey, everyone. Scott here. I just want to take a second and say thanks for listening to the podcast over the past couple years. Obviously, this wouldn't be possible without each and every one of you. I have a favor to ask, so I would love to get some more information about you and why you listen to the podcast and why you listen to the show and why you tune in every week. And I have put together a short survey, and we are using this to help us sort of inform what type of content we want to create and the direction of the podcast going forward. This information is not shared with anyone else. So this is just for us internally and I put together a link so scottdclary.com survey where you can go and you can fill in some information so we can know what kind of content you love. Also, for the first 100 people that respond to the survey, uh, you will be entered into a draw for a hundred dollar Amazon gift card. So we'll be giving out one of those to the first people that respond. It should not take more than two minutes of your time to fill out the whole survey. It's really not that long and it will help you shape the future of the podcast. So I really appreciate each and every one of you and thank you for listening. I just want to take a second and thank Cornbread Hemp for supporting today's episode. Now, Cornbread Hemp CBD gummies have been this really nice addition to my wellness toolkit. I don't use them every day, just when I want to unw after those extra busy weeks, but they're perfect for those moments when you want to take the edge off and just find your balance. Really just shut off from work. And what makes them special is how Cornbread Hemp crafts them. They only use a flower of USDA organic hemp plants. That's the best part for the purest, most potent experience. No fillers, no artificial fluff, just clean full spectrum goodness and delicious watermelon, berry and peach flavor. I keep them in my nightstand for those moments when I just need a little extra help relaxing. And I love how transparent they are too. Every batch is third party lab tested so you know exactly what you're getting. And they put together a special offer for all Success Story podcast listeners. All listeners can save 30% off their first order. Just head to cornbreadhemp.com success and use code success at checkout. That's cornbreadhemp.com success code success for 30% off your first order of these amazing gummies, I have to take a second and thank Northwest Registered Agent for supporting today's episode. Now listen. I know a lot of entrepreneurs listen to this show. If you're an entrepreneur, if you're building a business, you have to listen if you want to get more when you're launching your next big idea, Northwest Registered Agent lets you establish your entire business identity in just 10 clicks and 10 minutes. For nearly 30 years, they've been the secret weapon for entrepreneurs who want to move fast while getting expert guidance. For just $39 plus state fees, they'll handle your formation, create a custom website and establish your Local presence wherever your business takes you. As an entrepreneur myself, what I value most is their one stop business solution. You get everything from formation paperwork to custom domains to trademark registration all in one easy to use account. No more juggling all these multiple services or wasting time figuring out the legal stuff. So don't wait. Protect your privacy, build your brand and set up your business in just 10 clicks and 10 minutes. Visit northwestregisteredagent.com/success and start building something amazing. Get more with Northwest registered agent@northwestregisteredagent.com success. It's so funny how I, you know, when you, when you lay it out like that, it's so simple. But I would assume that most people in their entire life, like you mentioned before, they're only ever to even a small degree, planning the reactive work and everything else is just ad hoc.
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Right? Right.
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Planning the relationship, the person. Like I, I feel like most people go through life without ever purposefully putting any kind of energy into planning those things. And I think that's why you want.
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To, you want to have extraordinary things. You want to be an extraordinary person. You have to do extraordinary things. Right. You want to be average, do what everybody else does.
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Yeah, but it's not even, it's. It's so sad how the bar for extraordinary seems to be so low.
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It's true.
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These are not complicated concepts.
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It's very, very true. But you know, the thing is, it's so much easier to have an easy excuse, right? It's the news, it's Mark Zuckerberg. It's this, it's that. It must be. It's my adhd. There's so many ways to get out of taking personal responsibility. Just taking a few steps, right? Just doing a few, couple of things here. There's four steps, right? Master internal triggers that we didn't really talk about. Just a little bit around. Understand this. By the way, this is the most important step. If you don't do this first, nothing else.
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We can talk about that a little bit more too.
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Yeah.
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People understand that.
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Remember those internal triggers we talked about earlier? Boredom, anxiety, uncertainty. If you don't understand the root cause of the problem, you will always get distracted by one thing or another. Whether it's too much news, too much booze, too much football, too much Facebook. You're always going to get distracted by something unless you understand what you are trying to escape. What's that uncomfortable, icky, sticky feeling that some distraction is solving for you? Okay. That's the first and most important step. If you don't solve that. Nothing else matters. That you have to figure out how to master those internal triggers. You don't have to go to therapy for this. You just have to have a tool in your toolkit ready to go. So that when you feel bored, when you feel anxious, when you feel lonely, when you feel uncertain, you know what to do with that sensation as opposed to trying to escape it. Oh, I don't want to feel it. Let me click it away. Let me scroll it away, let me drink it away. No, you're going to deal with it in a healthy way that leads you towards traction. Okay? So that's step number one, master internal triggers. Step number two, which we've been talking about the most, make time for traction. Right? Planning out what it is you're going to do and when you're going to do it. Sounds so simple. Most people don't take that step because they realize if they did, they would actually have to do the hard work. That's the truth. I've heard every, oh, I work in the services business. I can't plan my time. I have international clients, I have distributed teams, I have kids, I have this, I have that. All these excuses when we're not willing to face the fact that if we actually said, you know what, 11 o' clock, I'm gonna go to the gym and then I'm gonna go to the gym. That's something people don't wanna do. I don't do the behavior. So I'm not gonna, I'm not, I'm not gonna plan the time because they haven't done step one. They haven't dealt with the uncomfortable sensation in the first place.
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Okay?
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So that's why step one is so, so, so important. So step number one, master internal trigger. Step number two, make time for traction. Step number three, hack back the external trigger. So this is where we talk about the pings, the dings, the rings. Even though they only account for about 10, we go through systematically. How do you work through each and every one of those? Not only the usual suspects, you know, the, the, the things on your phone and computer. That's kindergarten. That's very, very easy to deal with. I can show you in about five minutes how to make your phone indistractable. The harder stuff that people don't really want to deal with are the stupid meetings that are nothing but distractions that we didn't need to be in, the emails that didn't need to be sent or received that are nothing but distractions. Our kids, we love them to death, but they can be a huge source of distraction. So we go step by step through each and one of these external triggers and then the last step is to prevent distraction. With pacts. A pact is a pre commitment device. It's when we decide in advance what will be the consequence of getting distracted and we make a pact with ourselves or others to make sure that that doesn't happen. It's the last line of defense. And I promise you if you use these four steps in concert, just do one small thing in each of these four steps, anyone can become indistractable.
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Thanks for tuning in. If you found this valuable, don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you never miss an episode. And if you want to dive deeper into this convers, check out the links in the description to watch the full episode. See you in the next one. Prolon is a success story partner. Now long weeks and busy weekends, they can leave everybody feeling depleted and tired. We work non stop and that's why I love prolons 5 day fasting mimicking diet I love this company. Let me explain how it works. Basically they have a fasting mimicking diet that rejuvenates you from the inside and out. They deliver plant based soups, snacks and drinks that keep your body in a fasting state while giving you nutrition. And when your body's in a fasting state, this triggers cellular renewal and it actually works. This is why I loved intermittent fasting for so many years. This is the magic of Prolon. And the exciting news is that they just launched a new next gen five day program. So it has all the benefits that they had before but now they have 100% organic ingredients in their food. Better taste and ready to eat meals that make the whole process easier. I've tried the original Prolon program. I felt fantastic whenever I do it. I personally cannot wait to try this new and improved version. And if you've never tried them before, you're in for a treat because the old one was great. I can't even imagine how good this new Prolon five day program is going to be. And for a limited time Prolon is offering success story listeners all you guys 15% off site wide plus a $40 bonus gift. When you subscribe to their five day program just go to prolonlife.com Clary that's P R O L O N l I f e.com Clary to get your 15% discount and your bonus gift. Prolonlife.com Clary.