Maximize Your Workday & Supercharge Productivity With Scott Friesen

Chris Ronzio: (02:50)

Hey everyone, welcome back. I'm your host, Chris Ronzio. And today we're going to talk about a topic that everyone always wants to talk about, and there are going to be a ton of nuggets and takeaways. So whether you're running a business, working in a business or just want to lead a more productive life, you're going to get to hear from Scott Friesen. He is the founder of Simpletivity, which is a massive YouTube channel that just keeps growing by the week. And he's just a productivity expert. So Scott Friesen, thank you for being here.

Scott Friesen (03:09):

Hey Chris, good to see you. Thank you for having me.

Chris Ronzio (03:12):

I'm so excited to dig into this. So this is, as my followers know, efficiency, productivity, one of my favorite topics, and anytime I get to talk to someone else that is a master at this stuff, I learn a ton. So I'm just going to pretend that this is a coaching call for me. And I think everybody's going to learn a lot from you. So let's get started with, you've got a really cool mission, which is to kill busyness. Is that right?

Scott Friesen (03:39):

That's right. That's my official title, busyness killer. And a bit of background is that for many years, I spent my time in the technology and software industry working in the corporate world. And when asking people, "Hey, how are things going in your life? Or how are things going at work?" Constantly, people telling me, "Oh, I'm so busy. I'm so busy. I'm so busy. I'm so busy." I said to myself, "There's got to be a better way. There's got to be a better way to work. There's got to be a better way to take a look at our work and our outlook." So yeah, my mission is I want to try and keep us away from the busyness and much more on the productivity side of our days.

Chris Ronzio (04:26):

Yeah. When people say, "Oh, I'm keeping busy." It's like, "Okay, on what? Is it stuff that you want to be doing? Is it boring work?" And so I love that we're going to dig into this. Let's go back in your history first. How did you become a productivity expert? Where did it all start?

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Using Youtube As A Marketing Channel

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Scott Friesen (04:44):

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Yeah. So as I mentioned, I spent many years working in software and much of that time as a software product manager. So helping people get the most out of their tools, working directly with clients and stakeholders, as we developed a variety of different serviced based systems. And along the way, I found a few new techniques to improve my own productivity and to organize my schedule. And I found that many people, many of my colleagues would keep asking, "Hey, Scott, how did you do that? Or, you seem to always be on top of this and that type of thing. What are some of your tips and tricks?"

So time and time again, off the side of my desk, I was teaching someone else or giving some advice or maybe recommending a book, something along those lines until eventually I said to myself, "You know what? I really love this teaching side of things. I love personal productivity and time management. Maybe I should consider doing that full time." I was first very fortunate to make a transition within my own company at the time from product management into talent development. And that allowed me to travel the world and provide a number of workshops and training and also virtual training as well, but eventually, decided to branch out on my own. And Simpletivity has been going strong ever since 2015.

Chris Ronzio (06:15):

So did it start as formally as your YouTube channel or were you just sort informally showing people this and that? At what point did you say, "I need to record this because I'm showing people the same thing over and over?"

Scott Friesen (06:28):

Well, here's the true story. Here are the details after working for this organization for roughly eight years, had a fantastic time, wonderful experiences made many wonderful connections and colleagues, but near the end of that eight years, there was a bit of an itch to do something new, to do something a little bit different, but I wasn't really sure what that next step should be. I wasn't really sure if I should be looking for a new job opportunity, should I be looking to make another minor career change something along those lines until finally I said to myself, "You know what, maybe I need an outlet. Maybe I just need something to get this out. Maybe just to share my knowledge with others." And YouTube seemed to be the natural choice to start producing a few videos.

So it happened to be on one of the days in which I was working remotely and anyhow, I decided to take a few minutes and recorded a couple of super short videos. I upload them to YouTube and of course no one saw them at all. I could see the view count. No one was watching them yet, pretty standard for any new YouTube channel. About an hour later, about an hour after uploading those first few videos, I got a phone call from the VP of HR saying, "Scott, sorry, you've, been a wonderful asset to the organization, but we're going to have to let you go. We're doing some downsizing. This coming Friday will be your last day."

I share that story with you because I don't think it's coincidence that the day that I uploaded my very first YouTube video happened to also be the day that I got laid off. I'm often asked, "Did they see your video? Did they think you were doing ... No, trust me, I was looking at the view counts. No one was watching that content, but that was the springboard as to what was going to happen next.

The business itself didn't start overnight, didn't start immediately. But the one thing that I did do for those coming two months after being laid off is just continue to upload new YouTube videos. And about two, two and a half months later, I decided to make it my business. I decided to offer myself as a consultant and the rest is history at this point. Being laid off is maybe one of the greatest things in hindsight that's ever happened to me, but no joke. It actually happened on the same day that the Simpletivity YouTube channel was born.

Chris Ronzio (09:04):

So it's funny when I hear these stories, a lot of times the YouTube channels or the social media success stories that start without monetization, that start as just sharing and delivering value and consistency and building a following. Those are the ones that skyrocket, whereas when people have some business model and they think, "Oh, I'm going to supplement with social media." It doesn't work as well. And so do you think that those early months of just posting posting posting gave you that foundation? Or how much did it influence what became the business model?

Scott Friesen (09:37):

Yeah, I think absolutely. And even from the get go both in those early days, but even after the business side of things started, it was never my intent to monetize or to have YouTube as a significant revenue generator. The real purpose was from a marketing standpoint, a way to communicate my message out there, a way to be discovered by potential customers and potential clients.

And that was really always the goal, especially in those first few years. I've always looked at it as a bit of a bonus that when I started generating more significant ad revenue, when I started attracting some really quality sponsorships and that type of thing, that's all been a wonderful bonus since that time. But I agree whether it's YouTube, whether it's a podcast, your blog or some other vehicle, hopefully you have your intentions very clear and that they're not all based around monetization.

Chris Ronzio (10:43):

How frequently were you posting in those early days?

Scott Friesen (10:47):

So I faithfully posted every single week, sometimes twice a week for that first year. And I do like to emphasize that because I really didn't see hardly any growth in that first year. And you've probably talked to a lot of YouTubers over the years. It's that first year that you have to get through or those first 50 videos, sometimes the first 100 videos not just to break through. And I don't mean to break through from an algorithm standpoint or something like that, but I just mean to break through from learning from yourself, figuring out, okay, what's working, what's not working? What do people like more than other things? Let's experiment. Let's try with something. You're going to have to get through that. I forget who mentioned this quote, but I love it. They say "Your first 50 videos are going to be crap. So you might as well get through them as quickly as you can, just get through them because you got to learn so much along the way."

And in my case, it was probably almost a year to the date of uploading that first YouTube video that I got a video that had a bit of a higher uptick. It took me back. I said, "Oh, wait a minute. People seemed to be resonating with this particular video. And it was something new. It was something different. It was a different format. And I took that as a great hint. And in many ways, my format even to this day is somewhat similar or based on that one video. But I couldn't have gotten to that point without uploading each and every week for nearly a year.

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Defining Productivity

Chris Ronzio (12:28):

It's the repetition. So if you're listening to this, I want you to hear that you've got to get the reps in. And even if you're talking to an audience of zero, it's good for you. It's good practice to figure out how to deliver the message and how to be concise and how to speak without fumbling over your words. I remember looking back at one of the first videos I shot before I started putting out any content and I was pacing around in the front lawn and outside of my mom's house, visiting her. And I thought, "I'm just going to go out here and shoot a video." It was terrible, so bad, I didn't even want to listen to the rest of it, but it takes that, like you said, it takes that to get to good. So let's turn to productivity now. How do you define productivity? What does it mean to you?

Scott Friesen (13:12):

Yeah. That's the golden question. When we're talking about productivity, when we're talking about time management and getting the most out of our day, for myself, I think too often, we think of quantity when we think of productivity, we think of, the number of tasks I can cross off in a day, the number of phone calls or emails. We were just talking about content, the number of videos or podcasts that I can record in a week. I think true productivity or the best definition of productivity puts the focus on quality, what you are able to produce. Are you happy with the quality of that work? Have you actually done something meaningful for your stakeholders, for your boss, for your team, whoever it is that you serve? What's the quality behind the work?

I might only accomplish three things today, but if I do them at a high quality, if I can leave my office with a big smile on my face and say, "Yeah, you know what? I made a difference." To me, that's a very productive day versus another day where I might be able to cross off 27 things on my to-do list. I may be in six different meetings, whatever the case may be. That might be a very unproductive day. I ticked a lot of boxes, but did I really pushed the needle? Did I really make a difference in someone else's life? So when it comes to productivity, I think it really comes down to the quality of the work when all is said and done.

Chris Ronzio (14:46):

So productivity is really a measurement of your progress against what's important and not necessarily just your daily quantity of tasks. And so if you're working on things that aren't that important, not moving the needle, then by your definition, that's not really a productive day, right?

Scott Friesen (15:05):

Absolutely. And I think in some ways it's almost harder in the environments and the tools that we use to get that type of perspective of quality versus just quantity. I think email is a classic example. I know so many of us, we get lost in our inbox. We spend a half hour reading, replying, sending a bunch of emails and we trick ourselves into thinking, oh, I got a lot done. Look at this, I got through 50 messages or I reply to 14 emails. We fool ourselves into thinking because things are changing from bold to italic, to a check mark, to some other color, all these visual indicators as if we've done something.

But if you really look at that list of emails or messages that you've sent, how much further has that progressed you in your business? How much have you actually helped those individuals or you just waiting for a reply, some never ending thread that's happening within our email inbox. The same could be said with many of our task lists and our to-do list, just checking off boxes. But yeah, I think that quality piece is so important.

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Get The Most Out Of Your Task Management

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Chris Ronzio (16:22):

I hope I'm not alone here, but I definitely am guilty of putting things on my to-do list after I've done them. Just so I get the satisfaction of crossing off another thing. Have you ever done that or am I alone here?

Scott Friesen (16:36):

You know what? I might say that I'm fortunate that I'm not very tied to the past. And I say that not just from my workday and how I manage my own tasks, but I mean that with physical things as well. I know that both my wife and my mother, especially when I was younger would always get on me like, "Scott, you might want to remember this token." Or "This is something you did when you were younger." And I'm very much a forward thinking myself. Now we're all wired a little differently, we all have a slightly different personality, but no I'm very much one to just sort move on. I know one of the practices or one of the things that I'm best known for within this Simpletivity YouTube space is showing people how to use their calendar as a to-do list.

In many cases, it's their digital calendar, whether they use outlook, whether they use Google calendar or perhaps some other format, you can basically turn any online or digital calendar into a to-do list. But a common question I get is, "Scott. Well, how do you determine, how do you check something off within your calendar to-do list? How do you convert an event, even if it's just listed as an event as off. And my honest answer for me is that, well, it's just delete it. I just get rid of it. I've done that task and I'm moving it on now.

There's a variety of different ways in which you can adjust for that. You can change a color, you can add a flag or a label. You can move it to another calendar. So there are other ways around this, but for me, I'm often surprised at how attached some of us are to wanting to look back and take a look at what's happened in the past. Perhaps part of that is just the way I'm wired. I'm always looking forward. If the task is completed and there's nothing else there for me to review or need to go back on, it's gone, I'm moving on to something to else.

Chris Ronzio (18:35):

So I'm curious your take then on carrying tasks forward that don't get done. So for instance, if you put a to-do on your calendar and it's an important block of time that you're supposed to work on something and you skip it, something else comes up, you're on the phone, you just can't do it. Do you then drag that thing forward to a later time in the week? And same with a task list, if you don't get your outcomes for today done, how do you carry those forward?

Scott Friesen (19:01):

Yeah. None of us are perfect. Even those of us who study and teach productivity still have things that we don't get to and we have to either defer or push it to a future date. One of the nice advantages of using a calendar based system, or even those who may be more comfortable with a notebook or a paper based system, is the idea of physically moving something to a particular date in the future. I think one of the traps that many people fall into, if they're using a to-do list manager or perhaps some other project management tool, is that many of these pieces of software make it so easy for us to bulk defer, right? It's so easy to take five things and just, oh, push that to next Monday or push all five of these to tomorrow, even though you haven't really looked or analyzed any of those items individually, you're just dumping them all sometime in the future.

So I think taking a little bit of effort upfront saying like, "Okay, wait a minute. I'm not going to have time to do this today. Do I need to do this tomorrow? Or can I push this even further in advance? Or, maybe of the three things that I'm not going to get to today, what absolutely should be done tomorrow? What else could be defer to maybe later on in the future?" I think far too often, people get to Monday morning and they've got a huge list of things, many of which have just been deferred from the previous week by default. So I think putting a little bit of extra thought actually going through each light item.

The other trick or tip that I have is that when you are deferring something, especially if you found yourself deferring the same task multiple times or multiple days is to actually go back and rewrite that task, reword it in a different format, because if you're just moving the same thing, it might be the way that you're actually looking at that task. Do you need a verb or an action tense at the beginning of that? Were you not as specific as you should have been when you first wrote that task? So if you find yourself deferring the same thing more than two days, force yourself to maybe white rewrite it, excuse me, in a different format that might be a lot more effective than you think.

Chris Ronzio (21:28):

Such a great tip, or maybe it needs to be divided up into something that's actually achievable instead of such a big task. I see a lot of people putting these gargantuan things on their to-do list that you couldn't possibly make any progress with because it's so daunting. We have a rule, my assistant follows defer, defer, defer, delete. If I've deferred something three times, she really presses me on it. "Do you even need to do this thing? Are you ever going to do this thing?" And it's a good wake up call. So I think that's always an option too, is if you're deferring, maybe you don't need to do it.

Scott Friesen (22:03):

Absolutely. I love that. That's almost like three strikes and you're out, right? If you've done it three times, wait a minute. Is this really valuable to you? Or another important D word is, delegate. Does it need to be delegated to someone else if you have that option? But I also am very glad that you brought up this concept of length of time or the duration of any given task. My general rule of thumb is if it's going to take me more than two hours to complete something, you need to break that up because you're probably dealing with a project. Even if it's a small project, if you can't complete that task in less than two hours, you should try and break that up into smaller chunks.

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Setting Meeting Boundaries

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Chris Ronzio (22:48):

Great call out. Don't put projects on to-do list, divide them up into tasks. Great call out. So I've heard from a lot of people, even some of our managers at Trainual, they talk about, "I feel like I was in meetings all day and I didn't actually get anything done." So is there a different way to set up the day so you can achieve more or to go into the day with knowing how you're going to measure yourself at the end of the day?

Scott Friesen (23:16):

Yeah. Great question. And I think we can all agree, I think many of us view meetings as a bit of an evil, a necessary evil or something that fills up so much of our calendars. I think one of the challenging things is that when it comes to when you work at your peak or when you are at your productive best might be very different than when I work at my productive best. The good thing is that internally within any organization, hopefully you can have some of these open conversations right, about, "Hey, listen, we're not going to have meetings until 11:00 AM because we want people to be focused at that time. It sounds like most of us would like that time for personal projects or specifically deep focus work. And then we can start our meetings." However, outside of the organization, it's going to be next to impossible to do so, right? You're working with external stakeholders and clients, et cetera, et cetera.

I still do believe that you need to put in some boundaries as a part of your day or play some defense. If we want to use a sports analogy, right? Even if you're fortunate enough to have a secretary or to have an assistant, they're only going to be able to deflect so much. You need to decide, I'm at my best in these particular hours or these parts of the day. And so I'm going to protect that time for my most important, my most strenuous my work that requires my undivided attention, but I'm going to leave myself open for meetings and other ways to collaborate maybe in other parts of the day. Another thing that can be very effective for many individuals is reserving days of the week for specific activities or for specific meetings.

So going back to my YouTube content, as an example, I block off most of my Mondays and Tuesdays for recording. Just like I imagine you're probably recording several podcasts today, or maybe over the course of several days, batching that content, even if you're not a content creator, is there something in your world or something within your responsibility that needs your attention that needs your focus? Maybe you can try and block off either an entire day or much of a day just for that particular work. Something that I think we don't talk enough about is our personal energy levels.

And that's what you want to bring into the conversation, right? When are you typically at your best? When could you handle something extra challenging? See if you can block off some time there and reserve the rest of the day or other parts of the day for your meetings and lesser activities.

Chris Ronzio (26:04):

Again, incredible tips. So the way I do it, which mirrors exactly what you've just suggested is, I have at least a couple focus time blocks through the day to make sure that I have that buffer, those boundaries, that I can actually catch up and get things done. And every morning when I do a standup with my assistant, we agree on my top three outcomes for the day so that I can be sure I've got some space in the day between meetings to tackle those things.

And then just as you suggested, if this is helpful for anyone else, I set it up. So that Mondays and Thursdays are all of my internal meetings, my one on ones, company meetings, all hands meetings, Tuesdays and Wednesdays tend to be external or project work. And Fridays is press podcast PR. And so Fridays are this open content day. And so it sounds like that's something you agree with and maybe a tip that others can implement.

Scott Friesen (26:57):

Absolutely. And for those who have not experimented with that format, you got to try it out. You can't dis it unless you actually experiment it with yourself. At the same time, I think you need to allow a certain amount of flexibility, a little bit of nimbleness as a part of your schedule.

I know that I've come to a Monday where I'm typically ready and raring to go to record and edit much of my content, but I'm just not feeling it that morning, rather than beat myself up about it being flexible with my schedule so I can find maybe another chunk of time or swap it with another block in my day. Because another thing that often can bring us down is being too restrictive with ourselves and boxing ourselves into these specific slots that we can't move or that we can't touch. So having a little bit of both is probably going to help your productivity overall.

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Task & Project Management Tools

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Chris Ronzio (27:55):

Absolutely. You start with the framework, but then there's always some gray area. It moves a little bit. So you mentioned using a calendar as a task list. If people don't like that or don't want to use a calendar, do you have recommended tools, favorite tools? I know there's a ton of applications out there, but I'm curious, what tools you like and what the anatomy of a task list looks like for you?

Scott Friesen (28:19):

Sure. Yeah. We live in an age where there's an endless number of to-do list managers, task managers, project management lists available to us. I think there's some pros and cons as a result. One of the cons I should say is switching so rapidly. You get started with a particular tool or a particular app, and not even three months later, you're jumping to something else because they have this feature. Or I saw someone else do something over here. I don't think we need to overcomplicate our task list. Yeah, it's nice to have a few bells and whistles and depending on your specific needs, but I think what's more important is understanding the capability of the tool that you are using.

One of my absolute favorites is Trello, which is probably better known as a project management system. Trello has its history in software development and helping development teams collaborate together, and it's really based on the Kanban method of moving things through different stages. But Trello is such a flexible tool. It's an excellent choice, even for your own personal task management, you can create as many or as few lists as you need. It's a very visual based system, which I find a lot of people really enjoy. Rather than just being trapped within text and due dates, it's so easy to upload images and to apply labels and so forth and move things around. Almost everything is drag and drop, so you can really customize it for your needs.

Far too often, we pick a tool that again, really boxes us in to their framework or how we should be working or how they think we should be working based on the software itself. So Trello is a recommendation that I give quite frequently to many of my clients.

Chris Ronzio (30:20):

So technical question for you, do you use cards as tasks or do you use the tasks within the cards as tasks?

Scott Friesen (30:27):

Yeah, that's a great question. In my case, most often the cards represent the tasks themselves. Although in some cases there may be some sub-tasks or maybe reminders within that checklist inside the card. So yeah, those cards can represent a project. If you like, Trello has given us a lot more flexibility over the last few years with how checklists can be used and assignments and their own unique due dates beyond just the card itself. But in my case, I typically am using the card for task purposes.

Chris Ronzio (31:02):

So in my first company, it was a video production company. We had to track productions between stages of a production, pre-production, production and post-production, fulfillment, that sort of thing. And Trello, that Kanban format is incredible for tracking something between stages. And so I'm sure you do something like that with your tasks, whether it's a long term thing or a today thing or ... Any tips there?

Scott Friesen (31:29):

Yeah. I think one of the things that is so eye opening for many people, especially if they haven't tried a tool like Trello or the Kanban system, whether it's with a team or for personal use, is yeah, thinking about your tasks in those different stages or the entire workflow. So for example, there's a big difference between adding something to your task list and things that you're actually engaged with, or actually doing, right? It's easy to add something to a list, but what are you actively working on in the moment? The other list that I often highly recommend is having a list called pending or waiting for, and this is for tasks that are perhaps out of your hands at the moment, you've left a voicemail with someone else, you've reached out to the vendor for a quote, you're waiting to hear back from a client.

There's really nothing you can do at the moment, but the nice thing is that it's not in the middle of your task list. It's not staring back at you. You're not questioning yourself, "Why aren't I moving forward with that particular task?" There may be good reason why you can't move forward at this particular point in time. So having that hiatus bucket or that hiatus list to say, and it's also a great way to quickly go and check maybe at the end of each week or at the end of each day, you want to review that particular list and say, "Well, you know what, it's been two days since I last reached out, maybe I need to pick up the phone again and call that individual." So yeah, breaking your task list out beyond simply done and not done can be very effective.

Chris Ronzio (33:08):

Yeah. I think that's an important point about this pending bucket. And if it's in an email, maybe you're using some snooze functionality that it comes back into your inbox, or like you said, with the task, some task systems have that snooze functionality. So the last point I want to make on the task system here is, this doesn't have to be a commercial for one specific application, but I think you said, stick with it, right? And I think there's an important point there in sticking with an application long term, there's some benefits of getting to look back at years worth of tasks and understand what responsibilities are on your plate that maybe you could start to delegate to someone else. And you'll lose that history if you're changing applications every couple of months.

Scott Friesen (33:52):

Absolutely. And another thing to be wary of is, most of us are only scratching the surface with the tools and the software that we use, right? On average, you're probably using maybe 10% of the features that are available to you. I highly recommend that once you've selected something, once you've started working with something and have committed to it, spend some additional time, maybe watching some videos or going through some tutorials, reading, maybe the product updates from that particular software to see what has been released recently, because there are probably some additional features that are going to be extremely beneficial to you once you learn what their purpose is and how they work in your world, rather than always jumping ship to another tool or to some other application.

I think, for far too many people, we're not maximizing, or we're not optimizing our use with the current tool. And if you've already selected it as your primary tool, it's worth your money, it's worth your effort to learn out some of the other features that might be able to help you along the way.

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How To Tackle 'What To Do Next' Paralysis

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Chris Ronzio (35:04):

What a novel idea to actually use the features of the thing that you've selected. We see that too, with people using Trainual, we can track feature usage. And so we'll reach out to people and say, "This feature's been out for a year and you haven't used it." And they say, "Ah, I didn't even know about it." And so sometimes it's just digging in, like you said, and learning the tool you've committed to. So how about when people just get paralyzed by what's next? What do I work on next? I've got an hour, I've got two hours. What do I tackle?

Scott Friesen (35:37):

Yeah. And that happens to a lot of us. In the middle of the day, middle of the week, you just come out of a meeting and you've got that big, scary, hairy to-do list staring back at you. One of the things that I recommend is keeping your daily to-do list as small as possible. And the reason being is that it's only human nature. It's only natural for us to scan what is in front of us. And so if you have a to-do list that has 20 something staring back at you, you are going to be scanning that each and every time you come back to that screen, whether you come back to that piece of paper, spreadsheet, wherever you are managing your tasks, you're constantly staring at that entire to-do list. And there's going to be some negative consequences, right? You might start to beat yourself up saying, "There's no way I'm going to complete all of these things on this list."

The other negative habit is that we start to scan for low hanging fruit. We start to scan for things that are quick or easy or simple to do, but those may not be the most valuable or the most important things on your task list. So I'm a big fan of starting your day, just like you mentioned, you've got three key tasks or three areas of focus start it small with three, maybe limit yourself to only five key things per day. It doesn't mean that those are the only things that you're going to accomplish today, but it's also a great feeling that once you've accomplished that small or that micro list to then start pulling in other things that you hadn't even planned for, you hadn't even set as an objective at the beginning of the day.

The other thing I want to mention when it comes to feeling overwhelmed and prioritization and what to work on next, there's a great question that I guess you could say I've stolen or I've borrowed from the author, Gary Keller. He wrote a bestseller almost a decade ago called The One Thing. And I think the question, what that book is really based around. What's the one thing that you can do right now, that's going to make everything else easier or unnecessary?

I know the first time when I heard that question and when many people hear that question, it sounds silly, it's a ridiculous question. But it's that last part of it, right? What's something you can do today or what's something you can do right now that's going to make everything. And I mean, even things outside of your career or outside of your work world, what's going to make everything easier or unnecessary? If you can identify that task, I can almost guarantee that should be number one on your priority list. That should be the thing you should be working on next, because if it might just cancel out other things on your task list, if it might make other problems go away or prevent other problems from arising, that's probably the thing that you should be working on next.

So I know many times I've had a busy morning back to back meetings, whatever the case may be, I'm feeling tired, I'm feeling exhausted, but I'll ask myself that question. Okay. What's something, even if it's a simple thing, what's something I could do that's going to make everything else easier or unnecessary? A very powerful question.

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Defend Your Work Against Distractions

Chris Ronzio (39:02):

Such a great filter. And that's an incredible book. I feel like it's a timeless book. So if you're listening, you haven't read The One Thing, go check that book out. Last question, Scott, for you. There is an army defending a lot of our task lists from ever getting done. That army does not want us to even get close to our task list. And that is of course, Slack and email and phone calls and text messages. And so how do we fight back? How do we stop those distractions so that we can actually get stuff done?

Scott Friesen (39:36):

Well, I think you alluded to it right there. Defend or defense as I mentioned earlier. I think, we cannot be afraid to put up some barriers to put up some barriers within our work world. I'm a little bit of an anti Slack individual myself. I understand the purpose of it. I know there are millions of teams out there who use Slack on a daily basis, but I find that so much of our instant messaging does not benefit us nearly as much as we think it is. We don't think of those negative consequences.

I would argue that we over communicate that we spend far too much time communicating back and forth in contrast to execution or actually getting things done. Yeah. There's a time to ask questions, there's a time to check in, but so much of our workday seems to be taken up by communication, whether it's instant messaging, whether it's phone calls and whether it's meetings.

So I'm a big proponent of muting yourself, whether that's muting or silencing your phone for long periods of the day, whether that's muting your instant messaging. And again, if we go back to the example of internal versus external, internally, hopefully you can have some of those open conversations and saying, "Listen, I'm just not going to be checking email, or I'm not going to be online with Slack from these periods of the day or for most of the morning, but I'm going to get back into it."

And the other thing I want to mention here, regardless of the format, regardless if we're talking phones, emails, instant messaging, if you're batching those tasks, if you're batching that communication, you're going to be so much more effective and get through it so much quicker. I know a lot of people look at me strangely, when they say, "Scott, you only deal with email two times a day?" I said, "Yeah, I'm basically only responding or replying to emails once in the morning and once in the afternoon." Not only does it allow me to retain my focus and the other things that I want to accomplish today, but when I'm in my email, when I'm dealing with email in those two particular periods, I'm getting through so much more than I would, if I was trying to manage it on a second screen or just off the side of my desk. So yeah, playing some defense, creating some boundaries for yourself.

Chris Ronzio (42:07):

And if you don't believe what Scott's saying about email and being able to check it only a few times a day, I would challenge you to take a vacation, go for a day off, ignore your inbox for a little bit, come back and see how long it takes you to get through everything. And you'll be so surprised that you could just do that on a daily basis. It's absolutely a great trick there. Scott, like I said, at the beginning, this could be one of a 10 part series. There's so much we could talk about on productivity, but I'm just going to leave people to go follow you on YouTube and check out your channel at Simpletivity. Anywhere else you would tell people to go?

Scott Friesen (42:46):

Yeah, probably the best place to start is the Simpletivity YouTube channel. If you're looking to get the most out of your existing apps and technology, or want to be introduced to some new things that can help you as a part of your day, that's the best place to start. And if you're wanting to learn even more and reach out and connect, you can also visit me at simpletivity.com.

Chris Ronzio (43:06):

All right, Scott Friesen, Simpletivity Training. Thank you so much for being here. And I know this was useful for a lot of our listeners.

Scott Friesen (43:15):

Hey, thanks so much for having me, Chris, looking forward to our next conversation.