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Are you ready to transform how you

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work and live, turning endless to-do lists

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into achievements that matter? Welcome

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to the 25X Productivity System.

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My name is Tam Pham and I've dedicated

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my life to unlocking the secrets to peak

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productivity. With the expertise from

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coaching over 17,000 clients to success,

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I bring you a proven path through

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the T-Fright work, time, energy, and attention,

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tailored to elevate your efficiency to new heights.

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Imagine reclaiming five hours a week,

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achieving more with less stress, and

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finding joy in your daily routine. If

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you're set to redefine productivity and embrace

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a fulfilling balance, it's time to

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explore 25X Coaching. Discover

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more at 25xcoaching.com

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to get more information on our

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coaching program. Welcome

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to The Productivity Show, a podcast where we

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believe you can get the important things done

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without sacrificing your health, family, and things that

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matter to you. And today

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is another Wisdom Wednesday episode where you'll

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get actionable productivity advice in less than

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10 minutes. And today's topic is

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a time audit. This is one of the 25 skills

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we teach as part of our 25X

1:10

Productivity System and it's so important. Why

1:13

is that? Well, think about it. The

1:15

number one things many people say about their productivity

1:18

is, I just don't have enough time to do

1:20

anything, or I'm just always so busy all the

1:22

time, right? Have you ever said either of those things?

1:25

Well, it's why the T is the first part

1:27

of our T framework, the three levels that impact

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your productivity, time, energy, and attention. And so the

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question is then, how can you improve your time

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in the future if you don't know how you're

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spending it now? So if we agree that maybe

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time is something that you need some help with,

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then the question becomes, how can you improve your

1:43

time in the future if you don't know how

1:45

you're spending it now? It's kind

1:47

of like investing for retirement, right? You need to know

1:49

how your current investments are doing if you know

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that you're heading in the right direction. You

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know, vibes don't work for retirement savings and

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they don't work for productivity either. So, That's

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all this We call it be Time

2:02

Audit Amazon we're going to talk about

2:04

in this episode And big Picture There

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are two ways to do a time.

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Audits Number one: track your time and

2:10

then review that tracking later. And

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number to look back and review your calendar

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periodically and I'm going to take you

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through both of those steps and how you

2:19

can apply them and improve your own product

2:21

to be and game back more that times

2:23

and freedom that we talked about earlier. Let's

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start with number one. track your time and review

2:29

later and tracking your time Sounds like it could

2:32

be a pain or maybe you've tried it once

2:34

and it didn't really work out for you and

2:36

I'll be honest, it can definitely be a pain

2:38

depending on how you do it. So many of

2:40

us set an intention that we're going to start

2:43

tracking your time and we start. And we make

2:45

progress at first, but then the habit just kind

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of falls away. I've done it's everybody's done it

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at some point. However, there are ways to track

2:51

your time without a lot of effort to really

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can be done and us or going to talk

2:56

about today. The first

2:58

place you want to ask yourself is, do

3:00

you need to track every minute of every

3:02

day I think that's what we're A lot

3:04

of us get off track, right? we get

3:06

way to granular and we spend time tracking

3:08

a bunch of stuff that doesn't move the

3:10

needle. And maybe if you build your time

3:12

or you need to report it to somebody

3:14

than sure Of course track everything. That makes

3:16

total sense, but for the rest of us

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a lot of times, broad strokes are okay,

3:20

only you know where you are on that

3:22

continuum. So how

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do you track your time? Well, this

3:26

is an area where you can get

3:28

really really geeky if you want, but

3:31

you don't have to. The productivity and

3:33

tech podcast are full of people using

3:35

apps and automation than short to do

3:37

tracking and this can work really really

3:39

well. Definitely not saying don't do it

3:41

for those apps like toggle timer, he

3:43

timing rescue time was links to all

3:45

those in the show notes and the

3:47

way more than that and they'll let

3:49

you track your time and some of

3:51

them you have to start and stop

3:53

timers. To track it's and some The

3:56

Moxie watch what you do on your

3:58

devices and then automatically. Court

4:00

that and then you go in and then it will try to

4:02

a bucket your time and then you can go in and we

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get later. And these

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apps can be really enlightening, especially the ones

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that do automatic tracking because a lotta times

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the way we think we're spending our time

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is very different than the way that. We.

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Are actually spending our time so you can

4:17

actually get a lot of value from one

4:19

of these things that records everything that you

4:22

do. So that could be somewhere you want

4:24

to start just to get a baseline as

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a time tracking after gray and we can

4:28

all learn a lot from them. The only

4:30

problem is they can get really, really silly

4:32

and a lot of times you spend so

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much time in these apps reviewing categorizing, tweaking,

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automating, and playing around that it takes away

4:39

from the things that you should be doing.

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So if you're gonna use this time tracking

4:43

apps and deathly not saying, don't. You

4:45

just wanna be careful. Now another much simpler

4:48

alternative is to discuss are rough log of

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how you spend your time isn't just be

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really really simple a can just be on

4:54

a notepad besides your desk or something like

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that or that you carry around with you

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and basically just write down and blocks what

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you work on. Suffer me. Maybe it's Ninety

5:03

Nine, Fifteen Daily Huddle Nine Sixty Nine Forty

5:06

Five Automation for our Twenty Five X program

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as coming up Ten to Ten Forty Five

5:10

podcast show. No, maybe ten Forty Five to

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Eleven Research Buying new printer which is my

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least favorite. Thing to do but us from

5:17

doing right now and so on. You're not necessarily

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recording a think, it is getting the broad strokes

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of what you do. At keeping

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a simple log of how you spend your

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time might be not as granular or accurate

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as say, a time tracking app, but you

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may get like eighty percent of the value

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with only twenty percent of the effort, so

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it's definitely something to look out for every

5:36

tracker time. Just make sure to periodically review

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that information. May be on a weekly basis

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or a monthly basis. probably weeklies. Better boat,

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Whatever you can fit into your schedule. There

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isn't really much point in tracking your time

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is you're not going to use that information

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to improve going forward, right? That's what we're

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trying to do with this time tracking. So

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you want access of questions like are you

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spending more time on something than you thought?

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Are you spending time on something that you

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could alum eight or delegate? Are you short

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changing important projects or areas of your life?

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Maybe you're not spending as much time on

6:06

something as you think you were. That could

6:09

be a red flag so maybe you should

6:11

find a way to allocate more to to

6:13

something. So these are

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the questions you want to ask yourself. As

6:18

you're reviewing your time tracking. Now

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speaking of reviewing your time, let's go on

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to time Audit Strategy number two, and Madison.

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Look back and review your calendar periodically. Time

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tracking great, but there's another super effective way

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to do a time. It's about. as for

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viewing your calendar, after all, if you think

6:35

about it, you're com. There should be a

6:38

pretty good representation of how you spend your

6:40

time throughout the week. it as your meetings,

6:42

your appointments. Maybe it has space carved out

6:45

to work on certain tasks and so on.

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Not everything's gonna be on your calendar, probably,

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but a lot will be. The

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only thing as a lot of us never

6:54

ever look back on our calendar once a

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day is done. Once we move onto the

6:58

next day, we never looked back at the

7:00

previous day's which is too bad because our

7:02

founders can really be a goldmine abuse or

7:04

productivity information. And the best

7:06

part is this takes almost no time at

7:08

all, just a couple minutes. And it's really

7:11

really simple. You just every week look back

7:13

at your calendar and ask yourself how much

7:15

flow or focus times you have. was it

7:17

a knopf? When you plan your and week

7:20

next week, try to prioritize more of that.

7:23

Then. You want to think, what on your

7:25

calendar could you get out of in the

7:27

future? Maybe there's something you could delegates? Maybe

7:30

there's something you can cut his or anything

7:32

on your calendar that you ideally should spend

7:34

less time doing and then try to again

7:36

going forward. spend my time doing it everything

7:38

and both trade off, but at least by

7:40

reviewing your pound or you'll know where you

7:43

stand. And ideally

7:45

what you want to do overtime is increase

7:47

your ratio of focus time to wasted time.

7:49

You won't be all to get all of

7:51

it right away. It's definitely a process, but

7:53

if you make small improvements every single week,

7:55

it'll really pay off if like what we

7:57

say on our Tps, plus the annual fee.

8:00

It once we could we and it's all about

8:02

that and you'll be surprised how effective it can

8:04

be. So for your

8:06

action item this week for the next week,

8:08

track your time. Either do it using an

8:11

app or just broad strokes on a notepad.

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Whatever works the best for you. And at

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the end of this week, review your calendar

8:17

and try to make one tweet to improve

8:19

your focus time to waste of time ratio.

8:22

Thanks so much for tuning in and see

8:24

you next time.