3 Practical Steps: Get More Done in Less Time and Create Time to Enjoy Your Life (Part 2)

In Part 1, I discussed the first step in producing more output via less input, and how to increase your "free time" by drastically reducing the deceptively voluminous time spent on unnecessary email checking. For you those of you who missed it, you can check it out HERE.

What follows is the second step in creating more time in your day. I promise I'll spare you the waves of prolixity I may have drowned you with in Part 1.

2. Eliminate All Time Wasters In Your Day

We humans are experts at creating distractions in order to avoid completing the tasks that are actually of greatest importance. I can't tell you how many times I'm sitting in a coffee shop, or walking by an office window, and catch a glimpse of someone who's clearly supposed to be working but has Facebook, YouTube, Pinterest, or a Blog pulled up on their computer screen.

And I won't try to fool you by preaching that I'm the most self-controlled guy of the bunch, nor that I'm immune to the time-wasting practice of fools. So what are a few things I recently instituted, and would be remiss not to recommend them to you as well?

1. Block all the websites you're addicted to out of pure entertainment. 

For those of you who have worked on your laptop while traveling via airplane, even notice how much more you were able to accomplish in the short time you sat there? As is kinda obvious, it's because you didn't have any access to internet (I'm pretty sure some airlines may have internet access on planes now, but I digress...)

When we're connected to the internet, we almost can't help ourselves but go to our favorite "fire gazing" web domains. These websites do nothing but allow you to delay doing what will actually provide you the greatest return for investment.

The problem is, sometimes you need the internet to accomplish the task at hand (using an online program or app, for example), so it's not always a matter of simply turning off the internet to get something done. Besides, even if it is, you can always click the "On" switch should you lose self-control and desire to browse the web rather than complete your work.

So how to remedy this issue of our own depravity?

If you use Google Chrome, install Google Nanny, and if you use Firefox, then install Leech Blocker. I personally use Google Nanny, and I love it.

The beauty of these is you set a pre-determined time in which it will prevent you from logging on to particular websites. You can choose what days you're blocked, and what times within those days you are blocked. I have personally chosen to block, from 8AM-10PM on weekdays, Facebook and all the popular fitness and "lifestyle design" blogs I tend to lurk on to distract myself. I can check up on them during the weekend, to see anything I may have missed. I do schedule a 15-minute window for Facebook to open up so that I can post these blogs online, but outside of that it's an extremely refreshing media fast.

And don't worry, contrary to popular belief, the world isn't going to end if you left of the loop for a few days in the blog-o-sphere.

I chose 8AM-10PM because those are the hours I'm typically near my computer, and I can't tell you how many weekday evenings I've gotten to bed wayyyy later than planned due to some pointless internet roaming. 10PM keep me from logging on the web when I should be climbing into bed.

 I can't tell you how much time this has saved me, and how much faster it has allowed me to accomplish tasks. As when Jacopo reminds the Count in The Count of Monte Cristo, "I must protect you, even if it means protecting you from yourself."

2. Stop checking your email so darn much.

Yes, I had to repeat this, even if I already belabored the point in part 1. It's funny, as I feel that all of us across the board tend to enjoy checking email much more than we enjoy sending email. If you don't batch your email and make your checking/sending an efficient and time-saving process (as discussed in part 1), this leads to the creation of an enormous gorilla on your back, constructed from all the emails you haven't replied to.

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Next week, in the last installment of this series, I'll cover a critical action step to that drastically cuts down on the amount of time it takes to finish an important task. Up until now, we've learned how to remove distractions, but next week we'll go over a bit of the actual "process" in task completion.

3 Practical Steps: Get More Done in Less Time and Create Time to Enjoy Your Life

"What's it going to be?" I mused blithely to myself as I rummaged through the gift bag. "A 21st century shaving kit? A manly hunting knife? Perhaps some Under Armour Boxers*?"

I was seated at the rehearsal dinner for the wedding of my eldest brother, Brian. The dinner and celebratory toasts had recently subsided, and Brian had just made his rounds passing out the gifts to his groomsmen, me being included in the bunch. As I extricated  The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss from my gift bag, I had no clue of the impact it was about to make on my daily living.

Upon holding the book in my hands, perusing through the table of contents and the back cover, I was honestly a bit dubious of the book's promises and claims. I had heard of Tim Ferriss and his book (as probably most of you reading have, too), as Ferriss had quickly launched into semi-celebrity status in the sphere of lifestyle design and blogging upon the release of The 4-Hour Workweek. However, I'm not typically a fan of "Self-Help" materials, which is what I thought this particular book embodied. I find that 95% of the people who read self-help books may, yes, genuinely enjoy what they’re taking in during the read, but they then typically walk away and do nothing about it; they fail to implement any of the nifty solutions to their problems. And as we know: Education without action is just entertainment. Nothing more than that, really.

But at the same time, I knew that Brian had read (and applied) the concepts in The 4-Hour Workweekhimself in order to successfully create his own business, shortly after he made the decision to leave a steady and "safe" position he held at a company ranked top 100 on the Fortune 500. Not to mention, he was now living and working according to when he operated most productively (as opposed to the non-negotiable 9-5 workday most corporations enforce), and enjoying the convenience of working from home.

So I decided to give the book a shot. I was looking for a new book to read, anyway…

350 pages and a few action steps later, I realized that the 4HWWwas far from your ordinary feel-good, lets-sit-holding-hands-in-a-circle-singing-kumbaya self-help book. No, this was a book chalked full of practical, real-world strategies that anyone – be they an employee of a large corporation, an entrepreneur, a business owner, or manager – could immediately follow and see instant results.

Taking myself for example, I’ve already found myself experiencing an extra two hours of free time per day, more enjoyable weekends, and increasingly productive work periods in which I produce more output in less time. And I'm just getting started. 

And so I wanted to share some of the information here, to help those of you reading who may be in need of a bit of lifestyle redesign.

-Are you perpetually buried by the incessant and stubborn flow of emails? -Do you check your Facebook 15 times per day  (I'm being generous here by lowballing this number...), and wonder why you can seemingly never complete anything? -Does your To-Do List add items to itself faster than you can check them off? -Do you feel like you never get to do the things you actually ENJOY doing?

Now, before I continue, let me be clear that I have absolutely no intention of working only four hours per week; I simply love my job too much and personally prefer to be actively and intimately involved in what I do on a daily basis: Teaching athletes and regular people how to move and feel better. (If you hate your job, maybe it's best to reevaluate what you're doing as a career before we even think about moving further with this topic.)

Nor do I pretend that the majority of you could achieve a realistic 4-hour workweek, even if you followed all of the steps in the 4HWW to a tee.

But what I do think that all of you reading can (hopefully) agree with is this: We should work so that we can live, NOT live so that we can work.

And my wish is that these steps can at least help you get started walking down the right path.

1a. Check and Respond to Email Only Twice Per Day

Email (and I'll throw Facebook and Twitter into the mix, too) is perhaps the greatest time waster in modern society. With large thanks to the invention and widespread use of the smartphone, email has become a flighty temptress that people can't resist checking into at every possible moment: first thing in the morning, every 5 minutes during the work day, standing in line for coffee, walking down the city street, in between sets of squats at the gym, right before bed and even during dinner with family. Heck, when I was working as a personal trainer, I had a client who insisted that he carry his phone with him during every session, checking the incoming email as soon as his phone buzzed.

With instant access to each other and instant access to information, we have created this false sense of urgency that the world is going to end unless we check our email and/or social media accounts every few seconds.

Why does this really matter, and how does it pertain to the title of this article? Accomplishing critical tasks in less time (and thus freeing up extra time in your day) requires complete focus on the project at hand, with as few interruptions as possible. Quoting Ferriss:

There is a psychological switching of gears that can require up to 45 minutes to resume a major task that has been interrupted. More than a quarter of each 9-5 period (28%, or 134.4 minutes) is consumed by such interruptions, and 40% of people interrupted go on to a new task without finishing the one that was interrupted. This is how we end up with 20 windows open on our computers and nothing completed at 5pm.

In fact, a psychiatrist at King's College in London performed an IQ study in which he determined that people stoned (under the influence of marijuana) actually performed HIGHER on IQ tests than those who were "under the influence" of distracting email! You can read the story HERE.

I love what Ferriss points out later in the book:

Multi-tasking is dead. It never worked and it never will. Intelligent people love to sing its praises because it gives them permission to avoid the much more challenging alternative: focusing on one thing.

Here are a few steps I've employed to reduce my frequency of email interruption down to just two times per day. Guys, I really can't emphasize enough how this has RADICALLY altered how much more I accomplish in a day, and even (which may sound counterintuitive) how much more punctual it has made me with responding to emails.

A. Turn off the audible alert that lets you know when a new email has come in. B. Turn off the automatic Send/Receive feature that delivers new email as soon as it's sent to you. 

I don't know anyone who can honestly say they can resist the urge to pull up the email screen as soon as they hear that oh-so-familiar "Ding!" that rings every time new email comes in. It creates an unnecessary distraction, and it's the virtual equivalent of crack.

Or, for those of you Mac users (I have one), you know how hard it is to resist perpetually checking the notification on your dock informing you of how many unread emails you have.

C. Only check email TWICE per day. This, for me personally, has been the greatest difference maker. 

Ferriss recommends 12noon and 4PM, as he says that these are the times that provide the greatest likelihood of ensuring you've received a response from a previous email sent. I personally use 11AM and 2:30PM because of my schedule, but it's really up to you.

In fact, while I follow this policy for my business email, I now only check my personal email once per day, at 11AM.

Paranoid that you're going to receive something so critically important that it can't wait until your allotted email checking? Use an autoresponder to let people know of your new policy, such as the example Ferriss provides:

Greetings All,

Due to high workload and pending deadlines, I am currently responding to email twice daily at 12pm ET [be sure to indicate your time zone] and 4pm ET .

If you require help with something that can’t wait until either 12pm or 4pm, please call me on my cell phone at 555-555-5555.

Thank you for understanding this move to greater effectiveness.

All the best, Tim Ferriss

The beauty of that is you are providing your phone number for those that genuinely need to immediately reach you for an issue that's actually important or time-sensitive. You can see another example of a more "boss friendly" autoresponder HERE.

You know what a surprising side effect of this new policy has been for me, personally? I'm now actually MORE productive and punctual with responding to people via email!

Since I know that (if I'm doing my 2:30pm email check) I won't be on my email for the rest of the day, I can't use the "Oh I'll respond to them in 30 minutes" excuse, which as you know, can quickly lead to a stacking of 'Marked as Unread' items in your inbox, stressing you out to no end.

1b. Don't Check E-Mail, Texts, or Facebook First Thing In The Morning

This habit alone has changed my life. Checking email used to be one of the very first things I did every single day, even on the weekends. I'd wander out into my living room, pet my cat good morning, and then flip open my computer and check my email. I don't know what it is, but I think that most of us are now programmed to check email whenever possible, and not even out of necessity, but out of mere habit.

And I don't have a smartphone, but I can only imagine those that do probably check their email and/or social media while lying in bed. C'mon', admit it, I know you do!

After refusing to do it for a couple weeks now, I've experienced firsthand why checking email first thing, while a seemingly innocuous habit, is actually quite detrimental:

1. It will automatically cause you to get caught up and distracted by whatever you have seen arrive in your inbox. Say goodbye to a distraction-free morning, and hello to immediate saturation of seemingly uber-important, really-can't-wait-another-minute matters.

2. You will now have your thoughts occupied by the emails that arrived, dramatically hindering the real, important tasks you had to accomplish or work on that morning.

3. It can subconsciously sets the tone for the day of checking email nonstop. As we've seen  above, we want to avoid this at all costs.

4. It can take up a deceptive amount of time (especially if you throw Facebook and Twitter into the mix), erasing hours from your day before you even knew what hit you. This can be especially dangerous during the weekends, pulling you away all morning from things that, oh I don't know, involve you doing something fun with the people you care about the most?

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Some of you may be sitting there thinking "This would be impossible and impractical for me to do." And you know what, I thought the same thing. But I dare you to try it. You can thank me later, don't worry.

I realize I've only covered Step 1 out of the 3 practical steps I promised you in the title of this post, but I'll be back on Friday with Part 2. (**Update: You can view Part 2 HERE**)

  *The inventor of those can have my firstborn son.

Attitude vs. Environment

  Great teams create an environment and culture that allow players to unlock their potential.  Outside of sport, where we grow up, who we socialize with, and what our family structure is often shapes our personality.  There’s no doubt that a strong and positive environment can be a major factor in determining success, however environment isn’t everything.

As a coach, or organization, it is your job to try to create the best possible environment for your players.  The signs in the locker room, the practice facilities, and the marketing of the team, can all have a great impact on the performance of an athlete.  Don’t take for granted the ability to shape environment and give athletes the best opportunity for success.

As a player you often have little control over your environment.  You don’t pick your team, your teammates, the coaches, where you play, etc.  In fact, we may be forced into certain environments that we have little control over.  It’s often in those situations where excuses manifest and frustration takes over.  Examples like, “my team doesn’t care about winning”, or this team “isn’t any good”, or “nobody takes this seriously”, are real examples of environment dictating attitude.

As a player figure out how you can have the best possible attitude even in the worst possible environment.    Let your attitude be a driving force in changing the environment for the better.  Often when our environment is poor, we fall into the trap of allowing ourselves to blend into that poor environment.

If your environment is a 2 out of 10 and your attitude is a 4 out of 10 then you may be contributing to the poor environment.  However, if you take that 2 environment and improve your attitude to a 7 then maybe you can improve your environment.  It’s a simple change that can often be the difference between winning and losing.  Make the change and improve your attitude and environment today.

As the great Gandhi said, “be the change you want to see in the world.”

One More Baseball Testimonial

A couple weeks ago I posted a few testimonials of some of our student-athlete baseball players headed off to DI schools to play this upcoming Fall (You can view it HERE in case you missed it). Making a long story short, I didn't end up including one of them due to not having access to it at the time, but I'd like to post it now as it's more than well-deserved.

David Palmer was kind enough to do this for us. As you can see from the picture at the top of this page, he loves barbell glute bridging. The picture of him showcases him hitting a 600lb BB Glute Bridge (a personal record for him) for reps at the end of Summer training. No, we don't typically "test" people's glute bridges, but given David's enamorment with the lift, we thought it only fair to grant his request to test it.

Anyway, David is a competitive swimmer on top of excellent at baseball, and he drove the 30+ minutes each direction to train at SAPT year-round, no matter how many other commitments he had going on. He's headed off to Radford this Fall, and we wish him the best! Take it away David:

How Will You Succeed?

I stumbled across this on Facebook the other day.  Normally I just scroll through things like this; it doesn't usually make a huge impact on my day.  For some reason though this one stuck when I saw it.  I'm not entirely sure why but it just struck a chord with me, and I really liked it.  I believe it was the first line that might have done it for me, "I succeed because I am willing to do the things that you are not."  I have a lot of changes going on in my life and this line made me think about all the athletes and clients I've worked with over the past couple of years at SAPT.  The large majority of which have succeeded or will succeed in the near future.  Is this because of me or the other coaches at SAPT?  I say no.  The coaching staff at SAPT is merely a vehicle our athletes and clients have used to travel on the road to success.  It's something they posses within themselves that has gotten them to where they are.  As I said SAPT was just the vehicle, it was up to them to turn on the car and drive down the path.  The people I look back on and also the ones I currently watch train now have something their peers do not. They succeed because they are willing to do the things their peers are not.  They are willing to wake up in the early morning during their summer break to come train hard.  They are willing to come in after a long, hard day at work and get after it.  They are willing to train through and around injuries.  They are willing to hold onto hope that they will get past those injuries, even when it seems like all hope is lost they still do not ever give up.  And they are willing and able to understand that success does not happen over night but only through hard, grueling work.

When I think about the kids, teenagers and adults I've worked with I am in awe of their drive, their tenacity and most importantly their heart.  I am forever grateful to them for the inspiration and motivation they have given me and the other SAPT coaches.  They will never stop getting better, they will never give up... Ever. That is why they succeed.

How will you succeed?

Q & A: Can I Add an Extra Session to my College Strength and Conditioning Program?

I recently received the email below from one of our student-athletes who's currently playing D1 baseball for a university, and I thought I'd share the question+response for those of you who may be interested. Hey Steve,

I just had a quick question for you. Right now, the lifts we are doing as a team are pretty intense, but only last about 30-45 mins. I feel tired at the end of them, but don't feel like I am getting the necessary amount of work in. Obviously I have to do the team lifts but is there anything else I can be doing on my own to try and increase my strength? Right now, we do Squats-mon, Bench-wed, and close grip press-friday, however, all three days we do complete body work in some way. I know, two bench lifts in a row...bad. One day is bad enough. Could I be doing dead lifts on Sat or something?

Any input you could give me would be great. Thanks.

Always a good time when you're bench pressing twice a week, on back-to-back lifting days, right? Especially in the context of a baseball strength and conditioning program, given that bench press numbers have consistently shown such a strong correlation with rotational power, throwing speed, and batting average......Or not.

First of all, I'm honest when I say I'm extremely proud of you for recognizing some of the "holes" in the program you're doing, and your drive to make yourself better by working hard even outside of the mandatory lifting hours you're required to complete with your team. And while bench pressing can certainly have its place in a good resistance training regimen, you hit the nail on the head by recognizing that it may not be the best option for you personally, given your sport and time constraints.

That being said, there are two points worth noting before we continue:

1) In a strength and conditioning program, you can't always just "keep adding." Your body, unfortunately, only has a limited capacity to recover, and there comes a point where adding extra exercises, training days, etc. can hurt you more than help you.

Stealing an analogy from Tim Ferris: “To boil water, the minimum effective dose is 212ºF (100ºC) at standard air pressure. Boiled is boiled. Higher temperatures just consume more resources that could be used for something else more productive.”

Carrying this analogy over to your strength training regimen, you have to be sure that your body's "pot of water" is not already set to "boiling." If it IS, then adding extra stressors (exercises, training days, etc.) are only going to actuate more fatigue, lengthen your recovery time, and could actually REDUCE your power output and strength.

So: Give yourself an honest, unbiased, introspective assessment into how you're doing. Are you at "boiling" already? If not, then proceed with #2.

2) Since #1 is true, then you must begin your quest of adding an extra session by using the lowest intensity and the least amount of volume in order to incite adaptation.

See how your body responds and feels during the following week - both in the weight room and out on the baseball field - and then you can continue to tweak and refine from there, but still only adding the "minimum effective dose," and nothing more, to see continued improvement.

William of Occam said it best:

"It is vain to do with more what can be done with less."

Solution

You're on the right track suggesting a "deadlift day" for Saturday. Provided you're smart about it, I think it could really help fill in the missing gaps you're currently facing, along with providing you the perfect stimulus for continued strength and power gains.

Based on what you told me, I'm guessing that your coach isn't having you all do any dynamic effort work. Since most of your barbell work is probably being done at heavy loads+slow speeds (or "absolute strength" work) you could definitely use some work on the "speed-strength" end of the continuum.

Enter: Speed Deadlifts.

I love speed deadlifts for four reasons:

1. Provided you do them correctly, they have enormous potential to actually refresh you upon completion, leaving you feeling charged up and ready to kick down the doors of the playing field (if your playing field has doors....)
2. They provide an EXCELLENT way to tap into the higher threshold motor units, namely, those that have the greatest potential for force production. They also assist in neurotransmitter uptake and release, along with positively impacting the excitation-contraction coupling mechanism in muscle cells, for you exercise physiology nerds in the crowd.
3. Since you'd typically perform multiple sets at a load load and low rep scheme, it's certainly a good time to hone in on technique, practicing the set-up and execution multiple times in one session.
4. If you move the weight AS FAST AS HUMANLY POSSIBLE, and if you're good at doing this, then you experience the inevitable pleasure of causing everyone unfortunate enough to be around you at the time to destroy the backs of their pants.

For your first session, I'd recommend starting off with 6 sets of 2 reps, at 50% of your 1-rep max, with :45-:60 rest between sets.

And move the bar as fast as you can.

Did I mention you need to move the bar as fast as possible?*

Toss in some very low volume horizontal rowing (bent over DB rows, chest-supported rows, single-arm cable rows, etc.) and some scapular stability work (low box walkovers, forearm wallslides, easy pushups, etc.) after your deadlifts and call it a day.

Hopefully your coach doesn't mind you doing this, either. If he does, you may very well have to enter the weight room surreptitiously and pray he doesn't catch you.

The most important thing will be to start with the LEAST required to get stronger, LISTEN to what your body is telling you, and then make further adjustments (if even necessary) from there.

*You need to move the bar as fast as possible.