Transform Your Routine to Boost Productivity

This episode of Unmasking Greatness dives into balancing the demands of LIFE. We'll uncover five essential strategies that can transform the way you juggle work and life, enabling you to save time, maintain focus, and nurture your relationships and health. By keeping your initial motivations in clear view, you can prevent your career from overshadowing your personal life.

Creating a robust foundation in your daily routine can significantly reduce stress and decision fatigue. Imagine planning your meals, outfits, and meetings ahead of time to ease your daily load. 

Establishing personal rules and rituals—like maintaining a consistent sleep schedule or starting the day with gratitude—can set a positive tone for your life. Effective planning with tools like Google Calendar and physical planners, coupled with non-negotiables like structured nutrition and gym sessions, can help you stay organized and productive. 

Join us as we explore how to build stability, adapt to changes, and surround yourself with positivity for a balanced and successful life.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome to Unmasking Greatness. I'm your host, chris Kikoris, a lifestyle fitness coach and mentor. This podcast is about unmasking your greatest potential, finding your purpose and crafting a life worth living. Health and fitness has been the gateway drug to all of my success. My continuous drive to keep learning and surround myself with other high achievers forces me to level up, which has developed my mind to something I never thought was possible. This podcast is here to share what I've learned and continue to learn with all of you. This is your sign to take back control of your health, mindset and personal environment. Strap in as we are recharged and always find value in the show. Please subscribe and share, as we can all get better together. Let's go. What's up, fam? Happy Monday. I hope you guys are ready to crush this week.

Speaker 1: 0:49

You know this past weekend had a lot of things going on. We're getting ready to go to Mexico for a week and do a little bit of a family event. But I had posted a story on my Instagram and I had. It was me and my son. We were playing in his room. He's had his Legos and action figures and we're just kind of messing around and sometimes I'll I'll post little stories about us doing things.

Speaker 1: 1:14

And, um, uh, one of my good friends messaged me and he was like how do you do it? I was like what do you mean? And he's like how do you? How do you do it? Like, how do you, you know, run a business Cause we're in the same, same kind of work. And he goes how do you, how do you balance your time? How do you turn your mind off? How do you, how do you separate work from your personal life? He's like I feel like I'm constantly, like always thinking about what I need to be doing. I should always be doing something. I just I, it's hard for me to shut down. And he's like how do you, how do you, you know, delegate one to the other and just turn it off? Is it a light switch? How does it work? And, uh, it's funny because, as he's saying this, I'm, he's, he's me. He's basically saying the same struggles that I fight with, even to this day. Now, I started my business back in 2020, and I have refined it over time and I continuously try to do that over and over.

Speaker 1: 2:15

But some of the things that I was telling him, I was like listen, dude, I was like me and you, we're the same the thoughts, the feelings, the emotions that you're having, the stress, trust me, that unfortunately doesn't go anywhere. But there's ways to mitigate it, there's ways to optimize what you're doing. And you just got to be careful because you don't want your work to affect your relationships around you, you don't want it to affect your health, you don't want it to be a paradox of progress, meaning that we get so hyper, fixated on our business because we love it. Right, don't get me wrong. We love working, so we want to do more of that. But we also have a vision. We want to grow, we want to expand, and so you have to reel yourself back.

Speaker 1: 3:01

And I told him, I was like why did you start this? Why did you decide to go into business for yourself? Why did you decide to start coaching people? And it really came down to one. He loves it, he loves training, he loves the nutrition, he loves helping people, but also it's for a little bit of financial freedom. It's we don't want to work for someone else. We don't have to answer. We can schedule our days the way we want and in retrospect, when we zoom out, we got that.

Speaker 1: 3:30

But we started adding additional. You know goal points and stresses in our life to where there's a new level of normality, there's a new level of standard that we have created for ourselves, which we got the original goal, which was get out of a nine to five, get out of working for somebody else, creating our own schedules. But now we have bigger goals and visions that we're striving for. So there's no more clocking in and clocking out. The brain is always on and the best way I can tell you, as an entrepreneur, there's no, there's no balance. There's no balance when it comes to entrepreneurship. It is you have to find a way to integrate things.

Speaker 1: 4:16

And I and I told him I was like, listen, when I first started, things were going great. You know my business is growing. You know, getting clients, everything's moving in the direction. But I'm so hyper-focused in the business my relationship started to slip, you know, with my wife, with my son, and I came to this realization. I'm like, wait a minute, like I, I did this, started this business to be with them, to spend more time with them, to have less stress in my life, and somehow my business is starting to thrive and everything else is falling apart. So I said be careful how you do that. And so I want to give you guys some of the skills, some of the tactics, some of the strategies that I continue to put in practice to help you be successful in whatever you do. Maybe it's not, you don't have your own business, and that's perfectly okay, but there's certain things that you can implement into your life to be successful, and a lot of these things are going to be massive time savers for you. This is really going to help you stay laser focused. It's going to help optimize your friendships, your family, your family, your relationships, your health, everything if you implement some of these strategies. And so there's five different strategies that I'm going to share with you guys. Okay, and these five again are going to change the game.

Speaker 1: 5:39

Because, understand, many people, you know, associate discipline and structure with freedom. Because, understand, many people associate discipline and structure with freedom. But this is really furthest from the truth. Having structure, having a system put in place, is what eliminates a lot of distractions. Let me give you guys an example. Imagine when we have clients come into us. We're always starting with foundational work structure and I give a visualization of building a home. When we have clients come into us, we're always starting with foundational work structure and I give a visualization of building a home.

Speaker 1: 6:08

Imagine you are building a home for you and your family. You don't just start throwing up two by fours. You know the first wind that comes by is blowing everything down. Where do you start? You start with the ground. You got to grade it. You got to, you know, flatten it. You got to put the concrete down, the piping, all of the foundational work.

Speaker 1: 6:28

Now, I'm not a builder, but this is my context. Right, you're laying foundational work and then you start building walls, reinforcements, right, you start to put separate rooms for, you know, you and your significant other, your kids. You have a kitchen, you have a living room. There's certain rooms that you have designed for your life, right, but it's all underneath one roof. Now, the boundaries, right, the structural walls. What is that really for? I mean, you could leave just everything wide open and just have frame. No, you have these things put in place to make sure that rodents, animals, invaders don't come into your house and start ruining and wreaking havoc over everything. There's a reason those walls are up and it's to protect you and it's to keep things organized to make sure that you're safe and you're comfortable. But you're also progressing right, because everything's put into perspective.

Speaker 1: 7:30

So the very first tip and strategy I'm going to tell you guys is structure. Creating structure in your life will ultimately take away a lot of the stress and the guesswork. Most people that are stressed come from decision fatigue. If you've ever heard of decision fatigue, it is by making micro decisions all throughout the day, and by the time it comes down to making an important decision, you're mentally drained. There's nothing left, and so let me give you guys a couple examples. There's nothing left, and so let me give you guys a couple examples.

Speaker 1: 8:04

When I'm designing structure in my life, I don't want to think of what I'm eating for breakfast in the morning. I don't want to think about what I'm wearing that day. I don't really want to think about what my meetings and calls are supposed to be about that day. All of that should have already been established prior to the day starting, because if I'm trying to scramble and get everything together by the time I get home after a day of work, a day of calls, a day of meetings, here's a great one.

Speaker 1: 8:37

If you guys are in a relationship, you have one of these crazy days that I'm talking about. You walk inside, it's close to dinner time, your significant other is like hey, uh, what do you want for dinner? How many of you guys have ever answered I don't know, I don't care, whatever, just like your significant asked you what you wanted to eat for dinner. Maybe you guys, she was thinking that you or he or she was going to think about going out to dinner with you and you just go off the top because you're so mentally exhausted. You didn't even think before you started speaking and it just came off with a just negative energy and it's purely because you're fatigued by making all those micro decisions. So if we can just compound that and make sure that we have structures and systems put in place, you'll never have to be stressed out about what you want for dinner.

Speaker 1: 9:29

So those sort of questions, like I said, what to eat, what to wear, you know what's going to be at the meetings today, all of those, they should be already done. And this goes into like a lot of our planning strategies with our clients, helping them make sure that they set up their week on a Sunday morning. Sunday, you plan out your whole week, you game plan and you execute for success. So structure is going to be the first one. The next one is going to be rules, rules and rituals, and this is very person to person. Everybody has their own set of rules, their own set of rituals that they want to incorporate in their life.

Speaker 1: 10:11

It's a personal philosophy and, if you hear me talk a lot, some of the rules and rituals that I do my best to stick to. One of them is I wake up and I go to bed at the same time, every single day, every day. It doesn't matter if it's the weekend, it doesn't matter if it's Monday through Friday. I wake up at the same time. I go to sleep at the same time. This makes it very easy for me to know what the window I have of the time that I'm awake. It also allows me to have a window of time of adequate rest. I'm getting good sleep so I can perform at the highest level. So sleep is very underestimated when it comes to your health, your mindset, your wellbeing, how you interact with others, other things that I have incorporated into my rules and rituals.

Speaker 1: 10:58

I don't scroll on social media first thing in the morning. Matter of fact, I heard a this is a while back so I don't want to butcher this, but there, jay Shetty actually made this thing, saying would you allow millions of people to walk right inside of your bedroom first thing in the morning? Of course not. I mean, first off, my bedroom is not that big, but two like you're getting crust out of your eyes. You're you gotta go brush your teeth? You're not ready? And what do we do? That's exactly what a lot of us do is we open up the phones and we start scrolling and essentially we're letting everybody into our lives before our brains are already turned on and we're either seeing things about the news which again set the pace for you know, typically pretty negative conversations moving forward, or maybe we're looking at highlight reels for people we wish we had their lifestyle and we know nothing about these people. Their life may not be that great, but those highlight reels really push the narrative of you know, success and what that looks like and living on the beach and all those things. So where does that put our headspace?

Speaker 1: 12:01

I think we need to just shut that off and practice some gratitude, which is the third thing that I do. I write down three things I'm grateful for every day. Every morning, I wake up, I come in the office and I sit down. It's silent and I write down three things that I'm grateful for. And it helps me reflect because, just like I was talking about the, and it helps me reflect because, just like I was talking about the initial story with me and my friend, why we started entrepreneurship, we wanted to be financially free, we wanted to set our own schedule, we didn't want to work for anybody else and we got it. So the things that we're complaining about are very minuscule in context. Right, there's definitely still stress when it comes with it, but again, we got what we wanted. So we need to be grateful for that and I am grateful for that.

Speaker 1: 12:49

I don't. I never have to miss anything in my school events with my son. You know I can go on vacations for family events we have. The reason we're going to Mexico is a quinceanera. So I don't, I can't, I don't have to miss that. You know back working. You know in the restaurant business, and that was by far longer than nine to fives, but there was one vacation a year. For the most part, I couldn't leave. It's hard to get away from a business like that if things aren't running efficiently and you have good employees and things like that. So, again, setting really solid rules and rituals is going to make your life a lot more simple. So think about what those are for you and start implementing.

Speaker 1: 13:31

I would definitely suggest the sleeping and waking up routine. A lot of people have an alarm to wake up, but they don't have an alarm to go to sleep. That is another thing that we're we push in. Our program is set an alarm to go to sleep, because a lot of people that come into our program they're scrolling at night. They do get in bed. So getting in bed is not the problem. It's actually shutting down the mind, closing the eyes, not looking at blue lights like your screen, your phone screen, your tablets, computers. This all tricks the mind to stay awake. So again, rules and rituals would be the next one.

Speaker 1: 14:08

The third one organization and planning. Okay, organization and planning, these all kind of fold into each other, but if you guys don't use a planner, a schedule system, you are massively undercutting yourself. You have no idea. I love hearing I don't have time, chris. I don't have time to work out, I don't have time to food prep, I don't have time to eat, and when I ask them to explain a day to me, they have no idea. They don't know what time they wake up. They don't know what time they go to sleep. They don't know what time they wake up. They don't know what time they go to sleep. They don't know when they're working. They don't know any like. They just don't manage it.

Speaker 1: 14:51

And what happens is I'm like great, ok, let's start here. You don't have time, you don't manage your time. I want you to open up your phone for me right now and I want you to share with me what your screen time is. Oh, that's a heavy hitter. That's a heavy hitter because most people are spending hours a day on the screen Hours. Do you know what you could do with hours a day? And you're over here saying that you don't have any time. So it really puts things into context and perspective.

Speaker 1: 15:20

So being able to plan your months, your weeks, your days is going to massively cut down the time that you're wasting, and you can't track and adjust what you don't measure right. You have to be able to measure these things, and so we even created our own planner. I customized and made and designed my own planner that has a full training system in it of videos to walk them through how to effectively use it, because a lot of people just get it and they just write stuff down. They're just like, oh yeah, birthday party, gym, you know. But there is a very strategic way to utilize a planner to be efficient, and not only that, it's going to build your confidence. I'll give you one note about utilizing a planner to be efficient, and not only that, it's going to build your confidence. I'll give you one note about utilizing a planner and planning out your weeks.

Speaker 1: 16:11

One of the most common mistakes I see when people start to utilize something like this is they have a list of things they wanna do in a week Okay, very common, I do too. The mistake comes where they put it do in a week Okay, very common, I do too. The mistake comes where they put it all on a Monday. They try to get as much done Monday as possible because in their mind they're like if I can get everything done on Monday, I have the rest of the week to just kind of relax. That is a fallacy. That is not true. You can never catch up. There's no such thing as a catching up, because you're always moving to the next thing.

Speaker 1: 16:51

So I highly suggest space them out throughout the days one to three max a day and what will happen is you are going to see that you will accomplish those things, because you will audit the end of your day and see how you accomplish them, and it's going to build your confidence. You're going to be like I can actually get things done and then you go to the next day. You knock out the next one, two, three things that you're supposed to do again, but now you're building confidence in your ability because if you put everything on a Monday and you fail, you're like I never have time, I can never complete anything. You start to negative self-talk yourself. So that is the number one mistake that I see people do is that they just try to jam everything on a Monday. Don't do that. Spread it out.

Speaker 1: 17:26

If you're interested in wanting a planner, shoot me a DM on Instagram. I have one. I can throw it to you. It's not a big deal. So, with organization and planning, please try to organize your days. You know what time you're going to go to gym, what time you're supposed to be working out or, I'm sorry, go going to work. Um, what time are you going to? You're going to have date night. I even put date nights in my calendar because I I'm a visual person. I need this, I use, I use a, a physical planner, I use Google calendar and I also have a CRM system that has all my scheduling in it. I use all three and they all work together and there's something about writing something down that really helps just solidify and make you not forget what you're supposed to be doing. So do that time block, schedule your days.

Speaker 1: 18:13

The fourth thing I would say um, oh, I'm sorry, fifth. Fifth would be non-negotiables. Okay, having non-negotiables in your life. Again, this goes back to your own personal beliefs and what you want. But having a list of things to avoid is a super powerful way to support the structure in your life. And you want to be very clear on what will and will not help you be successful. And again you're going to, this will change, this will evolve over time. And I want to say something about the planning thing. Your planner, your schedule, your time blocking it will evolve.

Speaker 1: 18:56

We all go through seasons of life. Things become slower, things become hectic, you're moving locations, you're having a kid, you're changing jobs. There's always something going on. So don't think that what you create is supposed to be perfect and it's supposed to last forever. It's not. It will always change. So the non-negotiables are going to help solidify what you are trying to accomplish.

Speaker 1: 19:17

So some non-negotiables that I really press for myself personally is, you know one, not looking at social media first thing in the morning. I don't mindlessly just surf on the internet. That's just not my thing. I'm very intentional when I get on there, what I'm looking for and then I get off. You know, when it comes to my nutrition, I am non-negotiable. I have a very strict regimen, but I also give myself a little bit of freedom. My style for me personally, that I enjoy for when it comes to nutrition, is a 80, 90, 10, 20 split. Um, and I say it that way because I eat five times a day meals one, one through four never change Five. I have a staple meal, but I also give myself freedom if I want something else. So that's why I say what I say as far as the percentages.

Speaker 1: 20:12

But if you eat 80%, 90% healthy, organic, healthy foods, this will ultimately one probably get you in good shape and have you looking the way that you want, but also mental clarity. You're going to feel good, you're going to have good energy, you're not going to be bloated and gassy and just feel disgusting Anytime I get off my nutrition plan for three, four days, I start feeling kind of like yuck. I want to feel good, I want to feel energized. So that's some of the other ones. Non-negotiables could be not skipping gym days that you have scheduled in, unless it's an emergency that your emotions and feelings should be plucked out of that. You go, you show up, I don't care if it's for 15 minutes. Prove to yourself, build your confidence, know that you can accomplish things. Some non-negotiables you could also add in is trying to limit your time with negative, toxic individuals, and that could be your friends, it could be your family. But again, if you want to thrive and you want to build something, if you want to be successful, you want to show up for your family and your kids and optimal, optimal mind space. You know, if you want to be a good example, you got to start surrounding yourself with like-minded people like that to reinforce what you're trying to get out. So your non-negotiables essentially come down to you, your goals, what you want, but don't overlook those strategies.

Speaker 1: 21:40

You know all of these things make a huge difference in my life. I have changed these every year, sometimes every six months, because my life is constantly changing my stresses, my priorities. Things change and we should expect that If you think your life is going to be the same for the rest of your life. One, if it is, it's not a good life. And two, you should know that things you're getting older, right, your body's changing, your relationships are changing, you're going to have kids, they're going to have kids, you're going to be a grandparent someday. So working you might retire one day. I mean all these things. Things will change.

Speaker 1: 22:22

So you got to know how to navigate life and that is why our coaching program is all about customizing things, teaching, educating, showing people that your life is complex. Life is complex. A lot of things happen, a lot of things pop up, but if we let every outside circumstance change our behaviors and our actions and the way we feel and the way we act, you're in for a roller coaster ride. We need to control what we can control. Everything else you know we cope with and we work around it, but we need to control our emotions, control our actions. It is okay to feel one way and not react to it. Okay, good example Someone might piss you off. You want to punch them in the face? It's okay. You're pissed off Doesn't mean you need to punch them in the face, all right, so don't be punching people in the face.

Speaker 1: 23:16

I went to the gym the other day and I posted about kids and I say kids because I'm assuming they're kids they just leave their weights on the floor 45 pound plates, 10 pound plates on the floor next to the rack, next to where you put the weights away, and like dude, I'm like, oh my God, I mean, is it? I felt like it's common sense, but sometimes common sense is not so common, it's just lazy. And I made a little sly remark on social media and I was like you know what, you guys, if you can't put your weights away, I get it. You're not that strong and that's why you're not lifting what I'm lifting, because I'm packing the weight on, but I got enough strength and enough endurance to unrack them, bad boys, and put it on the place where they're supposed to go. It's just respect, you know, respect the weight. So I'm sharing this with you because I know time is a very important factor for many people and time is one of the most limited resources that we have and stress comes from that.

Speaker 1: 24:16

If you don't manage your time, stress is, it starts to accumulate, which brings anxiety, and anxiety is really from overthinking, thinking about anticipating the future, of what could happen, and so some of the ways to reduce that is managing your time and reducing some stress, which also starts to affect your hormones, and reducing cortisol levels. This is going to help optimize getting the body that you want. So, being overwhelmed if you feel overwhelmed right now, it is because you have a lack of clarity of what the highest priority is for your day-to-day actions. Okay, you have a lack of clarity of what the highest priority is from your day-to-day actions. You need to find out exactly what those priorities are so you can have a clear path of actions to take to get you to the destination that you want to be. And the fewer the goals, the easier it is to carve the path. Don't complicate things. Don't complicate it. There's levels, there's steps that you have to go through. So take your time as you start to craft the path and you will start to see you will build momentum. Okay, so that's my, that's my helpful tips and strategies.

Speaker 1: 25:29

If you got more questions, if you want to dive deeper, feel free to shoot me a DM, throw me a message. You remember the five tips and strategies. One structure your day. Two the rules and boundaries of your life. Three rituals you got to have some rituals in your life. Fourth is the organization and then five non-negotiables have five, make five non-negotiables to start. If you don't have any, okay, make some non-negotiables. I promise you, if you start to practice this, it's not going to be perfect. Okay, we're not looking for perfection, we're looking for progress. Slowly implement some of these things and I promise you, I promise you, this will change the game for you and when you will maximize your efforts and you will see a massive difference in your life and the energy that you're bringing around others. All right, I love you guys. I'll see you on the next episode. Peace.