In this special Extraordinary Focus episode, I’m going to help you choose the right mountain and climb twice as fast.
Tune in as I give a laser preview of what you can implement today.
- Why being over-enthusiastic can be dangerous for your productivity.
- Learn how to capitalize on the power of PFA Blocks and be at your peak productivity.
- Understand which Hat you should be wearing during different parts of the day to maximize your productivity and happiness.
- How to successfully reach your goals with a peaceful mind (no more stress).
- The 4-step process that will have you laser-focused for the next 12 months.
- How to integrate your values, so you live a purposeful life.
Productivity without direction is dangerous. And the only thing worse than going in the wrong direction? Is going enthusiastically in the wrong direction.
– David Wood
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– TRANSCRIPT –
Hey guys for this one, we’re going to do something different. I gave a speech to Ezra Firestone’s Blue Ribbon Mastermind Group during the pandemic. And it was a very important topic. It was about climbing the right mountain. You don’t want to get to the top of the wrong mountain after years of effort and go, I wish I had just done some proper visioning and planning. So without further ado, let’s jump straight into the speech and I’ll see you on the other side.
Welcome, welcome Blue Ribbon Mastermind members to this presentation of Choose The Right Mountain And Climb Twice As Fast. I wish I could see you all in person, but we do all we can with COVID-19. And for those of you who didn’t see me present in Florida, then I’ll give you quick background to me. I was a consulting actuary to Fortune 100 companies when I was 23 years old.
I’m now 51. I left that cushy job and started coaching and studying coaching, built my own digital products. I built my email list up to about 150,000 people, wrote a book, foreword by Jack Canfield of Chicken Soup For The Soul, and sold hundreds of thousands of dollars from the stage with the help of Ezra Firestone.
He was instrumental in helping me build that business to what I think was the largest coaching business in the world at the time. Now, what I want to help you with is how to choose the right mountain and climb twice as fast. And this is a whirlwind version of my coaching process. So with my clients, I work with rockstar entrepreneurs who want to uplevel life and business.
What we start with is choosing the right mountain and then climbing twice as fast. And I’m going to give you a really laser preview of that process so that you can take some elements of that and apply them starting today. If you choose. So choose the right mountain. We have a limited lifespan. That’d be pretty silly for me to help you double your productivity and climb twice as fast, justifying that you’re on the wrong mountain.
And if you look at this image here. Basically a guy has climbed the peak to the right and then your prize is on the other mountain. You’ve climbed the wrong one. So choose wisely. Productivity without direction is dangerous. And the only thing worse than going in the wrong direction? Is going enthusiastically in the wrong direction and the cost is huge, right?
Because we have a limited lifespan. If we could live forever, no big deal. Climb the wrong mountain climb another one. But let’s suppose you’re working in a business that’s not right for you. Or let’s suppose you’ve got life goals that aren’t going to lead you to happiness. You might’ve spent five or ten years getting to that wrong mountain, and then you’ve got to go and regroup and perhaps do another five to ten years getting to the one that’s really best for you.
So I want to save you some time. So we’ll start with that. 12 months from now. And I invite you to write this down. So you should have a pen and paper. 12 months from now, what would have you celebrate your ass off?
I was asked this question in a men’s group I belong to. David, what would have you celebrate your ass off? It took me a month and more to answer that question. Confronting. What would have you do the happy dance, be like be calling your friends can’t believe this. This is so good. Write it down and we’ll make a start on it today.
And then this might be something that unfolds for you over weeks or even months. You could put it up on your fridge. You can start with business goals if you like. But then my question is what does that get you? All right. I want to double profit. I want to have 15% market share. I want to get my product back on Amazon, dammit. Whatever it is, write down those goals. That’s great. But what does that get you? Let’s suppose you have more money. What can you do with that? That would actually change your state. And then what are your life goals? What do you want for your family? Do you want a family? Do you want a partner?
What kind of relationship do you want? One that inspires others? What kind of relationship do you want with your kids? What kind of quality family time do you want? What about friends? What do those relationships look like? Is there a learning goal? Something inspires you? You’re going to learn the piano or learn the guitar? Write down,
what would have you celebrate your ass off? And here’s the test, the deathbed test. When you’re on your death bed, if you imagine you’re on your death bed, looking back over your life, would you feel really happy and satisfied with these goals? Or would you have regret that these weren’t quite it? So that’s what I call the deathbed test.
Now let’s talk about climbing twice as fast. It’s, suppose you already know your goals or you’re going to take homework from this presentation and you will go and write these down, or you’ll hire a coach and work with them to work out, what’s the right mountain for you. But let’s assume you’ve got that.
Now, the question is, how do you climb twice as fast? I say the mind, the human mind, is like a monkey on crack. All over the place. Boom boom, or like a frog in a sock. Is just all over the place. And to get us to focus on something is very difficult. Shiny object syndrome is a real thing.
You’re an entrepreneur. So you see the possibilities. That’s your strength and also your curse. So we got to learn, like, how do we reign? How do we reign the mind in. People generally come to me seeking peace, focus and awesome results. Now that’s a big deal. I, there was a time when I didn’t care about peace.
Like who wants peace? I just want success. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized that peace, is a wonderful thing. You don’t have to have stress to be successful. In fact, if you have peaceful focused action, I submit to you that you’ll be more successful. So how do we do that? How do we get to peace? How do we combat the shiny object syndrome?
So here’s the path to doubling productivity and focus. Three things. One is CEO time. We each within us, I believe we have a CEO and a worker. The worker can crank it and nail it and get things done. The CEO can step back and do the planning, choosing the right mountain. So we need regular CEO time.
That’s A. B, peaceful focused action blocks. You can’t be focused 24/7. That’s ridiculous. But scheduling blocks of time when nothing can distract you from what your CEO, your own CEO internally has told you is important. So I’ll teach you in this presentation about CEO time, PFA blocks.
And by the way, you may know a lot of this and maybe 20% of this is new. You may know all of this, but you haven’t applied it. I give two things to my clients. One, new ideas that they haven’t thought of before. And two, getting them to implement stuff they already knew about, but hadn’t gotten to around to. C, truth, daring and caring.
It’s one thing to have CEO time and regular planning. It’s another thing to have PFA blocks, but how you climb also matters. All right, CEO time, this is not rocket science. This is one of those things that should not be new to you, but it’s one of those things you may not be doing. And just the doing of it can make a big difference.
The knowing of it doesn’t do very much. The knowing and the doing. So we have a worker in us and a CEO in us, and it’s confusing to wake up and go, Oh, which one? Do I need to plan today? Do I know what’s best? We get in our patterns, right? Like a hamster on a treadmill, again, in our patterns.
And we need, sometimes, to step off the tread mill and to look at the big picture. I call that CEO time. So you could do this annually. And schedule a half day, just a half day. Once a year. Could be alone or with your team. And then quarterly, you could do just an hour, a quarter, go and pull out your annual goals and say, this quarter, what are our targets?
And be specific, right? Measurable. Not like we’re going to make more sales. So you do that annually. You’ve got your year long goals once a quarter. One hour, just these, the targets this month. And then, and I think this gets more important weekly. So if you don’t do the annually and you don’t do the quarterly, at least do the weekly 30 minutes. Could be Friday, five o’clock, or if you’re a little burned out by then, it could be Monday morning.
Sunday, five o’clock right. Just pick it for you. Schedule it in your calendar. You’re going to have 30 minutes to look at your targets for the week. Might only take you 10 minutes, but you’ll look at your annual targets. You’ll look at your quarterly targets and then you’ll say, what am I going to hit this week?
By end of Friday, I’ll have made 15 calls to prospects. I’ll have hired that person. I will have drafted the job description for whatever, and I will have done this. Boom. Set those weekly targets. Very motivating, very empowering. And then this gets even more important daily at the end of each day, say five o’clock, or you can set an alarm nine o’clock before you go to bed.
Pick two things. If only two things get done the next day, that’s all you get to do. What would they be? These are the needle mover things that’ll move the needle in your business. You can look at your weekly targets. All right, this is what I got tomorrow. What will get done? I think this is where the rubber really hits the road.
These are the two needle movers in your business. Now it’s another conversation, how do you actually get those things done? Because I do have clients that they do this. Set the weekly targets, set the daily targets. Don’t get them done. They get distracted. We’ll get to that. So only two things you need to do here.
Not very hard. One, put these in your calendar. If you want to go for all four, put in the half day, the quarterly, one hour. But definitely put in the weekly 30 minutes. This is where you step back from the business, put your CEO hat on and you look at it, right? What are my targets for the week? And then daily five minutes at the end of each day. I’d recommend you don’t do this in the morning.
Why? Because in the morning you want to put your worker hat on, not your CEO hat. Don’t confuse the two. Oh, time. The day before then when you wake up, you know what you’re going to do. Those two things. And I recommend you do those first before you do anything else. Before you check email. I know that’s a big deal for some people. Before you check voicemail. You could even say, before I speak to anybody, I will do these two things.
You can get real samurai about this. So firstly, put these in your calendar. That’s half the win. A lot of people don’t do it and they wonder why it didn’t happen to show up. You got to show up for these dates with yourself. How many times you put something in your calendar and it pops up as a reminder?
You’re like, ah, not now. I don’t have time too busy. We’re only talking about 30 minutes a week and five minutes a day. To keep you on track and focused. All right. That’s enough on CEO time. That’s the planning part of it. Let’s assume you got that done. So you went and worked out the right goals. You got the right mountain to climb.
You’re doing the planning of the CEO time, 30 minutes a week, five minutes a day. Boom. You know what to do? Now let’s talk about how to do those things because people say, I just got caught up in email. I just got distracted. I had a meeting come up. Yeah. The mind is like a monkey on crack. So PFA blocks.
What’s the PFA stand for? I said it before. Peaceful Focused Action. I want that for you. I want you to wake up and have these PFA blocks and just crank it out and feel so productive. I want you to have that feeling. So firstly, schedule those PFA blocks. You can’t be on 24/7. That doesn’t make sense.
You just can’t do it. It’s ridiculous. You won’t work, but you could say nine to 11. Every weekday, my PFA blocked maybe noon til three on a Saturday. Or you might only choose three PFA blocks or you could say nine til three, I’m a samurai. Nothing will distract me, whatever it is. Put it in your calendar.
You have to schedule it. And then. You have to show up. All right. Let’s assume you’ve got that. So now here you are, your two needle movers you chose the night before. It’s written down, it’s on a piece of a piece of paper on your desk waiting for you. You wake up, do your morning routine.
That’s fine. Nothing too distracting, but a bit of yoga, a bit of movement might go for a jog, get your smoothie, whatever it is. But then come nine o’clock or whatever time you’ve set for yourself. You show up at your desk. This is a sacred date with yourself. So you’ll wake up knowing your two needle movers.
You must turn off all distractions. So the phone goes on airplane mode. The computer is set to do not disturb. And here’s a trick. If you have to send an email, open up your email in your sent folder. Do not let yourself see that inbox. You got a text message. You’re lost. You get an email you’re lost.
Even if you don’t follow that thread, your IQ is lowered for about 15 minutes, just held in your Ram. So turn off all distractions and I recommend you do not check email before you do your PFA block. Because we’re talking about the two needle movers, the two things you said were most important. Don’t let your brain get filled up with that stuff and don’t let yourself get distracted.
You can also put a sign on your door, tell the wife and husband and kids. This is my PFA block. So please don’t disturb me unless there’s a fire. I will come out at this time and be available for whatever you need and then do that, right? So you can train people around you. Now here’s a bonus. Not required, but say you got a two hour block.
I like to break it into 25 minute sprints. I call them Pomodoro after the Pomodoro technique. Really easy. I sit down, I’ve got a two hour block. I’ll probably, write. All right. That’s four sprints. What can I do in the first sprint? All right, I’m going to draft. Do the outline of the article. Second sprint, I will draft the article.
It will be written, maybe bad, but it’ll be written. Third sprint. I will polish the article and then fourth sprint. I’ll send it to someone for review and do a happy dance. Whatever. I find this useful, then I go, Siri set timer 25 minutes. Now in the 25 minutes goes off. If you want to play this game. Get up, stop, right?
At least within 30 seconds. Finish what you’re typing. Stop. Get up. Step away from the desk. Don’t reward yourself. Do a stretch, play with the dog, grab a cup of tea, whatever it is, but you’ve only got five minutes. Then you come back to it. Four sprints, really fun. I want you to try this out, try it for a week and let me know how you go.
I’ll give you my email at the end of this. Now after you’ve done your PFA block, check mail, voicemail, talk to the family, respond to texts, whatever you want. You’ve done your PFA time. All right. Third, this is pretty simple. It’s not so easy to do, but how you climb also matters. I want your life to be great.
So I don’t want you to just choose a great mountain. I don’t want you to just climb twice as fast. That’s not enough for me. It’s how you climb. That matters too. So three of my values, which have served me well, are truth, daring, caring. I say, if you increase your truth by 30%, as you go about mountain climbing. Reveal more of your desires to the people that matter to you. Reveal more of your tolerations and frustrations to the people that matter to you.
Ask for more of what you want. Confess more. Just 30%. You don’t have to go crazy, but if you live a more truthful and revealed and authentic life, I say you’ll have a better time in that mountain. Sitting on top of that mountain will feel way better. Daring. It’s my second value. Be 30% more daring. 20 years from now, you will regret more of the things you did not do than the things you did do.
So what’s edgy for you. Maybe it’s telling the truth. Maybe it’s revealing more to people. Maybe it’s going for that celebrity endorsement. Maybe it’s firewalking. Literally. Maybe it’s, maybe daring for you is not drinking alcohol for 30 days. I don’t know, but be 30% more daring. I think it’ll serve you well.
And then the last one is caring. If we don’t take care of ourselves, our bodies, our family, our friendships, if we don’t nurture our employees and actually care about them and show that we care, and our customers, then so much breaks down. So see if you can bump your caring up by 30%. Why not maybe donate maybe, you had a new client come in, you’re going to give money to someone that could really use it .Feels good.
All right. This stuff works. I want you to know that I’m not just making this up. I made up a bunch of it. That’s true, but it’s been tested over and over. So there are clients from the Smart Marketer Community who are using this who are on fire. I have one client who cut his time back in half and started making record sales month after month, cracking a hundred grand.
This works. It’s not that simple. I give a piece of this to a client. They go and try it out. Some of it works somewhat. It didn’t. We tweak it. They get back on the horse. So it might take some reapplication and some consistency, but what a great habit to have. I want you to get things done. I want you to kick ass and take names.
I want you to be peaceful and productive. The two actually go together. Really well. So to recap, choose the right mountain, make sure you got great goals that really light you up and are worthy of this time you have remaining on the planet. Climb twice as fast. How do you do that? Simple. Regular CEO time annually, quarterly.
But definitely weekly. He might do monthly. I didn’t mention monthly. It’s obvious. But definitely weekly, 30 minutes. And five minutes at the end of each day to choose what you’ll do the next day. That’s the planning, but then you got to do it. And this is where you schedule PFA blocks where nothing can interrupt you.
And what I didn’t say, don’t let yourself interrupt you. Cause, I’ll start working on something. That’ll be like, Oh, I need to order that on Amazon. I go off and do it. Or I’m going to do this. No, it’s samurai time. PFA blocks all distractions turned off. And then truth daring caring.
Because if you want an awesome life, you want to have awesome values. If you don’t like my values, if you don’t like truth, you don’t like daring, you don’t like caring? Choose your own.
And then lastly, if you want more support from me, you can go to playforreal.life/uplevel I’m happy to do a session with anyone from the Blue Ribbon Community who is seriously interested in doing better. And you’re coachable. You actually know that having outside help can make a massive difference.
If that could be you, go and check it out, book a session with me, we’ll create a plan for your life and work. And if we feel like a good fit for each other, then you might become a client. Either way, I hope this, I hope I get to help you through this presentation. And if we get to speak through that, and here’s my email address, I’m going to ask you to treat it with respect, please.
Don’t add me to your email list. You’d be surprised what people do. They’re like, Oh, gave me his email address. He must want to be on my mailing list. I get it. I get so much mail. This is for you. If you want to reach out with a personal question on something about this, or if you want to share how this impacted you.
All right, guys, and girls. Choose the right mountain and climb twice as fast. And I hope you have a really great time doing it.
