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Your Life Systems is a podcast about building practical systems for everyday life.
Join Wes as he shares simple ideas, practical frameworks, and real-world experience to help you make consistent progress in the areas of life that matter most.
Most people don't need more information. They need better implementation.
Instead of relying on motivation, you'll learn how to build systems that make success easier, more consistent, and more sustainable.
You Can Be Busy All Day and Still Go Nowhere
Hi, I'm Wes. Welcome to You Can Be Busy All Day and Still Go Nowhere.
Oftentimes, when I had employees or ran businesses, managed businesses, I had two kinds of employees.
I had one kind of employee that you could give them things that needed to be done and you didn't have to worry about them. But then I usually had a lot more employees that you could give them something to do, and then if you just glanced their way, they would look really busy.
But if you looked deeper or actually checked up on them, they weren't actually getting much done. They were doing busy work.
So remember that term, busy work, as we go through today, because there's a danger to us, especially if you're an entrepreneur and trying to create income, build businesses. There's a danger that we can fall into the busy-work trap, where we can stay busy but not actually be very productive.
In other words, busy isn't the same thing as being productive.
Now, today's question, or the theme question to keep in mind as we go through today's episode, is: If you complete everything on your list today, will you actually be closer to anything that matters?
And that's kind of loaded because there's a couple things there. First of all, if you don't have a priority list of the most important things you need to complete today, then you need to start there.
You need to have a list of things that you need to get completed today, and you need to rank them by the priority or how important they are to you reaching whatever goals you want to reach or whatever plans you hope to succeed with.
So that's the first thing. You should have a list of the things you want to get done today and have them listed in a priority order so you can make sure to work on the things that are most important to what you want to accomplish first.
Now, the rest of that question: If you complete everything on your list today, will you actually be closer to what matters?
Well, we already covered that. If you list your to-dos for today by priority, then if you do the things that are the highest priority, they will bring you closer to what really matters. So keep that in mind.
Now, you might take a look at what you have on your list today. If you complete everything on your list, is it going to get you closer to your goals or not?
Because you're either getting closer to your goals or you're getting further away from your goals.
Now, you might say, well, if I didn't work on anything towards my goal today, it didn't move me any further away from my goal, but that's not true.
It moves you at least one day further away from your goal, right?
So every goal you have, every system you have, every workflow you have, every plan you have, you're either getting closer or farther away. Every day, closer or farther away. It's that important.
And the way you make sure you continuously make progress towards the most important things are having a list and having it prioritized and making sure you work on whatever the highest priorities are every day.
Now, remember, you can be busy all day and still go nowhere. Activity measures how much you did, but productivity measures whether the right things are getting moved forward.
You need to be very relentless in identifying what you do every day. Are you busy and not accomplishing anything, or are you productive?
I'd much rather appear less busy and be more productive than do busy work all day that doesn't get me any closer to what my true goals are.
Urgent and easy tasks often crowd out more important work.
That's why I keep going back: have a list and prioritize it.
Prioritize the top thing that you want to get done today that's going to bring you closer to whatever your goal is. Then identify the second most important thing so you can make sure you can work on it if you get the first thing done.
You need to have a priority list that all brings you closer to whatever your goal is.
Decide what your day's highest-value outcome is before filling in your schedule.
I've done other episodes about this. Look up the episode on the time management system that I actually use, but just very quickly here, if you haven't watched that episode, what I do is I list everything.
I have goals and I break them down into little steps, the smallest steps possible, and then I assign steps to each day of the week. Like today I want to accomplish these three steps, and then I prioritize which step is most important.
Then I write down everything else I want to get done that day that might not be tied directly to this goal.
Then with the top three things, or whatever I decide for that day, the top three things that are going to get me close to the goal are usually in my top section. These are my priorities, and I number them one, two, three.
Then in my next section are things that I have to get done today that aren't tied to my goal, and then I prioritize them, number them also.
Then in the bottom section is everything that I'd like to get done, but it's not super important.
Then every day I use that to fill in my schedule for the day, and I make sure to time block time every day for my most important priority, and then my second most important priority, etc.
Now, some days whatever my most important priority is might take all of my time that day, and that's fine as long as I'm working on something that's important, which I get to decide.
I decide what's the priority, and then I work on it first.
Use goals and priorities to judge tasks instead of judging tasks by how busy they make you feel.
Now, everybody has to have some what I call downtime. You can't work 24/7. In fact, most people have to train themselves to work for even as much as an hour straight productively.
You can do that, and some people are better at it than others. As you work on this, you learn how long you can work productively before taking a break.
Now, usually what I've learned, I just need to take a break in my mind, and sometimes if I'm working on something really important, it can just be as simple as a five-minute break, or sometimes I'll schedule a 15-minute break.
Sometimes I'll schedule my day when I'm working on something really mentally challenging or intense. I'll schedule a day like I'll work for a half hour, I'll take a half hour off. I'll work for a half hour, I take a half hour off. Sometimes I'll schedule an hour of work and a half hour off.
My point is I have learned over the years how I can get the most productivity out of my time, and I make my schedule accordingly.
So I might work on priority number one for an hour, and then work on something in my second section that's not near as high of a priority, that's not going to be as mentally taxing, for a half hour to give my mind kind of a break, and then go back and work another hour on one of my top priorities.
The point is you need to have priorities, and you need to schedule based on those priorities instead of focusing on and scheduling things to make you seem busy.
Never trick yourself into mistaking being busy for being productive.
The way you accomplish goals, and especially big goals in your life, is by working on the things that advance you towards those goals the most. Not looking busy.
It can feel good. I got 47 things checked off today. It can make you feel good, but that's not what you should be judging.
You should be judging, it doesn't matter how many things you got done today, how much further along are you towards what your goal or your main goals are?
Use goals and priorities to judge tasks instead of judging tasks by how busy they make you feel.
I know I repeated that, but that's important because it says how busy they make you feel.
Your feelings have no business being in accomplishing big goals. If you didn't feel like you wanted to go, why would you make that big goal and make the plan or the system to reach it?
So once you start the system, once you put your goals in place and start making priorities to reach those goals, forget about feelings. Start tracking productivity.
Remove or delay low-value work before trying to work faster.
That's what I was talking about when I have the three sections. The low-value work goes in the bottom section.
It's not important. If I get everything else done, or if I have some downtime and I want to do something somewhat productive, something on my list, but it doesn't require a high amount of brainpower, I might pull something off that bottom section to just get it out of the way.
But I never track or value the number of things that I accomplish.
Now, I used to do that. I used to have a to-do list and I'd cross them off, and at the end of the day, the more I had crossed off, the better I felt. That's not how I do it any longer.
Now, it's: What did I do? How much production did I get done today to get me closer to my biggest goals?
A productive day can contain fewer completed tasks if the right task gets done.
Every day, when I make out my list and I choose my top priority, if that gets done, that's the most important thing that day.
If I have more than one top priority on my list, if I have two, if I get those done, that's a productive day even if nothing else got done.
Now, some days I'll have three. I usually try to have no more than three top priorities in a day.
If they're super small priorities or small steps, not small as in unimportant priorities, if they're small-step priorities, I might have more than three, but I usually don't have more than two or three in a day.
And some days, if the only thing I have time for is to get that number one priority done, as long as I've worked on it, that's a productive day.
So focus on production. Don't focus on staying busy.
Busy is a trap.
So ask yourself the question again: If you complete everything on your list today, will you actually be closer to what matters?
And that's all that really matters in the end.
This is Wes with Your Life Systems. Please subscribe, like, good luck, stay consistent.