Episode #5: Productivity on Fire with John Lee Dumas

Intro (00:02): Welcome to The Fast-Track Entrepreneur Podcast with your host, Terra Bohlmann. You are about to get filled with business strategies, advice, and motivation to get you prepared to fast track your five year plan in less than one year. So buckle up and let's create your first class business with clarity and confidence.

Terra (00:27): Hello, hello welcome business upgraders! I'm super excited to interview my very first guest on the Business Upgrade podcast. I have John Lee Dumas, host of the amazing podcast Entrepreneurs on Fire on the show today. All right. And so we are going to dig into some really cool stuff. We are going to talk about mastering productivity as time-crunched women entrepreneurs. We always want to do more, whether it's to get more done in our day because sometimes, you know, we honestly think if is there a way to clone ourselves or can we not sleep right and do more in 24 hours. Or maybe you want to get more stuff done so that you can actually have time to do things that you love or simply spend more time with your family. But productivity is one of these things that I feel women entrepreneurs tend to struggle with cause we always want to do more.

Terra (01:28): And then there's a lot of guilt if we're not doing it and all that good stuff. So in this podcast episode, John Lee Dumas and I have a great conversation about mastering productivity and having discipline and focus in just 100 days, I love nothing more than a plan and executing a plan. So this episode, it breaks down exactly how to do that. My own purpose in life is to fast-track women entrepreneurs five-year plan so that they can do it in less than one year. And what I know more than anything in the world is for you to take an idea that you have and turn it into a business, you have to have a plan. And for that business to become wildly profitable, you have to take consistent action. And that's where the productivity comes in. So let's get to the interview where we will get you fired up to be more productive and do the things that you love to do in both your business and in your life.

Terra (02:23): Let me introduce you to John Lee Dumas. He's the founder and host of Entrepreneur on Fire. It's an award-winning podcast where he interviews today's most inspiring entrepreneurs seven days a week, every day. That is so awesome. And with over 1400 episodes and seven figures a year in revenue, JLD has shown the world the power of podcasting. So let's prepare to ignite. So welcome. Welcome, John Lee Dumas. How are you doing today?

John (02:57): Puerto Rico. Sun is shining, our birds are singing, life is good.

Terra (03:01): I love it. I love that you just moved to Puerto Rico and are just doing the entrepreneur lifestyle thing. That is so cool. So cool. Which means you have to be even probably that much more productive and smart with your time because you're probably what surrounded by the most beautiful ocean and scenery in the entire world.

John (03:22): A lot of distractions down here, Terra. You know, we're right in the Caribbean. The weather's always warm and sunny and you know, we have a beautiful rain shower come through at least once a day that just kind of freshens everything up. But then it's sunny again 10 seconds later. So it's pretty ideal.

Terra (03:39): So that means you, you have to be super productive and smart with your time. And when we were talking last week, okay, what are we going to share with women entrepreneurs on this podcast? What really came up that I know that my clients and the women that I know and work with is time management, right? They're always crunched for time. There's never enough time in the day they need to clone themselves. Oh my, like it's exhausting. So it's something you do really well. So what I know for sure is that you have really great resources and insight around how entrepreneurs can manage their day without going absolutely crazy. So will you share some wisdom with us, your secrets to success?

John (04:22): Here's the problem with 99.7% of human beings and 99.9% of entrepreneurs is we spend our days in reaction mode. We spend our days putting out one fire to the next fire, to the next fire. We wake up, we go from one reactive task to the next reactive task, and that is a massive issue. And then when you compound that with, when you finally get done reacting to all these things and you jump on the task that's actually most important that you should have started with at the beginning of the day. You've got your phone dinging and you've got your browser flashing and you've got all these distractions pulling you away. And you may think that like, Oh, I could ignore those things. It's called residue. Every single one of those things is leaving a residue on your conscious and subconscious mind is pulling you away from your Deep Work is a great book by Cal Newport. I highly recommend it for anybody who wants to really understand how that vast majority of human beings and entrepreneurs are absolutely destroying their productivity. Because listen, you ask anybody, how was your day today? Oh my God, I was so busy. Yes. Yeah, always. And guess what? It's okay to be busy because if you're busy producing the right things, then you're winning. But so many people are busy producing the wrong things or just reacting to the fires that are there. It is an absolute disaster. Now we need to be realistic. We are not going to live in this silo-cone of silence where we can just say, you know what? I have this one task I have to get done today. I'm going to sit here quietly and do it until it's done. Never going to happen. So many people try that as a solution and no surprise, they fail, right?

John (06:16): So the way to successfully do this, and this is my personal experience and many, many other successful entrepreneurs who are actually productive by producing the right thing, have shared over the years and it is called The Pomodoro Method. In fact, with me, I was so obsessed with this method because it works so well. I created an entire journal around it called The Mastery Journal: How to Master Productivity, Discipline and Focus in 100 Days. And it takes you through and trained you how to apply this method to the highest capacity possible. So essentially, listen, our brains work best with carrot and sticks. We need to give ourselves a reward after we sit down and use it. Mental brain power to drain our brain. We have to do it that way, otherwise we're never going to sit down and do it. We're going to find a million reasons to procrastinate and get back in our inbox one more time and go down rabbit holes on YouTube and it's over.

John (07:12): It's done. So within the mastery journal, the structure that I set up was, listen, go easy on yourself. All you need to do if you want to win, is give yourself four focus sessions a day. And I think the average focus session, it should be somewhere between 30 to 50 minutes. Again, you choose the range, whatever feels good for you. Maybe you're starting, it's just 30 minutes, never go much more than 50 because then again, you're going to get caught in that thing where you just gonna procrastinate. But 30 to 50 minutes is a really manageable time. We're like, you know what's less than an hour? I know I can focus with that much time. I'm willing to go all in. And then you could have set a timer, Terra. The timer is key because you have to see the first couple of seconds tick off your brain to click into go time mode because once your brain clicks into go time, you know, Hey, this timer is going to go off in 36 minutes.

John (08:04): Like let me get this crap done right now. And again, there's zero distractions. This point, it's just that one focus task. But now where does the carrot and the stick come in? You have to give yourself an enjoyable refresh time afterwards. It's focus then refresh. So for me, what does it, maybe I'll jump on and watch 15 minutes of a survivor episode. Maybe I'll go for a quick walk around the block to get outside and get some sun just to kind of breathe. You know, maybe I'll go downstairs and grab a quick snack during that, like whatever it is, know that you're going to get that reward after this focus time, but not until after it. And are able and willing to set just four of those focus sessions throughout a day. You will be shocked at the quality, productive, and meaningful work that you get done.

Terra (08:53): And by the way, you hypothetically have that be done before noon. Again, we're talking about it a total of less than two and a half hours of actual work time. But the amount of quality work you're getting done is through the roof. And just to end this little rant, it's Parkinson's Law is, so real tasks will expand to the time allotted. So if you want to get something done in 37 minutes, set a timer for 37 minutes, press go and wash the first couple of seconds, go off, then get your little booty to work.

Terra (09:27): I love that, I love it. So I use, I time myself all the time. I love the Pomodoro, I love that method. So I'm so glad that you have a mastery journal that compliments it cause it can feel overwhelming when you start talking about, you know, Parkinson's, blah blah, blah, blah, blah.

Terra (09:43): And I'm sure you break it down so beautifully. So one thing I found with the Pomodoro is you know, it's real big on the tomato timer, right? And one thing that I thought was really cool, yeah, you could use your phone, which is totally fine, but I went and got, I didn't get a tomato timer. I have a champagne bucket timer. It just is, you know, very girly. But what, what really gets me going is the click, click, click, click, click. You know that these timers that you, you know, our parents probably used or mothers used to when they would bake cookies, they would put the timer on the old school timer. But the click, click, click just keeps me like so focused and going. So I love that. But yeah, the timer is absolutely key. So it's perfect. I love it. So that keeps us super productive. It keeps us super focused. Right? What else can we do in order to just have this mastery that you talk about?

John (10:35): So the three big components is productivity, discipline and focus. So we've already kind of covered the productivity part where you're producing the right things with your four focus sessions. But you need to understand that discipline is being a disciple to a plan of action. So few people actually have plans and so they wonder why when they get free minutes, they like run to their email inbox. Let me get a quick hit of dopamine because somebody forwarded me a piece of spam. Sweet. I hope that really works out well for you and your business, right? But the reality is this, like you need to be a disciple to a plan of action and execute that plan. And so I love the phrase "win tomorrow today".

Terra (11:16): Like to me, if you are not the day before, or I should say if you are not today, but the end of the day. And for a lot of people that works as making this one of their last tasks of the day during their quote unquote after action review. So at their end of day review, if you're not actually putting a plan in place for tomorrow, you're waking up behind the game. Like you're gonna count on your, you know, sleepy brain tomorrow to like make a plan for that day. No, that's a losing mentality. Win tomorrow today by creating that plan of action and then be a disciple to that plan of action and just execute it. And the last of this is once you have these things in place, you have to focus and that's follow one course until success. And so what is that one thing that you're focusing on during that one focus session?

John (12:06): And then focus session number two, Hey, maybe you need two focus sessions to get that thing done. That's fine. And then the third you're going to dedicate to something else. And then the fourth you're going to dedicate back to that first task. How you use these focus sessions is up to you. Maybe it can be four different things throughout a day and you're really moving the needle forward in all of those four things. Great. But you need to have a plan of action. And then focus on that and execute.

Terra (12:31): I love it. I mean that's just, it's truly about intention and when you're controlling your time, right? As entrepreneurs, some of us have control issues. I know that's no secret, but when you're controlling your time, and I love the idea of focus sessions and then at the end of the day, you know, you at least if you, even if you use all four of those focus sessions to do something, you've got something across the goal line, which makes you feel even that much more successful in your day. So it's brilliant. Brilliant, brilliant. Well, this has been amazing. Will you tell us, where do we go find the mastery journal?

John (13:05): So the mastery journal will be waiting for you at themasteryjournal.com. You can also just search for the mastery journal on Amazon as well. You're an Amazon customer and yeah.

Terra (13:18): Perfect! Thank you so much for sharing all your wisdom and knowledge. This is fantastic. I truly appreciate you, John Lee Dumas and thank you again,

John (13:27): Terra, it was great chatting. Thanks for having me on and have a wonderful and productive day.

Outro (13:34): There you have it. Another episode packed full of strategies and motivation that you can use every day to put your business on the fast track for a podcast recap and more resources, visit terrabohlmann.com. Don't forget, subscribe to the podcast and get what you need to help fast track your five year business plan.