982: ACTION SATURDAY (time to get more done!)

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Hey, what is up?

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Wantrepreneurs and entrepreneurs all over the world.

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It's Brian LaFermento here, host of the Wantrepreneur to Entrepreneur podcast, and this is an Action Saturday.

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Honestly, I love today's Action Saturday topic.

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I really this is something that, since I've introduced it into my life and into all of my businesses, I just get so much more done, and it's incredible because it's super simple.

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We actually overcomplicate things with regards to getting things done, and productivity is one of the most important factors in all of us making progress in our businesses.

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So that's why today's action for this Action Saturday is all about batching.

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It's a topic that I've talked about before here on this show, but it has really come to light even more frequently lately because, as you all know, we've expanded to five days a week earlier in 2024, and people always ask me holy cow, how do you manage a five days a week show?

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And the truth is it only takes one day a week for me, only Tuesdays.

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That is the only day that I do anything podcast related.

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I line up eight interviews from 9 am to 6 pm.

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I get a one hour break in the afternoon, which I typically record these solo Sunday episodes on, and so I've just batched.

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What does that actually look like?

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Well, when I wake up on a Tuesday, I don't have to worry about replying to emails.

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My team knows that I'm mostly going to be inaccessible.

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I don't have to worry about marketing related activities.

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There's very few things.

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Actually.

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There's only one thing that I focus on on Tuesdays, and that allows me to remain with a one track mind, and it's so funny in the hustle and bustle of today's world that we pretend that we have to get all these millions of things done.

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And that may be true throughout the week, throughout the month, certainly throughout the quarter.

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There's so many different things that we need to get done, but I firmly believe the way we do it is through batching.

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The way we do it is through saying you know what?

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Today I'm only going to focus on podcasting.

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Or, for me personally, you're going to see a lot more social media content from us as we head into episode or head into episode 1000.

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But, especially as we head into into 2025, you're going to see that I'm going to be creating content in different formats.

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Obviously, we have the podcast five days a week, but we want to be serving people where you all are on Instagram, on TikTok, wherever it is that you are, and so, when I look at my weekly workflow, it's challenging to ask myself the question on top of all of the things that I existingly do, where am I going to fit that in?

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And the truth is, just knowing the way that I love batching is I'm going to pick a chunk, and that chunk will likely look like a Wednesday afternoon where that's all I do, Because, quite frankly, for the past few years myself and maybe you can relate to me on this I've had the excuse of well, I don't have time to create content for social media.

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I'm recording all these different podcast episodes, I'm managing my email inbox, I'm managing my team, we are expanding.

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We're doing so many things on the website project, which you're going to hear a lot more about those in episode 1000.

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There's a million things going on and switching costs are real.

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The mental taxation that comes through switching activities, whether we realize it or not, is something that is real and tangible.

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In my book I'm going all the way back to 2015 for this example I wrote about this activity that someone once forced upon me to see the real ramifications of multitasking, and just to give you the 30 second synopsis of this activity first things first you sit down with a piece of paper, one line above the other and on the top line, as quickly as you can, you just write the letters out A through Z and beneath those letters you then write the numbers 1 through 26.

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So, very quickly, you start the timer.

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You write A, B, C, D, E, F, G all the way to Z, and then, underneath that, you write 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, all the way up to 26.

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When you end up with the finished time, you'll realize okay, I did that pretty quickly.

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You know, maybe it'll take you a minute to do that exercise.

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But now, if you do the exact same exercise, but on the top line, you write one letter at a time.

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You write A and then underneath it you write one, and then you go back to the top line, you write B and then you write two, and you're alternating constantly between letters and numbers.

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As easy as a task that it is, All of us have no problem writing A through Z and one through 26,.

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But when we're switching gears, a few things happen.

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One, your work is going to be a lot sloppier.

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Two, you're going to realize the mental taxation of wait.

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Where was I in this activity?

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And so that's why my argument for today's Action Saturday is truly to batch your tasks, to look at all the things that you need to do in your business include literally everything.

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I'm talking about your email inbox.

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I'm talking about your social media content creation.

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I'm talking about any and all of your marketing tasks.

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Heck, even those pesky meetings that seem to interrupt our weeks.

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Pick those chunks of time, whether it's a few hours, whether you call the chunks Monday morning, Monday afternoon, or whether you do it in two-hour windows or three-hour windows, whatever works for you.

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And especially if you're managing a nine-to-five job while you're working on your business as well, you have to be even more disciplined about the way that you batch your week.

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And so, with all of these considerations in mind, be singularly focused.

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You can crush your email inbox if that's the only thing you're focused on for the next three hours.

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And really, at the root of today's episode is for you to make this a habit and be disciplined and consistent with it.

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It has served me so well for Tuesdays being my recording days for literally years.

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At this point, they don't move.

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I don't have to think about it.

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I can show up fully present and be the best version of me on those Tuesday recordings, and I think that it's something that we can all benefit from if we embrace the concept of batching.

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So that's it for me in today's action, Saturday.

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I hope that this one hit you where you needed it and I hope you truly embrace it in your life and in your business, because you're going to get a heck of a lot more stuff done and you're probably going to do them a little bit better as well.

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That's it for me today.

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I will see you right back here tomorrow, same place, same time, for another episode of the Wantrepreneur to Entrepreneur podcast.

982: ACTION SATURDAY (time to get more done!)

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