Minute With Mallon: Win the Day By 10:00!
Welcome to Minute with Mallon!
Something I Taught:
I have several groups of clients that I work with in a process called Masterminds. These groups are awesome because over time, the members gain a deep understanding of each other's careers and businesses, and they can speak a lot of wisdom to each other’s lives.
A few years ago, I taught one of the groups the concept of:
Win the Day by Noon!
If you have been a reader of this newsletter for any amount of time, you already know of the 80/20 rule: 20% of what you do brings in 80% of the good results. And 80% of what you do brings in only 20% of the results. So the key to being productive is to focus on the 20% that brings in the 80% and do as much of that as you can.
What this means in plain language is that there are usually 1-3 things on any particular day that will make a vastly greater difference than anything else you do that day.
So the key is to work on and complete these things FIRST!
Most people start their days by knocking out the easy stuff. They want to ease into the day by taking little baby steps. They have convinced themselves that a lot of ✔️ marks means that they're actually doing something. Well, if you have a ton of checkmarks in front of a lot of things that don't really matter, who the heck cares?
About a year after introducing this concept to the group, I was working with one particular group member who is also one of the top financial advisors in the Southeast. We were working on his quarterly goals. He brought up the "Win the Day by Noon" concept and said that he had decided to start winning each day by 10:00! He told me that in his business, there were really only a couple of Very Important things that he needed to do each day in order to keep his company growing at a healthy pace.
And he believed that in most cases, he could accomplish those couple of things by 10 a.m. Sounded like a winner to me! So we came up with this goal:
I am prioritizing my daily tasks each morning before I begin the day by writing out a well thought-out list so that I quit cherry picking the tasks I like to do and start doing the most important things first.
Three months later he told me that he had been working on that goal religiously, and that almost every day now he got out of the office between 3:00 and 4:00 in the afternoon!
"This has revolutionized my work life!"
So now that you know this concept, take action to prioritize your most important tasks and Win the Day by Noon (or even by 10 a.m.!) to experience a revolutionary shift in productivity and work-life balance!
Something to Ponder:
"The secret of your future is hidden in your daily routine."
Mike Murdock
Something I Learned:
In the book 12 Rules for Life, Jordan Peterson writes this:
"Alterations in body language offer an important example. If you are asked by a researcher to move your facial muscles, one at a time, into a position that would look sad to an observer, you will report feeling sadder. If you are asked to move the muscles one by one into a position that looks happy, you will report feeling happier. Emotion is partly a bodily expression and can be amplified (or dampened) by that expression."
It's interesting that we can actually change our mind by changing our body! I was reminded of this as I was standing in a friend's bathroom and saw this sign over the commode. 🫣👇🏻🤪
Something I Saw:
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Hope you have an incredible week!
Robert
