Tag: productivity

How some people do so much more with their time.

We all know people who do more than everyone else.

They do the family things and the home things.

They do the friends things, the travel things, the work things, and the wild things.

And miraculously, they seem to be enjoying it all.

Like cyborgs. Or Stepford Wives.

They are creating things that interest them.

They are volunteering for causes they care about.

They are having success in their career, running their own business or leading their family.

They do the networking activities you would like to do.

They exercise.

And they get to worship, too, God bless them.

Plus, they coach or chaperone or team parent for the activities their kids do.

You wonder How do they do it all?

How are they involved in so many things? How do they fit it all in? And how do they not Chernobyl like it’s 1986?

The answer is simple.

Capacity is a state of mind.

You decide how much you can handle, how much you can take on, how much you can fit in.

You decide how much you can do with your hours, days and weeks.

When you decide you are full and overwhelmed, you stop. (Presumably in the name of love.)

People who do more believe they have a capacity to do more.

They see spaces to add things.

They find time in their schedule to make things happen.

They see opportunities that are worth their time and their energy.

And they recognize that at some point, they will run out of time, energy and opportunity.

So they go now.

The scarcity of time is precisely what drives them to see more capacity in their everyday.

Now is the time.

Now is the opportunity.

Now is the alternative to never.

Key Takeaway

If you want to fill your life with meaning, action and contribution, adjust your mindset to create capacity. Because when you want to find the time for more, you will find it. Or you will optimize, prioritize, reduce or eliminate things to make room. There is more space and time in your continuum for the things you really want to do. Find it. Enjoy it. Do more with it. And make others wonder how you do it all.

*If you know someone who could benefit from this message, please share it with them.

+For more of the best life lessons I have learned check out my book, What Does Your Fortune Cookie Say? from Ripples Media. And consider subscribing to Adam’s Good Newsletter.

How to use milestones as the secret to your success.

If you are not careful, your life will pass by in a flash. Your career will be over in a snap. Your kids will be grown and will have flown in a Blink-182. Because time is a crafty thief that lulls you into someday thinking. Like Sugar Ray. And then it yanks that someday away just like your prankster friend, pulling your chair away just before you’re about to sit on it, Potsy.

Milestones

One of the great ways to create a far more enjoyable and successful life and create memorable experiences is to utilize the power of milestones.

Milestones are those moments on the calendar that humans have made to mark the passage of time. Those days or events offer valuable markers for accomplishments, challenges and traditions. They are there to host rites of passage and other memory-making events. And without milestones, Hallmark would have a hard time selling you paper.

You know the big and obvious milestones. At Halloween, you dress up in a costume and do candy things. At Thanksgiving, you gather with family or friends, feast, and get thanky. At Christmas, you exchange gifts, eat, drink and praise Mary. At New Year’s, you celebrate and create lists of how the next 2 weeks will be different.

Deadlines and Opportunities

But milestones also create deadlines for accomplishments and opportunities for memorable experiences.

I sit down to write every morning by 6:10am. But Tuesdays and Thursdays are milestones to publish blog posts. Every 3 weeks, I publish Adam’s Good Newsletter. And every five years, I want to publish a new book. Those are all random and arbitrary deadlines. But they become useful milestones that make my elective activities time-bound. Milestones offer navigational markers on the naked landscape of time. Which ramps up your self-imposed productivity.

I had a major speaking event yesterday, and I used it as an opportunity to get in better shape. I committed to doing 30 minutes of cardio every day for 30 days leading up to the talk, so that I would look and feel more fit on stage in front of 1,000 people. (And I requested to have no cameras in the venue, because the camera adds 10 pounds.)

I always use my birthday as a motivating milestone. I’ve also used class reunions, New Year’s Eve, and the birth of my children as important starting points, end points and exclamation points.

I have used milestones to gain traction towards health and fitness goals, to measure my business success, and to create deadlines for my entrepreneurial launches. (Which are a lot less launchy than Elon Musk, Richard Branson or Jeff Bezos’ entrepreneurial launches.)

I used the end of the COVID-19 lockdown in 2020 as a milestone to finish the first draft of my manuscript for my first book, What Does Your Fortune Cookie Say? Then I used Thanksgiving of 2021 as my milestone to publish the book. I made both of those goals happen, thanks to the power of milestones. (Since then, I have learned how to write a manuscript without a worldwide pandemic.)

I use milestones to schedule big travel. For my wife Dawn’s 40th birthday, I surprised her with a trip to Europe. We scheduled a trip to Europe in the summer before my daughter Ava’s senior year of high school. We realized that the milestone provided the last summer opportunity for us to all travel together before college obligations made summer travel problematic. Using milestones is one of the best ways to visit the big places on your life-travel list. (Using airplanes is the other best way.)

I used a milestone to plan a major move. My wife and I wanted to find a place where we could settle to allow our children to finish their schooling without moving by the time my daughter Ava entered middle school. We moved from Atlanta to Mequon, Wisconsin, a large-yarded, low-taxed, great-schooled northern suburb of Milwaukee that sits on the Western shore of Lake Michigan. We called this our 13-year home. Which meant that we would stay in Milwaukee for 13 years, until we hit another major milestone: our son Magnus’s high school graduation. Then Dawn and I are free to hit the road again and take on more adventures.

Key Takeaway

Your greatest ambitions, experiences and traditions are far less likely to happen if you don’t tie them to a milestone. Use those special days to inspire your work, to create deadlines, and to force urgency. Use them to create regular events to bring your people together. Or to reset your ambitions, spark your goal setting and help you accomplish more elective activity than you could without them.

*If you know someone who could benefit from this message, please share it with them.

+For more of the best life lessons I have learned, check out my book, What Does Your Fortune Cookie Say? from Ripples Media. And consider subscribing to Adam’s Good Newsletter.

You have 1 month left to make things happen in 2024.

Welcome to December. 2024 is now 11/12ths complete. Which means you have one month left to make progress on your life and yearly goals. If you are a procrastinator, you have already hit the snooze button 11 times, and it is now time to get up and go. (If you are an amateurcrastinator you are not as good a procrastinator. But I don’t know if that means you put things off more or less. #ThingsThatMakeYouGoHmmm.)

December means you have one month left to:

Finish the year fitter, not fatter. The best way to a better body in 2025 is to start in 2024.

Revisit your New Year’s resolution. You likely left it somewhere in January.

Start a new habit. (Read Atomic Habits by James Clear to check the box on this and the next item. Plus it is half-price right now. You are welcome.)

Read a great book this year. (See above.)

Get in touch with that person or people you haven’t touched in too long.

Go to church. December is the best time to go anyway, for Christ’s sake. And for the bread and juice. And to try to get off the naughty list.

Donate to charity. (And get the tax benefits.)

Start that business. (I am working on starting an Excite Hustle with my son. We have talked about it for forever. But we are going to make it happen this month! An Excite Hustles is like a side hustle, but it excites you about doing work.)

Begin writing that book. Just start by writing down a simple outline of what you know about the topic, or a paragraph summarizing the plot, like Sir Mix-A-Plot. I write my books in a Google Doc. You don’t need anything fancy. Or schmancy.

Take that trip. Or schedule and book that vacation. It’s a great time to lock in your spring or summer travel and give yourself something to look forward to this winter. Unless you live somewhere vacationy already. In which case, pick another thing to do with your 12th month.

Do a million other things. Those first ten items were just examples. I don’t have time to write an exhaustive list of everything you could possibly do this month. Because we both have more important things to do. So let’s go, Geronimo!

Key Takeaway

Time keeps on slipping, slipping, slipping into the future. You have to recognize the passage of time to make its scarcity useful. The last month of the year, the last day of the week and the last hours of the day create a valuable sense of urgency, signaling it’s go time. Remember, when you hit a deadline, the opportunities afforded by that unit of time are dead. Let that motivate you to go now. There’s no better time.

*If you know someone who could benefit from this message, please share it with them.

+For more of the best life lessons I have learned check out my book, What Does Your Fortune Cookie Say? from Ripples Media.

You are about to get 111 hours free. Don’t waste them.

This week, you get an amazing gift. No, Ed McMahon won’t be showing up with a humongo check. You won’t have wise men pop in unannounced to drop off gold, fruitcake and myrrh. Instead, you will get the precious gift of time. Time away from work, or school, or even working at a school.

But you don’t just get 1 or 2 hours free. And not just 8 or 24 hours either.

You get a shipload of time.

In fact, you get 111 hours free!

The Math

If you are one of the many who don’t have to work or go to school Thursday through Sunday, your time off starts at 5pm on Wednesday and ends at 8am on Monday.

In between there are 111 hours for you to spend wisely.

You can use it on quality time with friends and family. There is plenty of time for talking, playing, singing, and laughing until liquids sprays our of your nose. And if your friends don’t make you laugh until you leak, you need better friends.

You can invest in your health. Walking, turkey trotting, hiking, or any other calorie burning activity before or after the meal is a great idea.

You can read. You can read a lot in 111 hours. In fact, you could probably read all 1032 blog posts I have written here at The Adam Albrecht Blog. You could read my book What Does Your Fortune Cookie Say? Or you could read an important piece of literature, a valuable self improvement book, the biography of a wildly successful human or a tale of epic human adventure and triumph. But my blog will have more random pop culture references. So I’ve got that going for me. Which is nice.

You can schedule that health checkup, or that therapy session you know you need. You could enroll in a program to stop doing that thing you know you shouldn’t do no more, like Phil Collins said.

You can start working on that master project you have always dreamed of. Or that mini project you couldn’t seem to find time to do, Mickey.

You could plan a vacation. Or book a vacation. Or at least watch National Lampoon’s Vacation.

You could transfer money to savings. Or to that investment account. Or to me.

You could plan a dinner with people you love chewing the fat with.

You could schedule a Zoom with friends or family that you won’t see in real life this holiday. But not if they are no longer in real life. (Zoom hasn’t worked out that technology yet.)

You could plan impromptu in-person get-togethers, right now, over me.

You can play games. Board games. Card games. Football games. Reindeer games. We don’t game enough.

You could start planning your own business. (Not that that’s any of my business.)

You could start filling a notebook with everything you know about a specific topic. That’s a great way to start writing a book.

You could volunteer. Even if you are not in Knoxville.

In fact, you can do just about anything you please.

But please, please, please don’t do nothing, Sabrina.

You can do nothing anytime.

Key Takeaway

You are about to receive the most precious gift of all. The gift of time. 111 hours. A stately sum. Invest it any way you like. But whatever you do, don’t waste it. Because you will never get it back.

If you found something valuable or rewarding to do with your 111 hours, please shoot me a note to let me know what you did at 614-256-2850 or at adam@theweaponry.com. I am always looking for good ideas and success stories.

*If you know someone who could benefit from this message, please share it with them.

+For more of the best life lessons I have learned check out my book, What Does Your Fortune Cookie Say? from Ripples Media.

8 Ways to reload your spring every day.

A good day is full of actions. Some physical. Some mental. Some social. But the progress you make each day is a result of the actions you take. But one good day is not enough. To live a good, good life you need to create good day after good day, mate.

However, a day full of action depletes your resources. That’s why it is important to reload your spring. (#snickering) Whether you are focused on your career, caring for your family, or training for competition, it’s important to come back day after day with great energy and effort.

To create a long chain of great days of action and progress you have to reload your spring.

8 Ways To Reload Your Spring

1. Sleep: A great night of sleep is the best thing you can do to reload. After a long day of activity, your spring is fully uncoiled. Your energy is expended. Like The Giving Tree, you have nothing left to give. No leaves. No branches. No apples. But overnight something magical happens. A full night of sleep reloads and resets your spring. It makes you ready to uncoil on another day of important actions, Jackson.

2. Eating: All that work you are doing burns calories. When you feel like a hangry, hangry hippo, it’s a sign that your spring is fully uncoiled. When you eat you are putting calories back in your system. You are refueling. As you reload energy into your system with great nutrition you are resetting your spring. Also, make sure to hydrate.

3. Hydrate: Make sure you are drinking plenty of water. Humans are basically walking bags of water. So rehydrate early and often to keep your spring at full hydraulic power. Start your day with a tall drink of water to make sure you hit the day fully recoiled.

4. Exercise When you exercise you are creating a better spring. You are putting more power into it. You are enabling it to uncoil over a longer period without losing strength. Plus, it makes you look more springy.

5. Socializing: If you have extroverted tendencies, you reload by spending time with others. For extroverts, socializing is like Gatorade. (But instead of replacing your electrolytes, it replaces your socialytes.) Make sure to add social activities to your calendar to regain what you have lost.

6. Solitude: If you have introverted tendencies, you reload in your quiet time alone. Don’t neglect this time. It will help you reset and prepare for another day among the Yappers.

7. Reading: Reading reloads your spring through education, inspiration and motivation. (Basically all the ations.) Learning new things helps you find new and better approaches to add to your weaponry. Reading exposes you to people who have done great things and inspires you to do more. Plus, reading provides motivation and reminds you of the reasons you are taking all those actions.

8. Faith: Faith isn’t just for George Michael and Tim McGraw. Tapping into and practicing your faith has the power to reload like nothing else can. Don’t miss out on its power to re-energize your system and bolster your resilience day after day.

Key Takeaway

Success is a result of putting your all into each day and then reloading. The better you are at reloading your spring daily the easier it is to sustain progress and deliver results. Whether you are the CEO of the world’s biggest company or the head of your household, make sure to reload your spring. It’s the key to bringing your best to each day.

*If you know someone who could benefit from this message, please share it with them.

+For more of the best life lessons I have learned check out my book, What Does Your Fortune Cookie Say? from Ripples Media.

Are you creating Onion Days?

I had a pretty bad day on Saturday. I coach 8th-grade football on Saturday mornings. And we lost. Like nothing-went-right lost. Like The-Bad-News-Packers lost. Like that-TV-show-about-the-plane- crash-on-that-island lost.

Then I couldn’t get myself motivated to do anything productive the rest of the day. By Saturday night I felt like I not only lost the football game, but I lost the rest of the day as well. Unfortunately, when you lose a day you never get it back, Jack.

But on Sunday, I bounced like Flubber. Before I went to bed Sunday night, I reflected on my day. And I realized that my Sunday was as good as my Saturday was bad. I had created an Onion Day. A day with layer after layer after layer of good stuff.

My Onion Day.

I woke up early to write and publish a blog post about the importance of planting yourself in soil that enables you to thrive.

Then my family and I went to the 9am church service. (God knows that service helps you get the most out of your morning.)

We took the slow Sunday drive home along Lake Michigan, avoiding the usual interstate route. It’s the automotive version of stopping to smell the roses. Although you can’t actually smell roses at 25 miles per hour.

I cleaned out a significant part of our basement that had become cluttered with random stuff during the renovation we did on our home over the past year.

I watched some of the Patriots -Bengals game, and watched my Pats look like a real team again for the first time since Tom Brady left to spend more time looking at himself in the mirror.

I helped my son Johann think through a writing and research project for an AP class he is taking.

I took a long walk with my wife Dawn, son Magnus and dog Lola along Lake Michigan. Which looks like an ocean, but is unsalted and shark-free.

I picked up fun food for dinner for the family, because I was too hungry to wait for the ribs Dawn was planning to make for our Sunday dinner. (And apparently, a commercial I watched during the football game worked on me.)

I broke down game footage from our team’s ugly loss so we could coach the team on how to do things better next time. (If they don’t do better I will cry myself to sleep every Saturday night until November.)

I talked to my daughter Ava on the phone on the last day of her 18th year and caught up on her day at college.

I worked out, like LFMAO would say.

The Reflection

I looked back at my day. And I realized that I had a near-perfect Onion Day.

  • I created
  • I churched
  • I meandered
  • I familied
  • I worked
  • I taught
  • I explored
  • I treated
  • I coached
  • I connected
  • I exercised

It was a great Onion Day, a great way to bounce, and a great example of time well spent.

Key Takeaway

The best days are Onion Days. Those are the days when you layer in as many of your favorite and most important activities. Know what your perfect Onion Day entails. Then work to create as many of them as you can. That’s how you build a great and rewarding life without regrets.

*If you know someone who could benefit from this message, please share it with them.

+For more of the best life lessons I have learned check out my book, What Does Your Fortune Cookie Say? from Ripples Media.

The most important work you do is invisible.

We often think of work as visible. Showy. Demonstrable. That used to be the case. For most of history, until the latter half of the 1900s, most work was easy to see. It was blue-collar and physical. And it drove a lot of sales of Bengay.

But today, machines do much of the physical work. This means that much of the important work you do is not seen. Because it happens in your head.

Today nearly 40% of jobs are classified as managers, officials or professionals. Roughly the same percentage are service jobs. While I am no mathemetician, I think that means that 80% of jobs require you to think. Like Aretha Franklin said. Because today, most work is mental.  

It is easy to tell when a manual laborer is not laboring. The person on the construction crew leaning on the shovel is both conspicuous and maddening. But when your work is not easily visible, you must bring your own mental discipline to stay on task. Focus is the key to mental productivity. Thinking work requires you to defend your focused time to get the thinking things done.

Focus is critical to strategizing and organizing in your head. Focus is needed to then translate those ideas to your coworkers, customers and partners for alignment and execution. Real focus. Not just focus pocus. 

The work performed by your mental machinery is the most valuable type of work there is today. The better you are at this work the more valuable you are to your team, and the more value you create for others.

Key Takeaway

Get good at your own inner workings. Master the work that no one else can see. Create structure and space to think and strategize. Organize the world in your head so you can organize the organization in the real world. This means both finding the quiet to do the work, and the discipline to be diligent about the work you must do to make a difference.

*If you know someone who could benefit from this message, please share it with them.

+For more of the best life lessons I have learned check out my book, What Does Your Fortune Cookie Say? from Ripples Media.

The 2 key ingredients you need for a great year in 2024.

You have just over 2 weeks until you jump into 2024 like David Lee Roth. Which makes now the perfect time to prepare for a great year. It is important to realize that great years don’t just happen on their own. They are created by you, with a strong assist from God.

I have had a lot of great years. And I’ve come to recognize that great years consist of success in 2 key areas. The first area I call PSI, which stands for Productivity and Self-Improvement. The second area I call ME, which stands for Memories and Experiences. (Although you could easily call it EM if you wanted to.)

Your PSI comes from a great routine.

A great routine ensures that you are working, growing and maintaining your mind and body. This is how you build productivity, and self-improvement into your days, weeks and months. This is done by developing strong habits in the following areas:

  • A good sleep schedule
  • Exercise
  • A strong and productive work routine
  • Good eating habits
  • Reading
  • Reflection
  • Prayer
  • Church
  • Meditation
  • Hygiene
  • Laying off the drugs

If you want help developing your own great habits I strongly recommend the book Atomic Habits by James Clear.

Your ME success comes from breaking your routine.

If everything you did was within your routine you wouldn’t create special experiences. And special experiences are critical to developing memories and an interesting, well-flavored life. The routine breaks are where your great stories come from. Because no one wants to hear your story about that time you followed your routine, and things went the way you expected.

Your scheduled routine breaks include:

  • Travel
  • Shows
  • Parties
  • Vacation
  • Competitions
  • Parades
  • Concerts
  • Hikes
  • Romance
  • Practical Jokes
  • Non-required shopping
  • Group Dinners
  • Taking an elective class
  • Reindeer Games

Key Takeaway

As you prepare for a great 2024, make sure you have the ingredients you need for a great year. Develop a strong routine that will help drive strong and productive habits. But then regularly disrupt your routine with special events that will add to your life and your experiences with friends and family. These disruptions are what will create a well-balanced life. Because your success comes from what you do repeatedly. And your memories come from the novel experiences. Together, they provide you with everything you need for a great year and a great life.

*If you know someone who could benefit from this message, please share it with them.

+For more of the best life lessons I have learned check out my book, What Does Your Fortune Cookie Say? from Ripples Media.

A simple rule of thumb to get the most out of your people.

When I was a kid I loved the movie Smokey and The Bandit. I was into trucks and Trans Ams. So a movie about those two vehicles racing across America, starring Burt Reynolds and his mustache, was an obvious Oscar winner to me.

I also loved the theme song from the movie, East Bound and Down by Jerry Reed. My favorite line from the song is the classic, ‘We’ve got a long way to go, and a short time to get there.’

Those lyrics still play in my head today. Because as a business owner, and both a football and track and field coach, I have big goals for my teams to accomplish. And I have a short time to make them happen.

Getting The Most Out Of Your People

To get the most out of your people there is a simple exercise to help you budget the time and energy you spend with each of the members of your team.

Grab a sheet of paper. (Yes, they still make paper.) On the left side write down a list of those you manage or coach in order from most productive to least productive. Your productivity rock stars will be at the top. Your ‘Why-are-they-still-here’ person is at the bottom.

Then, to the right of that, create a list, in order, of how much time you spend managing or coaching each of the people you lead.

Now, you are going to draw a good old-fashioned straight line connecting the names on the left list to the same name on the right list.

If you are drawing straight lines, and the lines don’t cross, you are budgeting your time appropriately. If your lines Christopher Cross, you spend too little time with your most talented people, and too much time with your least talented people. It is time to re-budget.

Key Takeaway

Maximize the return on your time invested in your team. This means the most productive people should get the most time and attention. The least productive people should get the least of your time. This rewards good behavior from your best people. And it ensures that your time and energy are invested where they will get the greatest return. Spending more time with your less productive team members sends the wrong signal to your great talent. And it is a waste of time. With rare exceptions, the least productive team members will always generate the least results.

*If you know someone who could benefit from this message, please share it with them.

+For more of the best life lessons I have learned check out my book, What Does Your Fortune Cookie Say? from Ripples Media.

One of the keys to accomplishing a lot is lazy time.

Like Morris Day, I am trying to make the most of my time.

So I try to stay busy and do a lot of stuff.

  • I am an entrepreneur. (TheWeaponry.com)
  • I write a blog and publish 3 new posts every week. (adamalbrecht.blog)
  • I have published 2 books and am working on a third. (You can find them here.)
  • I travel the country as a professional speaker. (That is still awesomely weird to write.) 
  • I coach youth football in the fall.
  • I coach high school track in the spring.
  • I have 3 kids that I try to parent right.
  • And I have a great wife that I love spending time with, and that I really want to keep.
  • Plus I try to work out at least 4 times per week.
  • And I am trying to read 3 books every month.

During my talks I am often asked how I get so much done.

Ironically, one of the keys to doing a lot is rest. (Although, like Alanis Morissette, I may have used ironic incorrectly here. Maybe it’s a paradox. Or maybe even 3 dox.)

Rest

Rest means getting good sleep at night.

It means taking quick naps in the afternoon or evening when I can.

And it means enjoying downtime. 

Sometimes downtime means a lazy few minutes, or a few lazy hours. 

Sometimes it means a lazy day.

Or a vacation.

Regular rest allows you to sustain your efforts over a longer time. It helps you avoid burnout, Spicoli. And it helps you look forward to getting back to work.

I plan to take some lazy time this weekend to rest, recharge and prepare for a strong push to the end of the year. I encourage you to too. And if Bono and The Edge are reading this, I encourage U2 to too. 

Key Takeaway

Rest is an important part of any success program. It may be counterintuitive, but rest allows you to maintain a stronger, faster and more sustainable pace.

*If you know someone who could benefit from this message, please share it with them.

+For more of the best life lessons I have learned check out my book, What Does Your Fortune Cookie Say? from Ripples Media.