How To Achieve More By Doing Less with Michael Hyatt

On this week’s podcast I am interviewing the amazing Michael Hyatt. As a New York Bestselling author, we are talking all about his book ‘Free to Focus’. We’re going to be talking all about how we can become more productive without having to increase the time that we have. The episode is going to be sharing a mix of simple mindset practices and various different hacks to help you become more productive, because who doesn’t need to know how to do that? Filled with lots of incredible information, you’re going to want to grab a notebook for this one!KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCASTThe Hustle Fallacy is the idea that you in order to achieve more you have to do more. In reality, not all tasks, not all meetings and not all opportunities are created equal. Focussing on the things that really matter is what will REALLY allow you to achieve more.There is such thing as a double win, where you can win at work and succeed at life. You just need to have that balance.You are the most important asset your company has and if you don’t look after your energy levels, your business is going to suffer. Because of this, nutrition is important. If you know a food is likely to slow you down, try to avoid it.When you’re taking time off, whether it is for a vacation or a weekly break, make sure you’re not doing any work at all.There are three steps to becoming more productive, the first one is to stop. Whilst it may seem counterproductive, you need to stop and see where your productivity lies. Ask yourself the hard questions. Has your smartphone made you less productive? Do productivity hacks give you the life you want?Evaluate the tasks that you’re doing. Think about the tasks you have completed over the past two weeks and evaluate whether or not you were passionate about it and whether or not you were proficient.Outsourcing your work is a great way to increase your productivity, as well as your income.If you know you enjoy something, you need to do everything you can to ensure you’re doing more of it. If you’re not enjoying something, you need to eliminate it.If you don’t want to say yes to something, you need to follow this simple hack. First of all, you need to affirm the person asking in your initial response. Once you have affirmed their work, you need to pivot. The best thing to say is ‘In order to be faithful to my other commitments, I have to say no’. This is the yes-no-yes formula.If you find yourself responding to a lot of requests, consider setting up your yes-no-yes responses as an email signature.The 3-by-3 System is where you have 3 goals for the quarter and 3 outcomes per week. Limiting yourself to 3 goals is important, because when your focus is dispersed across too many goals, you’re less likely to achieve any of them.If you could only pick three things to do this week to help your business grow, what would they be?When it comes to large projects, consider the 10-80-10 rule. This is where you are involved in the first and last 10% of a project to oversee it. You’re the architect, but you don’t have to be the builder.THE ONE THING YOU NEED TO REMEMBER ABOVE ALL ELSE…The biggest tip when it comes to being focussed and driving results is to ensure you get a good night’s sleep. A well-rested mind will be your most productive mind.Transcript below Hello and welcome to this week's episode of the podcast. I am your host, Teresa Heath-Wareing. Welcome, welcome. If this the first episode you listen to, then I am very happy to have you here, and boy, have you chosen an amazing first episode to listen to, because I'm not even going to do hardly any intro, we're going to go straight in, because I am so excited about this episode, because on today's podcast I am interviewing the amazing Michael Hyatt.Now this guy has been in business a very long time. He is a New York best-selling author, I'll give you his proper bio in a bit, but basically today we are talking all around his book, Free To Focus, which is all about how as business owners and CEOs we manage our time, how we become more productive without necessarily just pushing to do more within the time we've got, and honestly, it is full of so much good information. It's a mix of the mindset stuff alongside with some really practical, cool hacks how you can save more time and become more productive. And let's face it, who on earth does not need that?The other thing that I love about this and about Michael is the fact that he talks about taking naps and how good they are for us, and how crucial they can be in business. So, I am a massive fan of taking naps. I love a nap, because let me just add the caveat of I don't sleep very well for whatever reason. I often wake up, my brain doesn't stop working, and it's like constantly giving me things to think about in the middle of the night. Anyway, I love a nap but I was always too fearful to ever say anything through embarrassment, because I thought it made me sound lazy and that it wasn't good that I was taking a nap in the day when I'm running this successful business, blah, blah, blah.However, he has assured me that it's a very good thing. So anybody who tells me taking naps is good, I just think they're amazing straight off, anyway. But like I said, today's episode is jam-packed full of stuff. But if you haven't heard of Michael before, which I'm sure you have, then let me tell you a bit about him. Michael Hyatt is the Chief Executive Officer and Founder of Michael Hyatt & Company. He has scaled multiple companies over the years including $250 million publishing company with 700-plus employees, and his own Leadership Development Company that has grown over 60%, year-on-year, for the past four years. Under his leadership, Michael Hyatt & Company has been featured in Inc. 5000 list of fastest growing companies in America for two years in a row.He's the author of several New York Times and Wall Street Journals and U.S. Today's best-selling books. His books include Platform, Living Forward, Your Best Year Ever, Free to Focus, and I have to say, having read some of his books, they are great. Really, really good books. He is also, and I say this on the episode, he's got a great voice so I do listen to him on Audible as well, and he comes across really well. But he enjoys what he calls the double win with his wife of 40 years, his five daughters and nine grandchildren. So he has got a busy, busy life, but you know what? As you're going to discover from this episode, he manages to get that balance with everything, so, honestly, I think you're going to learn a whole lot from him today. I was so very honoured to have him on. He's a very busy man and I'm very privileged that he agreed to come on to the podcast, so I hope you enjoy this one.So, I am very honoured to welcome the amazing Michael Hyatt to the podcast. Welcome, Michael.Thank you, Teresa. I'm delighted to be on with you.Honestly, I am very, very grateful that you found the time. I know you're a very busy man and I know that my audience are going to love what you have to say, and get so many good takeaways from this episode, so I'm very excited. But, just in case, it is a just in case, because I'm sure my audience have heard of you, could you just briefly tell us how you got to do what you do today and have these amazing books and do this business that you have today?Well, I spent most of my career in the book publishing world. Most recently as the CEO and the Chairman of Thomas Nelson Publishers which began as a British company in Edinburgh in 1798. Now, I wasn't at the company quite that long, but when I was like the seventh CEO in the company, and so I decided in 2011, we sold the company to HarperCollins publishers, and I decided it was now or never. I was going to launch out and become an author and speaker which had been my dream thing for a long time, and I'd been in business for myself before, before I was at Thomas Nelson, and I said it was time to become an entrepreneur again, but I did that.So I had started blogging, believe it or not, back in 2004. I broke my ankle, and I decided while I was laid up after I had surgery on it, that I would take on this thing called blogging, and so I was pretty consistent at it for years and years and years, and to this present day, but that had created enough of a platform that when I left Thomas Nelson I was able to write a book on it, which was my book Platform: Get Noticed In A Noisy World. That book went on to become a New York Times best seller and I was able to create a membership site called Platform University based on that, and everything else happened as a result of that.So, today, we have 40 full-time employees. We're really focused at Michael Hyatt & Company on leadership development today, so we have that extensive coaching programme for entrepreneurs, we have some physical products like the Full Focus Planner, and just an array of suite of products.I love that. And it's really interesting, that, one, you came from a job, if you like, and then obviously went into being an entrepreneur, and also, what I love about where you are now today, is the fact that you came from a fairly traditional corporate background. The stuff that you talk about today, for me, seems like you've taken a big leap in the sense of how you are and what you promote, and the life you lead and the balance that you have, because actually I don't know about you, but I worked in corporate world for quite a while, and actually some of the things that you now promote in terms of becoming a good leader, I don't think they were around, you know. I worked for Land Rover, I was in their head office in the U.K. and I don't think those...