I’ve discovered 5 hacks to create more time.
One of the most common questions Grant and I get is:
How do you and Grant juggle all the business and family responsibilities to get so much done every day?
The secret is in our ability to work together to CREATE time. And let me tell you, it’s not easy. On a typical day, we’re up and moving before the sunrise. Then hour by hour, we knock out our targets one after the other. No stop. No breaks. Just pure 10X acceleration towards our targets and long-term goals.
This kind of life is massively rewarding, but it isn’t for the faint of heart. It requires you to reject everything that’s considered average. When you’re building an Empire, “average” is the least acceptable situation to be in. Because average means just busy enough to feel tired and worn out, but not busy enough to be fueled and revived by higher levels of success. “Average” is a death sentence for extraordinary ambition and progress.
So if you’d like to 10X your time and get more done in the day, I’ll tell you exactly how to do it. Please keep in mind, that the steps I’m about to give you presuppose that you’re already on the same page with your spouse for both individual and couple goals. If you don’t already have those in place and agreed upon, you’ll have to do that first.
Check out this video if you need help with what. Otherwise, let’s dive in.
Here’s how you take control and create more in the day — not just time management:
Tip #1: Never fight with your partner.
You’d be amazed at how much time you lose because of infighting and disagreements with your significant other. Fighting between the King and Queen can easily cost you hours, days, or even weeks of productive effort. Instead of using that energy to get closer to your goals and fight your REAL enemies, you spend it fighting each other and sabotaging your Empire.
Even if you aren’t spending hours on end arguing back and forth, the mental and emotional toll will cripple your ability to hit your targets. Remember, everything you do at every moment of every day is either building or destroying your Empire.
When Grant and I were first married, we fought CONSTANTLY. And it was usually over the most stupid stuff. We weren’t completely aligned. We hadn’t yet committed to helping one another achieve our individual goals or goals as a couple. Instead, we regularly fought for dominance. Looking back I’m embarrassed at how much time we lost that we could’ve put towards the Empire we’ve built.
I urge you and your significant other to adopt the same practice Grant and I have: learn to let things go. Don’t sweat the small stuff, always avoid unnecessary fights. And if you do fight, do whatever it takes to rebound from it as quickly as possible.
This one resolution has saved Grant and me countless hours. Nowadays, a 2-hour long fight is a BIG fight. At this point, I’d rather spend 1000 hours fighting my King’s enemies than a single hour fighting my King.
Tip #2: Cut out the time vampires
No matter how much we complain about not having enough time in the day, most of us are still guilty of wasting time. Many of us have regular activities in our lives that we enjoy, but after some honest reflection, turn out to be nothing but a drain on resources. A couple of time-wasters here and there can devour hours of your life over weeks or months. Even little things like social media or having a drink in the evening.
Take a close look at what you do each day and ask yourself:
“How is this moving me towards higher levels of success?”
“Which of the 5 Pillars does this activity strengthen?”
If you have to sit there and scratch your head about how it’s helping you towards your goals… It’s probably not worth your time.
Reflect honestly on your daily and weekly routines.
Are you spending lots of time scrolling through social media? Do you watch Netflix every day? Do you smoke or drink regularly? These are all examples of little-time vampires that can snowball over time and account for a mountain of time wasted.
But even more important than the things you’re spending time doing are the people you’re spending time with.
Do you need to spend 3 hours with the girls every weekend? Do you need to send hundreds of texts or DMs per day to keep in touch with friends and family? And, do you need to go out partying on Friday nights? Or, do you need to stay up late and waste the following morning?
Tip #2 is all about learning to say “no.”
Because building your Empire requires sacrifice. You’ll have to say “no” to yourself and others over and over again so you can keep saying “yes” to rising to higher levels of success. This was hard for me. Not so much saying “no” to myself, but saying “no” to others. I hate turning people down, but I had to learn. I had to sacrifice my desire to be nice with my desire to help Grant help 8 billion people on the planet.
If you want to 10X your life, you need to keep yourself so busy building your Empire that you don’t have time to do “normal people” things. You must focus your efforts on activities that bring you closer to your goals.
Tip #3: Prioritize like your life depends on it
Between the two of us, Grant is the more down-to-earth one. When we discuss prioritizing our actions, I’m more likely to get overwhelmed because I’m not sure which one to attack first. Whenever that happens, he loves using the analogy of the grenade…
“You’re holding a grenade and pulling the pin… now what do you do?”
It’s not a trick question.
The answer is, “You throw it.”
But why am I bringing this up?
Because when it comes to prioritizing your activity, your top priority is to immediately resolve anything that’s about to blow up in your face.
Before you do anything else, you throw the grenade, then move on to the next thing… and the next… and the next.
I admit this is not an earth-shattering revelation. But here’s the point: Prioritize your daily tasks based on what is 1) most important and 2) most urgent. Anything that’s about to blow up in your face, deal with it NOW.
You and your significant other need to figure out what’s most critical to work on. It’s helpful to remember the 5 Pillars supporting your Empire:
- Mindset
- Relationships
- Business
- Finance
- Health
You and your partner should be prioritizing actions to support and grow all five of those pillars every single day. Succeeding in one or a few while neglecting the others is just as much a recipe for disaster as neglecting them all. Any weakness in your Empire will eventually lead to its downfall.
How can you determine which actions are most important?
Grant and I have always used a simple grading scale based on the payoff we get considering the work it takes to get something done.
We grade every action on a scale from 1 (massive payoff) to 5 (little or no payoff). Anything that’s a 1 or 2 automatically gets on the “to-do” list. Everything else is either delegated or ignored.
Tip #4: Stop trying to do everything
Ironically, getting more done means trying to do less.
What do I mean by that?
I mean that most of the things you “need to get done” don’t “need” to be done by YOU. Someone else could do them for you. Speaking from experience, this can be hard for women, especially mothers. The idea of delegation just didn’t come naturally to me. I wanted to do everything. I wanted to be a Superwoman. But we have to be honest with ourselves. I couldn’t do everything all on my own. And while delegating was a difficult change for me, now that I’ve done it, I’m never going back.
How many of these could you delegate?
- Shopping
- Cleaning
- Laundry
- Washing dishes
- Driving kids to school
All of that was part of my Superwoman daily game plan… on top of keeping up with my health and business endeavors, world-changing inventions, and providing for my husband’s every need. It turns out I needed help, and victory requires sacrifice. What are you willing to give up to watch your Empire prosper?
For me, I had to give up my Superwoman illusion. I shed some of those responsibilities and prioritized the actions that are most critical for building and defending our Empire.
Delegation opens up your schedule to do more of what’s most important that only you can do.
Tip #5: Stay booked every minute of every day
Every day I use a 10X Planner to map out my time. It’s a really clear way to see where my time is going so I can direct it to what’s most important. You’ve only got so many minutes a day, so make sure you spend them well!
Grant and I think this works best if you break up the day into 15-minute segments. Your main objective in planning your day is to fill up every waking moment with an activity that contributes to one of your highest priorities for the day (see Tip #3).
The whitespace on your daily schedule is EVIL. It’s time wasted. It’s money wasted. Above all, it’s a betrayal of your commitment to center your life around 10xing your time to build your Empire. Fill up your 15-minute segments with activity and you’ll be shocked at how much you can get done.
Plus, planning your day this way will give you clear deadlines for everything, making your targets more concrete and easier to hit.
I like to make it a game, a race against time. Personally, that helps me stay focused and excited about hitting my targets.
I’ll make things even more interesting by attaching rewards and penalties to the deadlines. If I hit the deadline, I get an extra slice of dessert. If I miss the deadline, I don’t get any sweets at all the next day.
Share those resolutions with your partner to keep each other accountable each day. It’s easy to slack when you’re the only one measuring your progress. Ask your spouse to help you, compete with you, and encourage you to reach your goals.
Build an Empire,
Elena Cardone
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