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you want to achieve your personal and professional goals

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while still having time for the things you love?

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Then you need the 25X Productivity System.

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As a productivity coach with over 17,000 satisfied clients, I'll

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and 25 steps to productivity mastery,

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So if you're ready to become

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0:37

Have you ever looked at your to-do list for

0:39

the day and thought to yourself, I just have

0:41

no idea where to start? Well,

0:44

welcome to The Productivity Show, a podcast where

0:46

we believe you can get the important things

0:48

done without sacrificing your health, your

0:50

family, and things that matter to you. My

0:52

name is Brooks from Asian Efficiency, where we

0:55

help people become more productive at work and

0:57

in life. And today is another Wisdom Wednesday

0:59

episode where you'll get actionable productivity advice in

1:02

less than 10 minutes. And the topic

1:04

today is related to the concept of

1:06

focus filter. Knowing how to

1:08

figure out your priorities when, let's face it,

1:11

everything seems like a priority. It's one of

1:14

the skills we teach in our 25X Productivity

1:16

System course. Now, I'm sure you've heard the

1:18

usual productivity advice that you need to focus

1:20

on your priority for the day or choose

1:23

one to three most important tasks. Now,

1:25

that is rock solid advice, but of

1:27

course the question becomes, how do you

1:30

choose what your priorities are? And

1:32

sometimes it's very obvious. Your boss maybe comes to

1:34

you and said, I need you to drop everything

1:37

and work on this today. Or maybe

1:39

you need to take a family

1:41

member to the doctor, or you

1:43

have a critical system that you're

1:45

responsible for and it's down. Or

1:48

maybe today is the deadline to submit the

1:50

slides to the conference you're speaking at. Not

1:53

that any of those are good situations

1:55

necessarily, but at least your priorities are

1:57

crystal clear in those cases, right? Well,

2:00

it gets more difficult when things aren't so

2:02

clear, when we stare at our to-do list

2:04

and we think, how can I choose a

2:06

priority when everything on this list feels important?

2:10

I actually had this situation the other day when

2:12

my wife happened to be in my office when

2:14

I was doing my daily planning. I

2:16

was flagging my priority tasks and my task

2:18

manager, OmniFocus, that's how I do it. And

2:20

she looked at my screen and she said,

2:22

you're really gonna do all that? And

2:25

I realized, no, there is really no

2:27

way I was gonna be able to

2:29

do all that. And I was setting

2:31

myself up for productivity pain by not

2:33

following our own 25X focus

2:35

filter strategy. So in this

2:37

episode, I'm gonna help you learn from my mistakes.

2:40

So let's start with what a focus

2:42

filter is. The focus filter is your

2:44

ability to identify what we call the

2:46

critical few, the one or more tasks

2:48

to do during the day that will

2:50

make a real productivity difference and help

2:53

move you forward towards your goals. And

2:55

this can be surprisingly hard because sometimes

2:57

tasks seem urgent, but they aren't truly

2:59

what you should be spending your time

3:01

on. Or it can be

3:03

so tempting, especially when you're busy, to

3:05

do what we call snacking, which is

3:07

just hitting those quick and easy tasks

3:09

because checking them off our list makes

3:12

us feel so productive. I'm sure

3:14

you've been there, we all have been. So

3:17

if that's what a focus filter is,

3:19

how do you choose those important tasks,

3:21

those critical few? And I

3:23

wish I could say there's some silver

3:25

bullet or quick hack that makes your

3:27

top priority task crystal clear, but

3:30

it doesn't really work that way. We all

3:32

have different work and life situations. We all

3:34

have different priorities. We all have different ways

3:36

of doing things. But here are some things

3:39

that we think can help. Number

3:41

one is to have a daily target. And

3:43

we are gonna be talking about this more

3:46

next week. So stay tuned for that. But

3:48

a key productivity practice is to give yourself

3:50

a daily target each day. And this is

3:52

an objective way to ask yourself the question,

3:54

how will I know if I've had a

3:57

productive day? And that doesn't need

3:59

to be numeric. but it should be

4:01

binary either you met your target or you

4:03

didn't. And so if you're

4:05

going to set that daily target, which we

4:07

recommend, then it stands to reason that one

4:09

of your priority tasks should be something that

4:12

helps you meet that target. The

4:14

second thing we recommend is to connect

4:16

to your weekly, your monthly, or your

4:18

quarterly goals. You can start

4:21

to have a true positive productivity cycle

4:23

when you can start to tie together

4:25

the planning timeframes. For example, at the

4:27

start of the quarter, you have quarterly

4:29

goals. Then each month, you make

4:31

sure that during the month, you have a monthly

4:34

goal that helps you meet that quarterly goal. Then

4:37

during each week, you're making sure that

4:39

your weekly goal contributes to achieving that

4:41

monthly goal. And then we get to

4:43

the day, which is what we're talking

4:45

about. You want to have part of

4:47

your daily priority be something, no matter

4:49

how small, that helps you achieve that

4:51

weekly goal. And if you can start

4:53

to tie together the different levels, then

4:55

you're almost by default going to be

4:57

making progress every single day. The other

5:00

thing you can do is to use

5:02

a prioritization tool. There are other prioritization

5:04

tools that you can use to help

5:06

you figure out what you could focus

5:08

on. There's tools like the Eisenhower or 2-2

5:10

matrix, the ABC prioritization

5:13

method, the 30-30 rule. We'll

5:16

dive into these in other podcast episodes,

5:18

but either of these things can really

5:20

help you make sure that you're working

5:22

on something that truly matters and not

5:24

just checking off the easy or measurable

5:26

things. So to get started, use

5:28

one of these methods to come up with one thing

5:30

that you're going to prioritize tomorrow. It

5:32

doesn't mean that it will be the only thing that

5:35

you do, of course, but having a focus filter

5:37

to zero in on one key priority

5:39

will help you get back on productivity

5:41

track. Thanks so much for listening

5:43

to The Productivity Show, and I will see

5:45

you next time.