Systems, Habits and Creating Time

What insights your current behaviors, systems and habits can give you into creating more time.

The value of time boxing—limiting the period (and the amount of head space) you’ll devote to a particular thing.

Using habit stacking to create efficient ways to complete “must do” tasks.

How to use consistent habit tracking—aka streaks—to motivate you to stay on course.

When to buy back time—and overcoming your mental blocks that keep you from doing it.

Quotables

“Checklists or SOPs lift a weight off of you. It's this cognitive weight where…if you just do it in an order—the stuff that's going to happen every day—it gives you more freedom.”—JS

“It’s like Steve jobs wearing his black turtleneck and jeans every day. He didn't want to dedicate brain space to something that didn't matter.”—RM

“Time boxing helps quite a bit with the good enough slash perfectionism thing. Like the more you work on it, the better it will feel like it's getting therefore it becomes infinite.”—JS

“A little trick that I found that works really well—if morning is a good time for you to do detailed work—push your lunch as late as you can.”—RM

“I'm all about streaks. It's in my DNA to not want to break a streak.”—JS

“We can buy back time by hiring people to do things that we believe must be done. And it's not just about the business. It might be that you hire somebody to mow your lawn or buy your groceries.”—RM

“One thing is just to get rid of the things you don't need to do.”—JS

“There are people who will think nothing of spending a hundred thousand dollars in their business, but…can't have somebody mow their lawn. ‘I can't spend $10, but I can spend a hundred thousand.’ Sometimes the $10 will give you more value.”—RM