What if you could create a new habit in only 21 seconds?

I’ve long believed that habits and routines are one of the most critical things that entrepreneurs can create to propel them to massive success.

Blaine Oelkers from Selfluence joins me to uncover the power of habit and how can create new habits with incredible ease.

Enjoy Blaine’s TedTalk here: http://blainetedx.com/

Learn more at https://www.adamliette.com

Discover how to work with me: https://www.adamliette.com/work-with-me

Transcript

Adam Liette
Welcome to this week's episode of smooth operator, so glad to have you with us we are on geeking out as always guys, you know me my Friday episodes when I bring my guests experts in. Man, I've been geeking out on this one for a while because this is such a cool topic we're gonna go into and it like it heart harkens back to a lesson that I got from my coach several years ago. And it's really changed my life, where he told me if you want to look, it's if you look at someone successful, you're going to find someone with rock solid habits and routines. It's about establishing those habits and routines that are going to give us that foundational all the foundational things that we need to be successful. They give us momentum that gives us stability that allow us to operate from abundance at all times. So I got a very special guest with me today. I got Blaine Elgar's. He's the founder of self fluence and America's only only chief results officer. So I'm so happy to have you on the show. Blaine. Thanks for joining me. Hey, Adam,

Blaine Oelkers
thank you so much for having me on. And, you know, it is a privilege and a pleasure to be on with the chief of operations. And so I've you know, I've listened to the podcast love the podcast. And I like you think that that the dramas in the details and the operations and the systems and for your own life and success, yeah, habits and the use of your time, you know, that's kind of what life is made up of. So I'm excited to share today, and hopefully can bring some value to the listeners.

Adam Liette
Absolutely. So cool. So I want to let's just dive straight in. We were geeking out on child Dini a little bit before we hit record here, because we both we come from that background and some of those unique things that we all that we all share. So if you haven't picked up Chaldean yet, I'd set it for some multiple episodes, pick up a copy of your book. Apparently, there's a brand new one, a new version with a seventh one. So now I have some homework on my own. I gotta record another episode of the podcast. But hey, that's all good problems to have. So let's dive in straight to your you're a self professed habit master and you have this documented streak of so many days in a row and counting of, of having these habits. I'd love to hear more about that blank.

Blaine Oelkers
Yeah, yeah. So So yeah, I looked it up. Today is Day 1692 days in a row that I've kept a couple of habits. And, you know, I'm I love Cialdini and his ability to teach you about influence, right? How to influence other people how to get them to say, yes, you know, ethically, of course, but what's also interesting is that you have that same power with yourself. And so back in 2009, I started a company called self fluence, which is kind of the art and science of influencing yourself. But I also say it's the power, you already have to influence yourself, you don't need anything new, you know, the software that you have up in the brain, you know, is all you need, you know, to really move your life forward. And one of the things you know, you kind of you are, what you do, repeatedly, over time, kind of creates the framework of your life. So this concept of, of habits, you know, we kind of are the summation of all those things that we do. And so one of the bedrocks of how things are going to turn out for you is going to be what are your habits, right? And what is that thing that you're doing over and over and over, and the habit, when something becomes a habit, you know, it's it doesn't typically take any willpower, and it runs automatically. And some habits can be, I like to call them results machines, because once you turn them on, they tend to keep you moving forward. And, and what is going to help you in life is progress, I often talk about like going from point A to point B. But if you're moving towards your point B, that thing that you want to bring about in your life, that's going to feel good, and you're going to win, what I call the Battle of the brain chemicals every day, whether you feel good, where you have the energy and all those things. And a lot of that is based on these results. machines like the habit of planning your day, I never let a day end without planning the next one. So next day planning. You know, if you turn that habit on and make that happen every single day, you're going to be more successful because you're going to live more of your life. You're less distractible, you're less susceptible to shiny objects when you kind of have a plan. You know, so that's that's what One example. But let's talk about habits. And so I have a framework that that I discovered, I'll tell you the story of how I discovered it, but I have something it's called 21. Second habits. And that's how to create a new habit in 21 seconds, not 21 days. So if somebody told you it takes 21 days to create a new habit, I'm sorry, they lie to you. Sorry for that. Now, scientifically, the wiring for a new habit does begin to happen in about 21 days. But actually, now in the last about three years, the the measurement of your brain and your neurons and all that stuff has gotten so good, that now they know that it takes actually 63 days to really fully wire in a habit so that not only does it happen automatically, but it happens really, really fast. And this whole thing you could, you could really geek out on the brain chemistry and how it puts this insulation around the nerves and they start communicating faster and faster. And you're kind of you know, building this neuro framework, you know, for that new habit. But we are going to talk about hacking that system a little bit so that you can basically create habits at will, right. But I also want people to realize initially, you know, sometimes people say, Blaine, I'm no good at habits, I can't start new habits, keep new habits. You know, I'm not a habit master. And I said, Wait a second. Wait a second. Now with self fluence, we teach that, that everything you need is within reach, you're already doing it. And you could master it, right? And so in this area of habits, when I'm doing like a, you know, kind of a big workshop, I'll say, Okay, raise your hand, if you brush your teeth within the last 24 hours. Almost every hand goes up, right? Maybe it's there's one or two dentures in the room, but most of the hands go up. And then I say, Okay, how many years have you had that habit? And then everybody's like, decades, you know, it's like, okay, you're already a habit master at brushing your teeth. So we can forget about determining whether you're a habit master or not, you are a habit master. Now, you may want some other habits besides brushing your teeth. And that leads me to the story that kind of help me kind of discover these 21 second habit framework was so my wife Beth. Now luckily, this is in the past, but she used to have nearly daily migraine headaches. And so you know, so we went to the doctor and the doctor gave me this kind of like extensive headache log. And so she's supposed to fill it out every day like the weather, the barometric pressure, what she had to eat, what what she thought the triggers of her headache could be. So she do it for a couple of days, then she would lose it, then she forget to do it, then she'd have a migraine. I asked her about it. That was bad. I stopped that quickly. But one day, she was brushing her teeth, and I noticed that she was, you know, a habit master. And she's does the dentist recommended two minutes of brushing in the morning and at night. And so the first key here to the 21 second habit is what I call habit linking. So habit linking is where you link the new habit to an existing habit you already do. So my wife took the headache log, put it under the toothbrush. Now she's never going to lose it again because she knows right where it is. But she filled it out four minutes a day, two minutes in the morning, two minutes at night, she filled that lock she went in from can't do it for two or three days to 90 days in a row. She filled that thing out adjusted meds and you know today she has a migraine maybe once every couple of months, you know at the most. So that was key number one is habit licking. If you think about it, there's lots of stuff you do sometimes like teeth brushing multiple times a day, then there's things to do just once a once a day, there's things you do once a week, right? So there's a wide range of things you could have it lead to. So I said okay, that's a great insight that's, you know, moment of dawn and comprehension light bulb goes off. But I said what about me? Okay, so I want to try this. And there were two habits, new habits that I wanted to create at that time. And so the first one was I wanted to, I wanted to kind of read the Bible every day, I wanted to do something in the Bible every day. And then I also wanted to take a mind shower. Now, people like physically, they wash their bodies typically every day. But how often do you kind of wash out your mind? So I wanted to do a mind shower. So I use an app called Headspace. It's like a meditation app. There's another one called calm. Another free one called Insight Timer. There's a Christian one called abide. But But anyway, just I wanted to make sure that I was washing my mind, you know, each morning. So then I thought, okay, what can I link to? And I thought, well, let's see. I know from studying habits, I knew that first thing in the morning is the best time to exercise to do stuff before the day comes in and steals the rest of your habits away. And so I want to do first thing in the morning. So what I did is, I said I said what's the first thing I do every morning? Well, the first thing I do every morning is I opened my smartphone. Now sometimes the alarm is going off on my iPhone, but I always open my My iPhone. And so what I did is I moved all the apps off the homescreen. And I just put the two apps are in a Bible app and the headspace app. And then I said to myself, so So that's the habit linking, right? So there's, for me to open my phone, no willpower required happens every day. I don't have to do anything new. So I knew I could get it open. But then I had to figure out a way to make sure that I did those two apps before I touched anything else on my phone. And so what I did so the second key to the 21. Second habit is that you have to do urge surfing. Okay, so urge surfing is where you surf the urge to do something, and you use the energy of that urge to fuel you into doing that habits, right. So when I open my phone, even at the bottom, there's four apps, there's four little apps down there, one of them happens to be text messages, right? So when I wake up, there's always text messages. And man to I want to check those text messages. My son lives in Denmark, you know, I got clients, I got all different people texting me, I want to check, you know, the news, social media, bank accounts, orders that came in, I have a big desire to jump into that phone. Right. And so I serve that urge, you know, to do that now, some days, you know, I prefer a 10 minute mind shower. But some days, if I'm short on time, I'll just do a three minute right, I'd rather dial down the resistance, you know, and make sure to get that thing in. And not Not, not miss a day. But that combination of habit linking and urge surfing, that's what produced for me this 1600 You know, and 90 Something days in a row of never missing a habit. Now I like the apps because they track them, right? So if somebody ever says hey, you know, prove it, yeah, okay, here, here it is. And so linking habit linking, urge surfing. And the last part is leverage. So that's the third part of the 21 second habit, and just getting some leverage on yourself, right. And so both pain and pleasure work the carrot and the stick, right, having a reward works, say, look, if I keep up this new habit for a week, I'm going to do this or a month, I'm going to do that, right. So having that reward. Pain also works, you know, tell a best friend tell a spouse, hey, I'm going to start this new habit. If I don't do it, you know, then you can make me do something, whatever it is, my wife knows that. I don't like to clean out the big garbage cans, you know, that go out on the end of the street. So she'll say, Okay, if you don't get that done, you know, keep that habit for seven days or whatever, you have to clean the garbage she has now she says you have to wash the neighbor's garbage cans on the side where you know, you don't touch their stuff, you know that I that I really know, she wants me to get it done, which has never happened, by the way. So I mean, if I commit to that, I'm making sure that that happens. But that leverage on yourself, you know, with either a reward or some kind of accountability, or also, there's a leverage from the number of days in a row, you know, it's called don't break the chain. So once you get like three or four days in a row, psychologically, you have a chain that you don't want to break, right, so you get three days, five days, 10 days in a row, it becomes stronger and stronger and stronger. Right. So now I have, you know, 1600 days in a row, I'd hate to lose that. And I've lost some streaks that were five 600 days before. But in any case, so those three things are the key, really, to the 21 second habit. So habit linking something you already haven't mastered yet, you know, and then be able to serve summers, like in my wife's case, she was surfing the urge of like the dirty teeth, gritty teeth, you know, she wanted to have the clean teeth. There was the I'll give you one last example. And that is I had one attorney and she really wanted to do next day planning but she wasn't doing it. And she's like, I don't have a plan. My day gets chaotic. I mean, I have appointments, but I never get any of my own stuff done. And so I said, Okay, and let's say you're gonna make this plan every morning, what is the first thing you do without any willpower? She goes, Well, I have a cup of coffee every single morning said without you don't have to remember to do that it happens right? So I said look, take a pad of paper and a pen, put it by the coffee machine maker. And I want you to brew the coffee, and I want you to smell the coffee. But you can't sip the coffee. You can't taste the coffee can't drink the coffee until you have started your plan. So now if the plan is done, she gets to have the coffee but if it's not done, then you know that she serves that urge you know for the coffee to get the plan done now sometimes some days the plan is just top three things out of her head right but she's doing it and she's starting to win that battle the brain chemicals because that consistency brings confidence and then the confidence kind of helps you to build bigger and better habits so I went on a long time there back to Adam

Adam Liette
I love that so much because it's a reverse engineering all the behavior of I had a bad habit you had to break like I used to smoke cigarettes with hardest cigarette that to have was the morning cigarette with coffee. Like because it was habit linked. So what we're doing is we're taking positive reinforcement, the the triggers that we know we already have, and just naturally linking them up. It's that's Brilliant.

Blaine Oelkers
Yeah, and the bad habit elimination. That's like a whole nother kind of beast. But But yes, you know, there are frameworks for that, and, and you've been through it, you know, having a big why, you know, having a substitute habit for that bad habit, you know, and then minimizing the cues and triggers, you know, to that bad habit as best you can. And when you fall back in, we're human, it happens, if you fall back into it, try to try to look back and figure out well, what led me to that, you know, space, you know, I used to eat too many potato chips, you know, and so, you know, I came up with, you know, substitute habit, which was macadamia nuts, which are healthier than the potato chips. You know, I had a big reason why, because I had some health issues, you know, but then minimizing the cues and triggers for me on that was getting it out of the house, right. So, so if I, maybe I'll potato chips, like at a party or something. But if if they're not here, right out of sight, out of mind, it's a lot easier, you know, to, to have some control when there's a big obstacle to you getting it. So we try to we try to dial up the resistance for the bad habits, and dial down the resistance for for the good habits.

Adam Liette
Fantastic. And what are some superpower habits that you've observed in working with professionals and entrepreneurs? Like, what, what are some of the super, the habits, we should be looking towards daily planning 100%, I preach that in my membership, as well, and it's something that I can't live without my planner? It's right next to me right now. But what are some other superpower habits we should consider?

Blaine Oelkers
Yeah, I think, you know, next day planning is, is one of the biggest right. You know, I think that the other thing is investing in yourself. Now, most successful people are, are, you know, investing in themselves in some way on a daily basis? Right. And that, that kind of leads you back into the morning routine, which saw, you know, there's a lot of stuff published on on that, but but, you know, I have this kind of morning sacred 30. You know, and so when you first wake up that first 30 minutes, is so important to how your day, you know, ends up being right. So I think that that that's a big, you know, that's a big one is to really make sure that you're getting some exercise in and you're, you know, you're fueling your body in whatever way that is, and you're fueling your mind, you know, as well. I think most you know, Leaders are readers or leaders, successful people are consuming information. I like Audible, you know, so I listened to a lot of books on tape versus reading, but they're feeding their mind every day. You know, so just like, you know, I mentioned earlier, like, the difference between you got a shower, right? And then you have a mind shower. Right? Right. So you know, you're physically washing your body, but, but at some, in some capacity, successful people kind of wash out their mind, but then they also feed their mind. So if you, you know, most successful people have what I call, you know, kind of a daily mind meal, I usually do about 30 minutes of something good. Now, that can be a good book, that could be a good podcast like yours, that could be time with a mentor, and the mentor could be alive or not alive. Again, a lot of audio recordings. My my mentor, was a gentleman named Jim Rohn. Have you ever heard of Jim? Yeah, yeah. So So Jim Rohn. I mean, that that, you know, 30 minutes with Jim Rohn. And I'm, I'm on track and kind of, you know, on fire. So I would say, I would say that, that's big. You're setting your intention for the day, I have a little saying, I did a TEDx talk about this concept of why Teva, what you think about you bring about so you know, controlling what you think about is is key, right? And so how do you make sure that you kind of stay on track with you know, so having the thoughts of where you want to go, what you want to do what you want to bring about, right? And then but how do you stay focused on that, and I think successful people, certainly put in routines to make sure like reading, connecting with the right people having a mentor, no planning their day, I think some of those key things are, you know, are there, you know, making sure that they're kind of making progress each and every day?

Adam Liette
Absolutely. And I think the, the big takeaway is, it's less about the, the what exactly like you must do this meditation or this, but it's more about, like finding the right fit for you as a person. Is it a meditation through comm? Is it listen books on audible? Is it I do something called workshop of the mind, where it's like a 15 minute self guided meditation that I do every morning, I learned it from Jim Fortin. It taught me that and it's been just huge in my development, but it's about finding those different things. And I think it's no coincidence. You find these hugely successful people and they're all doing the same things. It's kind of crazy, right? Hey, maybe if it works for them, it can work for us too. So for the listeners out there, like take stock of your own habits. Like what is it that you're doing to prepare for your day? What is it that you're doing to give yourself momentum to give yourself that stability and that foundation, and it's never too late to introduce something new, to start doing something new. All streaks start at one. Correct all start at one. And the first time is going to be the first time, it's not the hardest time first times the easiest time. But it's like around the fifth and sixth time and like, oh, I can let this skill but the great thing that Blaine shared was, there's if he has a day where he's a little stressed for time, he might not do the full 10 minute mind shower, but settle for a two minute or a three minute the point is we train ourselves to keep going train ourselves to make adaptations and keep those streets alive to keep our our brains and our bodies geared towards what we have to do in our job, man, um, it's makes makes work so much easier. I found for sure.

Blaine Oelkers
100% and those streaks are so important. Like, psychologically brain chemical wise, you know, I like to say when early when off, and so no of clients will be like, I'm gonna start an exercise routine, I'm going to, you know, the research says 30 minutes a day, you know, now now I typically do 30 minutes a day. But but if they start with that, you know, then they come back the next week. Alright, how did it go? You know, I did three days, and they're all upset with themselves, right? Well, that's 90 minutes more than you might have had, if you didn't say you were going to do that. But what I like to do is dial it down, and I say, Look, don't miss a day, even if you have to nano size, the exercise routine, and I'm saying nanosized like turn it all the way down to you do five push ups before you get in the shower, you know, or 10 Jumping jacks or something or just do some high knees, you know, you know, some something right? So that you can still say you had some exercise, right? So dial it way down, to keep it alive. And that's why some of the great people will say, Okay, start a meditation practice with one minute a day, you know, and then build up from that, right? You know, and if you're going to miss it, then you do 10 seconds. Okay, everybody has 10 seconds, everybody's wondering, I mean, for me, I'm like, I my smallest mind shower is a three minute one typically, because I've got three minutes, I I could do that while getting dressed or something, you know, I mean, you can start to find the synergies, you know, within your, within your world to kind of make that happen.

Adam Liette
And you find that accountability, and like you mentioned, clients will check in with you and report their results. Like how important is accountability, to maintaining our habits?

Blaine Oelkers
Yeah, most, most people are not that self willed, you know, to maintain things without it. So if your accountability is only with yourself, that's okay. It's better than nothing. But it's pretty weak. And so what I have found is that people need accountability from other people. Right. And so now, like you said, there's different flavors of accountability. And it could be on a weekly basis, you know, I've found texting daily texting, back and forth has been the most powerful for people. Yeah, and they kind of drift in and out of it a little bit. But if they drift away from it, they they'll when they want to get results, they'll drift back into it. But I think yes, accountability with other people makes a big difference. And there's some good studies that really do show that that there's a there's a study out of Canada, where the setting goals, achieving goals, you know, I don't know, like, like, 45% of the goals were achieved when people wrote them down, you know, and had some accountability, but it went up above 75%, when they had accountability to somebody else on a weekly basis. So accountable to somebody else, raise it up to like 60, some, but that the highest percentage was weekly accountability to somebody else, and typically stated, you know, where they hear their own voice, they tell someone else, they're going to do it. And there's a lot of fun ways, you know, I talked about leverage, you know, there's, there's a great website called stick with an extra k at the end.com. And that is designed to help you stick to whatever goal you said, or bad habit elimination, or whatever. And it goes so far as you put your credit card in, and you designate a referee. And if the referee person says, nope, Adam didn't do it, you know, I can hit a button, and then your card gets charged, whatever pre amount you say, it could be $100. And that $100 could go to something that you really don't like, you know, so they have both sides of the aisle, they have all kinds of different organizations, you know, and it's even I've watched you know, like, sometimes they say people what they do to get a t shirt. I've watched people what they would the hoops they jumped through to make sure that $1 didn't go to the party of the other side, or this organization. They really don't like you know, and and so, anyway, that's a pretty Pretty powerful, powerful site as well to use. But again, it's all tools, right? And it's how you use those tools and how much you use the tools. And so yeah, I think having an accountability partner is critical to achieve things and especially to achieve big things or achieve things for a longer period of time. You're just you're gonna do more when someone else is watching, not just you.

Adam Liette
Oh, fantastic. I loved what you said about like goal setting. And if it's written down, we get it done 45% of time, if we're accountable, and we have someone else watching us it, it almost doubles. It's pretty huge. And so if you're listening to this, and you're still solopreneur, like get a VA, if nothing else, I'm going to hold you accountable. And what I've challenged my VA to do, yes, she's in the Philippines, and she's very part time relationship. But I've given her permission to come out me out on my BS, when I don't do something. The Oh, I didn't get time to it this week is not an excuse. And she's yelled at me before. And but I empowered her to yell at me and be like, No, Adam, you told me to do this. This is part of my job. There's so many different ways we can figure this out, not only in our personal lives, but also our business lives of getting people to do that for us, and knowing that they're not yelling at you, because they're mad at you, but it's all about helping each other. And I love and enabling people around me to hold me to task, because we all need it. And that's the important thing. Blaine I think that's that's really where it comes down to.

Blaine Oelkers
Yeah. 100% 100% and having people you know, it's in pursuit of mastery. Right? Not in pursuit of, oh, I caught you not doing this right thing. No, no, it's in pursuit of mastery. I want to be better. I want to get more done. You know, it's an honest, you know, it's an honest, you know, hit a stick. You know, and so I think when people come at it that way, it works well. And we're all human to those so so I think sometimes it's good to show your humaneness you know, I took the edge, I was presenting an event last weekend, and I made a mistake, you know, and and I don't make a lot of mistakes, you know, but it took the edge off for the person running this mastermind event. And they felt like oh, good, you know, blade did make a mistake, you know, and just kind of took the edge off in a good way. Right. And I point out my humaneness when, when that happens. So I'm, you know, I like that. And even with habits and streaks, right, something's gonna happen. And if you lose the streak, now you have a chance to begin again, now you have something to go after. Right? I think success boils down to you beating just one person. You got to beat this one person. And that's your yesterday self. So once you beat your yesterday self, you're better than your yesterday self. That's all that matters, right? So it's kind of better, your best and move forward. So yes, you fall off the wagon. Yes, you know, it's you know, you don't keep up your exercise routine, dial it way down. But if you miss a day, for whatever reason, you know, then then start again, right? And now you have something to go after. And it's your own personal record. I mean, for me, I've, I've always I have a few daily habits. But when I go on, you know, travel, either like a vacation or more work, travel. You know, it's sometimes it's tricky. Like my only goal is to try to get all that stuff in. You know where I can because sometimes meetings will start like when I have I've read my peloton bike, I actually bought it from my wife, but I've written it like, you know, close to 800 days in a row even like I COVID through COVID and all that. But, you know, some of these meetings, if I'm at an event might start at 630 in the morning, right? So now, you know, what am I going to do? Am I going to get up and go do it or not? Yeah, and I did you know, but now some of those rides you know, I usually minimum right 30 minutes, I might do a 10 minute ride if that's all I got on I'm gonna keep the streak alive with a 10 minute you know, official ride it's it's logged in the peloton app you know, even if you don't have to tell peloton bike you can still log it in the app as you ride the bike. So, so anyway, you find a way, you know, to do it and to keep those streaks alive. But and I turn it into a little bit of a game

Adam Liette
that makes now I know there's someone out there thinking, well, great, these habits sound wonderful. I do not have time for this, Adam. But you also teach a very interesting idea of that 30 minute hour. So I'd love to hear more about that so we can free up our time. So you all out there in podcast land, have no more excuses, because we're going to buy back 30 minutes of your time.

Blaine Oelkers
Yes, and this is this is very powerful. This is what most people say I'm overwhelmed. I don't have enough time. They're kind of arguing for their limitations. So when you argue for your limitations, you get to keep them so be careful. Be careful there. But the 30 minute hour is very powerful. And you already know how to do it. You actually already have done it. So we're going to we're going to show you how to do it more often. But I have to say A that it's very powerful. So this framework is very powerful, so powerful, Adam that have to make sure that is used for good and not used for evil. So So let's say that you and I, let's say you and I have for 30 minute hours in a row. So basically, we got four hours worth of stuff done in just 30 minutes. I mean, just two hours. So now we have two extra hours did for those that are row. So we've got two hours of guilt free time. And so here's the question I'm going to have you all answer first, and I'll ask you is if you had two hours of guilt free time that you're not allowed to work? You know, what would you do? Because when we study people at the end of their life, they never say, I wish I would have worked more. I wish I put more time in the office, they only say two things. Everybody, oh, it will sound of these two things. And the first one is, I wish I had more memorable moments with the people I loved. Now the loves people can be family, friends, could be peers, could be people they worked with, right. That's category one. And then the second one is I wish I had more impact with what I knew what I learned in life. I wish I could have impacted more more people and it always fits into those two, but by and large if you had these two guilt free hours, no, no work involved. What would you do so for me, I do like to peloton bike um, I might do a ride on the peloton, I like to go out and hike. So I might do that. Probably connect with my kids. I like the family. You know, I do like a good old fashioned nap. So I might take that I work from home. And then I also like to connect with friends, which I feel like I don't like old friends from college and stuff. I feel like I don't connect enough with them. So that's what I would do. What about you to guilt free hours? No work? What are you going to do?

Adam Liette
Oh, time at the kids time in my workshop and more frequent dates with my wife.

Blaine Oelkers
Okay, all right. See, that's the stuff. That is the stuff. And so what I want to do is, we're going to teach you this framework, right now, you're going to start to have these 30 minute hours. But I want you to bring some of those things, listeners, whatever you thought of bring some of those things back into your life. Right? Do that first, then LIKE US type A or you can use the more time to get more work stuff done. Alright, so there is a day of the year, there's a day of the year, where the average person is three to 10 times more productive than their ordinary day. Now that's 3x to 10x. And we're looking for 2x This is gonna be really easy. But but they're three to 10 times more productive than a normal day. Do you know what day of the year that is?

Adam Liette
Oh, I've no idea. All right, I some guesses. But I don't know if they're any good.

Blaine Oelkers
It's not like a specific date of the year. But But and some people have this more than once. Alright, so here it is. So when you think of the 30 minute hour, I want you to think of the day before vacation. Right? So think about that. The day before vacation, people get three to 10 times more done than their ordinary day. And so if you think back, if you put yourself back into that day before vacation, it's a little chaotic. It's a little crazy. It's a little hectic, but it boils down to so what I did is I went back and I studied the day before vacation. And it turns out that everything that happens, that gives you more time that allows you to get three to 10 times more stuff done. Can we whittle it down to three things I made a little acronym to make it easy. And the acronym is PDF. So you think 30 minute hour, day before vacation, PDF now PDFs easy to remember because you people say hey, email me the PDF Hey, go printout that PDF. Now in, in computer geek geek ism, that stands for portable document format, which is just a document that that you can print out from any machine in our case. So when you think of, you know, think of the 30 minute hour day before vacation PDF stands for plan, Delegate focus. So let me unpack each one of those so that you can see how you can begin to create the 30 minute hour. So plan. Now, you know, when you get to this day before vacation, all of a sudden, people start planning out their whole day. So they do that next day planning but I mean they're planning it out like hour by hour, some people minute by minute, but they have a bunch of stuff they have to do. And they've got to get it done before they go on vacation. So they really plan out your day. So if you will plan out your day more, you will get more done, you will have more 30 minute hours just by planning the day and over planning it a little bit. Now we know life is gonna crash in your business could crash and your boss could crash in until you do some new project or whatever. That's okay but you're going to start your day with a plan because that's going to help you get get a lot more done. Typically on the day before vacation people wake up 30 to 60 minutes earlier than normal. So you want a 30 minute hour you get 30 minutes extra if you just wake up 30 minutes extra now, maybe can't do that every day but just know that that's that can be a piece of the puzzle.

Adam Liette
I wake up before I can't get up earlier early. It's not gonna happen.

Blaine Oelkers
So so you're getting up at a pretty good time. They're pretty good pretty early. Most people are getting up three or four hours later than that. So. But anyway, so military habits die hard. Hey, that's good. Maybe your beds getting made as well, then? Yes. So so the so the weekend, the other the other things on the planning side is that the day before vacation, people have like a very clear vision of what they need to get done. And they also all of a sudden, they start using this rule that they heard about this thing called the 8020 rule, the Pareto Principle, they've heard of it, but they, they the day before vacation, they actually use it, they actually say, okay, look, 80% of my results comes from 20% of what I do. So they start to focus in on that 20, because they don't have time, they have to prioritize, they're forced to prioritize, and focus on the 20. And then out the 80, the 80% of what you do that only produces 20% of real estate, they asked the 80. And they focus on the 20. So same thing for you, if you get up, you know, if you start your day, and you look at your day, and you say, Okay, what were the 20 percenters? What's the most important stuff? And then what could I defer, which is kind of gets into delegation and deferring to the next day. So so that's the planning side. So de Dustan for delegate, right, and, and defer. And so what happens, what's interesting is, on the day before vacation, people ask who before do so they think who before? Do they think who could do this before I go do this? Right? So they think who before do and they start to delegate out and this is one of the easiest ways to get a 30 minute hour, like my wife will say, Hey, I'm gonna go out and you know, pick up some stuff. You know, can I run any errands for you? Well, if I delegate, you know, post office, bank, other things, business supplies, whatever, if I delegate that to her, boom, I have a 30 minute hour immediately. So what happens is, you become much more of a delegator so So let that be how you start, right. So I have a little card on my wall about about the 30 minute hour and the day before vacation and PDF. And I'm always thinking who before do before I go do something, who else could do that? Right? And so if we bring some of that in, that creates it, you know, as as well. But the most powerful where I get my most 30 minute hours comes from this strange, fierce focus that you have the day before vacation, right? If you think about all things that don't happen, there's no idle chit chat. You know, you're not surfing the internet. You're not being distracted by shiny objects this much. No chit chat at the watercooler. All these different things don't happen that day before vacation. Like you're you have this fierce focus, I'm on a mission. I've got to get this stuff done. And some people will use that fierce focus just for certain time. Like they'll say, Okay, I'm gonna do that for the morning. And there's like, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, day before vacation mode. And the people will be like, Well, where are you going on vacation? I'm not. I'm just using that mode right now. You know, so so you can take parts of your day into that. The other interesting thing is, let's see. Are you a fan of James Bond?

Adam Liette
I asked. Yes. Yeah. Love.

Blaine Oelkers
Okay, so do you know the very first movie came out in in 1963? Do you know the very first James Bond movie?

Adam Liette
Very first, I feel like Dr. Know is coming to mind. Yes.

Blaine Oelkers
And I have not had I've never had a podcast host get that right. So it is doctor? No. And the reason I brought that up, is because what happens on the day before vacation, you become Doctor No, like so on the day before vacation? Blank. Can you do this? Can you do that? No, no, no, no, no, don't ask me to do anything. I got a full I got a full boat here. I'm going on vacation. I gotta get all this stuff to you become doctor? No. And you want to do that? You know, that creates a bunch of 30 minute hours for me, because my default answer is no. Now sometimes I'll have to check my schedule, or I'll get a little buffer time. So I could think about the request. But my default answer is no, you need to become doctor no one to create 30 minute hours, but also to avoid the What's worse is is what we call the 90 minute hour. That's when someone asks for an hour of your time and it takes 90 minutes. Right where somebody asks you for 10 minutes and it takes 30 You know you so you want to be doctor? No. So just making that and figuring out for you. What is the easiest best way for you to say no, I always have a big goal, like a big project, you know, you know then I can say hey, I've got this big project. So I can't do that right now I've got this big family thing or whatever it is I kind of pre know my nose. You know pre know kn O W so I can no which is in the middle of no kn O W so remember that when you know you can know. So so saying no is good. The other thing that happens with your focus is the day before vacation people tend to stay on schedule more and to use timers. So all day long. I've got my schedule down I do an hour chunks, but I'm staying on schedule more so especially because I've mapped out, but I am using timers. And so I know that if I'm going to do internet research, I mean, I could be toast for four hours. So you know, I'll set a timer. I'll tell Siri to set a timer for 30 minutes. Or if I'm going to check my email, 15 minutes, I'm going to go into social media, I got to make some posts super hard to resist all the social media stuff of what my friends are doing what you know, they they know exactly who I am, the ads pop up specifically for me, you know, so I got to set a timer. Now I set the timer. If it goes off, and I need another 10 minutes, that's fine, but at least it's a stopping point, right? So so using timers can help you to have the 30 Minute hours. And then the last part where I personally get the most 30 minute hours from personally is through tasking. So on the day before vacation, you become like this tasking guru. And there's three types of tasking, single tasking, multitasking, and batch tasking. And so single tasking, this is for me, where I get the most 30 minute hours. single tasking is when you're doing some tasks, and you're like the best at it, you have to do it, nobody else can do it. It's not delegate double, and you totally focus in on that task. And you remove all distractions completely. So for example, I can get an I write a lot of articles, I can get an an hour's worth of article writing done in 30 minutes, if I will go into single tasking mode. Now that means my phone goes in airplane mode, or I turn it off, that's even better. You know, my computer screen, it's just the one screen I'm typing in. And that's it, I have this piece of scrap paper for when the monkey mind tries to attack me It says wait a second, you know, you're gonna want to talk about this on Adams podcast, I quickly write that down less than three seconds, and I put it aside and I get right back to what I'm doing. Over time, you can quiet the monkey mind down. But But anyway, I'm totally focused on that some people turn off their Wi Fi, that's because they really want to be focused in you know, on that or their go to some other location where they can really zone in and concentrate or they have a certain place in their, in their office that they can go and be really quiet. But that's single minded focus this, you know, and you really cut out all the distractions, because if you'll notice, when you work, you're going to see that you're checking your Oh, I'm hungry, oh, this on that. You're checking your thing. Oh, let me I just gotta send them a text real quick. There are so many distractions, that's what's destroying kind of your productivity. So going into that single tasking mode is is where I get my most 30 minute hours. The second one multitasking sometimes gets a bad rap. But it's where you can do two things at the same time without sacrificing the quality of either one. Right? So I can't do a quality podcast interview and check my email at the same time. Right but you know, Can I can I work on something while I ride my peloton? Yes, I will insert turns a peloton bike into it. It turns into a desk. I know sometimes there's sweat dripping on whatever I'm working on. But I can I can do those two things, you know, of height with high quality both of them? Can I talk hands free on my phone while I'm driving? Yes. So a lot of times I will I will batch which is the last one I'll batch together all my phone calls for when I'm going to be out driving, you know, because I can do those two things at the same time. I love my family time, but I loved exercise. So you know kind of taught the family to play tennis. So if we all go out and play tennis for 30 minutes, that's really I got 30 minutes of tennis and 30 minutes of family time. That was like an hour's worth of stuff in 30 minutes. So looking for those synergies, my wife asked me to do something put in the earbuds and get to work, you know, because if I'm using my hands, my mind is free. So looking for those things where you can do two things without sacrificing the quality of either one. And then the last part is batch tasking. And that you naturally do on the day before vacation, you batch things together like running errands, you're not going to go out and let's say have three errands you're not going to go out come back while you're going to go out run all the errands batch them together. Well, that works on the day before vacation. For people, they batch their phone calls they have to make they batch the work on the computer, they batch meetings, and they'll even the smart ones will even batch their interruptions. And what I mean by that is like you go into work at eight o'clock and you say look, I'm going to be in this thing that I heard about from this guy Blaine, I'm going to be in single tasking mode from nine to 11. But when I emerge at 11, let's let's do 20 minutes of any questions you had for me during that period, anything you need my input on whatever it is, so you kind of almost have like a little office hours there, but you batched all those interruptions into that 20 minutes and gave you the chance to kind of you know, single focus in on what you need to get done. My wife and I, we used to text each other all day long and interrupt each other flow, you know, train of thought and all that. And then we realize wait a second on the iPhone, you can have a shared note. So you have a shared note which we put stuff in and then we're having dinner or whatever, you know, we'll go to the note and look and see what's in there but we both can tell you You know what we see each other types. And then we started a bunch of shared notes, restaurants who want to eat at, you know, you know, things to do for the holidays, you know, anyway, that's, that really kind of put those interruptions. We're not getting notifications of that stuff. Right. So again, batching the interruption. So the oven that the overriding thing that happens on the day before vacation, is that you release your inner perfectionist, right? You release your inner perfectionist, and Done is better than perfect, right? And you let things they're not 100%. But that's okay. Because you got it, they got to get done right, they got to get done. So release, enter perfectionist, so when you think 30 minute hour, think day before vacation, PDF, plan, Delegate focus, and you can start having those hours immediately.

Adam Liette
Well, I know what I'm doing this afternoon blame single focus time, single focus on actually I have a little trick I use where if I have to do like that heavy writing, but like you do for articles, yeah, I'll switch to my iPad, and get away from my desk, I'll even have this little I have this little other table over here on the side, side, like, can even shrink down the size of my screen. So that total focus.

Blaine Oelkers
I love that and, and there's a lot of little things tricks you learn over over time, you know, like, what do you like, what, what are the sounds of productivity for you? Right, so some people it can be classical music, or some people can be rock music, but But you know, you start to dial in and help your brain to get ready, you know, for that for that work. You know, there's a, there's an app that I use called endl, which is personal soundscapes, so they have created the soundscapes basically kind of like music. But but for different things. One is for focus, you can have one for exercise, and all this, but it takes a lot of inputs, like time of day, your your heartbeat, you know, you have to give it access to that information. You know, I do through Apple Watch, but But anyway, it takes all these different things and creates this personal kind of soundscape for you. And I noticed that it works for me. And that when I hear that I get more I get focused, and my willpower to stay focused increased with that. So I know that was another just little tip. But yeah, all those things like you going to the iPad, going to a certain location, or getting where people can't reach you as easily. You know, things like that, that's those, those routines are golden, to also put you in that state and drop you into the state deeper and faster and quicker.

Adam Liette
Oh, my goodness. Well, I might have to go back and listen this episode at least two more times to pull all the knowledge out of this because Blaine, you've just been it's so much value. This has been tremendous. And we all have a lot of work to do. But that's I think my mind, my biggest takeaway from all this is we're never done building ourselves. We're never done optimizing ourselves. And these are just some great tricks that you can start using all these immediately. There's no super secret method that you have to do first, it's all you can start doing these things right away, we can continue creating that better person because like Blaine said, we're just trying to be better than the person yesterday. And this that continuous development. And that kind of reminds me of Matthew McConaughey that he had that famous Oscar speech of his hero is always him 10 years from now. And so we're constantly chasing that hero that's right in front of us. These are all great tools that are going to help you get there. And it's been tremendous Blaine, I do want to be respectful of your time. We're coming up on the hour. But is there any place where the listeners can learn more about you and continue their own personal journey? Yeah.

Blaine Oelkers
Thanks for that. Yeah, well, the easiest thing is probably just to get a copy of my TEDx talk. So you can just go to Blaine tedx.com. So be lainetdx.com. There, you can kind of opt in to get kind of a transcript. And you can see my TEDx talk. And in there, I talk about this concept of white table what you think about you bring about but but showing you a way to kind of program, your subconscious mind, you know, 100 times a day, no effort on your part. So that's kind of fun. And then we'll be connected. So you have my email address, you get to know me through some emails. And if I can help you in any way I would, I would love

Adam Liette
to do it. Fantastic. Well, I'll have that link here below the show notes, guys. So go ahead and link over to that. TEDx talk. Now. I know what I'm doing in my next power hour when I'm, well I haven't a couple of interviews coming up yet, but I will get to it this afternoon. I promise you that Blaine. So this has been absolutely tremendous. Thank you so much for your time and all this amazing knowledge. It's it's gonna definitely make a big difference for me, so I'm really appreciative.

Blaine Oelkers
Well, thank you so much. And I'll leave the listeners with this the bad news. The bad news is that time flies the good news. You're the pilot. So pilot, well, my friends pilot well.