PreneurCast is a business podcast. Each week, author and marketer Pete Williams and digital media producer Dom Goucher discuss entrepreneurship, business, internet marketing and productivity.
This week, Pete and Dom try a radical experiment in Productivity. If you join in, Pete guarantees that what he suggests will improve your productivity immediately.
Pete and Dom share what they consider the biggest productivity secret
Transcript:
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Episode 021:
The most productive episode yet
Pete Williams: Hello, Dom. How are you this week?
Dom Goucher: Hello, Mr. Pete. I’m very good, very good. And you?
Pete: I’m doing very, very well as usual, and looking forward to another episode of PreneurCast, a special one at that.
Dom: Yeah, I’m intrigued. You mentioned a bit of a ninja productivity tip. Lay it on me.
Pete: Should we get straight into it? Let’s just dive in.
Dom: Yeah, let’s be productive.
Pete: What I think we can do for this episode is share with the listeners what I consider the biggest productivity secret or method, and let’s make a big promise. We spoke about on the podcast before about the importance of big guarantees and big promises, and just standing out there and making a statement. I really believe if people stick through this entire episode from start to finish, they will be a lot closer to achieving a particular goal and would have made some good progress by going through what we’re going to talk about today.
Dom: Wow. Big, big claim.
Pete: It’d a bit cool, but I really do think that if people do follow through and listen to the entire episode, take in what were going to talk about and implement which is what the key is, they’ll be definitely a lot closer to where they need to be.
Dom: Ok, you definitely have me intrigued.
Pete: Alright. Let’s break it down. Step one is basically grabbing a yellow legal pad or a notepad. I prefer yellow legal pad because I think there’s something in the color of it, I don’t know what it is. A yellow legal pad and a pen, you need that to be ready. And even if you’re out running, or riding, or driving to work, you can still apply this process and go through it. But it is much better if you can have a pen and paper handy.
The first thing we need to do with this pen and paper is at the top of the page write down one action that you can take which would normally take about 30 minutes to do to get closer to your goals. I don’t want this whole session to get into the whole David Allen Getting Things Done methodology. I would love to do another episode about GTD and that whole philosophy. For people who aren’t aware of what it is, I think it’s a great process of getting things done, funnily enough, that’s what the process is called.
The premise, what that’s all about is you work out what you want to achieve and then you write down all the individual actions you need to take because it’s the physical action that gets you closer. Thinking about it isn’t going to do anything; it’s actually an action that needs to be done. So what is one action that you can do that takes about 30 minutes that will get you closer to your goal? Is it writing out a business proposal? Is it just planning out a business? Is it writing a sales letter?
Is it writing an e-mail that you can send to your list about a particular product? Is it writing an affiliate offer? Is it sitting down and tweaking a sales page? Is it installing WordPress? Is it writing up a sales spiel that your retail staff can use in a greet-and-sit type process we talked about as part of the 7 Levers episode? So what is one thing that you can actually do that will take 30 minutes that will get you closer to your goal? An actionable 30 minute task?
Dom: That could even be a phone call that you can make to set up a JV, some kind of deal with somebody, or write an e-mail to a couple of people. That kind of thing, yeah?
Pete: Yes, exactly. Some actionable task or tasks that you can do without distraction, that’s the key to this. Something you can do without distraction. You don’t want to go off and have to go buy a new packet of colored pencils to make this happen or anything like that. It’s got to be something that you can do an action straightaway. So, once you’ve got that, do it. That’s right. What we’re going to do for this episode of PreneurCast is gift you 30 minutes right now. We’re going to gift you 30 minutes.
And I really do believe that it’s the best gift that Dom and I could give you right now. We’ve had 20 episodes so far. You’ve learned enough to implement something. You can write a proposal, you can plan out a video pitch, you can work on the numbers of your seven levers. You guys know at least something from these last 20 episodes that you can implement right now for 30 minutes, and we are going to gift you that. Instead of listening and learning from us, we’re actually going to give you the gift of implementation. How does that sound?
Dom: I like this and this plays to a couple of things. Some people may think, oh wow, how lame, blah, blah, blah. Right. Let’s be clear about this. One of the things that Pete and I are really big on is that people spend a lot of their time taking in new information, buying new information products, looking for the next big shiny thing. And they don’t spend, they don’t even allocate time to implement. You can spend your entire life back-to-back buying the next big course and going through it, reading it, watching the videos – I don’t know, reading the transcripts, however you want to take it in.
Even using your commute to listen to it, if you want to really optimize your time. But if you don’t allocate the time to actually implement it, then you may as well not have spent the money. That’s one. And number two, Pete is right. Pretty much anybody listening to this, even before you started listening to our podcast had a pretty good idea of what it was that you needed to do in your business. You may have come across another information course or thing like that, read a book or just had a chat with somebody and thought, “Hey, that’s a good idea,” or seen something.
And certainly in the last 20 episodes, we really hope that you picked up some great tips. Now, instead of just giving you more and giving you more and giving you more, I agree with Pete, the best thing we can give you is that half an hour that you would have spent listening to us and okay, those of you brave enough to listen on two-speed, we’re giving you back about 20 minutes. But instead of listening to more stuff, implement some of it. Off you go.
Pete: Alright. Now, we’re going to leave you guys for half an hour with some working music and we’re going to come back and explain something to you, which is called the ‘Mozart effect.’ So 30 minutes, let’s get to work. We’ll catch up again soon and talk about the Mozart effect at the end of the episode. But let me leave you with a fantastic quote, before we get started, from Do the Work, Steven Pressfield’s fantastic book. “Don’t think. Act. We can always revise and revisit once we’ve acted. But we can accomplish nothing until we act.”
[Music]
Dom: Ok, folks, there’s your half an hour.
Pete: How did you go? Hopefully, you’re feeling confident that you’ve actually made some progress. If you’ve taken the time and not fast-forwarded it, taken the time to spend 30 minutes either writing, communicating, producing something, or even just thinking about something and planning it out in your mind while you were driving; I really do think that right now you’re a little bit closer to your goal and a little bit more confident you’ve actually achieved something today and not just consumed.
I personally, when I find time to think and reflect on what I’ve done recently, if I’ve spent more time consuming than creating, there’s that little bird on my shoulder saying, “Yeah, you learned something but are you actually going to have a better life from this? Are you going to have helped anybody? Have you made any more money?” whatever it might be, without actually acting. So that’s the whole idea of that.
Yes, yes I am, as he says in a calm, cool voice. The Mozart effect, it’s really cool. It’s a set of research results according to Wikipedia that indicate that listening to Mozart’s music may induce a short-term improvement on the performance of certain things and certain mental tasks known as spatial-temporal reasoning. Basically, the whole theory is that a Mozart-type music is actually good for producing and increasing your productivity. That’s the reason that the 30-minute interlude we gifted you just then was actually a soundtrack by Mozart. It’s all about helping you not only spend that 30 minutes wisely, but also spending it more productively as well with that Mozart music. So that’s an extra little surprise gift in there.
Dom: Slightly deep, but cool.
Pete: Slightly deep, but let’s not make it so deep. The funny thing about this whole Mozart effect is apparently, a study between Purdue University and some German agricultural thing back in the ‘90s concluded that cows which are played Mozart melodies produce more milk than cows that don’t. So there you go, guys. That is this week’s episode. I really hope that this has been the most productive for you. It might not have been the most educational, but if you’ve actually implemented for the last 30 minutes or so, it will definitely be the most productive podcast you’ve actually devoured and consumed. See you next week.
Dom: See you next week.
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Links:
Do the Work – Steven Pressfield
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozart_effect – Wikipedia – The Mozart Effect
http://lifehacker.com/5365012/the-best-sounds-for-getting-work-done – LifeHacker Article
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