6 Time Hacks to 10x Your Day

In this episode I'm talking about the Compound Effect. It is an incredibly powerful force that is constantly at work in our lives, whether or not we acknowledge it, and it can work for us or against us. Once you realize the profound nature of the Compound Effect, you can begin rethinking how you use your time in light of it. There are some activities that will pay off exponentially over time and some activities that won't. Time is your most valuable asset, so invest wisely. Prioritize the things that will give back to you with residual returns. In this podcast, I'm giving you 6 concrete strategies for investing your time in things that will pay off exponentially. You will be astonished how you are able to create so much more time in your days.

To connect with me about 1:1 coaching, head over to www.briellegoheen.com/coaching

Transcript

Hi everyone! Welcome to the podcast. I have a little bit of news and a process to let you in on. I'm in the process of changing the name of this podcast. I really did love the name A Little Bit Unstoppable especially because of the phrase "a little bit." To me, this means that you only ned the tiniest pieces of you to keep going in the tiniest way in order to not stop. That's what makes a person unstoppable - by allowing themselves the grace to slow down and do less in order to keep moving forward in difficult seasons. But I have had a complex relationship with the name. At times I felt like the word unstoppable felt a bit pompous even though I didn't mean it in that way. I also felt a bit boxed in to only talk about goals and achieving what you set out to do - which is a huge part of what I teach and what I love to help people accomplish. But it is one part in the bigger story of what I want to help people do, and that is to live life well, whatever that means to you.

So I'm in the process of changing the name of the podcast and you'll see some changes roll out in the coming weeks. The new name of the podcast will be A Life Well LIT. I use the phrase "a life well lived" probably every single day. I think that deep down it's what we all want. To come to the end of our lives knowing that we did the best with what we had. That we invested our time and energy into things that mattered. That our presence in this strange and wonderful journey that is life means something and that we will make a mark in this place in some small way. So the phrase "a life well lived" is really meaningful to me. But that's not quite the name of the podcast. The podcast is called A Life Well LIT.

The word "LIT" comes from my DIM to LIT framework that I coach my 1:1 clients through, and it's baked into the design of my online courses (which, by the way, as a teaser, are currently receiving a makeover and will be re-released in December). I'll give you a whole bird's eye view look at the framework sometime, but for now, I'll just tell you briefly what the acronym LIT stands for.

The letter L stands for Lucid - a Lucid Why. A clearly defined purpose for doing what you do each day that is both inspiring and clear.
The letter I stands for Intentional Systems. When you know your Lucid Why that sets your heart, mind and body on fire with passion and inspiration, you then set up systems to support you in that vision. If you create systems before defining your Lucid Why, there's a good chance you will end up optimizing your life beautifully - for the wrong thing. I think this is part of the recipe for a midlife crisis.
The letter T stands for Targeted Action. Once you have Intentional Systems in place that flow from your Lucid Why, you can begin the process of acting out your vision in every area of your life. What I love about targeted action is that it's not busy. A sniper isn't busy. A sniper isn't feeling stressed and hectic. They are breathing deeply , and calmly. They are waiting and alert until they act with precision. If we can live a life of targeted actions, it won't feel so busy, stressful, or chaotic. It will feel calm - and you'll see a whole lot better results as well.

That is waht LIT stands for. So the name A Life Well LIT feels really freeing and aligned for me. I'm very excited about the change, and I hope it will help serve you better as well as you pursue your own unique version of A Life Well LIT.

I wanted to talk today about the power of investing your time in things that pay off exponentially. If you’ve ever listened to a personal finance expert, I’m sure you’ve learned about the power of compound interest and how investing small amounts of money over time begins to stack up really powerfully as you begin earning interest on interest. The key to this is time. For compound interest, the 30 years mark is around when the investments really begin paying off, which is why the experts all talk about how important it is to begin investing in your 20s and 30s whenever possible. Now, I’m not a finance expert by any stretch, but I have developed skills to become an expert in time management, and the concept works in a similar way. But, I’m going to use an example using the metaphor of finances for a minute that I think communicates really well the power of the Compound Effect. So here it is:

I’m giving you a choice. Either take $3 million dollars now, or take a penny. This is a magic penny that doubles in value each day – but that effect will end after only 31 days. Which will you take? Okay, so the fact that I’m even offering this choice gives you an indication that there’s a trick to it. But which one sounds better? A penny doubling in value over 31 days – it just couldn’t possibly compete with $3 million dollars right? Okay. Let’s draw it out. You take the penny and I take the $3 million dollars on Day 1. On Day 2, the doubling starts. After 10 days (a third of the way through) you only have $5.12. I win! After 20 days (two thirds of the way through) you have $5,243. I’m totally winning this one. By day 29, with only TWO days left to go, I’m still winning. You have $2.7 million and I’ve got $3 million. It isn’t until day 30 of 31 that you pull ahead. Your magic penny is now worth $5.3 million. And on the very final day, it’s worth a whopping $10,737,418.24. In those last few days, you pulled ahead of me so quickly that you now have 3 times what I have.

This is the power of what Darren Hardy calls The Compound Effect. It is insane, and like I said earlier, finances is just one of many contexts where we see it at work. The idea is that small actions + consistency over time = radical change. What’s interesting is that the Compound Effect is always at work in all areas of our life. It also works both ways. Compounding habits that are negative have real consequences over time - think the forward head posture from looking down at our phones and computers all day which seems inconsequential, but results over time in headaches and back problems. Similarly, compounding habits that are positive give huge rewards. Our choices have real consequences – over time they can be our best friends over time, or our worst enemies, even the seemingly inconsequential choices. So own them. Own and claim agency over 100% of your choices because they will make up the quality of your life.

We all want to have good habits. James Clear, the author of Atomic Habits which is a fantastic book on behavioural change, writes that, “Habits are the compound interest of self improvement.” So we never start at the place of having a habit, we start at the place of self improvement and it compounds over time to become habitual. We start by making small improvements, and over time, these small improvements compound to create a life that is full of beautiful habits that make each day feel extraordinary.

Like I said at the beginning of this podcast, I am definitely not a financial expert, so if you want to find out about how to make the compound effect work for your finances, there are people (ie. not me) who can give you great details on how to go about starting that journey. But, I am an expert on time management and productivity, so I wanted to provide you with 6 practical ways that you can begin investing your time in things that will pay off with exponential returns. It’s all well and good to understand it conceptually, but I want to give you some really practical application points.

The first thing you will want invest your time in to see exponential returns is learning and personal growth. I have seen this one pay off enormous dividends in my own life in just 3 short years, and I believe it is the foundation to any life that is well lived. Back in 2019, I read James Clear’s book that I referenced earlier, Atomic Habits. It was the first book that I had read in its entirety in 5 or 6 years, and I hadn’t been reading really at all since university which was a full decade earlier. Somewhere in the book or in an interview I watched afterward, James Clear mentioned that the most important habit to foster in your life is reading. He said, “Start lots of books. Quit most of them. Read the best ones twice.” I took that to heart and made a commitment to read a book, or listen to an audiobook every single week. I would do menial chores while I listened, and take time to relax in the evenings with a book in hand to reach the quota I set out for myself. The result was incredible. My house had never been so clean because now it was enjoyable. I was so relaxed and ready to sleep in the evenings, having not spent my last hour in front of a screen. But the biggest difference was in my compounding breadth of knowledge. The knowledge that I gained from one book was one book’s worth. But as I integrated the learning from book after book, the breadth of my accumulating knowledge was so much greater than the sum of the parts. Our brains are integrating, connecting, creative machines and so each new thing you learn gets integrated and connected with everything else, which just hugely expands your playground for creativity. In that first year of beginning to read again, I read over a hundred books. I chose my next book by asking the next logical question that I had. I learned about mental decluttering and physical decluttering, and my brain became even more free to retain information, and integrate the new with the old in some really cool ways. I realized that I needed to have a practice of stillness and meditation which led me on a journey that I didn’t even know I needed to go on to release self-loathing, to embrace myself as I am, and to learn to feel my own heart again. It led to the creation my online courses and coaching practice. It led to me creating my own meditation app for curious followers of the Jesus Way called Daily Breadth. It led to profound Spiritual transformation and deepening. But all of this started with the simple step of committing to read a book a week, a goal that was quickly surpassed as I found ways to make it easy and enjoyable for myself. So my question for you is - what do you love learning about? What skills do you love developing? Where can you say, “the more I learn about this, the more I want to learn?” Invest your time into those things. Follow your curiosity and your desire to learn and grow. Not everyone is captivated by the same questions or ideas, so your abundant curiosity is a clue that will point to areas where you are uniquely able to dive deep. Follow that deep dive long enough and it will yield exponential returns.

The second thing that is worth investing time in is regularly teaching what you learn to other people. One of my favourite authors is Seth Godin, and I quote him all the time. He says, “People don’t remember what they read, what they hear, or even what they see. If they’re lucky, people remember what they do, but they’re not very good at that either. We remember what we rehearse.” The sad truth is that you and I will forget most of what we learn. But the more you rehearse something, the deeper it will become engrained into your memory. I find that I think I understand something when I hear or read it because the logic was laid out for me. But when I try to explain it to someone else, the gaps in my understanding become clear immediately. Honestly, it is one of the most frustrating feelings. But it is a really clear indicator that, if I care about retaining what I learned, I have to leave the point I was led to and retrace the journey of arriving there. Relearn the logic that led me to the new understanding. And teaching is the very best way to figure out where the gaps are, and then to rehearse the content over and over again until it is integrated into so many different places and processes and memories in your brain that will be hard to lose. By the way, you can start this process of teaching what you learn today by telling someone else about these 6 Strategies to invest your time wisely. See if you can remember all 6 after the podcast is finished. Then see if you can remember them well enough to write them down later that day. Then see if you can remember all 6 to share it with someone else tomorrow. We remember what we rehearse, so anything you want to internalize needs to be rehearsed dozens of times at least. This is really the second step that  takes your learning and personal development and makes it exponential by solidifying it many places in your brain.

The third thing that is really worth investing your time in is learning to hack your own unique habit code. I’m sure I’ll do a whole podcast on this in the future, but - we all live out most of our days in a series of programs or habits. We wake up, do the same things in the same way to get ready, go to work using the same roads, do the same activities at work, talk to the same people, take the same train home sitting in our usual seat whenever it’s available, make the same meals we already know how to make, watch our favourite tv shows on repeat, and go to bed. I know that for many people, there is variety in the days somewhere, but the point is that we live out of a series of habits. We have habits we love - like coffee in the morning or sharing meals with our family; habits we tolerate - like washing the dishes or grocery shopping; and habits we hate which would include various addictions or compulsive behaviours that we just can’t shake. The first time you try to break a habit or install a new habit, it will be quite hard. It will be the hardest time, actually. It will be a series of trials and errors. But every time you fail and try again, you gain learning. I talk a lot about a Habit Hypothesis - an idea about what will motivate you to break a habit or help you install a new habit. It’s a hypothesis that will most likely fail. But you take the learning and make a new hypothesis. Try something new. Each time you learn more about yourself - what makes you tick, what motivates you, what inspires you, how to make things enjoyable for yourself… Once you have successfully broken a habit or installed a new habit, the process will instantly be easier the next time because of all the learning you gained along the way. Once you’ve figured hacked your own unique habit code, hacking your next habits will become easier and easier. Learning this process and investing time into honing this skill will pay off exponentially.

The fourth thing you will want to invest your time in to see exponential returns is preventing recurring problems. We all have problems that sap time or energy on a regular basis - problems that recur maybe every day, every week, every month, or every year. They might be tiny things, like losing your wallet or keys every day. But that surge of stress as you’re looking around for it when you’re already late and the time it takes to look for it every single day really adds up. If you spend 3 minutes a day looking for things you lose regularly, it doesn’t seem like that much. But over the course of a year, that’s half a work-week of time. Prevent the residual problem from recurring by, for example with the wallet or keys, giving the item a home in one of our drawers with a dedicated plastic bin or plate. And then there are the bigger things that cause relational stress. If you and your partner are constantly double booking and creating mini emergencies for car sharing or picking up the kids, the stress that this causes really accumulates in the body and a lot of energy is wasted in the wake of that stress. So prevent the residual problem from recurring by, for example, getting a shared Google Calendar or Wall Calendar so that you can always see the other person’s appointments. There are so many small things and big disasters, too, that we can completely prevent with simple, thoughtful solutions. Solve those residual problems for good and you will see exponential returns in the time and energy you have available to use on the things that matter most.

The fifth thing that is worth investing time in is learning to apply automation in any repetitive process in your life. There are so many powerful tools for automating recurring tasks digitally. Whatever you do on a regular basis, there’s an app to help you do it better. Use technology to your advantage with the powerful programs available to automate your workflows, correspondences, etc. To be honest, I love digital automation when I think of it, but I’m really more of an analog girl, so for the non-techies listening, you can also use automation in simpler ways! For example, you can create Standard Operating Procedure documents in your business to automate work flows, or create simple schedules for recurring tasks. I automate my cleaning schedule so I never have to think about what tasks will be done on a certain day. When I have time to clean, I can find what needs to be done that day on a laminated piece of paper in my kitchen. There’s no decision making that needs to happen. I made the decision once, put it on a cleaning schedule for myself, and now each day I follow the automatic program that I set up. The hardest step for this is that it takes time to notice each of the hundreds of recurring tasks in your life. And it takes more time to set up an automation the first time than it does to just do the task. But if you invest time in addressing and automating the recurring tasks, they will go so much more quickly, smoothly, with fewer mistakes, and it will truly yield exponential returns.

The sixth and final thing that you can intentionally invest time in to see exponential returns is building trust. The process of building credibility - showing people that you are qualified, worth listening to, and trustworthy - takes time. It’s important to not violate a trust bond once it is setup. Be trustworthy. Create boundaries around what you will and won’t give, and stick with it. Show that you are reliable. Take accountability for your mistakes. Be honest and communicate clearly. Be authentic and give wholeheartedly from your authentic self. All these things seem simple and obvious, but it could take a lifetime to learn and apply how to do this better. The cool thing is that once trust is established, you can work with other people so much more effectively and at a deeper level. I am working on a musical project with a friend of mine. We’ve been working together for about 18 months now. We spent over a year just establishing trust. But what is so cool is that now we’re able to go deep with the improvisational process almost immediately and with enormous consistently. Creating in community is so much more fun and more powerful than creating in a vacuum. But trust is the essential component to creating in community with ease and freedom. Investing time in building that trust will pay off exponentially.

The Compound Effect is real and it is at work in every moment of your life for better or for worse. Bad habits compound just as suddenly and profoundly when they reach their natural titration point as good habits. Productivity compounds, but so does stress. Knowledge compounds, but so do negative thoughts. Relationships compound, but so does anger. So dedicate yourself to the good, tiny, boring, unexciting daily investments. Because these are the things that matter most. The boring, simple things matter most. James Clear says to aim for 1% improvement over time. Just 1%. You usually don’t have to change your life drastically or all at once to see incredible results over time. Just aim for 1% improvements with consistency.

Thank you so much for listening today and for giving me apiece of your time. I am just so hyper aware of the fact that time is your most valuable asset and so I really appreciate you spending your time with me. If you want to learn more about how to go deeper with teh things you hear on the podcast through 1:1 coaching, head over to briellegoheen.com/coaching for more information and to connect with me directly. If you fill out that form, I'll be in touch about ways that we could work together. Have a fantastic week and remember: the worlds we imagine are the worlds we build. So imagine the most beautiful one you can, and get to work.