I'm going to share with you the 12 hacks that keep me insanely productive 99% of every day. These strategies are what allow the top 1% to get more done in a day than most people get done in a week. They're what I use despite having crippling ADHD to become a millionaire by age 27, sell three companies, and build a $100 million business empire. So without further explaining it, these are the 12 ways to be more productive that cost nothing.
The first hack is to increase your cycle time. A couple of years ago, I was hiring a bunch of copywriters and I noticed that one of them was 10 times more productive than the other two. It was interesting because eventually I ended up meeting up with them for a work session and I saw one copywriter type with all 10 figures using hotkeys while the others just type with two fingers like fifth graders. It never occurred to me that a copywriter wouldn't know how to type the person who is 10 times more productive they also never touched their mouse they were using hotkeys the whole time which made their output be that much faster the first rule of productivity is to just get faster at the thing you're doing increase the speed of your mouse if you go in there and just fast forward the speed of your mouse it might feel weird at first but you'll eventually get used to it listening to playbacks on any type of audio put it at 1.5 2x just gets faster learning how to type taking typing classes typing.com learning the hot keys for your email tool your productivity tool to make sure that everything is just one keyboard click away from getting done an advanced version would be automation with ai think zapier or other tools like it where you can plug into workflows and use the AI to understand what you're manually doing for it to process it and automate the whole thing so you never have to touch that work again.
It could be everything from processing comments on your social media to connecting your inbox so that once a day, maybe twice a day, you get a summary of all your emails using AI to figure out which ones are high priority, which are low with even recommended texts to reply to those emails. Learning how to automate and increase workflow and be productive costs you nothing but improves the cycle time. Which brings us to number two, which is to make a stop doing list.
When I'm speaking at a recovery center or at a group home for troubled youth, I always allow the kids to sit in my McLaren. And oftentimes they ask, so what do you actually do? And I usually respond with, it's not what I do, it's what I don't do. Most of us are doing things that take up our time.
And we don't understand this core principle called the 90-10 principle. It's 10% of your work drives 90% of your results. So the key thing is to figure out what are your strengths? What are you great at? Double down on those.
Stop trying to become great at something you hate. Do enough so that it's not a deficit, but definitely don't spend all your time trying to take something you hate doing to try to make it something great when you're good at something and go be world-class at it. Also look at all your vices. When I say it's what I don't do, I don't drink.
I don't hang out with my friends and talk about other people. I don't gamble. I don't vape.
There's all the stuff I don't do to create the space for me to be more productive. I'm also a big fan of finding people that are good at the things I'm bad at and love to do the things I hate. There's people out there. that literally play at things that I consider work.
My bookkeeper, she would rather sit there and stare at a spreadsheet and reconcile bank accounts than anything else. I would hate to do that. I'd rather be on the phone talking to people. I'd rather be at an event presenting.
So just understanding there's other people out there that can- buy back your time that could help you out. You can trade, you can ask for favors. Another idea is to actually make a list of all the things that drain your energy.
Things that you did in the last six months that you wish you wouldn't have done. Make that list, be clear, and then ask yourself in the future when those opportunities come up, I'm going to make sure I immediately say no. And it's as simple as a no.
Reviewing the last six months and deciding what things you did that you would never want to do and put that on the stop doing list is a good strategy. Which brings us to number three, which is to create urgency. I don't know if you can relate, but I'm the kind of guy back in the day where I would wait till the last minute to work on a big project, either homework for school or a big presentation at my work so that I created a sense of urgency to get it done. I used to tell myself some weird line about like, oh, that's when I'm most creative when I have pressure on myself. But it turned out it made it really bad for everybody else in my life.
It meant I didn't prepare and it just created a lot of emotional shrapnel that didn't need to exist. This is exactly how I do it today. First off is I set an earlier deadline for completion. I know I'm making this up in my head. That's fine.
Whatever is the due date, I make the date sometimes two weeks before. Why? Because I just want that urgency to focus my creativity that allows me to come prepared to all these big events in my life.
If it's prepping for a podcast I'm going on or working on my book deadlines or whatever it is, I'd rather have the date way sooner that it's needed so that I also have the breathing room to be more creative and more inspired. Another strategy I love to use is to block time in my calendar, usually about 90 minutes per project. And what I'll do is I'll set a timer. I like to use a Pomodoro timer, which is 25 minutes of focused work and then five minutes off to refresh, to use the bathroom, to get some water.
And then it goes off and I'm back at it again. Whatever project I'm working on, if I put that block time, those 90 minutes in my calendar and I do three sessions of that Pomodoro, it helps me overcome my ADHD. It focuses me. And because the timer is counting down, it's like every five minutes I'm like, how much did I get done? How much did I get done?
It's almost up. It's almost up. And it just focused me to get the most work and makes me more creative.
and more resourceful and doesn't waste my time. Which brings us to number four, which is to commit to others. This one, very few people use.
And it's one that I use almost on a daily basis. I remember when I was writing my book, I tried three times. The first time I sat down and said, oh, I'm gonna commit to writing every morning.
And for three weeks, I sat there and I wrote and I wrote. And I had no process and no purpose. And honestly, I didn't even know what the book was gonna be about.
Then I tried again and I figured, you know what? Maybe I should do this different. And I had a friend help me out with the outline.
But the problem was I was still doing it on my own. By the time I gave up, gave it my third shot, I realized I need somebody else to be committed to. So first thing is I hired a person that became my book CEO.
This person managed me as the talent to be accountable to them. Second is I hired another writing partner. That way I had somebody that was waiting for me on my writing.
And then I also had somebody that was an editor where we would schedule time together to review the work as a team. And on that call, we would do the work of writing the book. Without that I probably wouldn't have created the type of work I did because having somebody else that is a co-creator, a collaborator, somebody to bring different creative ideas, it actually made the whole process fun.
And I now use that strategy in all the different areas of my life, from doing paperwork I don't want to do, to creative ideation with some new content ideas with my team, to strategic planning. Instead of doing it solo, I always invite one or two other people to collaborate with. Even when I had no money, I would just call a friend and ask them if they wanted to do like joint working sessions.
Sometimes we'd meet up at a coffee shop. Other times we would just connect over Zoom. They have accountability to me because I'm sharing my screen. And then we just set a timer. We check in with each other.
We just make sure that, hey, whatever project we said we would move forward, we committed to that person. Because it turns out you will do more for other people than you'll ever do for yourself. Just think about your dog. I mean, if your dog's sick, you're like...
The world stops and we get that dog healed up and all the medication. We give 100% completion of whatever pills the doctor says. Whereas for you, you will go long periods of time sometimes not feeling good without ever taking care of yourself, let alone if you get medication, maybe you'll finish 60, 70% of it.
So understand committing to other people is actually a very powerful tool to keep us focused and be really accountable. Which brings us to number five, which is to schedule time to recharge. I'm not proud of this.
but I used to be the person that would work 100-hour weeks. I would just get up, crank, ignore everything else, ignore my health, ignore my friends, ignore my relationships because I was just doing whatever I could to try to be successful. And it did create momentum.
The challenge is it also created bad momentum because I didn't take the time to recharge, to reset. And the energy was frantic, which means there was no space for what I call step. functions of growth ideas. So now I have a completely different approach and here's how I think about it.
Just like I have blocked time for work, I also have blocked time for rest. See, the magic that I've discovered is in the reset. We are one creative idea away from having our whole life changed. Think about it.
It could be that book idea. It could be that idea to call a friend. It could be a conversation with somebody that you didn't even plan.
What I've discovered is the world works this way. There's two different systems, no matter who you are. Think about the yin and yang.
There's a sympathetic system, which is fight or flight. And then there's the parasympathetic system, which is to relax and to chill out. There's the anabolic system, which takes protein to build muscle. And then there's a catabolic system that eats the protein.
There's eustress and then there's distress. Eustress is when you decide to do something hard and you push on the world to change. And distress is when you feel like the world is pushing on you and it makes it hard. Understanding that if you want to want to be the most productive, the most creative, the most expansive, that you have to have some push and also some time to pull, some drive, and also some reset. I now have cutoff time for when I finish my work because I know my brain's not gonna work well after that.
No good decisions are gonna be made. And I also understand how my body and my energy flows. So for example, I'll go sit in the hot tub and just sit there on my phone and outline new video ideas or reach out to friends I haven't seen in a while or think about creative ideas of things I might wanna do over the next six months.
It's understanding that you can't always be going charge, charge, charge, because it's actually in the reset where you create the space that makes the creativity and the big needle moving decision. come to life. I've learned over the years that vacations make me a better person for my team, for my family.
So when I go away and I go mountain biking with my friends, or I take my family and we go to Europe somewhere is when I come back. I just feel energized. I feel that I've got more life to give other people. And it turns out that if you're building businesses with other people, you have partners, you have customers, you have vendors. Those conversations are going to be a lot more fun when you've reset yourself, you've new energy, you're recharged to attack your work.
I think most people feel guilty taking time off. They think anytime I'm not working or I'm not showing up for my team, that I'm just one second away where something massive is going to implode on my life. And it makes it really hard for them to unplug where the opposite is actually true.
It's kind of, Like a pressure cooker, if you work 100 hours a week and you don't take any time off, eventually that pressure cooker is going to overflow. And you may think that you're good, but your body will start going into adrenal fatigue. You'll have anxiety attacks. I've seen people break out into shingles.
They've got these little sore spots that start breaking out on their skin. And that's literally their body telling them they have not reset. They've not created any self-care in their life.
You can't redline your body nonstop and it not be upset with you. Productivity is... being able to stay consistent for long periods of time without having to reset because you went too far.
Which brings us to number six, which is to wake up early. This one is going to be controversial, but early risers make more money. Period, full stop.
If you look at any person that's ever succeeded from Churchill to Steve Jobs, they get up earlier than most people. Now, I'm not saying you have to join the 5 a.m. club, but I'm not saying you shouldn't. If you're getting up at 8.30, 9 o'clock, you might want to consider changing your whole day to start earlier.
because when you can get up before everybody else does, you will be connected to an energy that very few people ever experience. There's actually a spiritual concept around the 4 a.m. timeframe. Now, you don't have to get up that early, but you should at some point try it out and really attack the work, do creative things.
I get four hours every day from 4 a.m. to 8 a.m. where I get some very deep work, some creative projects to really move my dreams and goals forward because I'm up that early.
Does that mean I go to bed early? Yep, I do. I'd rather wake up early, connected to my creator, and really plug in to the availability of the world because everybody else is sleeping. It's like a different brainwave that's going on. It's quiet.
Nobody's interrupting me. No distractions. Then not have that massive boost in productivity.
And it carries on for the rest of the day. Getting up early is productivity 101. So just start with 15 minutes every week, just a little bit earlier, a little bit earlier. You'll reset the clock. And one day you'll realize, man, this isn't even hard anymore. It's just who you are.
In those morning hours, you will come up with ideas that will transform your whole life. Which brings us to number seven, which is to eat that frog. Now there's a whole book on this by Brian Tracy.
So it's not a new concept, but most people tend to mess this up all the time. Essentially, before you do anything, do the most important thing. I always think about the leading domino.
What's the most important project? Typically the thing I least wanna do, but I know if I do that first, that it's gonna set me up for the rest of the day. Essentially, it's the project that is gonna guarantee me success. marketing, sales focus, revenue driven opportunities for you to get in front of new people. So anything that kind of gives you angst, but it's a meaningful project, I want you to start with that first.
It might be working out because that's hard for you. It could be reading a book. It could be reaching out to people.
It could be learning a new language. Whatever you need to do to really upgrade your life, you want to start with that in the morning so that you build that momentum for the rest of the day. For some people, they'll just make a list of all their big tasks for the day.
And as soon as it, they'll just call their day complete. And I like that idea too. So just make a list and as fast as you can get through everything, eventually your day's done and then you can do whatever you want with the rest of it. But eat that frog first. It might be to get one hour of studying for that big test.
Send out emails to people you've been meaning to connect with. Those cold calls, obviously time zones matter, but you just want to get the hardest thing, the biggest rock, the frog eaten first. Do it first thing in the morning.
Most people like put off the thing because they want to get ready to start. It's like I'm not ready. I need my coffee.
I need my energy. I need this. I need my crystals. I need my timer Yeah, you need some stuff, but just start the work There's no better answer than just doing the thing which brings us number eight, which is to follow your energy flow I used to be the person that would take meetings all the time if somebody could only meet at 8 a.m Okay, let's talk then. Or if I had to create some content, it's like, when can I fit it into my schedule?
And it's like, all right, end of the day, 4.30. I guess that's all I got, 30 minutes. The challenge is it turns out that the energy that I have throughout my day shifts and changes and the type of energy I need for certain types of work is different. And if I mix them up, then those tasks, those projects are not gonna get the best version of me. I look at how my energy is going to flow from the early morning to the late morning, to the lunch, to the early afternoon, to the late afternoon.
And I map the activities or the projects to that. So for example, for me, I start my day with creative tasks, things that require kind of unique perspectives, ideation, outlining stuff, writing, creating, designing. That is my morning. I'm super blessed to be able to do all of that before I ever have a meeting, usually not till 11 a.m. throughout the day.
So I put me first, my big projects first, and then I put. all of my conversations, et cetera, in the afternoon. I gotta create content.
I like to do it right after I work out. Why? There's something about getting a workout in and then going to shoot content where I feel really good about how I'm feeling and how it comes across on the camera.
Everybody's different. I'm more of a morning person. Other people might be a night person. I had little kids that became human alarm clocks, so I had to restructure my whole day.
But knowing your energy, how it flows for you, and batching those projects that require that energy together will change your productivity overnight. Which brings us to number nine, which is to create something to run away from. Whether you believe this or not, most people do more to avoid pain than to gain pleasure.
So this is just how we're wired as humans. We're always trying to look for the danger out in the world and try to avoid it. So if you make up some kind of thing to avoid, it will propel you forward because you're trying not to experience that. So for example, when I wanted to lose 30 pounds in 90 days, I created some stakes. I created the downside if I didn't achieve that goal.
And for me, I chose to enter in a fitness competition as I would look. no shaving chest no tan no super lean i was just wherever that competition was if i didn't hit my goal immediately entry immediately on stage all my friends watching recorded for life that was the stakes so do you think that i didn't hit that goal or i absolutely crushed it i mean the stakes were so high i had something to avoid to run away from using this idea for yourself strategically is the most productive thing you could do maybe there's a political campaign you would hate to donate to And if you don't hit your timeline, you don't hit your goal, you have to donate $500, $1,000 to that political campaign and like really honor it and follow through with it. I mean, some people, if they were trying to get healthy, just the commitment to themselves that they will publish a photo of themselves in their underwear on their social media is enough fear of embarrassment to run away from to go get that result. So just think about it for yourself.
I think that if I wanna be productive, I need a downside thing to avoid to drive away from to get my result. which brings us to number 10 which is to get a carrot on the stick this is essentially the opposite of my previous point this way you'll double your motivation think about it if there's a stake or something at risk if i don't hit it what's my reward if i do hit it implementing rewards for your goals is a game changer when it comes to being productive when i was training for my iron man i had a family vacation on the line if i didn't finish the iron man so i told my wife when we were out eating At a restaurant, do you think she asked me if I wanted dessert? No, she's like, you have to train tomorrow. When I told her I had to get up early with a bunch of friends, did she give me a hard time?
No, because she knew what was on the line. Even enrolling other people to that reward will help them create positive peer pressure on you to achieve that outcome. In those situations, I like to create it where it's not just a reward for me, but it's a reward for my family, for my team members, for my friends, so that they get behind supporting me on my goal.
And it always comes back that you'll always do more for other people than you'll ever do for yourself. So create the reward that helps them as well. well so that everybody wins which brings us to number 11 which is to honor your schedule i can directly correlate someone's net worth to the increment of time they schedule into their calendar it's bananas to me most people do not plan do not put things in their calendar every day is an opportunity for i don't know whatever i feel like or every week is i don't know whatever happens and it's crazy because it's the difference between a life by design versus a life by default if you can just understand that putting the big rocks, the pebbles, the sand into your calendar first before the rest of the water and the other demands on your time come in will allow you to be more productive than anybody else you know.
The key though is, is to honor the calendar, not context switch, not dismiss the notification, not pretend like it's not there first thing in the morning for you to attack. But sometimes you're working on something you didn't finish it. So if you didn't, just move it to the next time block, maybe to the next day or maybe to the afternoon.
One of my favorite concepts is this thing called Parkinson's law. I was just sharing it with a friend the other day. She asked somebody to get something done.
And the person said, well, I'll get it done at the end of the week. I said, why didn't you ask for it to get done tomorrow? They said, well, I don't know. I go, well, that's the difference between four days and one day.
And she's like, I didn't want to be that person. I said, well, you could at least ask. Parkinson's law states the work will expand to the time you allocate to it. And that's true for your calendar. It's true for other people.
Momentum is about stacking small wins. So if you start doing what you say when you're going to do it, it's going to build that confidence because you're keeping the commitments you made to yourself in private. So build that discipline.
Which brings us to number 12, which is to turn off all notifications on your phone. Some of you guys are like, no way, Dan, I'm not doing this. And I'm going to tell you, there are professional PhD doctorate employees working at all these tech companies building all this software that their only job is to distract you. And when I think of the most unproductive thing you could possibly do is allow the notifications, the apps to interrupt you when you are doing something that you decided was important to you just because somebody else somewhere in the world sent you a message.
Your focus is worth more than somebody else's notification. Remember one time I was messaging with one of my new employees and he would always reply, always reply, always reply. And I sat down with him when I want to one and I shared with him, I said, Hey, I love that you want to be on top of things and respond to me right away, but that also tells me that you're easily interrupted. If you're doing it with me, you're probably doing it with other people, which means I'm not getting your best work because I'm not getting your focus work, your heads down deep in the zone work.
So I'm going to need you to batch those activities into one block time so that if you need to reply to me, just sit down and look at your old text messages and reply and then get back to your next project. Most people will never do this because they are addicted to the dopamine hits of those notifications. But to do your best work, you have to get into flow state.
And to do that, you need to get lost in your work, not distracted by those notifications. Most people are on their phone all day, not working because it's an illusion of productivity. Responding to people's messages feels like you're doing something, but you're not getting anything done. You're staying busy, but you're not creating. You're not producing.
You're not pushing a project forward. You're just moving a bunch of information. It's not that it doesn't have to get responded to.
But stacking that and doing it on your own time instead of allowing an app to bug you is gonna be a game changer for productivity. If you wanna learn the 44 cheat codes I know at 44 that I wish I knew at 24, click the link and I'll see you on the other side.