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Hey, Jordan Harbinger here.
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Welcome to Mini-Sode Monday.
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I m happy to be here with you, kicking off the week with something quick and actionable that you can implement right away that ll make you more magnetic and effective.
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Today with me, once again, Noah Kagan of AppSumo, slash sumo me, slash okaydork, slash, that s it.
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You probably own a lot more domains, but.
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We were talking today on our 6.18 or whatever mile walk in the morning about productivity and how people often ask, how do you get so many things done?
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I assume you get the same question.
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And I m not naturally, or I should say I have not naturally been a productive person.
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I do get a lot of things done because I put systems in place.
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And the systems are very simple.
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But whenever people ask for productivity advice or how to get more things done advice, they always want to make it really complicated.
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There s tons of huge systems and they fail or they don t implement them.
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And so I wanted to talk about why productivity is actually very simple but just the concepts and systems are seldom applied.
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With productivity, I think a lot of people do a few things incorrectly with productivity.
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Number one, they re not prioritizing the right problems.
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So they re like working on random shit versus working on the right shit.
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Number two, they re looking for some tool to solve the problem when it s actually just themself.
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And so really what, you know, my favorite productivity ever was like my Trails 650 for the old school people out there.
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Is that a palm pilot yeah, I got so much that and like mine.
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You know journal planner my daily planner I was killing on the productivity game my belief is two things one I think people have figured out their productivity since they were probably in high school and By this point more or less it won t change right they haven t bothered to update it They like they made electronic what they used to put on maybe in the little student homework notebook or something, but that s a pretty much it
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Totally.
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I think people think that the new productivity tool is going to do the work, but it won t.
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The one thing that I would recommend that I ve found for myself, and it sounds like for you, Jordan, too, specifically, is look at when you ve been the most productive and how can you replicate that?
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So for me, my most productive time is when I m in an airplane.
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I honestly probably cure cancer like if you left me in an airplane for a year cancer would be cured HIV I mean, I don t hear that scientists all have working on cancer and HIV for the last couple decades I just need more flight flight time for flying hours.
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I ve seen those miles, bro Give me the miles.
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No, but the point being is that you have to understand.
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Okay.
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So what is it about that environment?
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And then how do you recreate that on a daily, weekly, monthly, yearly basis?
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So for me, it s, okay, I don t have really anyone else around me.
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Two, I already have blocked out work I want to do.
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And three, there s no distractions.
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I never pay for Wi-Fi on airplanes.
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I never do the same thing.
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I can survive for 14 plus hours, clearly, without internet.
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And that s the longest flight you re ever probably gonna have.
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So there s absolutely no reason, I have so many things to read and write that require no access to the internet.
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And I d be shocked if you re listening to this and you re like, no, I actually need internet the entire time, and I m gonna get 100 emails about some people who do things that are always connected, and that s fine, but if you have nothing to read, read for pleasure.
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You ll thank me later.
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I guess the two things that I wonder with that is, number one, I block it out on my calendar, so I actually have time each week where I m like, this is my airplane mode?
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Yep.
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Do you have airplane mode?
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Well, I actually do.
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Holy shit.
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Yeah, this is my calendar.
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Yeah.
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Thank you.
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That s fucking wild.
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These are all different appointments, of course.
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So yeah, what do you call your airplane mode?
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I put prep, show prep is what it s called.
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Show prep?
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But show prep mode is literally anything from reading to researching to replying to my producer s internal communication or something like that, but even that s rare.
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but I will also mostly, most of the time I m literally just reading at that point and taking copious notes on what I m reading.
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That s it.
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One thing I wonder about, do you feel better when you re doing interviews and creating things or when you re consuming things?
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That s a great question.
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Probably something for a more philosophical one for another show, but creating, definitely.
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100% creating.
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Exactly.
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I think that s just something I try to get back to.
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It s like when I m starting to reply to a bunch of emails and not being productive, I m like, this is why I feel like shit.
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How do I feel better?
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Yeah, just go start making things and creating things and moving things forward versus just consuming and taking things in.
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I definitely understand that.
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Here s where a lot of people, in my opinion, are mistaken.
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They will replace creating something with, well, I wrote back all those, I replied to all those emails, and I handled all that, I m in inbox zero, I did all this social media stuff.
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That s not really creating.
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because you re not really creating a body of work by doing that, you re treading water.
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And so in the moment it feels good, like I m at Inbox Zero, this is amazing, this is so good, and then you look back and you could have a whole year of Inbox Zero where you didn t do a damn thing that s worth, that has any legacy whatsoever, right?
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There s no legs.
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And so it s ultimately very unfulfilling and unsatisfying.
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True.
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So what I use for productivity, for people who are like, yeah, yeah, I get it, okay, what do you use?
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Just give us the fucking tool.
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Right, precisely.
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All right, yeah, give us your tools, I ll give my tool.
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So here s what I got.
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I use my, this is my number one productivity tool, is BusyCal or iCal or whatever calendar, Google Calendar that you use.
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I block everything off.
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It uses 15 minute blocks.
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That doesn t mean every task is 15 minutes long.
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When do you block it off?
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When do you review and start blocking off things?
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This stuff fills up before the day arrives.
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Well before the day arrives.
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This calendar is made largely weeks or months in advance.
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Do you review it though so like two things?
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I m wondering so one like on my Sundays I look at my calendar, and I kill a lot of stuff cuz I m like that s a lot of shit I just don t want to do and secondly I don t do this yet, but this is what I m doing moving forward and experimenting with is I create daily themes I don t it s I would imagine you have something like that so like Monday is my prep day Tuesday for you would be your interview day Wednesday is your like relaxed a Thursday s your exploration day, and then Friday is another interview day and
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I do that, but less so.
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For example, look, Monday, when I look at Monday, I ve got a lot of administrative stuff.
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It s like, check the mail, the actual physical mail, check the mail in the office, which is all scanned by a company called Earth Class Mail.
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I check that online.
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I check our corporate Facebook pages, make sure that our employees  internal communication stuff is working.
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I have a show prep meeting with producer Jason where we go over all the guest pitches that made the initial filter, and we look at the next two weeks ahead to make sure, do we have the book from this person?
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Did this book get read?
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Do we have the resources?
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Are we ready for the shows this week?
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That kind of thing, and general catch up.
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Then I usually work out.
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I ve got a Chinese lesson.
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I eat some lunch.
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And then I do the rest of the day, I prep for shows, I leave for show prep.
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Because if the answer to our prep meeting questions is no, I m not ready for Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday, or Friday s show, I gotta finish that stuff up.
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And that could take hours.
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That could literally take hours.
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That is crazy.
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So how many hours are you prepping per an interview?
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Eight to 10 hours.
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Yeah, but that s one of the reasons why they re actually decent is because I ve looked at everything they ve done, and then I ve read deeper than what, anyway, we re on a totally different topic here.
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So use this, what else do you use for your productivity and your tools?
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So I block off, here s the key though.
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If it s on the calendar, it gets done.
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If it s not on the calendar, it doesn t get done.
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And that sounds really dumb, straightforward, but this is the way most people are.
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Well, this is on the calendar, but I m kinda tired, or oh, but I ve gotta do this other thing, so I m just gonna do that over this time slot.
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But what happens to this task?
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It gets bumped into oblivion.
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So the beautiful part about having it physically on this calendar is if I do something else, I will mark it in the calendar, and then I gotta drag this thing somewhere else in my week to get it done.
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and where does it go?
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Because most people, many people anyway, will spend the entire day going through a bunch of different stuff, and this stuff will get pushed, but since they re not moving it around on the calendar, they re just saying, I ll do it later, they end up with 10 hours of work that they ve got to do, and it s Friday afternoon at 2 p.m., and none of it s getting done ever.
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or it backs up so far that they start to feel guilty about not doing anything, and you start to feel like crap, and those tasks start to fall by the wayside, and things that should be essential are falling by the wayside because at 8.30, you didn t feel like going to the gym, you felt like doing something else, and you didn t rearrange it on the calendar.
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The other thing is, if it s not on the calendar, it does not get done, so if there s no room for a workout in here,
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you gotta delete something and put the workout in there.
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Don t start working out over the call that you ve got with this conference call, and don t be late for this, and don t push your inbox stuff off, urgent emails, because you re working out, and then just not do it.
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It s really, really easy, but it just requires discipline.
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You just have to be anal retentive about planning out your entire day, hour by hour, from when you get up until when you are done working.
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So I have something written here that says shut down complete and that s at six or eight p.m.
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and that is the end of the day and I literally say shut down complete.
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This is credit to Cal Newport who wrote Deep Work.
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I say shut down complete, I put my laptop or my computer away, I go to Jenny s parents  house, eat dinner, whatever, go out to dinner, go to a movie, watch TV, which is pretty rare but still done with Westworld and things like that.
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Sometimes I will read after this if I m like, but that book is so good.
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I will read it, but only if I m enjoying it.
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If it s like, oh, I m slogging through this damn thing for the show, it doesn t happen.
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But luckily, most of the shows and most of the people I interview are friggin  fascinating, so I can t wait to finish this stuff.
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So this is really important, and this has been my productivity key for so, so, so long alongside HBO.
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to-do app like MeisterTask, Todoist, or Remember the Milk.
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And the reason for that is because what happens is otherwise people start using their email inbox for to-dos and that becomes a huge effing disaster because most of our inboxes are crazy anyway.
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So imagine if you ve got
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Fan mail, internal employee communication, and you re using that as a to-do list.
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What s at the bottom of that inbox?
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A bunch of to-dos that never got done and never will.
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So you have to have this.
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The other reason is because if I don t know what time I m gonna be able to do something, because that s the excuse most people have for not putting something in the calendar right away, then what?
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Where do I write it?
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Am I gonna remember it?
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Hell no.
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Am I gonna put it on my calendar at a time and then move it later?
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Maybe, but what if there s no time in the next two weeks because you ve actually been using the system and you ve planned it?
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You have to put it into another task app to migrate it into the calendar and you have to do that every single effing day or you will drown.
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Does that make sense?
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Well, so you put everything, what about something like a thought?
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Like, hey, maybe I want to do this in the future.
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Where do you put that?
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That goes into either a project in MeisterTask, which is what I have right now, or some people use Evernote for someday maybe.
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I don t like that because I want to actually move someday maybe into tomorrow.
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It s interesting, I was at a 37signal seminar a few years ago, and I stuck with it.
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I stayed the whole time, because it was great.
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Wow.
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Can t believe that.
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But what they do is that they generally don t create a roadmap for their products.
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They just delete everything, and then they kind of look for what stuff keeps bubbling up.
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And so I ve been trying to get better at that, where I have an idea for something, and I ll put it on my note, and I use iNotes, or I put it in my to-do list.
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And then I ll delete it, and I ll be like, I wonder if it comes back.
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And if it comes back, it s like, OK, that s clearly something that I ve been thinking about and I want to do.
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Interesting, so it comes back meaning somebody asked you to make a networking product.
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Somebody asked where that networking product is.
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Why don t you have a networking product?
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Hey, I wish you d teach me how to network.
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Why don t you have a, yeah, okay, that s why we made Social Capital.
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So many people were like, I m just, I wanna just learn networking for business, especially a lot of the AOC sisters.
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They were like, look, a lot of this stuff s super useful, but I wanna come to boot camp.
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Oh, I can t.
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Why the hell not?
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Here s Social Capital, right?
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So it s a unisex product that teaches business and relationship networking.
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because people kept effing asking for it, and not only that, but we were good at it.
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So it s like, why aren t we teaching that?
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People want it, and this is something we ve basically almost mastered at this point.
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We should create a product about it.
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Not just, well, we did the market research, and studies show that they ll buy this if we create a.
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crapola PDF and then put it up online for $10 billion.
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That s what most people, marketing-wise, do.
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But you re right, what keeps bubbling up and what am I actually good at, that Venn diagram in the middle there, what am I good at and what keeps bubbling up, that center overlap, that s where you should be creating products and services.
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Yeah, we just divert.
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We just took a turn now.
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We ll come back, but I dig that I dig that actually I think that s awesome The few other things that I do for productivity.
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I was trying to think about it So I use a moleskin so a lot of times what you ll see Jordan is like This is a date and I ll put generally three to five things showing me a notebook with a date and with three to five bullets next to it
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Yeah and I generally what I do personally is on Sunday nights I plan my week and so I ll actively look at like is this a week that I m looking forward to or not and then I ll try to understand what it is and I ll cut things or add things and I m like and I so it helps me adjust and look forward to the week as well as like and I ve said this before I have a text file I just use a text file and so what I do is and I ll do two other things and I ll share but the text file I have basically things I want to work on things I want to work out like my fitness and then personal things like what would be fun
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And so I m like, oh, here are the fun things I m looking forward to this week, like coming to the seminar, seeing some friends, going to SF.
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That was on my list for this week, and now I can check it off that I did it.
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The other thing I do, because I think what the challenge is, is that there s a short-term kind of like, just get the shit done, and then there s long-term projects.
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And long-term projects, frankly, it s just a combination or culmination of a bunch of small tasks.
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So I have long-term projects that I keep on a sticky on the background of my laptop and all my laptops And so I always continually see my long-term projects, and it s like all right well Am I moving towards that do I have it in the calendar do I have small tasks are helping me lead to?
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Right is small tasks, so you don t have one in the back.
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That s like write book.
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It s like figure out topic of book outline first chapter or whatever I don t know how to write a book, but you get what I m saying
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Yeah, so I in my bucket list for the year on my sticky notes.
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I have write a book, but then each week I m looking back on my to do is like is this something I can something small that I can start accomplishing it moving towards the week Perfect.
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I hope this was helpful.
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This is a little glimpse into the world of Noah Kagan and myself our productive
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measures that we take to make sure we re getting stuff done and moving towards our goals all the time.
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Don t forget about the Art of Charm Challenge.
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We re gonna help you connect with others, create more productive, there s that word again, personal and business relationships, and we ve got step-by-step challenges to help you move forward, and there is a Facebook group with.
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Literally thousands of other AOC family taking the challenge as well.
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Of course, AJ and I are in there with the rest of the Art of Charm team, helping you all move through the challenges.
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Text charmed, that s C-H-A-R-M-E-D, to 33444 here in the States, or go to theartofcharm.com slash challenge and get rockin .
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Alright everybody, have a great week.