Maximize Your Productivity by Doing Less!

So what I'm hearing is mm-hmm. If you're overwhelmed and stressed mm-hmm. And have too much stuff to do, get rid of the thing that brings you the most joy. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

You don't like that answer? I'm gonna go crawl in a hole and hide and weep. People love my inspirational talks.

Welcome to the marketing team of one podcast where we have conversations about the issues one person marketing teams face when trying to meet their goals with limited time and budgets. Now, here's your host, Eric and Mike. So today we wanna sit down and talk a little bit about how to fit. A bunch of things in a tiny space, right?

Mm-hmm. And how like you feel like you don't have any more space. Like the bandwidth is just, yeah. You don't have it, right? There's only so many hours in a day, is kind of what you're saying. Yeah. Nobody's figured out how to create more hours in the day. Not yet. Yeah. Well, maybe, I mean, we can kind of go through, is this like, uh, flying from like.

Oh, like, yes. Across the dateline basically is, this is the thing you gain a day by. Yeah. Yeah. Flying from. How would that work? So like Hawaii Yeah. Is pretty darn close to the end of the day, whereas like, and then you've got like New Zealand is, yeah, they're in the future right now. So if you went from Tokyo to Honolulu, you'd basically gain a whole day almost potentially.

Like 20 hours. That's one way, but hard to, that's not practical. Daily and expensive. Yes. Yeah. Flights, introducing airplanes into this is not the way to mm-hmm. Is not the answer. Right. That's gonna be a big no-no. Yeah. Alright, so you came up with a list of. Potential ways that we could find, squeeze a little bit more in like, like to open up a little more bandwidth for, for our days.

Yeah. I think in the past we've kind of outlined some of the challenges that people, you know, the bottlenecks, we, we talked about this earlier or in another podcast, but we all run into these bottlenecks. Yeah. In our day to day or week to week. And so we thought that we would, the, the one that really stood out was.

Bandwidth. Like how do I get more, how do I put five pounds into a one pound container? Yeah. You know, like, how do I maximize and get more and more efficient? So we've had some conversations about this and I, we, I really like the idea of starting with little small steps that you can do. Yep. And then moving all the way up to big, monstrous.

Big, big things that, big things. Yeah. I think a lot of people, when it comes to bandwidth, they may a maybe. There might be some frustration, like, oh, I've got all these things to do and I'm just not getting things done. Mm-hmm. Or like, I'm, I'm over here doing this and that's preventing me from getting this done and this is super important.

And you know, like, so there might be frustration that you're not getting things done. There might be just a frustration that you have to work 10, 12 hour days to try and fit it all in. But, so the whole point here is to talk about different ways that maybe we can get more done. Mm-hmm. Or get the right things done.

Yes. In time. Yeah. Be very strategic in what you do. So, yes. Thank you. And I think what we, you need to first do is look at what are your strengths? You as an individual, as we talk to marketing teams of one, they came from certain backgrounds that they are passionate about writing or they're passionate about design, or they're passionate about.

Marketing or all kinds of different facets fall under that description of a marketing team of ones. Yeah. So you need to discover what is your sweet spot, what do you love to do, what are you great at, and what makes the most impact for your company? And then from that, make decisions and kind of look at all of the things on your plate.

'cause you're ideally, yes, you're just doing what puts you in that flow state every single day. But we all know. Yeah, there's email, there's a phone call, there's something on the website that needs to be fixed and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. There's all these, yeah, take away from that kind of flow, like get into your groove, right?

So look at what your tasks are. Kind of take a. Inventory of all the things that you're asked to do throughout your day. And then that's where you kind of start looking at what can I do? Yeah. Align that with goals that are given to you or you've decided to work on as far as outreach or whatever your marketing goals are.

Um, obviously talk with leadership over that and get buy off on that and then start to assess like what are the things that are gonna make the most impact with the least amount of either effort or money, or. Make those decisions. So that to me is kind of the beginning of the genesis of this process. I think there's always going to be admin things that need to be done.

There's yeah. Little tiny tasks or little things that need to be written or sentences or cleaned up, or database fixes or things like that. I think you've got some examples of this, but this is probably where you can dip your toe into this AI world because that's, so that would be kind of the starting point, right?

Yeah. Like you've got your list of things that you are, you've, you've done an assessment of what you do every day, right? And you're trying to figure out where you can maybe trim the fat or. Something, right? Yeah. Or not so much trim the fat, but be more strategic and use your in things, right? Yeah. As I like to say, what are you burning your calories on?

Whatever puts you in that most efficient state of work, I guess you could say. Yep. And then try to, like you say, trim the fat or clean out a lot of the things that are not necessarily in your, give you joy. Yeah. Let's say. Yeah. Okay. So you're saying like if when you're looking at that like. AI would be a good, a good first step.

Yep. Like, I'm assuming, because, um, it's relatively cheap, right? Yeah. Like, um, and you can kind of, I'm assuming you can find it, it's so. Malleable, right? Yeah. To different situations. It applies to so many different, like the, right, so there's, it is not like you're going to a specific like tool that does this one thing.

Mm-hmm. Right? Yeah. Well, I mean, talk a little bit about AI and what you're thinking about, like when you're trying to. Increase your bandwidth. What, what do you think see with AI or your thoughts? Yeah, and I'd love to hear what you have. 'cause I think that's what's interesting is everybody uses it in different, like you said, the vari, the varied effects of what AI can produce is incredible.

I've seen people, for me, I, I use it a lot for just, um, I'm not a strong writer and I'm, I'm. Good at editing, writing. Mm-hmm. But I'm not good at like blank page. Here you go. Yeah. Start writing a blog or whatever that blank page is. Evil. Tough. Yeah. So I, I look at it as tools for analysis, quick analysis on things.

Yep. Uh, quick tasks as far as genesis for ideas or helping me kind of think in different mental models about problems. Mm-hmm. And how to solve them and approach them. Those are really helpful. Yeah. I never use it for generative like. Just write me a thing, you know? There's always something that I'm training it on that's a genesis or a little, you know, starter Yeah.

Idea concept or even maybe even an outline for something. I want to cover these many things. Maybe you can help me think through that. So it's good for, I use, I guess, sounding board stuff. Yeah, I was gonna say, it's kind of like a thought partner, right? Yeah. Like you're, you're running ideas. By it and mm-hmm.

And just kind of, maybe there's something else that gets said that gets you thinking and gets you further down the path or something. Mm-hmm. Right. Well, how do you use ai? I, it's funny, I've had a journey, right? And I think what if you're in the spot where you're maybe not using it all the time? Mm-hmm. I think it can be like, oh, I've gotta learn.

Ai and that in itself feels like, how am I gonna learn AI on top of it? And I, so I think there's a little bit of a journey that I've been on with it and I start, but I, what, where I really started noticing it is in just like little things that. I've said this before, like even before AI came around, like I've, I've got this philosophy in my head that's like, if it feels like it's, this is too hard or it's taking too long mm-hmm.

It probably is, there's probably a way to speed that up. Right? And so I come into this AI age with that in mind, right? So. Like one example is I had to do, I had to do something where I had to list out the days of every Saturday and every Sunday for four months, and I needed to format it a very specific way to include the, the day, um, the month, the date, and a timeframe.

And the times didn't change. Mm-hmm. But like it really wasn't in a clean spot anywhere. Right. Yeah. So I could ask ai, Hey. Can you give me every Saturday and Sunday between this date and this date, format it this way. Mm-hmm. And it spit it out in seconds. And then I had that, that I could use to put into, actually into a couple different places.

Places. Mm-hmm. 'cause I needed it in a bunch D places The old way. Yeah, there's a whole bunch of different ways you could do it. You could probably put it in a spreadsheet or whatever, but like you have to know all the formulas to do all that. Right. I just said I, it was as simple as give me the, give me the dates, give it to me in that format, and then I had something, if I retyped all that out Yeah.

Like, yeah. Yeah. It's, it's a micro cha change, but it could be, um. I, if you start identifying those things, I think as a starting point, you start seeing that and then you can build from it from there. And I think that's where I've seen on my AI journey, it was these little things and then to where I was using it maybe once, twice a week when I thought to do it.

Yeah. And then you start getting more confidence. You just start, your mind starts opening to more opportunities. Mm-hmm. Um, and you start using it more. But if you're at that like beginning point, I think thinking about things like stupid things, like just for reformatting things, right? Yeah. Like, um, you, you have a list of things that you want to change things around, or maybe you have a, a simple spreadsheet and you want to change the order of some things or, um, there's so many things that you can just like, like little things that are kinda like grunt work type stuff that I know some people probably enjoy it, but I personally don't, you know?

Well, that's part of that audit is like what? I mean, there's things that I love to do that are kind of mind numbing sometimes. Yep. Maybe it's in production or something like that. That is great. And you're working towards an end goal. That's wonderful. But yeah, analyze what those things are and make sure that is, can a robot be doing this?

Yeah. Because. Yeah, that's more the test. It's like if a robot can do it, then you need to be using your calories for something a little bit different. Yeah. Yep. So, yeah, and I was talking with some, some friends, and we were talking about how we were all using mm-hmm. AI and um. I know some great examples about like, if you're running into a problem, like if you have to, it's actually if you have to do something on a website and you're struggling with something mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. And there's a code element to it and you can't quite figure it out. Like, I think you're, if, if that's not your strong suit. And maybe even if it is your strong suit, you might be able to save a lot of time by just putting that code in and saying what you're hoping to get out of it. Hmm. And it, it'll, it can code the, the resolution for you.

Wow. Yeah. That's pretty exciting. Yeah. I mean, especially simple HTML type things and stuff like that. Mm-hmm. It's perfect for that. Yeah. So I would look at little AI things like that, like little increments that you can do to save little bits of time. Okay. And then over time, you could grow to do. Um, bigger things with it.

That's good information about ai. I think thinking in terms of those filter, again, it's so varied. You have all of those different GPTs as well inside of chat GPT, that allow you to work inside spreadsheets and all these different formula things that can limit some of those minuscule little tasks that may take a long time for a human being to do.

But think about whenever you see those, there should be a trigger, like you said in your head. Turn on the ai. I mean, you just said formula, but like if you're not a Excel whiz. Right, right, right. Like if you're trying to get the right formula instead of like you've messing around trying to get it just right.

That's another little micro savings. Like, Hey, I want, I'm trying to create a formula in Excel that does this specific thing. Yeah. It'll spit out the formula. You could try it out. I had an example where I asked it to do that. It gave it to me Excel. And then, but I was using Google Sheets and I said, Hey, this isn't working.

I'm using Google Sheets. They're like, oh yeah. Well, it's supposed to be Google Sheets, handles it this way. Here, try this instead. It's like, and if I would've done that on my own, I, it might've been a half hour or more of me. Mm-hmm. You know, trying to get it just right. So half hour's a long time. That's the thing is be cognizant of what, how things, how long things take.

Yeah. Little things are still little context switching. You gotta get back up to speed. Little tiny micro tasks still take 15 minutes. Yeah. 10 minutes. Yeah. There's only so many of those in a day. You can't just keep doing those things over and over. Yeah. And if you do, try to limit them. Of course. Yeah. And, and maybe try to discipline yourself to say, okay, the first.

40 minutes of my day is these micro tasks, and then I set up for everything. I mean, just think if you could, you know, use AI for, uh, for four small tasks that save you 15 minutes. Yeah. I mean, the 15 minutes doesn't feel like very much right, but there you've just gained an hour, all the more reason to have another meeting.

Then you could schedule a wait. Oh. No, that's not a good idea. We don't want to fill up our free time with meetings. That's number two on the list, right? Like what? What can you do to create more bandwidth? Yeah, try and get out of meetings. Meetings and productivity never mix. This is not something that I, yeah, I mean, rarely do they provide that, and I feel like the bigger the organization, the more that's true.

Yep. Because there's so many other dynamics that take place. In larger organizations that make meetings very ineffective. And I know that some of the big organizations have run into such a problem with us that they limit their meetings to stand up only 15 minutes. Yeah. Like Google I think is legendary for that.

They're like, okay, you wanna have a meeting? Great. We're gonna go walk. You know, Steve Jobs did that too. We're gonna go walk for a half a mile and you can talk about it. And then when we're, well, the walk's over, we're done with this meeting. Yeah. Yeah. Um, and because they can be such a time suck in there.

Sometimes selfishly created by people and leadership. So what types of steps should people take? Be very disciplined with that schedule. Right? I mean, that's something that if you can like, right? Like I think that's, that's part of the where are you in the meeting dynamic too, right? Yeah. But like I think there's a very strong case to be made that, um, I could go to this meeting and we could talk about this thing and if we don't have a.

A strict agenda or we don't have a, an outcome mm-hmm. For the meeting. Yeah. Right. Like that's, that could go ways when I could be doing this other thing. Mm-hmm. Right. So I think one thing you could do is just maybe check in, do I really need to be at this meeting? Mm-hmm. So there's a great book called Make Time.

It's by the guys who, um. They, they're both Google, ex Google guys. Mm-hmm. They define, they created this design sprint that a lot of, um, oh yeah. People are taking, and so they have this book called Make Time and it's got a lot of really kind of innovative things to think about when you're trying to create more bandwidth.

And one of the things that's really sticks with me is this idea of like, kind of questioning these defaults that are built into day-to-day life. Right. And meetings. Can be one of those default things in your organization, right? That, that we just, we do them. 'cause we've always done them, right? Yeah. And so taking a second to question this, is this like a default that needs to stick or is this something that that could be done in an email?

Questioning the norms as it were in a sense? Yeah. Well, and I think helping to make that is really critical, but not just like, Hey, we're gonna talk about. Set a goal for like, we're gonna make a decision on. Yeah. Don't just like talk about things. Yeah. To make them productive, you need to walk away with results.

Uh, to-do lists. I'm going to do these, you do this, I do that. Okay. We're gonna check in just a quick little how, you know, maybe on Slack or something and just make sure progress is being made. Yeah. Those are effective meetings. They're, they have can be extremely short. Mm-hmm. And. Be very disciplined with that.

Yeah. That's a challenging thing. 'cause there is a dynamic in play, right. You might not be able to, but I think if you're looking for a way to create more bandwidth for your day mm-hmm. Looking at every meeting and kind of questioning whether it's something needs to happen could be just a very, and if it does need to happen, see if you can exert some control on it.

So it is more focused and more tight. Exactly. And it's not kind of rambling. Well, and then there's the emergency meetings, you know, and this is that, you know, be careful of. The kid who cried wolf. I mean, like you only get a few of those. Yeah. You don't get all, not every meeting is an emergency meeting.

Yeah. And whose emergency is it? Exactly. Yeah. What's the emergency? And that's a deeper conversation with leadership. If they're the ones calling emergency meetings. If there's so many emergencies, then figure out a system to at least get people's heads around. Frequency rates or you know, like what level of emerge?

What is the emergency like? Is it about this or that or, yeah. Topics, you know, there can be a pattern to chaos. Mm-hmm. I guess, you know, if chaos is part of the mix in that office, try to put some systems around that chaos and I think that that's possible. Mm-hmm. It sounds a weird to say it like that, but you know, there can be.

A way that's healthy for people to understand that stuff's gonna go wrong and we're gonna be available for it during these times. You know, I'm thinking of like the end of big projects for us, whether it's print projects or it's web-based projects. There's chaos at the end of it. You know, you post something.

Yep. People take a look at it. Oh my gosh. It doesn't, that's spelled wrong. Or Yeah, that page doesn't work or whatever. So I'm, I, you know, I'm a huge Saturday Night Live fan. Right. And like I listen to anything I can getting my hands on and there's a repeating thing. Right. No one would describe that scenario as calm.

Absolutely not that week. Yeah. Uh, calm, right? They, they've figured out how to. Deliver something in the chaos. Mm mm-hmm. They, and if you listen to enough of 'em, they do have some structure to it. They have some meetings that are, you know mm-hmm. That need to happen to get everybody on the same page and make decisions and everything.

There's, it's inherently very chaotic. Chaotic, right. They've embraced it and yeah, they've churn out great stuff. So it is possible. 50 years of possible there. There's a part to Saturday Night Live. That stresses me out. 'cause I know what goes on behind the scenes. Yeah. Like I know on Wednesdays and Thursdays these things happen.

Yep. Because we've studied and understood how Saturday Night Live is 'cause we're fans and so it's every time I see a finished product or a finished show, I always think back to, oh, there are Thursday. Must have been hell. You know? Yeah. Yeah. This is a tough one. Yep. Or tough on these, this group of people that need to do this, but that's part of their.

That's what they signed on for. And they have people that have worked there for decades that understand it. And so there's a system there that does work somehow. There's an interesting, yeah. The, their bandwidth though is you have, when we get back to bandwidth, they, their bandwidth has to be, you know, 20 hour days in 24 hour days in some cases.

Yeah. That's a, it's a grind for sure. You know, there's, okay, so we may not be able to move meetings. Right. We might have to accept some of them. If we can nip and tuck through there, that'd be great. Yeah. Right. Okay. So we're trying to create a little bit more bandwidth for ourselves. What else can we do?

Well, we can just stop, just stop doing things, you know, that's really easy, you know, 'cause you just that, that really, yeah, yeah. Just done, you know, I mean, I don't mean it that way, of course. No, but like, if you, if your, if your bandwidth or your time is a bucket. Yeah. And you keep to trying to throw everything in there, the bucket's only gonna hold so much.

Right, right, right. So maybe be a little bit more strategic about what falls outta the bucket and what stays in the bucket. Right. Yeah, I like that analogy. Yeah, that's good. That's good. Well, yeah, your bucket is filled, and we talked about this, doing this kind of this audit at the beginning or at some point where you look at all of the things you're tasked with, all the responsibilities, and look at what tasks.

Okay. You've gotten rid of certain things with ai. You've limited your meetings. Now you've got still, you're, seems like you're still working 40 hours a day. What do you do next? Okay. You make a decision. Get really. Kind of medieval on what all the list is that you're doing and try to stop doing some of those things.

Yeah. And I know this sounds counterproductive 'cause obviously when you stop doing something, but that's where it comes down to an analyze things about like the strategy of why you're doing it. Is there an ROI to it? Yep. Is it making an impact? There's a thing. As a designer, I know I love to do these things, but they take a long time.

They don't really produce a lot of results. Yep. But man, I sure love doing them. Yep. Because that's what I did when I was in high school and in art school, and it's so easy and I'll spend nine hours doing this one thing because it's drawing or designing this one thing that, that's not my job though. Yeah.

You know, that's not the thing that makes me most effective for this organization. So unfortunately I have to make brutal decisions and say. I can't do this thing that Yes, I love to do. Yeah. Yeah. And it puts me in that flow state. But if it doesn't have an impact and it's not making a difference Yeah.

It's hurting your whole scenario. Totally. Totally right. Yeah. The, so that's an interesting thing, like looking at the goal of what you're trying to accomplish, right? Mm-hmm. And is, are you spending a lot of time on something that isn't meeting that. Goal. Right? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's a, that's a good thing and is as close as and as dear as it might be to you.

Yeah. And it may be really, really hard to let go, but if you're, if you're stressed out and you got too much, if you've got bandwidth issue issues, that might be, you know. The thing to let go. It's hard. That's why I wanted to talk about it, because it's not an easy decision to make and, and we're making harder and harder decisions as we get into this list.

I think that's part of the dynamic of what we're talking about is you're killing off something that gives you joy and that's a hard. Conversation to have internally about what you're doing. There are restraints to what your responsibilities are, and they are down these certain channels that you've established early on and know that you need to make progress on.

And so focus on those things and make sure that when you get into doing those things, 'cause you can also find a task or a certain part of those processes where you're like, oh, I really love. Reformatting Excel sheets. 'cause I can just click off my brain, listen to some tunes and just get right into it.

Yeah. You know, it's super fun and I'm relaxed. That's an AI job. I'm sorry. Like Yeah. You know, that's not something that's gonna create results for you. Spending two hours on doing that as opposed to a robot spending five seconds on it, you know? Yeah. That's where, yep. That's the hardest part of those decisions is really.

Being disciplined and maybe killing off the stuff that you absolutely love. So a lot of your examples are kinda like you having a lot of agency over everything you're doing. Yeah. But in some cases it might be like that you're given all this stuff to work on. Right? Yeah. Do you have any ideas of how you can evaluate things that have, are given to you by other people and how you nip and tuck that?

How do you, ouch. Yeah, that's that. I guess that's the native nature of work, isn't it? Yeah. Here's these things. You do them. Yeah. I pay you. Yeah. Yeah. So what I'm hearing is mm-hmm. If you're overwhelmed and stressed mm-hmm. And have too much stuff to do, get rid of the thing that brings you the most joy.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

You don't like that answer? I'm gonna go crawl in a hole and hide and weep. People love my inspirational talks. Mike, I think you've have been victim to it many times. Yes, that does sound, there's many people out there who say you should fo follow your joy and that that you're fully realized that you have a job that brings you joy, right?

Yeah. All right, so ideally there's some, the thing that keeps you coming back is the joyful things. And so, and I'm telling you to get rid of those. Okay. And you're, you're saying like you might need to kill the joy to get more done. Yeah. What if there's other things to look at? Are there other ways we can get to, to doing this?

Thank you. Yes. That sounded horribly depressing and I appreciate you pulling me back from the depths of, uh, darkness there. But yes, I think. The perspective of what your job is, should be very focused on what the end goal is and getting the results for that goal. Okay, so it's maybe bigger picture. Yeah.

Should be where you're focused on. Yeah. More and more. More. Let's just, okay. Yeah, more. Um, and that will be a good filter for. Killing off the things you love. Okay. So, 'cause you can combine, you can fall in love with all kinds of things and. I, I think your approach should be to find the things that result and with the most impact and try to fall in love with those things.

And so, uh, so you're kind of talking about goals that might be set as you, as an individual of what you're trying to accomplish, but maybe even the, the marketing goals that are set for the company overall, right? Yes, correct. So I've got this list. Mm-hmm. It looks like. Everything's meeting. Like we're doing all these things to meet these goals and everything, and I'm still just like, ah, I can't get it all done.

So you've used ai. I've used, I made everything. You've killed off meetings. Yeah. You've stopped doing things that you love. Not really. I'm saying yes. Stopped doing the things that are not having impact. Are there ways for me to cut out? Maybe I don't think I need to be doing them, but other people think I need to be doing them.

I think at that point, then you need to start looking at getting help, getting outside help, not therapy. So let's assume a lot of these things are like, if you have agency over your whole everything, right? You're making all the decisions, you're mm-hmm. Pushing everything through. But I think a lot of people that are not that, that, that would be an idealized world, right?

I'm mm-hmm. Um, I've got it. I can do what I want, when I want and, and everything. But reality is you're, you're fed a lot of different things. You got priorities from sales team, the CEO Yeah. All these different things. And there's probably a big part of your week is probably fulfilling the request of others, right?

Yeah. How do we, I, can we, can we cut out those things, do you think? Can we stop doing those things? Yeah. I, that's a hard thing. And, and those requests sound like they, maybe those requests on your time are not justified in some way towards working towards that large goal. I don't know. What, what do you think?

Yeah, I think, I think I would probably, you talked about doing an audit of all the things you do. Yeah. But I think maybe there's a secondary audit of like, here are all the things I'm doing, and then. Like, are they being used? Like, are they, are they being utilized? Right? Yeah. Like if you, like, ideally you've got data on things, you know?

Mm-hmm. Like, uh, I don't know. One of our previous episodes Lydia talked about having, um, PDFs in, uh, in a system where she could see how many people were using it, right? Oh, yeah. Right. That's, so if you're, if you're spending all your week, like creating materials for everybody and then you look and they're like, oh yeah, it's been used once.

Yeah, and I'm using my whole week. I would, I think you could build a case and say like, Hey, I am completely maxed out. We're not reaching our goals because I'm maxed out. Mm-hmm. Look at how I'm spending all this time here. Can we, can we talk about like. Killing this thing. Yeah. Or scaling it back so I can reach these other goals.

I think it's kinda like, I don't know, getting, getting really good at creating pitch decks for yourself to, to management. Just say like, yeah, here. Hey, here's a problem. I see this is what's happening, here's why. Yeah. And you know what I, I'd like to think most people would be rational and think about and not think well, well, yeah, we've always done it that way.

We need to, we need to have, uh. This here. Those PDFs. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I think that if you're, if you're struggling, and especially if you're not in control of your, of your workload mm-hmm. To a certain extent mm-hmm. Like being able to have a reason to argument why that, why maybe. That should, why we should stop doing that?

CRI could be a way to kind of build some data. The, the data portion of that is what's so critical. Yeah. Because data just numbers and that's what's so great about your process when you are starting to analyze websites to build. Yeah. Is you go through and you look through that data. Websites are great 'cause they just measure all of that.

Well, nobody's looking at that page. Nobody's looking at this content. Nobody cares, I guess. Yeah. You know, so, or do we need to promote it more? You know, there's a lot of different things you can draw on. I, that's a great example. Like if you're, if you're doing like content creation, let's say you're writing, writing a blog or a newsletter.

Mm-hmm. Um, and you're posting it to the website every week. If you go in, we had this happen with a client recently. We looked at their analytics for everything. It was like. Yeah, those, those articles, those things mm-hmm. Are so far down the, the. The analytics thing, just on basic numbers, like that's a lot of time, that's a lot of effort.

Yeah. Maybe, maybe we need to pivot. Maybe we need to do instead of every week, maybe. Maybe we'd have the same impact if we did one a month or something like that. Like, like just. Be open to looking at the numbers, refining it, and this is where it gets, maybe you love writing those things. Maybe that's your joy in the week.

Yeah. You know? But if it's not working and you're feeling the stress of trying to do other things, that that might be a thing where you, maybe you're just doing a little less of the thing that you enjoy love. So you still get some joy out of your Yeah. We're not removing all joy. Okay. Phew. We gotta keep the joy.

This podcast is all about joy. Yeah. I think we've established that. So we're using ai. Yep. Nip and tuck around the edges, try and eke out some extra space. We're saying to no, to as many, as many meetings as possible to really trying to remove those from our calendar. Um, we're looking at things we could just stop doing.

Yeah. Right. If we're, if we've tried all these things and we're still like, maxed out and everything like that, like, I mean, what's, is there a cry for help? Like what, what can you send up a flare at? Yeah. At that point, what else could we, what are some opportunities here? Like is there anything else we can do to kind of Yeah.

Open up the bandwidth? Well, and maybe in some, some organizations, this would be considered the nuclear option, which would be. Call for help. Try to get help obvi, obviously, if you can get help. Oh, literally call for help. Literally call for help, yes. Oh, never thought of that. There are other human beings that might be available to help you.

Wow. Yeah. Yeah. Ideally there. Like internally. Internally. Thats where you would start. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe this person over here, you know the, we work with a lot of small organizations. We're a small organization and I would say the strength of people who work in small organizations is. They're like Swiss Army knives.

They do a lot of different things and they can be, can be pretty, yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of variety in what they do, and that's where maybe they get that joy that we're talking about is like, oh, I get to do that funky thing. You know, that thing that I'm usually doing accounting, but on Fridays I get to do a little bit of work with the website.

Mm-hmm. Or something like that. Mm-hmm. I really like that. Yeah. And I look forward to that, you know, so that can be a really great resource. That's not super cost. You know, prohibitive, I guess you could say. No. No. Like if there's, if other people have bandwidth and you don't Yeah. Being able to share that, that that's, here's my load, I need this stuff taken off.

You know, can you do this piece, part, whatever, and, uh, that can be really effective. Yeah. Outside of that, then what if everybody's maxed out? Ever, but nobody's available. Nobody can help. Then what? Well, I mean, I think. About going back to the, the list you talked about mm-hmm. The inventory of the things you're doing.

Right. Are I, I assume if you look at something that you do, but you know, you're not great at, or you know, it takes time, you've looked at all the other options. Mm-hmm. Like maybe finding people outside and hiring. Whoa. Wow. One way or another. Yeah. Freelancers, um, agencies, you know. Um, other people to share that load.

They're, they're more skilled or something like that. And there's different levels of that. I mean, totally one, one of the things that, I know that there's a lot of help out there for very kind of generalist skillset in people, but like that ex that admin thing. Yeah. Virtual assistants. Yep. You know, you can.

Have those people in, hire them incrementally. Two hours a day, five hours a week. Yeah. Something like that. You know, those are maybe take a lot of those admin type tasks Yeah. Off your plate. Yeah. Yeah. They can do a lot of that, you know, calendar management stuff. Yep. Maybe email management, maybe other little tasks that don't take a long time to teach per people.

Yeah. And maybe not a real high risk thing that you know. Don't let them work in the bank accounts. Yeah. And things like that, you know, that might be a little bit more extra. That said, you can still hire other professionals. That's probably where you need to go next, it sounds like. Yeah. If you're maxed out with everything else.

Yep. Um, but again, understanding, you don't have to hire, uh, a, a giant organization. You can hire at different size, like look at these different things that could help support what you're doing. Yeah. In a, you know, um. Yeah. If you're not good at it. Yep. Right. Is one. Right. If you, you might be good at it, but you take longer than you think and it's keeping you from mm-hmm.

Doing something else. The hardest part about that is fighting for the. Maybe the budget resources. Yeah. The budget to do that, right. Yeah. I don't know, I think we mentioned it in another podcast, but kind of maybe there's like knowing, like making an ROI argument to people like, Hey, I'm spending, you know, every time we do a YouTube video I'm spending, you know, 20 hours editing this thing.

Yeah. Yeah, right. Like in that, I mean, that's a half the week, half a work week, right? Yeah. Doing this thing, right? Like, and there, here's all the other things I need to do. If we hire somebody to just take care of the editing, you know, like get half the week back, even back, even if they, even if even if they take 20, 20 hours, I can do all these other things and, you know, stuff like that.

You said something interesting earlier though that I wanted to just kind of mention. Yeah. And it's, it's a difficult thing and it kind of speaks again to what do I love to do and maybe not do. That if it's not effective, what am I good at? Yeah. Yeah. Need to look within yourself and understand, are you a good judge of what I'm good at?

Because I would say my meter on that sometimes is not perfectly calibrated as to what am I good at. That's, that's tough. I, I, I think for everybody, right? Yeah. That, that level of self, self-awareness to like. Yeah. Yeah. Assuming that you're not great at anything. I mean, that's my motto, right? That's how I roll.

Yeah, exactly. That's why we have a jar that we have to put money in every time we talk about it. The no self-deprecating jar. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's getting full. Yeah. I think having that, that awareness is really tough. But the, um, one thing I've seen in, um, that I think might be helpful as people are kind of thinking about this mm-hmm.

Is there's a, um. Michael Hyatt, he's written a whole bunch of books. Yeah, I can't remember exactly. It might be free to focus or something like that. He has a worksheet that you can download. It's called this Freedom Compass is what he calls it. Oh, okay. And it's got four quadrants in it. And it's talks about like things that give you joy, things that you don't.

That you that you have to do, but you don't mind the things you absolutely hate and everything. And you doing a, so taking your list. Yeah, and like assigning it to those things. The top one is your sweet spot. That's where you want to be doing all your work. In the ideal, in an ideal world. The other quadrant is, yeah, you could do it.

That's fine. There's another one where you should be delegating because it absolutely needs to happen. And then the last thing is. It doesn't matter if this gets done or not. It's, it's not affecting anybody. Just stop doing it. So as we talk about, as if we loop back to that kind of like awareness and all that stuff, that might be a good resource people could, could dig up to try and, uh, I think there's sort that out.

We could put that in the, in the show show notes as well. But there's also a Japanese concept of, of Igawa. I don't know if you've ever heard of this. No. But it's basically, it's kind of a Venn diagram of, you know, what am I great at? What. Provides the most impact. What do I love to do? And it kind of helps you do the same thing.

They don't really address the bandwidth type thing Yeah. As much, right? Yeah. Like, alright, so I'm super stressed out. Yeah. I know I've got, there's not enough time in the day to do all the things. Right. What, what we've talked about a lot is really kinda get, get real with all the things you're actually doing.

Right? Like list them out. Mm-hmm. What are all the things that you're doing to look at inventory? Yeah. Yeah. Inventory. All the things and the things you're responsible for, the things you're doing to mm-hmm. Meet those responsibilities, goals, all that. Right. List all that out. Right. And then pro, there's four different kinda like levels that we can get at to try and.

Chip away at this problem. Right. Solve the problem. Yeah. So, so first being like ai, right? Like look at like seriously, look at like making that part of your, part of your day. Mm-hmm. You know, what are some little things, little annoying things? Reformatting like, um, learning or some of these things that you can integrate in there and shave.

Mm-hmm. A little bit of time. Right. Two would be, um, meetings. Get ruthless, get 'em all, get ruthless with meetings. Yep. Um, you may maybe just get a little annoying. Do I really need to be there for this? Yeah. Can I just read that a lot? Just send notes? Yeah. Can gimme a summary when you're done. Yeah. Yeah. So like, yeah.

Question that, like do you, do I need to be in all these meetings? Mm-hmm. Look at that list and see what you can stop doing. Right. Stop doing things. Stop doing things. That's the best way to improve your, that's one of my strengths. Yeah. Do less, doing less. Exactly. If those are still, you're still feeling the, the pressure and everything.

Mm-hmm. Look for opportunities to have other people help you. Right. So whether that's internally share the load a little bit, or if it's more of like a skill type thing that you, you want, maybe you want to do better, um, as an organization, but maybe you're, you've hit a ceiling, find somebody to, who can help you.

I think this helps. I think it's a good list of things. It's things that we have like to evaluate on when we're looking at times of squeeze. I think that sums it up really well. A couple of takeaways that I've gotten from this conversation have been, I. Build a system around chaos. 'cause I know that that's a big part of a lot of people's work life is that there's this chaos.

Understand, try to put a plan around it. Try to understand that that's the chaos is maybe the norm. And then build systems around that. And then know what you're good at and make sure that you're doing those things that make the most impact. And we talked about those assessments and we can put those in the show notes.

Understand who you are, 'cause maybe you're not great at. Certain things or you're trying to learn something, but it's just taking so long for you to learn it that. There's no time for you to learn it. Mm-hmm. You'll, that's when you need to reach out or get extra help or figure out a way to solve that. But knowing who you are in this whole equation is really powerful.

Mm-hmm. And will help you become a lot more efficient and effective and, you know, affect the real things that matter to the goals. The, the last thing is measure things. 'cause using those numbers. Can help you realize where you are on that spectrum and where you need the help. And also make arguments against doing things like doing.

That's one of my strengths. I do less. I do so much less. Those are my takeaways. So, yeah, I know you have a nap to get to, so maybe we should cut this short. I am really drowsy right now. I mean, it's the epitome of doing less. As stunning as this conversation, stimulating as this conversation has been. Yes. I still need to get to that app, so thank you.

All right, sweet dreams. Goodnight everybody. Thank you.

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