time management tips

How To Create An Effective Schedule

April 12, 2014 by Marc Guberti 4 Comments

One of the best ways to effectively manage your time is by creating a powerful schedule. The ideal schedule is an uncomfortable adventure that results in progress in the right areas while not being a burden at the same time. I enforce a strict schedule on myself every summer that ultimately allows me to get a lot of work done but also gives me some time to kick back and relax. I do not schedule anything just to put more work on the table. Everything has a purpose. Just to give everyone an idea, this will be the typical day for me this summer.

Work out for 4 hours. I want to have a very strong Junior year for my track and cross country teams.
Work on a book for 1-2 hour. I want to finish another book during the summer and have it published before the New Year. This will make sure Lead The Stampede is not my only physical book.
Create videos for 1 hour. I will be launching membership sites and training courses in the near future. Summer is going to kickstart that.
Write blog posts for 1 hour. That’s enough time to write at least 5 blog posts every day.
Write video scripts for 15 minutes. Before I start a video, I need to know what I am going to say. Speaking off the cuff was horrible, and those days are over.
Other business activities for 30 minutes (reading or responding to emails). When they come up, they will get done.

I understand that I will not be able to do this every day in the summer, especially on vacation days. Regardless, my goal is to get as close as possible towards accomplishing all of these goals on my schedule. This 9 hour schedule does create some discomfort, but the discomfort is needed in order to get more accomplished. It still beats the 9 to 5 (no traffic),

The key elements of my schedule is that everything has a purpose, it is not an easy schedule to follow, and it promises big rewards for being implemented. The idea of getting big rewards (for me, that would be a bestselling book, a membership site with the potential of making thousands every month, and getting a lot faster) will allow you to push through the work. By giving yourself high standards, you will be able to get more accomplished. I could easily get by with writing two blog posts every day and not doing anything else. However, I would not be able to unlock my potential by limiting my growth.

You will never know how much you can truly accomplish until you raise your standards.

How I Find The Time To Publish 2 Blog Posts Every Day

April 10, 2014 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

When I made the change last summer to write two blog posts every day instead of one blog post, I knew it was going to require a lot more work. In addition, I knew that I was encountered with a decision to cross the Rubicon. Once I start something new, and I like the results, I have a need to remain consistent and show gradual improvements.

Writing two blog posts every day was a big step for me. I had 20 blog posts scheduled at the time, but instead of having 20 days of blog posts left, I only had 10 days of blog posts left. Instead of writing three blog posts on some days and then taking a break, I started to write blog posts every day. In fact, I continue writing blog posts every day even now (unless something stops me from getting to my computer).

The biggest factor towards me being able to write two blog posts every day is that I love what I do. If I had forced myself to write a certain number of words per blog post, I would not have liked this as much. When I first started writing two blog posts every day, they were short and filled with mistakes. No one noticed because at the time, my blog was not getting a lot of visitors. I was simply practicing.

Then, I had the realization that I could make it far as an author, blogger, and entrepreneur. My short blog posts started gaining momentum, and now all of the blog posts on my blog combined average out to be 250 words per blog post. This indicates the big increase in words and information I have shared in more recent posts (in the beginning, many of my blog posts had 100 words or less). After the love came, the vision was able to drive me further. Then, I decided to increase the rate that I send out blog posts.

Then there’s time management. My ability to effectively manage my time has been a crucial part towards writing more blog posts. My love for blogging and the vision made me more willing to carve out hours of time to write blog posts. In order to carve out that time, I needed to sacrifice other things. I used to be a couch potato and watch TV for countless hours. Now, I only watch The Big Bang Theory, my Red Sox when they are on the diamond, and some football. Since those are not on every night, I sometimes go for days without watching TV. I decided that in order to become successful, I would have to commit more time to becoming successful. It’s a success model that makes sense, and it’s a success model that I decided to implement.

Ultimately, it comes down to your love for doing something and your vision. Having the love to do something and the vision of great success will make the process of time management a lot easier. We tend to carve out more time to do the things we believe can change our situation (or the world) than we carve out time for washing the dishes.

And that’s how I am able to two blog posts every day. So far, I have never worked a single day in my life, and I plan to have that statement remain true for my entire life.

My Case Study For Time Management

February 17, 2014 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

time management

I recently had the honor of being mentioned in an article on the U.S. News about time management. Geoff Williams, the person who wrote the article, mentioned that I am a case study for time management. In this blog post, I decided it would be a good idea to provide my own case study.

I had to do a lot of digging to find out what resulted in my effective time management. Different to what many people think, homeschooling is not the result of my productivity. Quite contrary, I go to school and run for my track team every weekday and go out for a meet on one day of the weekend.

I notice there are some activities where I effectively manage my time. Many people see this in the form of 2 daily blog posts, 48 daily tweets, multiple books, and other forms as well. These are the activities that I like to do because I enjoy the privilege of being a teenager entrepreneur. There are other activities that I do not like to do as much, and those activities usually get held back. By choosing a business in which I enjoy working, I enjoy spending hours writing blog posts, scheduling tweets, and doing other things to grow my business as well.

Choosing to do what you love is the biggest dose of motivation you can get. After that, all you need to do is optimize that so you are more productive. Almost a year into my blogging career, I realized I was running out of ideas for blog posts. I did not want to have a day where I did not send out any blog posts, but I did not want to write a blog post just for the sake of keeping the consistency. What I decided to do is read books about my niche. This gave me more ideas for blog posts and motivation. Now I never run out of ideas for blog posts because they simply come from the fly or from a blog post or book I read. Some of my blog posts have even been inspired by videos. Roadblocks will question our faith towards who we are and what we (as an individual and/or as a business) stand for. Conquering the roadblocks will make you further love what you do which will result in you put in more work and effort.

After I was writing blog posts and scheduling tweets the way I am today, I began to realize the potential I had (and still have). That’s when I created the vision–something for me to strive for. I defined what I wanted to do instead of thinking about what I wanted to do and changing my mind over and over again. When you invest a lot of time into something, you need to have a defined result(s) that you need to achieve.

I am still putting in some tweaks to my time management plan. Reading The 12 Week Year made me realize that every week is important, and now I have certain time blocks where I work 3 hours straight. Furthermore, I keep score of how effectively I am accomplishing my goals, and as a track athlete, I know how important the score is (my team won one of our championships by 1 point). This has led to a further increase in my productivity and time management.

Doing what you love will dramatically help you to become effective at managing your time wisely. By doing what you love, you are able to push yourself out of your comfort zone without going too far from the comfort zone. This ideal push allows you to stay somewhat comfortable while putting in more work and effort. There are also more ways to get better time management as well such as by following these tips or using sticky notes.

The key to time management is being consistent. As you gradually improve your time management, you will gradually see better results. Then, one day, you will see a dramatic improvement in your results that ends up sticking around.

How To Increase Productivity By Keeping Score

February 14, 2014 by Marc Guberti 2 Comments

More Productive

In a competition outside of business, whether that be a sporting event or the speech and debate team, keeping score gives people something to be competitive about. A football team has the ball, they are at the 10 yard line of the opposing team, they are down by four points, and there is only a minute left in the game. The football players probably try a little harder during that play versus a play on the 50 yard line with a minute to go.

The reason both football teams try a little harder when the football is at the 10 yard line is because the game is too close to call. We always want to be on top. We want to be a player on the winning football team. A 24-22 win and a 60-0 win are both wins. We like the ability to have a high score, or at least a score higher than the opponent.

Keeping score is a motivational factor that makes you push at the end. The runner in 6th place picks it up on the final lap to catch up to the person in 5th place. The 6th place finisher does not get to score a point for the team, but the 5th place finisher gets to score a point for their team. The need to get that extra point (and in numerous cases, the medal), will give the person in 6th place more motivation to catch up to and outrun the person in 5th place. The need for 1 point increase productivity, and in this example, leads to a much better time for the race.

Football players try a little harder when the game is at stake. Runners push it on the last lap in order to get more points for their teams. A great way for entrepreneurs, business people, and anyone else to be productive is by keeping score. Although you may not have a runner in front of you who is currently in 5th place, you have your goals. What are you trying to accomplish? Do you want to follow a certain amount of people on Pinterest, get a certain number of followers on Twitter, or do something else?

I decided to start off February by keeping score. The results have been incredible. Here’s what was on my scorecard:

Write 20 blog posts
Schedule 10 days of tweets
Write KeyNotes for 12 videos
Complete and finalize 8 videos
Schedule 10 days of posts on Google+
Write down ideas for 20 Vines
Post 5 Vines

That’s a length scorecard, but I was able to accomplish everything there…in just a week. I tallied my way from 1 to 20 blog posts, and I tallied my way through all of my other goals as well. Keeping score gave me a sense of urgency. Since I started this particular scorecard on a Thursday, the following Wednesday was like my 4th quarter. I had to get everything left on the scorecard accomplished in two days. I did a lot of work prior to those final two days, but I also did a lot of additional work prior to that 4th quarter. We know from sporting events how challenging it is to pull off the comeback from 28-0 in the 4th quarter. Instead of getting in that hole, I decided to do my work consistently. Then, I kicked it in on the last two days just like runners do on the final lap.

There are two lessons we need to learn from this. The first one is that keeping score has the potential to dramatically increase your productivity and giving you the sense of urgency you need to succeed. Success does not happen if you stay in the comfort zone forever. The second lesson we can learn from this is that there are a lot of things we can learn from sports.