You’re Wasting 80% of Your Time (here’s how to fix it)

Productivity is how much money you get out for the time you put in.

I know this because I went from $0 at age 23 to $100 million plus net worth at age 31.

Simply by better investing my time.

And I'm going to teach you how I do it so that hopefully you can do it.

And I'm even going to show you my calendar at the end of the video and walk you through step by step how I get good returns on my time.

Have you ever had someone reach out to you and say, hey, got a minute?

Hey, got 10?

Hey, let me introduce you to so and so, they're going to be in town.

How does 10:00 a.m. work?

A normal exchange like that, you might say, yeah, I've got five minutes or sure, I can meet so and so for coffee.

The problem is that for one specific type of worker, that five-minute meeting blows their entire morning because they can't do the development work they need.

They can't edit the video, they can't write the book chapter because it disrupts their workflow.

On the other hand, there's another type of worker where for them, it's actually very optimal for them to take that meeting.

The question is, which one are you and at what times?

Also, special shout out to Paul Graham who wrote a tiny blog on this 14 years ago.

So if time is what we invest and money is what we make from that investment, then the people who are the best investors of time are the ones who make the most money.

And so, it turns out, there are two specific types of entrepreneurs and you'll switch hats throughout your day or throughout your week.

The first and most common investor of time that people are familiar with is the manager's schedule.

And these people have a very specific way of investing time and getting returns on it so they can make the most money.

So let's talk about that.

The manager.

Managers divide their time into the smallest chunk possible, they often have 20 plus chunks per day from 15 minutes, sometimes five minutes, all the way to an hour or 90 minutes.

And for managers, an empty time slot is a lost opportunity, that's time that did not get a return on investment for them.

And for that reason, they treat time like currency.

And the only real cost for them to fill is just the cost of coordinating with somebody else's calendar to find a mutually empty slot so that they can work together.

Now, on paper, since work on meetings is a mutually filled slot, it makes both people more productive.

And so when a manager interacts with another manager and they mutually fill a slot, both of them make more money.

Now.

They talk to lots of different people and do many different kinds of tasks all day long.

This is the nature of the manager.

They collect data, they report data to persuade, to lead, to train, and encourage and make other decisions one-on-one and sometimes in groups of people.

For them, they have a pretty clear beginning of the day and a pretty clear end of the day.

The day begins when they start preparing for their meetings maybe 30 minutes or an hour beforehand.

And it ends at the end of their last meeting.

Now, if they prep for the next day, then they could add that on top.

But more or less, the duration of their day is directly proportional to the duration of the meetings they have.

They basically work until their last calendar slot.

And that's how their day works.

And this is the key point here.

The main objective of the manager is to use up all their chunks in the day so that they maximize their time.

A fully booked day is a maximally invested manager.

They've used up all of their time slots and so they are productive.

The maker.

Now, the second type of time schedule management is something called the maker.

And this is one that the vast majority of people do not know.

This is where the creators, this is where the entrepreneurs, this is where people who have to make big things, who build stuff, get the highest returns on their time.

The vast majority of entrepreneurs at some point have some or all of their time that's dedicated to making stuff.

This is the deep work.

This is the stuff that moved the big ball forward.

They are often tasks that are not urgent but incredibly important.

And when you look back on your month or your quarter or your year, the few things that you remember that actually moved the ball forward, that actually moved your business forward, in the long term, were these chunks of work.

Now, the problem is most entrepreneurs do not have the time and do not have the system for maximizing that time of important work.

Because fundamentally, if those are the footholds that allow you to push yourself forward towards your goal, then you want as many of those as possible.

The difficulty is that it's never urgent.

This is like if you're a coder and you need to develop software, obviously if that software is developed, that's the most valuable thing you can do.

If you're an editor and you make videos, then actually editing the video so that it can get out in media is the most important thing that you can do.

If you write copy for emails or you're an author and you write books, you actually writing the book and actually doing the work of the book is the most important thing that you can do.

All of those things are maker work, you create something that before this did not exist.

Although this work is important, it's incredibly expensive in terms of time.

And the problem is the vast majority of the world works on manager time, not on maker time.

So let me explain the difference.

So, for the maker, when you get into maker mode, instead of many small slivers like the manager has, you have only a few large chunks.

And the reason for that is because if you put a meeting or you interrupt a four-hour long block, then you often can't get back to the work that you were doing before.

Also, if you know that you have a block that's coming, you can't get into the flow because you know that you're going to have to get out of the flow.

And so this is like the end of day meeting that kills you.

This is called the Zeigarnik effect.

It's that we tend to remember open loops and meetings are open loops because you have to set time so you don't forget it.

You have to start setting a timer before the time to start wrapping up, even if you're cruising right now.

Then you start thinking about the meeting and what you have to prepare for that meeting.

And now you're not thinking about your own work.

And this eats up your brain power and saps your ability to make.

Unlike the manager where the decisions, the direction and the coordination is the output of their work.

For the maker, the stuff, the things they build, the things they make is the output of their time.

Instead of working on meetings, they work off meetings.

They work on projects that can't get done in 30 minutes.

Sometimes those projects last weeks, months, quarters until they're done.

And so, the way that that work actually looks is that most makers have a set start time but variable end times.

So unlike the manager where they, they know when they start and they know when they finish.

Most makers work open to goal.

If you've ever lost yourself in your work and you're like, man, I just want to keep riding this, this high.

I want to keep riding this flow.

That's what it feels like to make.

You want to stay in there as long as you possibly can.

And that's why having no cap on the day allows you to get lost in the work and produce more than you ever could.

So, if you have only large time chunks, that means that you only have one or two per day.

Sometimes three if you're working 18 hours.

And so that means you usually have a morning block and a post-lunch block.

Now, if you're somebody who likes to also work after dinner, then you have a post-dinner block.

So you basically have three, four to six-hour chunks per day.

That's it.

And on a sustainable basis, most people just have two per day.

And so, if someone takes one meeting in the morning, they blew one of your 10 work blocks per week if you only work five days a week.

And so, someone's taking 10% of your total output by having one meeting.

The issue is that that manager who's working on manager time.

Puts that thing in and for them they're becoming more productive.

But they're destroying your productivity.

When this happens.

Is when you finish your day, feel like you look back and know that all your time was spent, but you got no return on it.

You have nothing to show for it.

And if you feel like you have that happen again and again and again, this is how businesses stay small.

This is how entrepreneurs fail to grow.

This is how they relive the same six months, same 12 months, same two years over and over and over again because they do not know how to invest their time.

For the maker, an empty time slot is not a lost opportunity.

The empty time block is the opportunity to get the return.

If you are a maker, you understand what I'm about to share with you.

If you look at your calendar and see that you have literally nothing on there, you have no meetings, you have no nothing, it's just empty until the end of the day.

How much energy are you filled with, you're like, oh my God, I'm going to crush this day, there's all this, this big project, I want to sink my teeth into it.

I'm going to be able to take a huge chunk out of it.

That energy that you get is because that is a maximally productive day.

Is an empty calendar rather than a filled calendar.

And so for context, when I was writing my book, my days every day were just writing the book.

And I told my team that that's all I was going to be doing.

Now you're like, but don't you run this portfolio of all these companies and there's all this money and these deals and decisions that have to happen?

And the answer is yes.

And when I show you my calendar, it'll all make sense.

So literally, diametrically opposed calendars are both maximally allocated to invest time to get the highest returns on it in terms of money.

The big problem is when the two need to interact.

Because if you just had makers making and you just had managers managing, everyone would be happy.

The problem is when managers manage makers and they have to meet.

The maker/manager conflict.

So, when a manager doesn't know how makers work, they kill the productivity of their team.

Managers often assume that makers can work like they do on demand.

They think it's, hey, it's just 30 minutes and you've got free time, what's the big deal?

I looked at your calendar, you have nothing all day.

You're barely even working.

Because they're using their measuring stick of work, their way a calendar looks when they're maximally effective.

And then transposing that on top of the maker's calendar and thinking these two are the same when they couldn't be more different.

For a manager, a short meeting costs one work unit, which is maybe 15 minutes.

And for them, they've got 20 plus per day, so they can easily spare one.

Whereas if they take one from a maker, they take one of the two time slots you have per day and sometimes you take both based on what the topic of the meeting is.

If you say, hey, we're going to do your quarterly performance as an employee at 2:00 in the afternoon.

The likelihood that the employee leading up to that is going to be able to think about the work that they're going to do when they're worried about their job or they're worried about their performance all day long.

And then afterwards, they're thinking about what they said and what they could have said differently.

That day's shot.

To make matters worse, if a maker is falling behind, the manager's solution is to interrupt them more, which creates a vicious cycle.

This means managers prevent the work that they check in on, so by checking in on them, they disrupt the maker's work so that they can't actually make during the time slot to check in if they're actually working.

Because the manager works while on meetings where the maker works when they're off meetings.

And when this happens, and it happens often, both parties lose.

And this is the main point.

The manager loses because the maker is not making what they need to be making and the manager is responsible for some level of output.

So both people aren't making the best returns on their time.

This is why this is important for managers and important for makers.

So if you are on a team, share this with your boss, share this with your team so that this can become like this can become more common in the lexicon.

All my companies understand and use this language.

If you ask as a manager for a maker to make time for you, they either one, offend the manager by saying, no, I can't do that because I'm working.

And the manager's like, well, I see that you have an empty time block and I outrank you.

Or even if you're peers, it's like, what do you mean you're not going to give me that time?

I see that it's empty.

By refusing them, they offend and they can incur other risks by making that, you know, offense and declining the invitation.

This often time damages the relationship and decreases the likelihood of collaboration in the future.

Which they might need.

You as a maker might need the buy-in of that manager.

And so you risk losing that goodwill by declining the invitation.

But by doing so, if you accept the invitation, you destroy the morning.

Right?

And so, option one, piss someone off.

Option two, destroy half your day.

A very terrible proposition.

And the crazy part is that even if you accept that meeting, often times the yield from that meeting is nothing.

Because the person who had the, do you have five minutes, didn't really have an agenda, didn't really have a plan.

And just basically said, I'm just going to steal your morning from you and give you nothing back.

By the way, this totally applies to networking stuff too.

If you're like, hey, let me introduce you to John, he's in the area.

You guys should meet for coffee.

Does 10:00 a.m. work?

I'm like, yeah, let's just destroy everything.

Right, let's just light my whole day on fire so that I can meet John who you think I have synergies with.

Maybe there's potential for collaboration.

Let's explore opportunities together.

You know what's crazy, I know what I need to do to make more money.

And I just need to do that.

I get asked all the time about what's the one habit that you have that has been the highest, you know, predictor of your success?

And I really genuinely believe that it has been this is that I have been ruthless with my time.

Everyone who knows me knows that I am a dick with my time.

And the thing is is that I've been able to maintain relationships because during that maker time where I say no to everyone else, I keep moving shit forward.

Because I have a fundamental belief that as long as I continue to achieve and I continue to make things that are valuable for the world, those meetings, those connections, those synergies, that friend dinner will always be there.

And that has proven right in my life.

And in the beginning it was the hardest because I didn't have the accomplishments to show for it.

But I truly believed, I was like, I know that if I can get this stuff done.

And I do it every single day for a year, two years, three years, five years, if every day I move the ball forward.

That's the thing at the end of the month when I look back on what I actually accomplished, 100% of it is stuff that I accomplished during maker time, not manager time.

And so, once I realized that the maker time was where everything, all the speed of me moving towards my goal was getting accomplished.

Then I spent the rest of my time trying to optimize my life and create a system around this that allowed me to do as much of that as I possibly could.

And to be clear.

There are roles in the business, like if you're CEO or COO from an operator perspective, you're going to have more one-on-ones.

You're going to have more team trainings.

You're going to have more coordination and decision making.

That's required.

But you just have to be clear that you're not not doing your job by not having maker time, it's just that your job is the manager stuff.

And then the maker time you have is to get more leverage on the remainder of your manager time.

And so Leila has a different schedule than I do.

She still has maker time, but it's probably inverted in terms of her schedule.

For her, she has probably one maker day per week and four manager days.

Where I have four maker days per week and one manager day.

And so you can have an inverted schedule.

But the important thing is is that she has to have that maker day because it's what gets her leverage, gets her higher returns on the other four days of the week.

And then for me, I have to still do that manager day because it gives me leverage on all the organizational decisions that have to happen throughout the whole portfolio.

You have to get out of the either or thinking and think which of these styles is best for me in this particular moment.

But I can promise you that you do have elements of both when most people have elements of neither, which is why they never move forward.

So I think I've accurately described the problem here.

Makers and managers work differently, these guys want empty calendars, these guys want filled calendars.

When they interact, one person destroys the other person's time and it's a disproportionate trade.

And when things get bad, they get even worse because the managers interrupt the makers even more.

And the makers trying to be polite because they don't want to turn down invitations, just make their lives worse and worse.

And they have to work longer and longer hours, lose sleep, lose family time, lose their weekends so that they can just keep up with their work without pissing anyone off.

And so, let's talk about a different way to do this.

So, I use something called a three-pronged approach for the solutions.

And that's because you have to address it from all angles.

It's not just saying, hey, makers, deal with it.

Hey, managers, do something different.

Hey, organizations, you have to attack it from all three directions.

You've got the managers, you've got what the makers should do differently.

And then you've got the organization overall.

So you've got all three of these parties that you have to accommodate.

The manager solution.

To the managers, step one, understand both the costs that you put on the maker.

The first cost is the cost of coordinating times while they work.

So they're trying to work right now before you coordinate the time that you're also going to disrupt them.

So you disrupt them while they're working and then you disrupt them at the meeting that you're trying to plan.

So you disrupt them twice.

Secondly, and once you have that time set aside, understand that the time itself eats an entire work block.

Itself and you have to know the difference between your work and the maker's work.

And when you ask for a meeting, it costs them 10 times more.

You use up one of their 10 time slots per week, whereas you use up only one of your 100 or more time slots.

So, when you choose to make an appointment or choose to make a meeting, be sure that it's worth it.

Especially if it's an ad hoc or impromptu, if you have a set cadence of communication.

If it can wait until that time, and you got to be real with yourself, can it wait, is this just a convenience thing for me or a preference?

If it is, then don't destroy the poor man or poor woman's time.

Step two, understand the value of the maker's no.

And this is something that I hopefully becomes incorporated in your lexicon at your business.

Is that this is a maker's no.

Not a, not a real world no.

It's a maker's no is that if a maker declines a meeting, don't take offense, see it as them actually trying to keep their larger commitment to you, the company and other people.

To get the meaningful work they need to get done, done.

And so this means you don't get offended, this means you don't, you know, hold back the, the promotion.

Or say that they're not being productive because they keep turning down meetings.

If someone turns down the meeting, it's because they're doing something that they can accurately say this is more important than that.

Now, if you as a manager say, I know that you have, this is going to destroy the morning in terms of your productivity.

But I think it is worth your time to be on this because we need your insight.

Then you can frame it that way and then you can give the maker the time to prep for that meeting.

If it is literally of that importance.

Step three for managers is actually ask your team what an ideal day would look like for them.

Like, what's a maximally productive day look like?

And allow them the time to give you the response.

And I suggest following that to the greatest degree possible so that you can actually help them be the most productive.

And so, for example, for us, uh, our media team leaders asked the editing team underneath of them.

Hey, what's the perfect day for you guys?

What's a perfect weekly calendar look like?

And as a team, they were like, well, if we could just bunch all the meetings here and we could have all the rest of the days free, that would be awesome.

And then if we had, it was like, okay, well, how do we, what about when we coordinate?

It's okay, well, we'll have specific coordination times that we keep for brainstorming sessions and things like that, but beyond that, we keep everyone's calendars empty.

And so that way, as a team, you as a, as a manager.

Also can have fewer meetings so that you can fill it with other meetings that aren't makers.

Right, so you can do more leading, more directing, more encouraging, more persuading, more training.

And then let the makers make.

And we've also realized, and I think you will break your own belief around this as soon as you start doing this, that a lot of work doesn't have to be done at the same time.

Everyone doesn't need to work on the same thing at the same moment to get the most done.

As long as everything gets done by this period of time.

Now, this video isn't the protect the makers video.

This is for all businesses and all business owners.

So, let's talk to the makers now.

The maker solution.

Step one, good managers want to help you.

So let them.

Tell them how you work, this is you communicating to them.

Send this piece of content to them to help them help you.

And yes, you will have to take meetings that eat your entire day sometimes.

It's part of the job.

You have to work with other people.

Because your project would never see the light of day without marketing marketing it.

Sales selling it, product delivering it.

And everything else that happens in between.

It's a team.

And so, if your manager is going to choose to put a time block in the middle of your morning or the middle of your afternoon.

Then switch that whole block into a manager schedule.

Fight fire with fire.

And try to knock out as many meetings as you can in that formally free time.

So that means that, okay, if I know that I'm going to have this one time slot that's killed, my big chunk.

Well, then let's slice that baby into as many chunks as I can and get all the other ad hoc and impromptu meetings done that morning.

So that I now switch to a maximally productive manager.

And so the thing is is that you don't want to identify as one or the other.

You just want your calendar to reflect the nature of the work.

And so the point here isn't to have two camps of makers and managers, is to understand what type of productivity system you're installing for that period of time on your calendar.

Because especially if you're an entrepreneur, you've got to wear both.

Step two for makers.

Have standard meeting times where you accept meetings.

So you say, hey, you know, Monday and Thursday afternoons is when I have all of my meeting times open.

So whenever someone requests a meeting, ask them if they can make it in those times.

And this is where when you get into the organization, if everyone has those times.

Then everyone's on maker schedules for those time blocks.

And then it becomes more efficient at an organizational level, which I'll get to in a second.

It's rare that a meeting is truly urgent.

So, if you can push them off to those designated blocks that you set ahead of time, you will make a lot more money with the time that you have remaining.

And you want to make this time available to anyone who meets with you on a regular basis.

And add some empty time slots or leave some empty time slots in that maker meetings for the ad hoc meetings that inevitably come up.

I would say I've gone through three distinct periods of understanding this maker manager concept.

And using it to great success.

The first one is you basically have to do nights and weekends.

Uh, and early mornings in order to get your maker time in.

But you have to do it.

And so when I was doing this as a gym owner, so a small business owner, I would wake up and I would like work on ad copy and work on ads.

Which is like deep work that I'd have to do.

And then I'd step into the gym at 9:00 a.m. and start taking sales calls.

Or uh, take training sessions or have to have one-on-ones with my trainers.

Like, I worked like a regular person with fires and people interrupting me all day.

Because I was running a small business.

And so, if you need to make sure that that maker work gets done, then you need to find one block that's usually at the very beginning of the day or the very end of the day.

If you're the entrepreneur and no one cares about your time in the beginning.

If I had not done that, I don't think I ever would have gotten out of one location.

I would never have been able to build the systems that it takes, like, how do you build the training system to get trainers on?

You do it in maker time.

How do you build the nutrition system that you're going to use for your whole location?

You do it during maker time.

How are you going to run an advertising system for creating ads and writing copy on a regular basis?

You do that during maker time.

Not during manager time.

And so to build the assets that I could build the business on top of, to build the enterprise.

I had to do that in uninterrupted time chunks.

And the problem was, everyone wanted to interrupt my time.

And to be fair, they could because I didn't have my, my time wasn't super valuable in the beginning.

Over time, you'll begin to have people who can start protecting your time for you.

So for a big chunk of my career, as I started to make more and more money, the first half of every day until noon or 1:00 p.m. was always wide open.

Because I do my best work in the morning.

And then, once I've kind of used up my creative juice, I can do the coordination and meetings and things like that.

Now, I'll give you a second pro tip on this.

Which is if that is the way that you want to plan your calendar, and let's call yourself an intermediate entrepreneur.

Start planning your day back to front.

So what I mean by that is.

If someone wants a meeting, you start at, it ends at five and starts at four.

If someone else wants a meeting, then you say it ends at, it ends at four and starts at 3:30.

And you work your calendar from back to front.

That way your front of the day is still the most open you possibly can have it.

Now, you'll still suffer from the quote Zeigarnik effect.

But you still have a very large chunk of uninterrupted time.

And by doing it this way, you avoid those empty dead times.

Where you're like, great, I have 45 minutes between two meetings.

Like, what am I going to do now?

And you're like, I guess I'll just have a snack.

So if you have less means, then you work double time.

You work on your client's time and then you do your work in off hours.

So like I was saying in my early days, by doing that morning five days a week.

And then I would work both shifts on the weekends.

I would get four on the weekends, I get a morning and an afternoon on Saturday and Sunday that I could put maker time in.

And then I get five blocks during the week.

And so this still gave me nine makers blocks per week to move big stuff forward.

That's a full-time job.

But the key here if you're noticing is that, yes, you work double.

Because you have to work the job that you're currently doing to make money.

And then you work the next job to get out of the job you're in.

So, the V1 of this is you have to make maker time.

The V2 of this is I, I think is the 50/50 split.

The first half of your day is maker, the second half of your day is manager.

And you work it from back to front.

That's the V2 version.

The V3 version, which is what I do currently right now, is that I have entire maker days.

So I have two, three, four days per week that are just maker days and then I have a manager day where I stack the hell out of my meetings.

Introductions, the, you know, coordinations, decisions, quarterly meetings for the portfolio companies, all of that type of stuff happens on those days back to back.

So I don't feel unproductive at the end of the day because I know going into it, I'm not going to do any maker work.

I'm just going to crush as many meetings as I can.

Step three.

Communicate about how you're going to communicate.

Tell people when you're going to be slow to respond, specifically during your maker's box.

So, people have an amazing ability to adapt if you tell them ahead of time.

People really only get upset when you have unmet expectations.

They expect you to respond immediately and then you don't and then they question if you're working.

When the reality is that's why you're working is the fact that you're not responding.

So, change them.

So let everyone know that this is how you work and this is when you're going to be responsive.

And if you do have that time period where you say you're going to be responsive.

Then be responsive.

Which leads to step four.

Actually work when you say you will.

If you have the luxury of having people who respect your time and respect your schedule and understand this maker manager dynamic.

Then you owe it to them as a maker to not waste your time.

Because if you don't, you will confirm their suspicions this whole time that you've been goofing off all day because you're not actually working.

And that's what the vast majority of managers think when they look at your calendar and see that it's empty.

Is that you're not actually doing anything.

And what you don't want to do is prove them right.

So I covered what you have to think about as a manager.

Right, you want to understand this lingo, you want to understand how makers work.

And you want to try and respect that and empower them to the greatest degree possible.

As a maker, you also want to understand that you work within an organization.

There are times that you're going to have to take meetings.

If you do take meetings, you want to block that time and then crush as many meetings as you possibly can.

Be responsive when you say you're going to be responsive.

And then work like a madman during the times that you actually have empty time slots on your calendar.

Great, so we have both of those covered.

But how do we install this into an organization so that we can make this canon?

So that we can make this standard.

And this is what I'm hoping across many organizations, so if I can use my platform to like help businesses make more money.

And help people actually enjoy their work more than like, can't think of a higher return on my time than doing that across thousands and thousands of businesses.

Organization solution.

So, as an organization, and this is if you're the entrepreneur who can make those decisions, step one, consider mandated quiet time on the calendar.

So during these times, entire teams can't message one another or meet.

And so either make this a, uh, a time of day every day or make this entire days of the week.

So for example, for us, Wednesdays are quiet days for the editing team.

Like, no one talks, there are no meetings, they can just crank on one or two big projects they want to work on throughout that day.

And I want to be very clear on this caveat.

It doesn't need to apply to the entire organization.

Only the ones where you have makers.

So think engineers, developers, copywriters, editors, builders, writers, presenters, media, whatever.

The people who have to work on projects that require intense periods of time without interruption.

The reason I think this is more important now than ever is because of remote work.

Remote work has removed the transparency between someone working.

And so I could walk, I can walk around my office now and walk past the editing base and see people plugged in, working on their computers, editing.

So I know they're editing even though their time block is empty if I just check their calendar.

But in a remote setting, if I look at someone's calendar and see it's empty, but I have no way to check in on them or see them, then I don't know if they're actually working or if they're just like rock climbing.

And so I have no way to know that.

Then you think, okay, well, I'll just slack them.

But by doing the slack message, you then disrupt them anyways.

And if they're super responsive on slack, you feel like they're working.

When the likelihood is that if they're really responsive on slack, they're not working.

Because they're on slack.

And so the real real is that if you're remote or the teams that you have that are doing making are remote.

You have to have an element of trust.

And you still need to measure on output.

So you can give, I would say basically extend longer periods of trust where you say, hey, we have this big project, this is the deadline for that project.

And then you want to remove as many obstacles as you possibly can to allow that person to work.

And let's also be real.

There have been days where I wake up and I'm like, I don't have it in me.

Like wherever the magic is or the muse didn't show up to work today.

Sometimes if you're a, if you're a maker, then maybe see if you can get meetings on that day.

Because you're like, dude, my brain's dead.

Like, I don't think I'm going to, I'm going to create anything today.

But there are some days where I wake up and I feel like the, the touch of God is upon me.

And I'm like, oh my God, I think I actually can cure cancer today.

And when that happens, then sometimes it's worth changing the meetings and saying, hey, man.

I'm in the middle of something right now, I'm crushing it.

Is there any way we can just meet later?

You know what's crazy, most people when they get that message, they're like, sure, no problem.

It wasn't urgent anyways.

And sometimes they're like, you know what, we don't even need to reschedule the meeting.

I actually handled it already.

And so, I would strongly encourage you as a maker to kind of keep a pulse on yourself and also managers to extend the time trust where you allow makers to make.

Now.

If they do not meet the deadlines and they are not meeting the output.

Then you need to be very clear about this is the trust I'm extending to you.

So what is the reason that you have for not getting this done?

And real real, a lot of times, you actually have to dig into their personal lives.

Because that's usually the mess.

Anyways.

As an entrepreneur, you're often going to have times where you're a maker and a times where you're a manager.

And being clear to your team about which hat you're wearing.

So I literally say, hey, I'm putting my maker hat on today.

Hey, manager hat.

Before I step into something, and that gives me and them a mental cue to know how I'm operating for that day.

And kind of the rules of engagement.

And by doing it that way, it sets, it sets all the expectations with one thing.

One change of hat, rather than we have to re-explain the rules every time.

Alex's calendar.

All right, before the last and most important point for organizations, let me show you my calendar and walk you through it.

So this is an actual time, uh, block, I think today is the 31st of May.

Um, as we're actually recording this.

And so, this is my, this is my actual calendar.

And so you'll notice that we had a, we had Labor Day weekend, right?

So Monday, um, I actually took off on Monday.

Um, so this was a short week.

But Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, I have nothing on here except for maker time.

So I'm you recording for me is maker time.

Like I'm making these videos.

I can't do this and then take a meeting and then come back and make this video.

Right?

Like I have to stay in it until it's done.

And so this whole day, all three of these days are just straight up empty.

And you can see I have a gym meeting with myself.

Uh, in the afternoon so I can get swole.

So I was telling you that on Wednesdays, we have our quiet day for editors.

But it's actually organization-wide.

And we just separated people into, are you a maker, are you a manager?

And so if you're a manager or you deal with lots of time slots, that just doesn't apply to you.

But for everyone else in the organization, which everyone else has transparency into, all of Wednesday is an acquisition.com quiet day.

And the reason that we put it on Wednesday was that way, if you think about how the week works out.

It's like you have two quiet days on the weekend, no matter what.

And then you have two days that could potentially get interrupted with another day in between.

So basically the longest amount of time that you have to wait is two days before you can have a guaranteed quiet day.

Now, you'll notice that.

Tuesday basically functioned as my Monday for this week.

I had a team meeting with my whole company.

I had a one-on-one with my head of investment.

He's the one who runs our deals.

I had my executive meeting, uh, which is just all the leaders in my company at acquisition.com.

I had a one-on-one with my book manager.

I had, um, a meeting with our workshop manager.

Because, uh, we wanted to touch base.

And after that meeting, I said, let's not have this meeting anymore.

Immediately after the meeting.

So to be clear, like, I try to always audit like, do I need to do this again?

Or is there a process or a person who can do this instead of me?

And most times there is a process or a person.

After that, I had my school games Q&A.

So I had once a week I take a call with the school games.

And notice, I do these calls.

That I have with customers on my meeting day.

Because it's still an interruption.

And it, to me, it feels the same.

It's like I hop on, I'm asking questions.

I'm answering questions, I'm directing, I'm doing whatever.

Then I had my marketing meeting for our internal marketing stuff.

And that was it.

I had a hair trim and then I had my gym.

All right.

And so, you'll be like, wait, that's it?

I just saw Alex's whole week.

That's all the meetings he takes.

And the answer is, yes.

Now, I think what might be more important than the things that you saw are the things that you didn't see.

And so, there's meetings that happen all the time with the leadership, with my team and portfolio companies.

With, you know, my media buyer and their media buyer, my, you know, uh, portfolio operating partner and the CEOs of the companies that we own.

Right?

All of those meetings, you'll note, none of them were on my calendar.

At some point, I see the entrepreneurial journey as a relinquishing of control.

And at every level of entrepreneurship, you need to learn a new level of giving up control.

And so it's interesting is that when we get into entrepreneurship, we do it because we want freedom.

But as soon as we do it to get freedom, we actually have absolute control over everything.

Because you have control of, you're a solopreneur now.

Like you have no team, it's just you.

But when you have control over everything, you actually don't have freedom.

So you cannot have both absolute control and absolute freedom at the same time.

And so if you want freedom, you have to relinquish control.

You have to extend trust to people.

Now, those trust can have guardrails and you can still have outputs that you measure people on.

And then you basically tighten up the reins if things don't go to plan.

But as long as people are doing their job and meeting the outputs, then you can continue to kind of extend the leash, I don't really like the terminology, but you get the idea.

And so at the end of every one of these meetings, I'm telling you, like, if you could just put a little reminder to yourself.

Is, do I need to do this again?

A, like, does this meeting even need to occur again?

And secondarily, is there somebody else or a system we can put in place to eliminate this altogether?

Leila and I, she's even better about this because she has more meetings as an operator than I do.

Um, every single week, she starts her week by looking at all her meetings and deletes.

She deletes first.

And then on a quarterly basis, she looks at all recurring meetings and says, how do I, how can I change the time that's being allocated across the whole company?

So she sees everyone's calendars and everyone's meetings.

And she does some Rain Man stuff where she says, I don't think we need to do this anymore.

I think we can combine these two.

I think you don't need to attend these.

And she tells people, I don't think you need to attend this anymore.

I don't think you need to attend this.

And I think that's where a culture of meetings don't make you productive is a very important subline here for organizations in general.

And you'll notice this with Elon Musk and Bezos and some of these, these great entrepreneurs, they talk about this.

Where they want to standardize like, hey, you can get up in the middle of the meeting and say, hey, I've just got stuff I need to do.

And I don't think I'm relevant here.

Or I don't think I'm adding value.

That's you returning time to the company.

Because this is the thing that everyone forgets.

Is that, let's say, let's say, uh, you make $50,000 a year.

That means that you make around $25 per hour in general.

And let's say you've got some people who are making $100,000 a year on the meetings.

So that's $50 per hour.

That means that if you have 10 people on that on a on a one-hour call.

It's like, that was a $500 call.

Or a $400 call.

Now, if we took the whole team out to Chili's and we spent $400 on drinks and chips and whatever, it'd be considered a major expense.

Right?

But every day, all the time, you're taking the whole team out to Chili's 10 times a day.

This is why people stay poor because they don't know how to allocate time to get the highest returns.

So.

Let's walk through the last step for organizations to make this real.

To get the most out of everyone.

Spread this content to makers and managers alike.

So that everyone can use the same language to describe this larger source of waste.

And prevent it.

Because.

If you are working with a maker manager schedule where everyone understands where people can get the highest returns on their time.

And your competition is not working this way.

You will get higher returns on human capital on the time you invest in people because they will be happier, they will stay longer, they will have higher output.

And the quality of their work will go up.

So you'll both get higher quantity of work and higher quality of work.

Both by changing how you allocate time and trying actively remove as many makers as possible from meetings.

And also, managers don't need to be there.

And my goal with this video is to increase the awareness of these two types of working styles.

And put words to something that plagued me for a very long time.

And so if you're listening to this and you're like, this is music to my ears.

This is what I've been trying to describe for such a long time.

And I haven't been able to put words to it.

I made this for you.

So that I could put words to something that hopefully everyone else can use and distribute at a bargain on time.

Is that you don't have to worry about making this thing.

You can just send it so that people can understand it for you.

And hopefully this gives words to the makers whose work moves the world.

And helps managers understand how expensive got a minute really is.