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Welcome to the Upside Podcast, where we help you get unstuck in your life and your business by elevating your thinking and provoking meaningful change from the inside out. I'm your host, Teresa Flood, and let's get started. I have a phrase that I catch myself saying all the time, and it's actually starting to drive me insane. And so if you know me in the real world, I would encourage you, if you hear me say this, I want you to call me out on it. And that phrase is when somebody asks me, so, Teresa, how are you? How are the girls? How are things at Dallas Preston Road? How's Tommy? My number one default answer that I go to, we're so busy. It's just so busy. And I hear myself say it. It's such a nothing answer. It's kind of like when somebody says, how are you doing? And you say, you're fine. It's really just an absolute nothing answer. Guess what? Everybody is busy. You're busy. I'm busy. My retired parents are busy. Everybody in our society right now is busy. It doesn't differentiate. It doesn't tell us who's successful, who's unsuccessful. The entire world right now is busy, and yet we claim that oftentimes as some kind of badge of honor or an indication of our success or our work ethic. And I just want to challenge you that busy does not equal productive. Absolutely not the same thing. Busy does not equal productive. And successful people are not the busiest people. Successful people are the most productive people. They're the people that use their time in the absolute best ways. So if you are feeling tired, exhausted, and, might I say, guilty, you need to listen up. So what separates successful people from those who are not is not about how full their calendar is. It's about whether they prioritize their calendar. It's all about our relationship with how we use the time that God's given us. So my question to you is, are you doing the things that are the most important? So there is a concept, I'm sure you have heard of it before, called the 8020 rule. This is not profound and new, but it is such a important thing that we have to understand. So the 8020 rule states that 80% of our results come from 20% of our activities. And this can show up in a plethora of ways. Essentially, what it's saying is that everything does not matter the same. It's not weighted the same. It doesn't have the same amount of impact. So if only 20% of our activities give us 80% of our results. You can flip that on its head and say 80% of our activities give us 20% of our results. So it is a law of unequal payoff. Everything does not matter the same. Busyness and productivity are not the same thing. What you do and what you accomplish are not the same. So I want to give you five things. I had to look at my notes, I could remember how many things I had five things to help us in our relationship with time and with productivity and to step away from the the badge of busyness and really turn into true productivity. So the first thing is get crystal clear on your priorities. Now I'm not even talking about your 20% right now. I'm talking about your 1%. I am talking about what matters to you more than anything else in the world. Why do you do the 20% activities? This is prob things like time with loved ones, your family, your faith, giving back, making it impact. It's the things that should be the most non negotiable things. These go on your calendar first. Protect them at all costs. This is when you are on your deathbed at 105 years old. I don't want to cut anybody short. So I'm going to give you like 105 years old and you're looking back on your life. What are those priorities that are your non negotiables? Get really, really crystal clear on what those things are. Number two, get crystal clear on your 20%. I heard somebody ask this question and I thought it was so profound. If you only had five hours a week to work on your business or to work on things that are going to move your goals forward, what would you do? If you only had five hours, what are the absolute most important things that you would focus on to move the needle? Those things are going to be your 20%. These are going to be your high dollar per hour activities. These are going to be the things that only you can do, that you can't outsource, that you can't leverage. These are going to be the things that make you money. And if you don't have them, none of the other 80% matters, right? If you are in real estate, most of my friends are in real estate and we can write a perfect contract, we can negotiate, we can do all of the things to manage the transaction. And if we have no clients, none of that else ever gets the opportunity to happen. So being crystal clear on what your 20% is and guarding that at all costs. Oftentimes it's the things we don't actually want to do. It's the hard choices that we have to make. Number three, learn to say no. Practice with me. No. It's actually a really simple word, and yet for so many of us, it is very, very hard to say. It feels good to be needed. It feels good to be wanted. It feels good to be included. And so many times we say yes out of an obligation and not out of a clarity on our priorities. So remember, when you say yes to something, you're saying no to something else. Believe it or not, you cannot be in two places at one time. You cannot do two things at one time. So everything that you say yes to, you've said no to something else. So be sure that your yes means yes. When you say no to an opportunity, you're actually allowing somebody else to step up and say yes. It may not be the opportunity for you. And by you saying, that's not my time, that's not my. My. My focus right now. I need to step away from this. You're giving somebody else the opportunity. Why is time so valuable? Time is valuable because it's scarce. That's why it's valuable. If we had all the time in the world, it wouldn't be such a valuable thing. So be sure that you are saying yes to your priorities. You're saying yes to your 20%, and you're saying no to things that might hold you from that. I love the question, what am I doing that if I stop doing, nobody would even notice? That's probably something you don't need to be doing. And what are the things that I'm doing that I should be doing more of? What am I winning at in my business? And if I double down on this, I could let go of some other things that aren't actually as productive, that aren't getting me the kind of results that I want to get. These questions are transformative, and if we ask them and answer them, it's going to make more room for what truly matters. So get clear on your priorities. Get clear on your top 20%. Learn to say no. And number four, learn to leverage. It can all get done. All the things can be get done, and it can all be done by you. And learning to let go. There is going to be a future podcast episode totally on learning to leverage. So I'm not going to go into this in a whole lot of detail, but it really is about learning to leverage. It's not just doing it. We have to learn from how to let go. We have to learn how to give up control. We have to learn how to choose when it's time and what those next steps are that we need to to allow somebody else to take and it becomes their 20% and out of our 20%. But all leverage is systems, it's tools and it's people. So it doesn't necessarily mean a hire. A lot of times it is a who. But this is also about systems and tools and when we learn to leverage, yes, there's a little bit of a slowdown in order to speed up dramatically. And then the fifth challenge that I have for you as we really improve our relationship with our time and that is to allow blank space. And I think there tends to be this feeling that all of our calendars need to be full. If there is, that there is an empty spot on it, that then we're not being productive or if we don't have something scheduled, well, gosh, we need to hurry and do something to fill that time. But remember, if you are over scheduled, you're never going to have time for those surprise opportunities. You're never going to have time for that spontaneity to come up and to be able to say yes to something that you really want to and should be able to say yes to, but you are so overbooked that there's no, there's no flex room in there to be able to say yes to those things. You can also have blank space on your calendar and not fill it. You can have a weekend with nothing on the calendar and that is okay. It is actually okay sometimes to sit on the couch. Yes, all of you goal oriented, super successful, highly productive people, it is actually okay to rest. And I think so many times we wear our exhaustion as a badge of honor. Like, am I the most exhausted person in real estate? I am. I must be the best. It is not a badge of honor. And we have as human beings a limited amount of energy. Choose how you use it incredibly wisely. You have to refuel it, but it will run out. Rest doesn't necessarily mean sleep. Sleep, that's a whole other conversation. I'm talking about rest. I'm talking about your brain taking a rest. I'm talking about your emotions. I'm talking about just having periods of time that are rest. Rest is not lazy. Taking shortcuts, that's lazy. Not doing hard things, that's lazy. Expecting a handout, that's lazy. Resting when we should be working, that's lazy. Robert Kiyosaki actually has a quote in his book and he says busyness is actually a sign of laziness why? Because a lot of times we're filling it with all of the things to keep us from doing the actual work that needs to get done. So I would encourage you to pre plan your rest. Be intentional about your rest. Be intentional about your downtime. Be intentional about your fun time. Here's the truth. If you don't rest, you will quit. You don't rest, you will quit. Your body will quit for you. You will get sick eventually. If you don't rest, you will quit. And I think there is a secret to productivity is learning to rest. It's strategic. It's intentional. Learn to rest so that you don't quit. So get crystal clear on your priorities on those things that matter above all else. Get crystal clear on your 20% activities that drive your metrics and your results. Learn to say no. Lean into leverage and learn how to do it. And then number five is allow blank space in your calendar. So if this episode was helpful to you, I would encourage you and ask you to share it with a friend, somebody who may feel tired, exhausted, or maybe even guilty, and allow this episode to maybe encourage them to think about their relationship with time differently. As always, this is Teresa Flynn. Thank you for tuning in to the Upside podcast. We'll see you next time.