How to Get Back 7 Hours per Week

Raise your hand if your current schedule looks something like this:

Adam shared this in the private Focus Academy Slack community during a previous Focus Academy class. (Reminder: enrollment for our January class closes in 5 days!)

Keep in mind, that was just his work schedule.

Imagine how it would look when factoring in family time, errands, social obligations, and all the unplanned daily surprises life has for us.

Not much time for breathing room, is there?

This is the reality millions of people wake up to every day.

Most of them believe you have to live like this to be successful. That the only option if you’re struggling is to #riseandgrind a little harder tomorrow.

Newsflash:

That type of schedule is not healthy.

It is not sustainable.

It should not be normal.

You CAN accomplish your professional and personal goals without working a schedule that leaves you gasping for breath at the end of every week.

How do you actually do it?

Sadly, a lot of folks get this wrong.

• 🦃 The Cold Turkey Approach: This is where you just burn it all down. Declare email bankruptcy, delete everything in your inbox, and start over. Cancel all recurring meetings and wait to see if any were important enough to break anything.

  We all know people who have tried stuff like this. While it can open up some breathing room in the short term, it doesn’t magically change who you are. A month or two down the road, you typically wind up right back where you started.

• 🤓 The Efficiency Approach: To some, a jam-packed schedule is simply a time management problem. Something to be solved by picking up an extra 10 minutes here, shaving off 5 minutes there.

  Yes, productivity tips and tricks can help, but I promise you can’t “One Weird Trick” your way out of overwhelm. It doesn’t help you stop spinning your wheels — it just helps you get faster at it.

• 👃 The “Right Under Your Nose” Approach: We’ve all done this at some point. You get fired up about reducing your schedule, pull up your calendar determined to clear out space, and expect to just stumble upon an obvious extra 10 hours.

  It doesn’t work like that.

  If you want to create lasting change, you have to start by understanding what your schedule is the result of in the first place…

Think of your life as 5 dials:

To reach a state of peak focus, all 5 of these dials need to be cranked up like you see in the image above.

But here’s the thing — each dial is dependent on the one that comes before it. (I explain it more in this video here.)

So before you can even think about getting a handle on your schedule, you have to take a hard look at the dials that come before it.

You can’t optimize your schedule if you don’t have a clear action plan you want to execute.

You can’t have a clear action plan if you’re still fuzzy on your short- and long-term goals.

You can’t prioritize the right goals if you haven’t aligned them with the big picture vision you have for your life.

This is why that random “foolproof morning routine that GUARANTEES success” you saw on TikTok didn’t change your life. If you try to turn your “Habits” dial to 10 while your “Goals” and “Schedule” dials are at 3, it’s harder to intentionally make progress on things that matter.

This is why Focus Academy dedicates time to each individual component of a focused life, starting with your Vision and working up to Schedule and Habits over the course of four weeks.

We start with your Mission Map because Focus Academy is all about building up YOUR foundation for focus that is built on YOUR values for your life.

If you’re craving clarity on your vision, goals, and priorities, you’ll find it.

If you know where you want your life to go, but you need the plan to make it happen, you’ll build it.

If you’ve got the plan but carving out the time in your calendar to implement it feels impossible, you’ll create your ideal schedule.

I’ll help you do it all in Focus Academy.

By the end of our 4 weeks together, I’m confident you’ll get back a chunk of meaningful hours per week in your schedule.

So if you’re telling yourself, “Gee, that sounds great, Shawn, but I don’t have time for this right now…”

^^ That’s a clue that you need this more than anyone.

Click here to explore the January ‘23 Class of Focus Academy ←

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Enrollment closes on Monday, so don’t delay!

P.S. If you want a sneak peek of what Focus Academy is all about, join me tomorrow for my free live workshop on The 4 Failures of Productivity (and How to Fix Them).

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