The #1 Productivity Hack Every Business Owner Needs To Use
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Podcast Show Notes

In this episode, I’m sharing the #1 productivity hack every business owner needs to use and how to assure you get more done in less time. 

Let’s get real. Feeling completely overwhelmed and exhausted in your personal or professional life has nothing to do with how many awake hours you have to work.

It’s because the hours you do have you spend too much time trying to juggle more than one thing.

The highest cost of doing multiple things at once is a gradual, long-term decline in your productivity and satisfaction.

If I’m being honest, When you get in the habit of always dividing your attention you are half-assing every activity or task you do.

Why is this not working

What’s wrong with this is that you are rarely focused on any …one THING. You have your hands and eyes on too many tabs at the same time.

So if you are overwhelmed and burnt out, this could be precisely why.

You think you are moving at a high gear to accomplish more, but in reality, you aren’t making any progress. When you do this, you are moving backward.

What are the things that matter most

But the good thing is, there’s a super easy productivity fix.

There will always be just a few things that matter more than the rest. Out of those, one will matter most. Find it.

That’s, in short, using the one priority method in work and life.

When I started to implement this method

I started to implement the one thing lifestyle early in 2019 when I was getting ready to launch my Branding for Beginners Blueprint Course.

I knew if I wanted to get my course launched in three months and it was going to take a lot of focus.

But by doing so, I had to say NO to many other things that would easily distract me or take up valuable time.

I learned even more about this topic when I read the book, The One Thing by Gary Keller.

My lead domino or focus was the projects needed to get my course (my one thing) completed on time. I didn’t let anything distract me.

  • I turned my phone on do not disturb,
  • closed down social media tabs,
  • and stayed focus on the project at hand.

By doing this, I didn’t allow one call from a friend lead into an hour-long discussion, or one ding from Facebook influence me into shopping for shoes I didn’t need or scrolling Instagram that then led to editing photos in Lightroom.

Those are all dark holes that have gotten me off track before.

I most importantly, didn’t let ANYTHING else get put on my to-do list that didn’t’ have urgency.

Not only do I use this one thing approach to product launches but the same goes for my day to day work life for content production and sales processes.

What’s wrong with your to-do lists

Gary Keller says that…

“Most to-do lists are actually just survival lists—getting you through your day and your life, but not making each day a stepping-stone for the next so that you sequentially build a successful life.”

– Gary Keller (The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results)

Just because you have a cute planner or to-do-list notepad and can check things off as COMPLETE at the end of the day has nothing to do with your success.

I have to be honest I cringe when people use the B-word. When people say they are busy, I always think of the ants inside my plastic ant farm I had as a kid. The ants would be digging in this tunnel, building that bridge, then moving that mountain.

It’s not enough to be busy, so are the ants. The question is, what are we busy about?

– Henry David Thoreau

I get it. You schedule your day with as many tasks and appointments as you possibly can. But at the end of the day, week, month or even year, have you really accomplished anything?

Did your business see any growth or your life find more happiness just because you have 30 pages of completed task sheets?

I rarely doubt it.

When I give myself the right to use the B-word

If I spit out the B-word, my friends know I’m in complete BATCH WORK, getting shit done mode. They know they won’t be able to drag me away for lunch, a margarita happy hour, or a quick marco polo video chat.

I have my one priority that I am persistent in getting done and nothing else matters as much.


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Why you get so distracted

As Gary Kelly says and I 100% agree,

“Nothing and no one has permission to distract me from my ONE Thing.”

I despise multi-tasking for this same reason and always defer back to using a batch work method to accomplish more in less time.

I have podcasts to record, videos to edit, show notes to get up on the blog, graphics to design for marketing, captions to write, email sequences to schedule, clients to talk to, kids to feed, and the whole nine yards… but if I tried to do all that in the same day I might get it done, but it wouldn’t be my best work.

And that isn’t even including the fact that I might get distracted with a phone call, a ding from Facebook, a message on Instagram or a bark from my dog who needs to go out.

Most people allow a third of their workday to get lost in distractions. 

When I was wasting time at work

I know when I was in the alcohol beverage industry before becoming a full-time entrepreneur, this was the case. We just went from one distraction to another… I always felt like so much time was wasted on a workday, and it drove me crazy.

We not only have a job to do but a job that deserves to be done well.

As Gary says, 

“Multi-tasking is merely the opportunity to screw up more than one thing at a time.” 

And honestly, your brain can’t do two things at once, so again… you aren’t mastering multitasking as you think. You are actually getting less done in the long term.

So as you gear up for this new year of opportunities to get things DONE and move the needle on your business, keep in mind, there will always be just a few things that matter more than the rest. 

Out of those, one will matter most. Find it. That will be your One Thing.

With an average of 4,000 thoughts a day flying in and out of our heads, it’s easy to see why we try to multi-task.

Focus on one thing, avoid multi-tasking, and watch your entire days free up so you can rest and enjoy more self-care. 

I mean, hello, who doesn’t want more spa days while your business is running on auto-pilot?

At the same time, you’ll start to see more success than you ever did before.

Try this at home

Also, I read from a blog I subscribe to that “if you hold a magnifying glass over a small pile of dry leaves as the sun shines bright on the hottest afternoon of the whole year, NOTHING will happen…

…so long as you keep moving the magnifying glass quickly from one leaf to the next.

But as soon as you hold the magnifying glass still and FOCUS the sun’s rays on one single leaf, the whole pile of leaves will ignite into flames.”

That’s the extreme power that comes with focusing on one thing at a time.

In conclusion

Your opportunity right now is to realize that you are the magnifying glass in your own life. You can intentionally focus the energy you get from the world on one single leaf at a time.”

So what could you put your effort into right now that will lead to more success automatically or with less effort?

The #1 productivity hack every business owner needs to use is the one thing method to assure you get more done in less time. 

As the book relates… Your big ONE Thing is your purpose and your small ONE Thing is the priority you take action on to achieve it.

It’s all about The Focusing Question:

“What’s the ONE Thing you can do such that by doing it everything else will be easier or unnecessary?”

When you bring focus to that one thing, you will ignite “flames” that move your projects, your dreams, your relationships, and even the world around you, forward.

References: The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results


Another episode you may enjoy is “6 REASONS WHY PERSONAL BRANDING IS A NON-NEGOTIABLE


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