How To Be A Habit Master with Blaine Oelkers

Joining me today is Blaine Oelkers, TEDx speaker and leading authority on personal implementation and consistency. Blaine strongly believes that you can create a new habit in just 21 seconds - not 21 days.

In Blaine's work, he helps people get control of themselves and their lives. In this episode, he'll teach us what the "30 minute hour" means and how to make some for yourself. What would you do if you had 2 guilt-free hours every day? How can you free up some time in your day but still get everything done?

Connect with Blaine and get his TEDx talk on his website: http://blainetedx.com/

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Transcript

1:00

Welcome back to a Magical Life. I'm your host Magic Barclay today. Blaine Eckler's rejoins us. If you didn't listen to our last episode, I urge you to go back and listen to that as soon as you can. Blaine is a Chief Results Officer. We were talking in our last episode about clearing the head trash about really, you know, putting your thoughts first and foremost, and welcome back Blaine. magic. Thank you so much for having me back. I'm honored to be a second timer, And again, thank you to you for, uh, creating a results ripple that is improving lives across the globe. And I'm happy to be here today and, and hope I can add some more value, uh, to the listener's life. Last time we, we had a great discussion and we talked about wealth and head trash, like you said, but, uh, but maybe there's even more. Thank you. And I believe there is, and there's actually a couple of things I wanna tease out and off air. We were talking about a couple of things. You mentioned the three minute hour. What the heck is a three minute hour and how do we do it? Yeah, so, so, so it was the 30 minute, hour, actually not the three minute, but the 30 minute hour. And that's how to get an hour's worth of stuff done in just 30 minutes. So we can, we can unpack that now or at any time you want during this show. Let's unpack it now cause it makes more sense than a three minute hour. Okay. Uh, alright, so a number of years ago, more than a decade ago, I started a company called Self Fluence, which is basically the art and science of influencing yourself or what I like to say. The power you already have to influence yourself and you are. a creation of God. And, and you are so much more powerful than you realize. And so with the 30 minute hour, you already know how to do it. You've done it before. and it's very, very powerful. And so, so I wanna make sure that as we teach you this right here, right now, the 30 minute hour is, I wanna make sure that it's used for good and not for evil. And so what I wanna do is, let's say magic that you and I. We put together four 30 minute hours. So basically we got a four hours worth of stuff done in just two hours. Now, that would give us two guilt free hours to do anything we want, but we can't work. We have to do something that is non. Work. So I'll ask you what you're gonna do, but I'll say what I'm gonna do is I had two guilt free hours. one is that I would probably ride my Peloton bike, which I love is here in my home office. Uh, I like to go outside. I'd probably take a little hike. I like to connect with my kids who are now grown, and out of the nest, so to speak. I like to connect with old friends, and then I do like a good old fashioned nap. Um, so that's probably what I would do. What, what would you do if you had two guilt free hours? Well, I would go out to my veggie gardens and do some, uh, some tilling in the soil with my hands. I would probably go into my native garden area and look at the colors and imagine what the colors are trying to tell me what their message is. And look, I love my adult kids too, so I would probably go hang out with them for a while. Okay. That, that's awesome. And, and the listeners, I hope you've thought about something that you would do with that guilt free time because, What I want you to do is I want you to take a little bit of the time you save from doing these 30 minute hours, and I want you to put that to use with something that you find valuable. Because one of the things I, I work with a lot of business owners and at the end of life, they never say, I wish I would've worked more. Right? They always say, Blaine, I wish I would've had more memorable moments. With the people that I love and more memorable moments doing the things I love. And so, so keep putting those into your life. Again, we talked last episode about, you know, living your life and, and uh, if you can have a successful day, then almost life typically works out. So again, put some of that into each and every day. Alright, so let's talk about this, the 30 minute, hour. How'd to get an hour's worth of stuff done in just 30 minutes now? Okay, there's this day of the year, some people have it more than once a year, but there is the day where the average person is three to 10 times. That's three x to 10 x. Three to 10 times more productive than an ordinary day. So now that's three x to 10 x. We're only looking for two x. We're only taking 60 minutes down to 30. But there is this day of the year, that people have this super productivity. So, so magic. Do you know what day of the year, and it's not like a certain, like, it's not like a Monday and it's not a specific date, but do you know what day of the year is the most productive for, for our people? I believe that might be January 2nd, the day after the hangover for New Years. So that is a good one, and people are productive that day, but that is not the most productive day for people. So the day of the year that people are three to 10 times more productive is actually the day before vacation. So think about this, the day before vacation, people get three to 10 times the amount of stuff done. And so what I wanna do is I wanna unpack this for you so that you can take what you already know. Like the day before vacation, I guarantee you were probably at a minimum three times more productive than your normal day. Right now there's a little, there's a little craziness to that day. There's a little stress. We don't want the stress, but we want the productivity from that day. And so I have a little. Acronym and it's P d F. Now I use pdf d f cuz everyone knows, oh, email me the pdf, d f, or go print out the pdf. D f It's something easy to remember, uh, for those technical people in the technical world that stands for portable document format, but not in the uh, results world. In the results world. I want you to remember 30 minute, hour, day before vacation. P d, F. Now, p d f stands for plan, delegate focus. So let's unpack those three so that you can start to have some, uh, 30 minute hours. So the first thing is that the day before vacation, people plan that day out. Now they plan it out like way more than a normal day, right? They have limited time and they. Pretty much plan almost every minute of that day. So if you will begin to do next day planning, I, I like to say never let a day end without planning the next one. so I like to plan the night before and typically when you're the day before vacation, you do plan the night before, but the night before, if youll plan out your day, I guarantee you there'll be some of those hours that you're gonna get twice as much done. Right? So, so they, they plan out the day before and also, You're kind of like, uh, that that day before vacation, you are pushing things into smaller timeframes. So I use this, I have a little sign here in my office. It says day before vacation mode to remind me when someone calls and says, Hey, uh, Blaine, could you know, could we meet for an hour to discuss this new project or new business or whatever? I say, could we do it in 30 minutes? Nine outta 10 times they say yes. So right there I got a 30 minute, hour. I cut it down from from an hour thing to 30 minutes. Alright, so there's that planning. The next thing is on the day before vacation in regards to planning, is that people typically wake up 30 to 60 minutes earlier on the day before vacation. So, If you're looking for a high productivity day, wake up 30 minutes earlier, You've got your 30 minute hour immediately, right in that first hour. Win early win often. I love that. The other thing about the planning is it's very clear, like you're very clear about what you need to do. What the categories and, what you consider done in that thing, but you got a really clear vision for the day. and many times people wake up, they don't even have a plan for the day. It's like getting on an airplane with no pilot. I mean, you are not gonna go any place. so planning the night before with a clear vision is key. The other thing about planning, the last thing is that You're really using this 80 20 rule, you become like a master of the 80 20 rule. The 80 20, the Pareto principle is one where it says 20% of what you do produces 80% of your results, right? And that also means that 80% of what you do only produces 20% of the results. But what happens on the day before vacation is you focus in on the 20, the high value 20 that produces the 80, and you kind of oust, you get really good at ousting the stuff that's not important, right? So as you're planning your day, You're looking for, what are those 20 percenters? Focus on those, and you're kind of ousting the 80. And if you can ous some things from your day, that's gonna give you some 30 minute hours. So that's planning. The second part is day before vacation you become this like delegation master, right? And you think who? Before the, do you think who before do so you think, who could do this before you go do this? Right. Always think who before. Do I also say think who before how. Cause if someone can do it, you don't need to learn how to do it if someone else can do it for you. Um, so, so you become this delegation master and so you're delegating stuff, and. that can be big. I, I know like for myself, my wife also works from home. And if she's like, look, I'm going out to run errands. What can I do for you? Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. I delegate my errands to her and I just add a 30 minute, hour immediately. right there. The other thing is you defer more on that. Day before vacation, you don't have enough time to do everything, so you defer things and I do something, I call it the positive procrastination, um, is I, I look at my day and nothing that if something doesn't have to be done today, I push it to tomorrow. Um, so that opens up my schedule for the really valuable stuff and the important stuff. Now, a lot of times by late afternoon, I'm working on tomorrow's stuff. That's cool. I even feel, I feel better about being a day ahead. I, I like to actually take people from being a day behind to being a day ahead. You wake up and the to-do list is done. That's pretty cool. so you also defer a lot. That's delegate. But the most important, so plan, delegate, fo focus. There is this weird, fierce focus that comes on the day before vacation. Uh, and so what you wanna do is you wanna tap into that. Right. so the first thing is, think about the day before vacation. Think about what doesn't happen. There's no long chit chats, there's no long email responses. There's no getting lost in the internet. There's no chasing shiny objects. I mean, you gotta plan, you gotta stick with it. You're going out of town, right? there's a lot of stuff that you don't do. So bring that back, bring some of that focus. Into your day and you'll have more 30 minute hours. You also become what I call Dr. No. So people say, Blaine, can you do this? Can you do that? I'm like, no, no, no, no. I literally become Dr. No. And so no is my default answer now. No is good. For creating 30 minute hours, but also no is good for avoiding 90 minute hours. So the 90 minute hours where someone asks for an hour of time and it ends up taking 90 minutes, right? Or they say, could you just work on this little project? It'll only take 10 minutes, whether it takes 90 minutes or it takes 60 minutes. Um, so, so no is probably the most powerful word in the results vocabulary is make know your default, right? And come up with a nice way to do it. I mean, I always say no, I have to check my schedule. Um, you know, and, and if you, if you preplan your days right, if you do next day planning plan the day before, like you do on the, uh, day before vacation, um, if you'll do that, your schedule really will have things in it, right? So, so you, you know, you'll be able to do it more easily the day before vacation. Also, your focus, you stay on schedule. Because you have to. Right? And so on the day before vacation, people typically use deadlines and timers all throughout the day. So my normal day, I will, I've got an iPhone, so I ask Siri to, uh, you know, te set a timer and sometimes it's 15 minutes, 30 minutes. An hour, whatever it I'm working on, I always set timers. Um, and, and that really pushes me to finish that stuff in that time. So look, look to have a tighter schedule, but also look to use timers. And the last part of your focus is that you become this strange guru of tasking. All of a sudden you become this task master and there's three types of tasking that you master. Single tasking. Multitasking and batch tasking. Now, my most of my, I get the most 30 minute hours from single tasking. Now what, what does that mean? What does single tasking mean? Single tasking is when I'm working on something or you're working on something that only you can do. And it needs your total focus, right? So for example, I work with a lot of mastermind groups. I write a lot of articles, right? But when I need to write an article, I can get an hour's worth of article writing done in just 30 minutes. If I will go into single task mode. So t single task mode is my phone is either off or in airplane mode. The door is closed, there are no distractions, there's no rings, dings or bings, and I'm focused on one window on my computer. Everything else is shut down. There's no notifications. Nothing can bother me. There's only one thing that, can, come into my single focus time. And that is my monkey mind, my monkey mind or my squirrel mind, whatever that is, right? and so what I do is I keep a stack of. scratch paper at my desk. And when that thing comes into my mind, you know, I'll just write it down and then I'll put it to the side. So I don't, I want to capture it. I don't wanna forget it cuz I could, I could forget it. And then it's gonna be an open loop in my head, but outside of that, I'm staying super. Focused, hyper-focused on that one thing. And if you can do that, if you can destroy all distractions, I'm telling you, you can get an hour's worth of stuff done in just 30 minutes. And what I noticed, it was like a muscle, meaning that once I got into this single tasking mode, The first time it wasn't that great cuz there was a lot of distractions. There was a lot of monkey mind. I I, I forgot that I had turned some, left something out on my computer and it popped up, right? but as you get better and better, you can drift into that single focused mindset faster and faster and faster as you train your mind to do so. So that's single tasking, uh, day before vacation. Also multitasking. What is multitasking? Sometimes it gets a bad rap, but it's doing two things. At the same time, multitasking without sacrificing the quality of either one. So for example, day before vacation, you have to run some errands, uh, or you have to do, go pick something up and you've got 30 minutes in the car. Well, if you've got 30 minutes in the car, realize, wait a second, I can make two phone calls, right? So I can do a phone call and drive safely. High quality, both. I have a hands free phone. I'm not distracted. So those are two things I can do. Drive. The car, you know, and talk on the phone, right? So that's multitasking. Also, like with my family, I love family time, but I love exercise. But then we just all play tennis together. So we taught everybody how to play tennis. We go out and play tennis for 30 minutes. Well, I got 30 minutes of tennis and 30 minutes of family time. I got an hour's worth of stuff done in 30 minutes. So you're looking for that When you're doing chores, you can be listening to Magic's podcast, right? Wherever. You can do two things. at high quality equal, you know, good quality in each. That's multitasking. And then the last one is batch tasking. Now batch tasking is when you batch similar things together, right? So like if you're gonna run errands, if you batch all the errands together, you're gonna save time. If you batch all your phone calls, all your computer work, if. All that. The day before vacation, you become a master at batching that stuff. Cause you don't have time to to do one, do something else, come back. Switching back and forth is not gonna be good. And the last part of batching is you. You also tend to batch people. Now what I mean by that is, If you're working with other people at work, right? And you want your single focus time, let's say it's gonna be from nine to 11, and then you say, look at 11 I, I'm gonna be single focus time from eight to 11, let's say, and at 11 let's have like an open office time, right? So at 11. You know, people can save up all the questions they had for you during the morning, and then at 11 o'clock you get together and you handle those, those questions. Right. So you're batching that interaction with other people. Uh, my wife and I do that. She also works from home and we were, we used to text each other all day long. Oh, don't forget this. Oh, what about that? And our phones were going off like crazy. What we decided to do is we, we created a note. You can do this like shared note inside the iPhone. And now we just put everything there so there's no rings, dings, or bings. Now we can go look at it any time. We both see the same thing in the shared note, but we typically have lunch together. And when we have lunch, then we'll open up the list and say, okay, here's all the things. So we're not missing anything, but we're batching it. So, plan, delegate, fierce, focus. the other thing I would say that happens on the day before vacation, why you get so much done. Is that you release your inner perfectionist and that's big. You release your inner perfectionist. That so, so done is better than perfect. And even if something's only gonna get done 80%, you're still delegating, you're still letting it go because you have to, cuz you're gonna be going away. So take some of that, release some of that perfectionist in your normal day. Take all these things and do what I do. Maybe even make a little sign that says day before vacation mode. Remember that day because it was. Your most productive day and not the stress of it. Uh, but, but the productivity side you can have every single day. And then maybe give yourself a little reward cuz you know, going on vacation is a reward. It's nice to give yourself a little reward. So, I dunno, there's a lot to unpack there, magic, but I wanted to get it all in. There certainly is, and I need to describe my desk. Having said all that, I have tiny scraps of paper everywhere because I brain dump quite often, and by the end of the day I have to have sorted those scraps of paper and out of maybe 50 scraps there might be two that stay. And that's part of my working through things and. Organizing my next day and certainly doing the podcast. I have my show notes organized two weeks in a in advance so that I know exactly what's going on and there are no surprises and I don't have to rush to get things done. So I love that you shared the p f tips because I implement them myself and I love them. Thank you. Oh, good, good for you. And that I, I love the, the scrap paper, and I have a little binder that's on my desk and, and if I don't get to it at the end of the day, I push'em all into one space. Like, you're not gonna lose them. But, but having like one inbox and one method of capture, uh, I also have a method of capturing ideas on my phone. But again, it's all in one place and it's there and you can find it rapidly. so well, well done for you. That's, uh, that's great. Now we've discussed a lot and there's so much more we could talk about, but I really wanna send people to your website, which is www.blainetedx.com. Listeners, there is so much more Blaine can teach you. Please head on over to his website and really delve into. Everything that is there. We haven't even touched on creating new habits in 21 seconds, but I'm sure Blaine, you'll be happy to teach the people that when they come to you. Uh, yes, uh, would love to do that. And, and, you know, the counterbalance to that is the elimination of bad habits. So, so creating new habits is good, especially in the area of health and wealth, but then also eliminating bad habits, right? That's, that's just as important, um, you know, for people and sometimes, Sometimes it's easier to, to decrease before you increase. So sometimes it's easier to remove stuff from your day to make room for the better stuff. So sometimes, like when you think about it, the 20% that produces 80% of the results, that's only 20% of what you do. Um, so there's this other 80% of what you do that only produces 20% of the results, but that's 80%, like start the ousting of that, right? So sometimes it's easier for people to remove things from their day or to remove. You know, bad habits, which could be, you know, getting lost in email, getting lost in the internet, uh, you know, different things that are kind of taking away from the valuable time that you have, uh, you know, e each day. So, so anyway, that's another, yeah. Another thing that we, we also help people with is, is with bad habit elimination. Fantastic. And talking of elimination folks mold, we need to eliminate that from our homes. And in episode 2 0 5, Daniel Maoli from Sanair Australia will be talking about just how to do that. So listeners, thank you so much for your time, Blaine, thank you for joining us. Oh, thank you so much. Thank you for having me. And I'll leave you with this, uh, the bad news. The bad news is that time flies the good news. You're the pilot. So pilot. Well, my friends. Oh, I love that. Thank you so much for your time. Listeners, go forth and create your magical life.