Productivity

The Lean Review: How to Plan Your 2019 in 20 Minutes

I know you want to make 2019 an amazing year.

But how can you do that…

- Without setting New Year’s resolutions that you don’t stick to?

- Without spending 20 hours creating a 30-page yearly review that you never review?

Without not doing a yearly review at all because you’re too busy working (or relaxing from work and spending time with your family)?

I’ve tried a lot of different things when it comes to reviewing the past year and planning out the next year.

I’ve tried the New Year resolutions. They never worked for me for longer than a few weeks when I forgot about them and moved on with my life.

I tried doing the 30-page planning documents, and while they worked well for a lot of my friends, I just never ended up using and reviewing them for longer than a few weeks.

This year, I realized that I didn’t want to spend 20 hours reviewing my year and planning the next year.

I decided I’d rather spend the 20 hours during the holidays skiing in the mountains, relaxing in a spa, and night-tobogganing after a crazy Apres Ski party:

I spent the holidays skiing in Solden, Austria – it was incredible!

But when I came back home, I felt like something was missing.

I recovered REALLY well during my vacation and felt more relaxed than I did in months, but I lacked a sense of clarity and direction for 2019, and it bugged me.

As I had only a few days left before I got back to work (most of which were spent preparing for a NYE party, partying late into the night and then laying hungover in bed next day watching Christmas movies and eating junk food), I wanted to find a way to make 2019 awesome without spending 20 hours doing a gigantic yearly review.

Instead, I wanted to plan my year in a way that:

- Is FUN and exciting for me

- I’d accomplish what I wanted to accomplish

- Is simple and doesn’t require a huge time commitment

- I would have crystal clear focus for the year

I could easily review my progress every week and correct course

To have even more fun with it, I decided to create my own annual review system that I call The Lean Review.

And of course, because I’m a spreadsheet nerd, I created a spreadsheet to go with it.

Today, I’ll share this full system with you – so you can use it to plan out your 2019 in a matter of minutes, rather than hours (and have fun while doing it).

Let’s dive in!

The Lean Review

The Lean Review includes just 5 steps:

1. The 5-Minute Clarity Session

1. Bronze, Silver and Gold Medals

1. The Lean Review Dashboard

1. The 2-Minute Weekly Review

Support & Accountability Systems

With the exception of the last step (the support and accountability systems) which can take a bit longer (but is optional), all of the steps within this process take only a few minutes to complete – and they’re actually FUN and EXCITING, not just another thing that you HAVE to do (but don’t have the time for).

So let’s get started!

Step #1: The 5-Minute Clarity Session

There are quite a few things I don’t like about the ultra-long annual reviews:

- They take A LOT of time (that could be spent relaxing and recharging)

- They force you to review and work on ALL areas of your life (which can be counterproductive as it splits your focus into too many directions)

They can be dreadful and tiring (rather than fun and exciting)

So this year, when I did my planning, I asked myself:

“What’s the 80/20 approach to doing an annual review and planning out my next year? And how could I do it in under 5 minutes?”

I ended up asking myself just 3 simple questions:

- What are some achievements that would make this year AMAZING?

- Which of these achievements are in my control?

“Do these achievements feel EXCITING, “MEH” or TOO MUCH?”

Let me provide some more context on each of these questions and how I used them to get more clarity on what I wanted from 2019:

What are some achievements that would make this year AMAZING?

Notice how I’m not saying “goals” – I’m saying achievements.

I don’t want to just set random “goals” that sound good on paper, feel like I “should” work on, and I’m not actually all that excited about.

Instead, I’m asking myself what can I ACHIEVE this year that would make this year amazing.

This helped me come up with really cool challenges that would challenge me and stretch me to achieve things I have never achieved before (and would make this year a year to remember).

Which of these achievements are in my control?

When I thought about my achievements, I made sure that they were actually in my full control, and avoided achievements that were not in my full control.

For example:

- I didn’t focus on losing X amount of body weight, instead I focused on going 60 days without a cheat meal.

- I didn’t focus on getting X new e-mail subscribers, instead I focused on writing 1,000,000 words in a year.

I didn’t focus on hitting X amount of revenue, instead I focused on putting in 1,000 hours of quality work this year.

I intentionally focused on tracking my hard work, not results.

That’s because if you focus on results…

- And something goes exceptionally well (a blog post goes viral and you get 2,000 new e-mail subscribers from it), then you can hit your goal and stop working hard

If something goes really badly (a few blog posts don’t get you almost any e-mail subscribers), you can get really discouraged by the lack of results, even though you could be doing all the right things

I wanted to avoid this emotional roller coaster around things that aren’t fully in my control, and instead focused on making progress on things that I CAN control, knowing that they’ll bring the results that I want in the long run.

Do these achievements feel EXCITING, “MEH” or TOO MUCH?

When I brainstormed my achievements, I came up with a lot of different things, from writing 1,000,000 words in a year, to going for a walk 5 times a week, to hosting 12 dinner parties in a year.

As my list grew to around 15 goals, I realized I quickly felt more and more pressure, rather than excitement when I looked at the list. That’s when I knew that I had to cut it down and make it leaner.

To do that, I simply looked at all of my achievements and asked myself:

- Does this achievement feel really EXCITING?

- Does it feel “MEH, KIND OF NICE”?

Does it feel like TOO MUCH?

For example, while I liked the idea of hosting 12 dinner parties in a year, it didn’t really excite me, it just felt like “meh”.

And when I thought about learning to cook 100 new dishes in a year, I just felt like it was way too much, and not really what I wanted to achieve this year.

I then eliminated all of the achievements that didn’t feel EXCITING and created a Lean List of 6 achievements that I stuck with.

How many achievements should you choose?

Should you choose 1 achievement? 3? 5? 10?

Should you focus on achievements in your business, health, or in personal life? Or all of them?

I don’t think there’s a “one size fits all” answer to this question.

Instead, I like to think about it this way:

- You can look at the list, and if it feels EXCITING (and not like TOO MUCH or TOO LITTLE), you have a good length of the list

You can always add or remove items from the list later during one of the weekly reviews IF you begin to feel like it’s too much or too little

I personally chose 6 achievements because that felt just right to me after I trimmed down my list. I could have easily gone with 4 or 8 items and it probably wouldn’t make a huge difference, and I know I might add or remove something from the list down the line.

Why you should only spend 5 minutes on this task

I call this task the “5-minute clarity session” because if you take just a few minutes for this task, you:

- Won’t get bogged down in it too much

- You’ll usually come up with the ideas that are on top of mind

You’ll get 80% of great ideas in a fraction of the time

What about the other 20% that you’re “missing” with this approach?

Well, chances are that if you have another really good achievement in the back of your mind, it will come to you over the next few days / weeks.

Then, you can just add it to your Lean Review System (which will literally take 30 seconds).

How I did it:

Here’s how I went through my clarity session.

First, I brainstormed all the cool achievements I could achieve this year:

- Write 1,000,000 words

- Put in 1,000 hours of high quality work

- Go on 5 walks every week

- Go on 12 long hikes

- Host 12 dinner parties

- Publish 50 posts on my website

- Save $100k

- Go for 60 days without cheat meals

- Have 10 collaborations with other bloggers

- Read 100 books

Get 200 members in my writing membership

Then, I cut out all the things that didn’t feel as exciting, and was left with:

- Write 1,000,000 words

- Put in 1,000 hours of high quality work

- Read 100 books

- Go for 60 days without cheat meals

- Save $100k

Get 200 members in my writing membership

Notice there’s no goals related to relationships, just one goal related to health, and no goals related to family, vacations, etc.

That doesn’t mean I won’t be working on those areas this year – it just means that some of these are going really well right now already, and I don’t have anything major I want to achieve (which might change throughout the year).

Instead of mindlessly filling up my list with 20 achievements just to cover every single area of my life (which can feel like too much and become a chore to keep up with), I’d rather have focus and do really well at the things I DO decide to achieve.

YOUR TURN:

Take 5 minutes and brainstorm all the cool achievements you could achieve this year.

Then, go through the list and trim it down to create a Lean List of achievements that feel really exciting for you.

STEP #2: Bronze, Silver and Gold Medals

If you read through my achievements above you might be thinking “You’re crazy! If you really write 1,000,000 words, read 100 books AND put in 1,000 hours of work, you won’t have a life!”.

You’re right. I probably won’t achieve all of those, and that’s totally OK.

A lot of us love this idea of setting “stretch goals”, “impossible goals”, or “insane goals”. It gets us really excited for the moment, and motivated for a few weeks.

But how often do we actually hit those impossible goals, and how often do we just forget about them and move on to something else when life gets in the way, even though we were actually doing really well?

For example, I could give myself an achievement to read 100 books in a year, which would mean reading roughly 8 books a month. If I only read 4 books in January, I might start feeling like this achievement is “too much”, “fall behind” and give up on the challenge.

But that’s nonsense. If I read 4 books, that’s great as I got a lot of new ideas for my business and I’m expanding my knowledge. Why would I feel crappy about it and not keep going?

To combat this issue, I developed the Medal System for my achievements.

Here’s how it works:

- The Bronze Medal is an achievement that might slightly stretch my current capabilities, and will feel GOOD if I achieve it this year.

- The Silver Medal will stretch my current abilities more, require more discipline and be more exciting, but won’t feel like I need to sacrifice everything to achieve it. I will feel GREAT if I achieve it this year.

The Gold Medal is the “impossible” achievement that might almost feel out of reach, but I know that it’s possible deep down if I put all of my focus, heart and work into it. It will feel INCREDIBLE if I achieve it this year.

Because it’ll be relatively easy to keep up with my Bronze Medal achievements, I know I’ll feel like I’m making good progress most of the weeks when I review how I’m doing, which will help me keep the momentum going.

But even if I’ll be doing well, I know that the competitor in me will want to push me harder and harder so I can reach the Silver Medal and Gold Medal benchmarks.

My goal isn’t to get 6 Gold Medals this year – but I know that even if I hit 1 or 2 (or just get a few Silver Medals), my year will be really amazing.

I love these challenges because they help me change my behavior and make slightly better decisions every day.

For example:

- “Sticking with a diet” is less exciting to me than to keep a streak of no cheat meals going for just another few days so I can hit the next medal.

- Instead of listening to music while driving to the gym, I can make a choice to listen to an audiobook and get closer to hitting my Silver and Gold Medal benchmarks that week.

Instead of watching Netflix over the weekend I can make a choice to get some writing done or read a book, to get closer to hitting my desired benchmarks.

If you love a challenge, you’ll love having these benchmarks in your life!

How I did it:

Here’s how I created my own Medals for different achievements (Bronze, Silver, Gold):

- Savings: 20k, 50k, 100k

- Words Written: 200k, 500k, 1m

- High Impact Work Hours: 500, 750, 1000

- Books Read: 20, 50, 100

- Membership Members: 50, 100, 200

Days Without Cheat Meals: 14, 30, 60

YOUR TURN:

Take a few more minutes to create bronze, silver and gold medals for your achievements – and have fun with it!

STEP #3: The Lean Review Dashboard

I love spreadsheets.

I have spreadsheets for everything – from tracking my diet, writing, work hours, my content strategy, and more.

So when I went through my Lean Review process, I knew I wanted to have this one place where I could visually see how I’m progressing towards all of my goals in a matter of seconds (and see exactly where I want to do better).

That’s how I created The Lean Review Dashboard.

I created a dashboard where I can keep track of all of my achievements (and how close I am to reaching the Bronze, Silver and Gold Medals for the year):

I created a way to track my progress on a weekly basis for 52 weeks of 2019:

And I even created weekly benchmarks for each of the medals, so you can see if you’re on track to hit them this year:

90% of this dashboard works fully automatically.

All you need to do is:

- Input your achievements

- Define Bronze, Silver and Gold medals

Spend 2 minutes every week updating your scores

…and that’s it!

All the other numbers like weekly benchmarks for different medals and your progress towards those benchmarks will get calculated automatically.

Setting up this dashboard literally takes 2 minutes, as you already have all the data for it from the previous steps.

You can download the Lean Review Dashboard through the box below free of charge (it’s on me – consider it a gift to make 2019 really amazing!), and I’ll also send you a quick instructional video with it to show you exactly how to use it.

YOUR TURN:

Download The Lean Review Dashboard through the link above, watch the instructional video and set it up to fit your achievements (this will take less than 2 minutes).

STEP #4: The 2-Minute Weekly Review

Have you ever tried doing a weekly review?

You know, one of those reviews where you sit down for 30 minutes every week, go over every goal you set, analyze what went, well, what didn’t go well, and make a plan for the future?

I know I tried keeping up with a weekly review habit multiple times in the past, but it always became a chore after a few weeks.

If I did the review at the end of the week, I felt tired and just wanted to finish working for the week.

If I did it at the beginning of the week, I felt like I was wasting time when I really wanted to be working.

Then, I felt guilty for not doing the weekly review, and in the end having one hurt me more than it helped me.

That’s why I stopped doing a weekly review in a traditional form.

I still have a few review elements in my support accountability systems (like checking in with my nutritionist 2x/week or working with a thinking coach 1x/week) that automatically happen every week, but I’m not using a review where I sit down and reflect on my life every week.

Instead, I decided to design a weekly review that’s easy, fun, and takes under 2 minutes every week.

All I’ll do every week is enter 6 numbers in The Lean Review Dashboard to see how I’m doing with my achievements:

Then I’ll compare those numbers to the Bronze, Silver and Gold Medals to see how I’m doing:

For example, I’ll update how much money I have in my savings account each week, I’ll calculate the number of words written so far, how many hours I worked this past week, etc. and add these numbers to the dashboard.

Then I’ll check if I’m on track to hit Bronze, Silver or Gold benchmarks this year.

And that’s it!

I won’t answer 10 different questions around each of my achievements thinking about how to do better at 10 different things.

Instead, if there’s an achievement where I really feel like I want to do better, I’ll use or revisit my support & accountability systems to do better next week – but that won’t include 30 minutes of journaling.

This might not feel thorough enough to you, but I do believe that it serves the 80/20 rule really well.

Of course, if I’ll feel like “crap, I didn’t get any writing done this week”, I’ll AUTOMATICALLY think about what I can do better next week and make some changes. It will just happen – it won’t be a chore that I have to do every week.

So I’ll work on “correcting course” when I want to, but won’t feel obliged to do so every single week, especially if things are going well.

How I remember to actually do the review every week

Right now that I’ve started using this system, using it is easy as it’s on top of my mind. However, I know that using it 3 months from now, or when life gets in the way might not be as easy, and there might be times when I forget to use it.

To prevent that from happening, I set up a simple calendar reminder that reminds me to update my dashboard every Friday. This isn’t a fixed appointment and I can move it to a Saturday or Sunday (which I likely often will), but I just want it to be there so I don’t forget to do my 2-minute review.

I also created three shortcuts that help me access the weekly review easily every week:

- I set The Lean Review Dashboard as my homepage in my browser

- I bookmarked The Lean Review Dashboard in my bookmarks bar

I linked The Lean Review Dashboard in my google calendar event description

This way I can access the dashboard at any time with a single click and make it super easy for me to do my weekly review.

Some people also prefer to use the Google Calendar reminder rather than a Google Calendar event to create reminders like this.

The differences are that:

- A Google Calendar Event can have a description (so you can link to your LRD from it), but can be easy to forget if you “miss it”.

A Google Calendar Reminder doesn’t have a description box, but doesn’t disappear until you mark it as done (it moves to the next day automatically), so it’s harder to miss.

Either can work well – I suggest just picking one and going with it (you can always change it in the future).

YOUR TURN:

You can set up your own weekly review system by:

- Creating a calendar reminder or event every Friday, Saturday or Sunday for your 2-minute review

- Linking the LRD (Lean Review Dashboard) in the calendar event description

- Bookmarking the LRD in your browser

- Setting LRD as a homepage in your browser

Simply doing the 2-minute review every week

STEP #5: Create Your Support & Accountability Systems

If you followed all the steps above, you’ve successfully completed The Lean Review and have a bulletproof system and bullet journal layout ideas set up so that you can keep up with your achievements throughout 2019.

Even without going through this last step, you can already get started with tracking your progress towards achievements and have an amazing 2019.

Nice work!

Now, let’s talk about one last step.

This final step of The Lean Review will make it easier for you to actually hit your Bronze, Silver, and Gold Medal benchmarks and help you “correct course” along the way.

This isn’t a step that you have to go through once though – it’s an ongoing process that you can iterate through and evolve over time (though you can get started with it today if you want to).

It’s not something you HAVE to do, it’s something you’ll AUTOMATICALLY do when you’ll want to make better progress towards your benchmarks.

As you create your achievements and bench for the year, you’ll want to ask yourself questions like:

- “How can I make it EASIER for me to reach my benchmarks?”

- “How can I go from a Bronze Medal to a Silver Medal next week?”

“Where and how can I do better than I’m doing right now?”

And from my experience, the easiest way to actually ask yourself those questions on a regular basis (and improve your progress towards your achievements) is to create some sort of a support & accountability system for each of your benchmarks.

For example, when I first started going to the gym, it was extremely tough for me to work out regularly.

Then I hired a personal trainer and all of a sudden, I went to the gym 3-4/week consistently for a YEAR.

That’s because even when the times were tough, my trainer was still there waiting for me, but also supporting me and encouraging me to keep going when I was swamped with work, felt tired or just didn’t feel like working out.

Or, in order to stick with my diet better, I hired a nutritionist that I have to send updates to 2x/week so that he can help me modify my diet as needed (and keep me on track with it).

To create your own support & accountability system, you don’t necessarily have to hire experts to keep you accountable (though I highly encourage you to do it if you CAN afford it).

You can:

- Find a gym buddy to hit the gym together

- Join a book club to read more books

- Create a writing tracker where you track your writing

- Join a cooking class to cook more

Track all of your work in a spreadsheet so you can improve your work routines and accomplish more

Even just having the 2-minute review for your achievements already counts as having a basic self-accountability system for all of your achievements and will help you do better than by not having any system at all.

On a more general level, there are a lot of different levels of support and accountability that you can think about:

- Hiring an expert or a coach to help you and keep you accountable 1on1

- Joining a group coaching / training program

- Joining a community or a club

- Joining an online membership

- Taking an online course

- Getting an app

- Taking a class

- Finding a mastermind group or accountability buddy

Creating a tracking system that keeps you accountable

Some of these are more expensive, others are more accessible. Some involve more active, others more passive accountability. Some keep you accountable to yourself, others to others.

If the achievements you’re working on are really important to you, I recommend setting up the best support & accountability systems you can afford for each of them, then iterating through them until they work well for you.

For example, you could always just try tracking your diet in a spreadsheet to see if that helps you make good progress with it. If that’s not enough, you could consider finding a diet buddy or hiring a nutritionist, until you find something that works really well for you.

You don’t have to set up all of these systems right away, but you can try to create more and more systems for yourself throughout the year, with the goal of eventually having a bulletproof system for each of the achievements you want to achieve.

Some of these systems might be more hands-on and more expensive (like hiring a 1on1 coach), while others might be a lot simpler (like having a spreadsheet where you track your work every week).

It’s important to note that not all of these systems will work for you, so I recommend just trying them up, then tweaking / replacing them after a few weeks if they don’t end up working as well as you wanted them to.

You can set up these systems when you feel like you’re plateauing and not progressing as well as you want to, when you feel like you fall off track too often, or simply when you have some extra money to invest in yourself.

How I did it:

Here are the support & accountability systems I’m currently using to make progress on my achievements:

- Savings: I have frequent conversations with my girlfriend about money and how my savings are going

- Cheat meals: I have a nutritionist that keeps me on track + I track my cheat meals (and how many days I haven’t had one) in a spreadsheet

- Writing: I track all of my writing in a spreadsheet + have weekly conversations about writing with my thinking coach

- Working hours: I track my work hours in a spreadsheet + have weekly conversations about work with my thinking coach

- Membership members: I update my Lean Dashboard whenever a new member joins the program

Books: I don’t have a system here yet, but will likely create a spreadsheet to track my reading that worked well for me in the past (or potentially join a book club)

I know that these systems aren’t perfect, and in an ideal world I would definitely have more support accountability, especially with reading books, my membership, my work hours and writing – but it’s a solid start and I’ll see where it gets me.

Then, throughout the year I can change my systems or invest more time or money in better systems if I feel like I’m plateauing or not making as much progress as I want to.

YOUR TURN:

Here come the final action steps. You can go through these now, or simply keep them on top of mind as you do your weekly reviews and notice that you’re not hitting your benchmarks.

For each of your benchmarks:

- Write down your CURRENT support & accountability systems

- Think about how you can create a better system TODAY

Think about what the IDEAL system would look like

And then create, change and improve your systems throughout the year as needed.

Conclusion

That’s it!

To fully implement everything you learned from this post:

- Create your Lean List of achievements for 2019

- Create Bronze, Silver and Gold benchmarks for each of them

- Download The Lean Review Dashboard through the box below

- Set up The 2-Minute Review in your calendar

- Create shortcuts to your Lean Review Dashboard

Create and improve Support & Accountability Systems throughout the year

And except from the last step, you should be able to do all of this in under 20 minutes.

I hope you’ll find this system as helpful as I’m finding it – and if you do end up using it, let me know how it helped you!

What about you? What kind of a review system are you using for 2019?

5 Surprising Lessons I Learned From Freewriting for The First Time

By Primoz Bozic 5 Comments

So you want to learn how to freewrite.

You’re probably wondering:

What is freewriting?
How do I freewrite?
How can freewriting help my business?

Today, I tried freewriting for the first time.

According to Wikipedia, freewriting is a prewriting technique in which a person writes continuously for a set period of time without regard to spelling, grammar, or topic. It produces raw, often unusable material, but helps writers overcome blocks of apathy and self-criticism. It is used mainly by prose writers and writing teachers. Some writers use the technique to collect initial thoughts and ideas on a topic, often as a preliminary to formal writing.

Or, in common folk language, freewriting means sitting down and writing whatever comes to mind without worrying about grammar or anything else for a few minutes.

I’ve first heard about freewriting from my buddy Frank that does it all the time, but I was never curious about it enough to actually try it.

Until today.

Today I sat in a coffee shop and worked on an article, and noticed that I really struggled with staying focused. Every 3-5 minutes, I kept getting these random thoughts at the back of my mind and that urge to check my Facebook or Instagram account. I just felt stuck, and didn’t understand what was going on.

Then, all of a sudden, I had an idea.

If I had all of these thoughts in my head and I wanted to get them out of my head, why not just sit down and write them out?

So I did. I sat down for about 10 minutes and just wrote wrote and wrote. I wrote 1349 words in 10 minutes, which must be some kind of a record.

I wrote about my business, about my work with clients, about writing, about relationships, about things I’m grateful for, about the impact I want to make in my life… I wrote about everything that came to mind with zero censorship.

It was random. It was uncomfortable. It was eye-opening.

And it only took 10 minutes!

Throughout this freewriting process, I got 5 very interesting insights that I want to share with you in this post.

Let’s dive in!

Insight #1: Freewriting helps you clear your head

Before I started the freewriting exercise, my thoughts were racing. I couldn’t focus no matter what I did. It felt like my head was about to explode.

For example, this was one of the passages I wrote:

I really want to build a bigger online business. I really want to help people. I want to feel that passion to help them that other people have. I wish I could bring my energy and passion from podcast interviews to my day to day work. I just don’t know what to do. I’m focusing on this one thing but I’m not sure if I’m doing enough. I wish I woke up earlier at like 5am. But that would mean going to bed at 9pm and that feels impossible right now. I want to have time to hang out with friends. Why do I hang out with my friends? It’s because I like it. It’s comfortable. I can lose myself in talking to them and playing games. I can just relax and chill. I feel like if I woke up at 5am I couldn’t really do that. I would just work all day long.

It’s hard to focus when you have thoughts like that going on through the back of your mind all the time!

No wonder I couldn’t focus on writing about one thing when I’m thinking about waking up at 5am, building a bigger business, feeling more passionate, podcast interviews, hanging out with friends… All in less than a minute!

After the exercise, I noticed that I felt way more calm, collected, and that my mind started to slow down. It was a lot easier for me to focus on one thing and write this article.

Now I know that whenever I feel like my brain is racing, I can just freewrite for a few minutes to make it slow down.

Insight #2: Freewriting helps you observe your subconscious thinking

Going through the freewriting exercise was fascinating to me because I could really observe how my brain worked.

For example, here’s another passage I wrote:

I miss going for walks and spending time outside. I don’t want to be locked in a house all the time. It would be great to live in the US where I could work and do all of my calls in the mornings. Then I could wake up earlier and have all afternoon for myself. I can’t do that right now. I don’t know why I’m paying so much for an expensive apartment. It’s not worth it. It’s big but it doesn’t feel like home. Why am I so negative all the time? I want to be more positive. I need to start. Now.

As I wrote that, it was fascinating for me to see the associations and connections my brain made, as well as how I reacted to them (for example: the “why am I so negative all the time? I want to be more positive.”.

It was also awesome to see some of the subconscious thinking that I never saw before (for example: “It would be great to live in the US where I could work and do all of my calls in the mornings. Then I could wake up earlier and have all afternoon for myself”).

I realized that there are things I’m really unhappy about right now (like having afternoons full of client calls) that I need to change in my schedule, which I haven’t really noticed earlier. I also noticed that my apartment doesn’t feel like home, which I need to do something about as well.

Before the freewriting exercise, I would just feel frustrated about this problem – whereas now I can actually do something about it.

Insight #3: Freewriting is great for copywriting

Another thing I realized while freewriting was just how powerful it could be for copywriting.

In copywriting, you usually try to capture the exact language and thoughts of your potential customers, which can sometimes be difficult – especially when it comes to capturing the subconscious thinking.

But through freewriting, that’s exactly what I was able to pull out of myself – the exact words I say to myself consciously and subconsciously.

Now I’m thinking about different ways in which I could use freewriting to write better copy.

Could I imagine a younger version of myself that has problems that I want to help my audience solve? Can I think about the desires and dreams that that younger version of myself had? And can I then freewrite about it?

Another idea that comes to mind is to freewrite regularly, then once I solve the problems I’m having right now I can go back and look at my old notes to find the exact language I was using.

I haven’t tried using freewriting in this way yet, but I imagine it could become a super powerful copywriting tool!

Insight #4: Freewriting helps you notice the negative thinking

When I started freewriting, I was shocked to discover just how negative I was.

It seemed like for every positive thing I said, I would spark 2 or 3 negative thoughts which were related or completely unrelated. That really blew my mind!

For example, even when I wrote about things that I appreciate in my life right now, I soon threw myself into a spiral of negative thinking:

What do I appreciate? I appreciate spending time with Aida. I appreciate that she cared for me this morning. That she tried to make me feel better. That she got us the pancake syrup. That we will go eat pancakes together tonight. I appreciate that my parents are still alive. I want to start sharing negative thoughts but need to train myself not to do it. Wow I could keep writing like this forever. This is interesting. Why is writing like this so easy but writing for business so hard? I need to get out of the downward spiral. Positive thoughts.

If you read through my earlier passages, you’ll notice I did that on a number of occasions – and overall about 2/3 of my writing was negative.

Freewriting helped me raise awareness around my thinking, and through the second half of the exercise I intentionally focused on more positive thoughts like what I’m proud of:

What am I proud of? I am proud of connecting a lot of my clients to each other. I need to stop having these BUTs and negative thoughts after each positive thought. I might cry. It’s hard for me to give myself credit and experience positive emotions. Why is this so hard? Ok, what am I proud of? Getting 2 renewals for TPC. Helping Heidi explode her business. Helping Jenni do the same and help a lot of people. I’m proud of helping Antrese launch her membership as well. I’m proud of Diana for getting fully booked with clients. I’m proud for myself for going through a painful therapy today. I’m proud of winning 3 gold medals in lifting. I’m proud of building a business out of nothing. I’m proud of working through my social anxiety.

This wasn’t easy, but I feel like I could get better at feeling more positive and having more positive thoughts by focusing more of my freewriting sessions on positive thinking like this.

Insight #5: Freewriting helps you get more clarity

Finally, I felt like freewriting gave me a lot of clarity on where I wanted to take my business.

For example, I spent some time freewriting about a product idea I had:

I really want to create some kind of a membership program. I LOVE TPC. I want to bring in more people like TPC people into my business. How can I do that? What do they have in common? What values to they have in common?

They are unapologetic. They want to do BIG things in life. They aren’t satisfied with something small. They don’t want to work 24/7. They want to feel connected to other people. Maybe through an event? They want to genuinely help people. They want to push themselves to their limits and beyond them. Maybe they want to be the best in the industry themselves, or they just want to be the best version of themselves. Who are the people I would like to have in my community? People like Jenni, Heidi, Karen, Nagina, Camille. People like Cary. That would be awesome. To connect these cool people together and just see magic happen. I want to find a way to foster CONNECTION. I want to bring opportunities to people. Like Selena’s IM community. How can I make that happen?

I want to spread positivity. I want to connect amazing people together. I want to give them amazing knowledge. Pass on what I learned. But also learn from them and help them teach each other. That would be amazing. I really enjoy learning. I’m curious. I also love creating and connecting. Even though it’s hard for me. I like making people smile. I like helping them. I should send the TPC link to Peter. I am really excited about the new version of TPC. I’m going to make it even better than the last one. I really can’t wait to get started!!

I knew that I had to think about what values my customers shared in order to build a strong community or a movement that would be a part of a membership community that I want to build.

I just never got around to putting my thoughts around that on paper. Through freewriting, my thoughts just flew onto paper and I already have a lot more clarity around this idea than I had before.

This means that I can stop thinking so much about my membership idea and move towards planning it and building it.

The 10-minute freewriting challenge

It’s crazy to see just how powerful 10 minutes of freewriting was for me.

So if you’ve read this far, I challenge you to try it out for yourself as well.

It’s really very simple.

STEP #1: Open a google document or get a pen and paper
STEP #2: Set a timer to 5 or 10 minutes
STEP #3: Just write whatever comes to mind

That’s it!

Then, once you do it, leave a comment below to let me know how the experience was!

My theme for 2018: Don’t be an asshole

By Primoz Bozic 7 Comments

I have a single sticky note on my computer that says this:

Don’t be an asshole.

This sticky note has nothing to do with anuses…

Or “being a stupid, mean, or contemptible person”.

(The definitions you’ll find in a dictionary).

And it has everything to do with growing your online business in 2018.

In fact, this single sentence is so important to me that I decided to make it my theme for 2018.

I wrote about why I did that (and what it means) in this post.

This one sticky note could literally change your life.

Apply it to your online business and you’ll…

Make more money than ever before
Help more people than ever before
And be the happiest you’ve ever been

It’ll help you make 2018 the best year in business ever (and it’s not even close).

And no, I’m not making this up.

Read on, and you’ll find out all about why you should put that sticky note on your computer as well.

But first, let me ask you something.

How many ideas did you have last year that never saw the light of day?

How many business ideas did you think of pursuing, but never explored?

How many blog posts did you think of writing, but never wrote (or published)?

How many products did you think of creating, but never tested or launched?

Think about it.

In fact, ask yourself a few more questions.

How many emails did you think of writing (to your friends, clients, mentors or readers) that you never wrote (or sent out)?

How many podcasts, guest posts or publicity opportunities did you think about pursuing, but never did anything about?

How many influential people did you want to connect with, but never did?

If you’re like me, just thinking about these questions will make you sick in your stomach.

It’ll make you want to hide the answer to these questions, because you’re ashamed of it.

For example, I have a note on my phone that includes 186 blog post ideas:

That’s a 10-page Google Document full of ideas (or exactly 2037 words of ideas).

These are just the ideas from the last 5 months (when I got a new phone).

There’re hundreds of more ideas scattered throughout my phone, notebooks, and computers.

How many of these blog post ideas did I actually end up writing?

Maybe about 10.

That’s a lot of blog posts that I’ve never written.

A lot of blog posts that could have brought more readers to my online business, and helped my existing readers live a lot better lives.

And it’s not just blog posts.

I’ve had tens of ideas for online programs that I never got around to creating.

I’ve had tens of podcasts that I could go on or reach out to but never did.

I even had a few guest post opportunities for major publications that I never wrote or submitted.

All of these things would help me further grow my online business.

And yet they didn’t, because they never saw the light of day.

And if you’re reading this, I bet you’re in the exact same boat.

You have your own wall of shame of ideas that you never acted on.

And you know that if you did, your business would be in a very different place than it is today.

So the question is…

Why?

Why do we have so many ideas that we never follow through with?

The easiest thing to say would be:

“I didn’t have the time”.

But come on. We ALL know that’s not true.

I know that if I had time to watch the whole Game of Thrones season, to spend more than 15 hours a week in the gym, and to spend more hours than I’d like to admit on emails, social media and reading travel blogs, I had more time to write as well.

If it wasn’t time, was it energy?

Was I so burned out and exhausted that I couldn’t physically make myself act on ideas?

To be honest, no.

I had plenty of times when I felt perfectly fine, but still didn’t act on my ideas (and instead invited friends over for the evening to lose myself in board games).

So if it’s not time, and not energy, then what the hell is it?

For me, it’s…

Perfectionism.

This might come as a surprise to some, because I’m generally known for “making things good enough and moving on”, and “executing on ideas fast”.

But that’s because of the ideas that people SEE come to life.

With those, I’m able to break away from perfectionism and launch them – fast.

But nobody sees the ideas that I don’t execute on (or follow through with) – but me.

And the reason why these ideas don’t come to life is pretty simple.

I don’t let them.

Sometimes, we’re our own worst enemies.

I don’t write blog posts because I think they’re not interesting enough.

Because I don’t think anyone will read them.

Because I don’t think they’ll make a huge impact on my business.

And obviously, the better alternative according my brain is to just spend time THINKING about blog post ideas and writing them down into my little note document.

I don’t create or launch new products because I’m afraid that nobody will want to buy them.

Because I’m afraid that I’ll spend hundreds of hours on them that will go to waste.

Because I’m afraid that they won’t work as well as I would have wanted them to.

Again, the better alternative according to my brain is to spend time PLANNING new products, rather than actually testing and launching them.

Luckily, there’s silver lining to all of this.

When we DO follow through with our ideas, magic happens.

You might remember how I started my first online business a few years ago (productivity coaching for online poker players).

I had this idea for “The Quick Guide to Skyrocketing Your Poker Productivity” at 6am in my parents’ apartment.

I woke up, I logged into a poker forum, and I wrote it.

A year later, that single idea I acted on has helped me bring in over $38k in coaching and freelance revenues – more than DOUBLE the average annual salary in Slovenia.

Or, you might recall a story of how my business idea of teaching online entrepreneurs how to write Ultimate Guides came to life.

I had an idea to do this, brought it up to a few friends, and got my first paying clients for it within hours of thinking of the idea.

Then, I sent out the idea to my email list and got a total of 7 paying clients for 1on1 coaching (and over $20k in revenue).

A year later, my Ultimate Guide System has brought in over 6 figures to my online business.

The crazy part?

I had this same idea to teach entrepreneurs how to write Ultimate Guides back in 2015, but never acted on it because I didn’t think it would work out.

Another random idea was The Top Performer Club, my group coaching program for online entrepreneurs.

Even though it took me more than 6 months to test out the idea through my email list, the 3 emails I sent out about it ended up bringing over $18k in coaching revenue to my online business.

It’s crazy to see how most of the big breakthroughs in my online business can be traced down to these small moments of courage…

…When I gave myself permission to stop worrying and just act on my ideas.

It’s scary to think how much more my business would grow if I acted on even more of my ideas.

Which begs the question…

What if we could follow through with our ideas ALL the time?

What would that do for our business?

How much faster would we be able to grow it?

How many more people would be able to help?

And how much happier would we be because we’d know we’re really giving our business EVERYTHING we can?

I know that for me, the answer is A LOT.

My business would grow a lot faster, I’d help a lot more people, and I’d be a lot happier.

But there’s also a trickier question that we need to address.

Is it even possible to follow through with our ideas ALL the time?

It’s easy to dream about the perfect world, especially in the beginning of each year when we’re all excited and motivated.

It’s much harder when the reality hits us and we actually need to do the work, especially when times get tough, life comes in the way or we fall off track.

And let’s be honest, no matter what technique I would use, I wouldn’t be able to write 186 great blog posts last year PLUS launch 10 incredible online programs last year.

Unless I cloned myself. Which would be super cool, but unfortunately I don’t know how to do that yet.

So it’s safe to say that following through with all of your ideas is pretty much impossible, and while that’s something we could strive for, it’s something we’ll never ever really achieve.

Especially since acting on our ideas successfully usually sparks MORE ideas for what we could do.

Luckily, there’s something we CAN do instead.

We can follow through with (a lot) MORE of our ideas.

And we can spend less time THINKING about them and REFINING them.

We can spend less time THINKING about writing that blog post, and actually sit down to write it.

We can spend less time EDITING that blog post, and publish it to see what our readers think about it.

We can spend less time doing the work that NEVER sees the light of day…

…And spend more time creating work that DOES.

And that’s what I’m committed to doing more of this year.

I’m committed to making more of my ideas come to life, even if all of them are not “perfect”.

Because I know that as I do this, I’ll open myself to finding ideas that ARE amazing, AND I’ll help more people in the process (rather than just keeping the ideas for myself).

There’s just one problem.

Following through with your ideas is a lot easier said than done.

I mean, think about it.

You’ve probably had times when you made the exact same commitment to yourself.

You said you’d stop being a perfectionist, and put your ideas out into the world faster.

In the moment, it felt great…

…But in the end, you didn’t actually do it.

A few days later, you forgot about it, and went back into your old habits.

THINK, THINK, THINK.

PLAN, PLAN, PLAN.

REFINE, REFINE, REFINE.

…over and over again.

So how will 2018 be different?

That’s where this little sticky note comes into play:

I got the idea for this sticky note through a conversation with my client that struggled with the exact same issue.

She spent months and months creating and refining a blog post that never saw the light of day.

This felt crazy to me, because I read her blog post and though it was awesome.

I asked her:

“Why don’t you just publish it?”

And of course, her response was predictable:

“I don’t think it’s any good.”

“I don’t think anyone will read it.”

“I think I need to spend some more time on it.”

She was her own worst critic, and her own worst enemy.

As I listened to her thoughts, I thought to myself:

“Wow, she’s focusing a lot on what SHE thinks about her blog post… And is completely ignoring what her READERS would think about it.”

Then I recommended her to make a sticky note like this one – and put it on her computer screen.

She finished her blog post shortly after that.

Here’s the truth:

Your readers don’t care about your blog posts not being perfect.

Especially if you’re just starting out with your online business.

They CAN’T and WON’T be perfect. (as you’re still learning how to write great content).

But what your readers DO care about is your IDEAS.

They want to hear your ideas, and implement them in their lives.

Just like this blog post that I’m writing right now, which by the way is an idea from about 6 months ago.

They don’t really care if the grammar in your blog posts isn’t perfect.

They don’t really care if your powerpoint slides for your online program has a typo.

They don’t even care if your ideas are 100% refined or not, as long as they can actually hear them.

That’s because they’ll take your ideas, and apply them to their own lives, in their own ways.

But if they never HEAR ABOUT your ideas, they can never do that.

They can never SEE them in a post that’s shared or social media, or HEAR them in a podcast where you talk about them.

They can never READ the blog post that you never wrote (or published) for them.

They can never APPLY your ideas if you don’t create that online program that will help them put them into action.

Your readers cannot care about the things they never hear about.

So by not putting your ideas out into the world, you’re not just letting yourself down.

You’re letting your readers down.

You possess all of this knowledge that could help them change their lives, and you’re not sharing it with them.

And that makes you kind of an asshole.

You’re putting yourself first, not your customers.

Not cool.

At the end of the day, running an online business isn’t about you.

It’s about your customers, who NEED to hear what you have to say.

So every time you catch yourself keeping your ideas for yourself, remember that you’re doing this to help people.

And then share your ideas with the world, even if they’re not perfect.

Because doing that is infinitely better than not sharing them at all.

That’s what I’m doing, and that’s why I have that post it note on my screen.

I encourage you to make one too – and send it my way. I’d love to see it.

In 2018, all I ask you is to do one thing…

Don’t be an asshole.

Share your ideas with the world.

-Primoz

What to do when you’re having a REALLY shitty day

By Primoz Bozic 6 Comments

It’s 3am in the morning and I’m wide awake. Not because I’d be a super early riser or say up really late… but because my sleep schedule is slightly messed up right now.

It might have something to do with staying up until 4am yesterday to help a coworker with a presentation, and trying to go to bed at 11pm next day… whoops.

It’s funny, because nobody sees this. Everyone thinks “well Primoz, you can work at any time, from anywhere… so you can take a lot of breaks, have plenty of time off, sleep as much as you want, have a good routine…”, and in theory that’s true. A lot of it is true in practice as well.

But when you’re working with a company where most of your team is in US, and the rest is all over the world, and you’re in Europe… it gets messy. I might need to do a webinar on one night at 3am, and attend a meeting on Friday at 9pm. 7pm meetings are standard.

Working on weekends happens as well when you want to run a live coaching class that works well with audiences from US and Europe and you don’t want to do a call in the middle of their work day.

You see, a lot of people think that being a successful entrepreneur or working remotely is all flowers and roses, expensive dinners and traveling the world while sleeping fancy hotels.

Primoz Bozic — Everyone shows off the awesome moments in their lives… I do too.

It’s what you might think when you follow successful entrepreneurs on instagram, facebook, or read their blog posts. Everyone wants to share their positive moments to inspire others, show it can be possible, etc. — and that’s fine. You’ll see that I do it as well, if you check out my instagram.

But the reality is that there’s a whole other side of entrepreneurship and being great that people don’t see, and not many people talk about.

What does it look like? Well, let’s just say it’s a crazy rollercoaster. There’s a lot of really awesome days and moments, and there’s a lot of really shitty ones as well. That’s why most people give up on their businesses early on, because they just can’t deal with it. It’s hard.

I love rollercoasters... maybe that's why I love this lifestyle as well? — I love rollercoasters… maybe that’s why I love this lifestyle as well?

“But Primoz, the more successful you get, the better you are at dealing with it, and the easier it gets, right?”

It’s funny… it actually gets harder, way harder.

Why? Well, as you become more successful, you’ll learn how to take on even bigger challenges, push yourself outside of your comfort zone, and raise the stakes. In essence, you’ll fail more, and more often. I will say you’ll get better at being used to it / dealing with it, so it won’t hurt you as much as it would when you were just starting out. It does get harder though.

Here, I’ll give you an example.

If you’re working at a regular 9-5 job where you’ve been in the same position for the last 5 years, do similar work every day, know exactly how to do it… and then spend the evenings hanging out with friends and watching TV, how much will you really put yourself outside of your comfort zone? How many new challenges will you take on?

Not many. You’ll have a pretty predictable day, some of them will be good, others won’t. Chances are you’ll either really enjoy or really hate your job. There won’t be as much of a roller coaster.

If you’re super ambitious and are hustling at your job or at your business, chances are that every day and every week will bring on a new challenge, and chances are you’ll suck at it. Therefore, more unpredictable shitty (AND awesome) moments.

Here’s a personal example from one of my recent trips to NYC:

AWESOME MOMENT: I had an awesome experience speaking at a conference, and the audience loved my speech.
SHITTY MOMENT: At the same time, I realized that my social skills are really shitty and that I can be really awkward in in-person conversations with people that I don’t know, especially when I’m tired. And I realized that because I’m becoming more known and people expect more from me, that’s not ok any more (shit, I can’t imagine how celebrities feel…). Any mistake that you make gets amplified.
AWESOME MOMENT: I spent 2 hours talking to one of the best mental toughness coaches in the world 1-on-1, and it was mind-blowing.
SHITTY MOMENT: Next day, I had to leave a mastermind meeting early because there was a work emergency that I had to take care of.
AWESOME MOMENT: I grabbed a 1-on-1 lunch with my mentor for the first time, and it was awesome (we only did coffee before). Weird as it might sound, this was a big milestone for me.
SHITTY MOMENT: Wifi was really shitty in our AirBnB in NYC, so I rented a room (through Breather) in NYC to do my weekly coaching call there. When I came there, I realized I couldn’t get in because the app I needed wasn’t available in my country (wtf Google Play, are you serious?). I managed to somehow get in by getting a security guard to help me, only to realize that the battery on my laptop was low. I had my charger with me, but forgot the converter from the EU to US plug. And of course there wasn’t any of those in the room I rented. In the end I made things work by doing the call from my phone, but let’s just say it was very stressful.
…

Ups and downs like this happen daily. I’ll have a student that is crushing it and getting amazing result, and another one I’ll need to talk to at 1am because they’re really struggling with their mental barriers.

Being an entrepreneur is a lot of work. This year, until my vacation in August, I haven’t had a single vacation day. I was either working or traveling (and when I travel, I usually work as well). I worked a lot of weekends, even though I didn’t technically “need” to be working. But there was stuff that needed to get done, and I wasn’t about to not do it.

Because I push myself very hard and always want to do more and more and more, I’m on the edge of burnout a lot. I’m not proud of it, and I know I should take it a bit easier sometimes. And yet, I feel like it’s the right thing to do…

You see, throughout the last few years, I’ve studied two groups of people:

People who are “successful”, who do better than most people. Think about people who follow through with their ideas and manage to build successful businesses. People who are in top 5% of a certain sport. People who always get the promotions and massive raises in their jobs. etc.
People who are the best at what they do. Steve Jobs, LeBron James, Christiano Ronaldo, and others.

It took a while for me to really understand what separates these groups of people, and what it takes to become successful, and what it takes to become the best.

There’s something I noticed that totally surprised me.

I noticed that the game constantly changes. It takes a totally different skillset and approach to become successful, than it does to become the best. And to become the best, I believe that you need both skillsets. Ok, that sounds a little bit abstract, so… let me explain.

Here’s the mistake that I think people make: they study and model the people who are the best before they become successful.

For a long time, I laughed at the people who read the book from Steve Jobs when it came out. Because I saw these people talk a big talk, get inspired… then give up after 2 days, until they found another inspirational story. They never made it. They thought they could work 17 hours per day and become successful because that’s one thing they read in the book, and then then they collapsed the next day. Whoops.

didn't want to read this book because everyone was reading it when I came out, and I wanted to be different. — didn’t want to read this book because everyone was reading it when I came out, and I wanted to be different.

And for a long time, I actually avoided reading biographies like that, because most of them were contradictory with what the personal development books talked about (you should work smarter, not harder, etc.).

And since those books worked really well for me and helped me build multiple successful online businesses, I just kept following the advice from there.

Then, after a while, I realized that I already knew most of the stuff from the books I’ve read, and I was doing great. I had my routines down, a lot of recovery, worked smart, connected with the right people… I did everything right. And it worked.

But over the last year, I realized there was more to it through conversations with some of my mentors (Kim and Christina… thank you.). There was another level that I had to reach. And most importantly, I realized that there was another level that I wanted to reach. Being moderately successful wasn’t good enough any more. I realized that I wanted to become the best at something.

And that realization scared me. It scared me so much I actively ran away from it for a while.

Why?

Because I didn’t believe I could do it.

You see, before in my life, I was either mediocre or moderately successful at things.

In primary school, I won all of the maths championships at my school (which felt great), but I was like #100 on the national level. My dad was #1 in maths competitions when he was a kid, and I could never live up to that. I felt I just wasn’t smart enough. And I didn’t understand all the maths concepts other kids did.
I was better at chess than most people. Yet, when I started competing, I realized I wasn’t that great at it after all.
I was mediocre at sports that I trained for a while, like badminton and breakdance. Yeah, I was better than an average joe, but when I started competing, I never really made it anywhere.

And the list goes on and on. It was always the same mix of mediocrity and being moderately good, but far from the best.

That’s why it took me a while to get out of the “I can be good, but I can’t be great” mindset. But I did it.

And once I did, my whole world changed. It became a game of “I know I can do this, all I need to do is find out how.”.

And this big, impossible vision of becoming a person that impacts millions of lives like Steve Jobs started to become possible.

So how will I do it? By doing what I do well — studying people who are the best, understanding what they have in common, then implementing the hell out of it.

In other words, I have acquired the skillset that allowed me to become successful in business. Now I can keep using that skillset and acquire a new skillset that I will use with my existing skillset to allow me to become the best.

And one of the things I’ve noticed (that helps me deal with shitty days) is that the best people show up every day, and do what it takes to succeed. And they sacrifice a lot to be able to do it.

I study and model the people who are the best at what they do, like Rich Froning.

For example, arguably the best CrossFitter in the world, Rich Froning, does 5-6 workouts when he’s preparing for the competitions. Every single day. Which goes against all rules of recovery. But ultimately, it’s what allows him to be the best. He shows up and does more than the rest. And it works for him.

Now here’s the deal: if you were just starting out with crossfit and wanted to just model Rich’s workouts, you would probably get seriously injured immediately. But if you took a few months to get good at it, learn the ins and outs etc. and THEN progressively start pushing the envelope more and more, and pushed yourself further and further with each day, you would become great at it.

It was the same wit Rich — he didn’t start with 5-6 workouts per day and he doesn’t do that many all year long, only when he’s preparing for a competition. He actually started with one workout per day. Then he slowly added a second one. When he saw he could handle it, he added another one, etc… He also didn’t sacrifice other parts of his life when he was just doing 1 workout per day. Now he probably sacrifices a lot more.

In the end, the lesson here is to show up, and give it your all every single day. 110%. Which can help you push through shitty days.

“Duh Primoz, you didn’t know that you just need to show up every day and do more than all the other people?!?”

Of course I’ve heard this before. Everyone has. It’s in so many motivational speeches out there. But KNOWING and INTERNALIZING or DOING IT CONSISTENTLY are different things.

Can you honestly say for yourself that you do whatever it takes to succeed and make things happen? I know that for a long time, I couldn’t. I knew I had more energy in the tank that I couldn’t use. Now I know how to do it without burning myself out completely.

Now I understand that yes, working smart is important, recovery is important, etc… but I also know that sometimes you do actually need to work all day or all week, and sacrifice certain parts of your life if you want to be great.

I had to first become great at creating habits, routines, understanding burnout, working smart, etc. so that when I try to model people who are the best, I wouldn’t collapse and give up.

Going back to sacrifices… I’ll admit that right now, my life isn’t really balanced. It usually involves:

Working… a lot. Weekdays, weekends, etc. It often feels like I work all day long.
Working out — I usually do at least 5-6 workouts per week, mostly with a personal trainer. This is what helps me feel good throughout the day. My nutrition is also on point, which helps.
Sleeping — This is another priority of mine, so I do get 8-9 hours of sleep on most nights (it’s a bit harder when traveling). Apart from nights like this when I’m still writing this e-mail at 4:56am…
Hanging out with friends — I do what I can to meet up with my friends 1x/week and play some board games, card games or old video games. It helps me recover.
Hanging out with family — I go and visit my parents roughly once every 1-2 weeks, that’s about it. I would have liked to do more of this, but it’s hard for me to do it. Finding the time for my family is something I’m not that great at.
Hanging out with my girlfriend — Well, we live together, so that makes things easier… But we spend a lot less quality time together than I’d like to, usually because I’m just drained from all the work so we just go out for lunch or watch some TV series. Another thing I want to work on.

“But this seems pretty balanced to me…”

Yeah, if you look at it like this, it does seem balanced. But when you know that out of the time I’m awake, I spend maybe an hour or two of “quality” time with my girlfriend, and the rest is either working or working out, it doesn’t really feel like it’s balanced.

It feels more like I’m working all the time (and hey, it’s because I LOVE working and because I want to be the best at what I do). I know that I “should” spend more time to recover, but luckily the systems that I have set up allow me to stay on 80-100% of my game most of the time.

At the end of the day, I’m making massive progress in my work and business, and I’m making incredible progress at the gym as well (I went from 0 to deadlifting 440lbs/200kg in a year). I had hired a personal trianer to help me reach my goals, this is the personal trainer I use. I’m sacrificing a lot of the time I could spend with my family, friends and girlfriend in order to be able to do that though.

You can check out my 200kg/440lb deadlift here.

It seems like it all works out — as long as I take a few days off when I really need them, surround myself with the right people, and give 110% whenever I work or work out, the progress is insane.

So, what does all of this have to do with shitty days?

Well, the solution to dealing with shitty days (from my experience) isn’t really a tactic like writing down the bad things that happened to you or meditating for an hour. It’s a long-term process of developing a mindset that you get better at (that most people don’t see or won’t talk about). In other words, you don’t use a magical solution to deal with shitty days. You learn how to do it over time.

To make it easier to really see how this mentality works, here’s an entry from my fitness accountability group about a really shitty day, and how I handled it:

How I overcame a really shitty workout yesterday.

If I break it down to a framework in which you could think about it, it comes down to something like this:

Acknowledge and anticipate that shitty days and moments will happen, and that the more of them will happen the more successful you become. Become OK with that [I know that shitty workouts will happen].
Go into every day with the mentality of “I’m going to show up and be successful no matter what.” [I go into every workout with that mentality]
When shit hits the fan, work through it. No BS excuses. Embrace the suck, fail, learn, improve. Keep moving. [I keep going on every workout until I give it 110%]

~~That’s it for today! It’s 5:20am and I’m going to try and get back to sleep.~~ It’s actually 5:56am since I wanted to include some photos and format it nicely… SLEEP!

-Primoz

P.S. Want to learn more about what I do to make massive progress in my business, despite having my fair share of shitty days? Check out my free 21-page on how I became a star student in multiple online business courses.

How to double the value of your time

By Primoz Bozic 5 Comments

A couple of months ago, I was on a call with one of my mentors, Naveen Dittakavi. Naveen is one of the most productive people I’ve ever met – he has a successful software development business, he manages a community of over 1700 people, and constantly works on developing new skills and new projects. All of that while still finding time for his family and friends!

I first met Naveen in Munich last year. Here he is with his fiancée on the right.
As I was very impressed with how much he manages to constantly improve despite all of that work, I asked him to share his strategy with me.

Here’s how the conversation went:

Me: “So Naveen, you’re working on so many things that it must be insanely draining… How do you manage to find the willpower and energy to keep improving your business and learn new skills like copywriting?”.

Naveen: “It’s actually not that complicated. Of course I have a ton of client work, but I don’t want to spend my most productive hours on that when I can spend them on doing things that will make the biggest difference for me in the long run.”

Me: “What do you mean by your most productive hours?”

Naveen: “Well, through testing I have found out that I am the most productive and focused between 7 and 9 am. It’s probably related to the fact that I wake up well rested, which means that I have a lot of energy and willpower at that time.

This means that if I want to get something, it’s way more likely that I will actually get it done than if I planned to do it in the evening when I’m drained. In that case, I would probably just keep procrastinating it on and on. I also make a point of making these hours non-negotiable.

From 7am to 9am each morning, I’m only working on my projects and growing my business, and never on client work. This ensures that I constantly grow both myself and my business.”

Me: “That’s very interesting. But how do you know what’s worth doing at that time? How do you determine what’s important enough?”

Naveen: “What I like to do is focus on outcomes. Think of it as compound interest – I invest time into activities that will grow exponentially and not lineary in the long run. For example, if I spend 10 hours building a system or a product that allows me to earn $100/month in recurring revenue per client, and I don’t need to put much extra effort in it after the initial 20 hours, this can earn me $1,200 a year per client.

But it’s more than that. I can then offer this to every new client that I work with without any additional work on my side, so in the long run, as my business grows, my hourly rate for those 10 hours of work will be insanely high.

If I would spend those hours simply doing consulting, I could perhaps earn a couple of hundred $ per hour, but that’s where it ends. I would make more money in the short run, but in the long run it’s not even close. I feel like that’s an issue that a lot of entrepreneurs have – they focus on getting results fast instead of building systems that will keep getting them results as the time goes by.”

To sum this conversation up in one sentence, Naveen uses his most productive hours on developing systems that will keep bringing in the benefits for years to come.

As Naveen explained this to me, it struck me – I’ve been using my most productive hours the wrong way, which is why I didn’t see as much progress as I wanted to.

Let me explain. Every day, I used to wake up between 10am and 11am. I would then shower, eat breakfast, read a book and go over the list of the 3 things I wanted to get done the day. I would play a couple of games on Lumosity while listening to calming music. Once I was done, I was in the zone and ready to do the work.

So I started doing the work. More specifically, I would usually have 2-3 hours of coaching between 12pm-4pm with my clients, with some breaks to do in-between. At 4pm, I would go to lunch, and after that I would work on the 3 important things that I wanted to get done for the day.

This was actually going ok for a while, and I felt like I was progressing well. However, with time I saw a pattern occurring. More often than not, I would procrastinate tasks that required a lot of focus. Answering e-mails, working on my blog, talking to people and reading books went fine. However, creating systems didn’t go so well. After 6 hours of work, I just didn’t have the creative power and focus that I needed any more and I would often procrastinate these creative tasks and keep moving them to the next day.

After talking to Naveen, I redesigned my days. I made sure that I had two hours free every morning before my first client session. Since then, I use these two hours mostly for learning new skills like storytelling, writing, as well as revising and building new productivity and business systems. Needless to say, my top 3 things for the day are now getting done way more often, and since I have a ton of energy, willpower and focus while working on them, they get done way faster.

This doesn’t work just for me and Naveen though. Last year, when I attended a conference from Ramit Sethi in NYC, I asked him to tell me about what his usual day looks like. He explained that it varies a lot, but that every morning he goes to the coffee shop for a couple of hours to just write his blog posts and e-mails.

Ramit wasn’t very thrilled that I was wearing a similar outfit to his…
The awesome thing about this strategy is that you can use it in various ways – to save time, to earn more money or to acquire a new skill faster.

If you want to save time, you can use your most productive hours to build productivity systems for yourself (more on those in the future posts). If you invest 10 hours into building a system that saves you just 30 minutes each working day like the one that Derek Halpern built to answer 3x as many e-mails in half the time, this can save you 130 hours in a year.

If you want too earn more money, you can use the time to develop products or recurring services like Naveen did, or you can spend the time on improving your business model and strategy.

If you want to acquire a new skill faster, you can use these hours to learn and improve through reading and thinking about what you’ve read. Your reading speed and comprehension are largely dependent on how focused you are, so if you want to learn something rapidly, it makes sense to actually do it when you are the most focused and not when you are tired and almost sleeping, like this:

Feeling Tired

If this is what you look like while learning, you’re probably not learning a whole lot.
With this strategy, it’s very easy to double the value of your most productive time. In fact, usually you can even 3x it, 5x or even 10x it by building systems that will earn you more money or save you time in the future.

Now imagine what it would be like if you actually did this. If you actually spent your most productive time on the high leverage activities, you might very well be making more progress in your business and life than you are right now, even if you didn’t do anything else for the whole day.

Imagine finishing up the two hours of work and creating a nice system that will save you hours of stress and frustration when dealing with e-mails. Imagine finishing a product that will bring you extra $500/month, even while you’re on a vacation. Imagine learning a new skill every 2 weeks. How would that make you feel?

In order to start using this strategy in your own life and reach your own goals faster, you can use the 3 step framework below:

Step #1 – Find out the high leverage activities that will give you the best outcomes

You can do this by asking yourself a couple of questions:

Where do I want to be in a year?
What do I need to do in order to get there?
Which of the things that I need to do will have exponential outcomes, like compound interest?

Here, you really want to be focusing on the activities that you do once and get the benefits from them for months or years. Make a list of at least 3 such activities and use it to determine what you want to be working on during your most productive time.

Step #2 – Identify your most productive time of the day

One of the easiest ways to do this is to track your time (write down everything you do in a day together with times/duration). Here’s an example of my time tracking:

You don’t need to make it as colorful and specific, you can simply do this in a word document or even on a piece of paper. If you want to be really sure when you are the most focused, you can also add a grade for focus/energy level on a scale of 1 to 5.

As a rule of thumb, you will most likely have the most energy after you wake up in the morning and go through your morning routine, before you do any work. If you are an evening person, try to identify at which time you usually start being productive in the evening and if there is something going on before that (maybe you come back from the gym or something similar). This will allow you to plan your productive time accordingly.

Step #3 – Make your most productive hours a non-negotiable

This is the key step. Your most productive time should be reserved for the activities that you identified in step #1, without exceptions. I like to make sure that I actually stick to this by putting my non-negotiable activities on my calendar – this way I can’t schedule a client meeting at that time. Below is an example from my calendar:

You might notice that I have time off for lunch and recovery scheduled on my calendar. Yes, that’s a non-negotiable for me as well.

If you often struggle with actually getting stuff done, you can also check out my FREE 5-Day Success Bootcamp where I will show you specific systems that you can use to take massive action, including a system that my friend Blaz used to go from being an unemployed student to earning more than $10,000/month as a freelance designer in less than 5 months.

That’s it! Now you have all that you need in order to skyrocket your progress in both life and business. You can get started right away by doing the action steps above, or you can navigate to another blog post, consume more information and never take action – the choice is yours.

If you liked this article and you have a friend who might benefit from it, why don’t you send it over to them? Your friend will thank you for solving their problem and I’ll thank you as well for spreading the love.

And don’t forget to join the Bootcamp.
-Primoz