Why LESS WORK beats High Productivity

Jesse explains the second half of his FIREBOX time- and self-management framework for freeing calendar space and preventing burnout so you can invest in what matters most. After briefly reviewing “Finish First” (time-sensitive and only you can do) and “Invest Focus” (not urgent but only you can do, guided by what you’d do with more time), he focuses on “Reduce” and “Extinguish.” Reduce covers tasks that are time-sensitive but don’t require you, using optimization, automation, and delegation (e.g., scheduling tools, outsourcing groceries, delegating chores). Extinguish targets tasks that aren’t time-sensitive and don’t require you, emphasizing having conversations to remove expectations (e.g., replacing a meeting with recorded playback) and accepting others may do tasks differently. He connects delegation to leadership and offers templates and additional resources.

00:00 Free Up Your Calendar
01:45 Firebox Framework Recap
04:15 Reduce Time Sensitive Tasks
07:01 Optimize and Automate Work
08:48 Delegation Without Guilt
14:57 Leadership and Self Management
17:47 Extinguish Low Value Commitments
23:11 Outsourcing and Letting Go
26:39 Templates and Next Topics
28:46 Podcast Outro and Resources

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Transcript

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This conversation is walking us through a method for freeing up space on our calendar, all our commitments so that we can take better care of ourselves. It is the second half of the firebox, the re part of it, and I'll give you a little refresher in case you missed the first one. But ultimately, if you're out there and you're making things happen and you know that there's a lot more that you want to contribute into the world, but you just can't find the time, this video is for you because we got some good tactics that kind of seem easy, but they're not. They're easy in, in direction, and a little more challenging in practice. I'm Jesse and this deceivingly simple framework has helped me and a whole bunch of other ballers out there find ways to shift from being over committ and burning out or on the verge of burnout to actually making real, measurable progress on the things that matter most to them., In case I didn't say it, I am Jesse, your selfish servant. Uh, and I like to tinker with self, like personal performance. And more importantly, I just wanna help contribute to your path so that you can actually have the impact on the world. That you are designed to have, like your purpose here is to serve others, and I wanna help you figure out how to spend more time developing your skills. You're exercising your gifts and talents to better serve the world. Alright, so we are going to get into it. The firebox, bam. Here we go. And so if you weren't here last time, there is a video replay when we talked about the first two, but high overview, if it's your first time here, uh, fire box, F-I-R-E-F, finish first. I invest more here. R reduce E extinguish. And so last time we talked, we talked about the top two quadrants here. Finish these first. These are the tasks, the commitments, all the things that you gotta do on your calendar, in your brain, et cetera, that are time sensitive. And you have to do them, meaning there's nobody else in the world that can do them. If a task is something that you can only do, you must be the person to execute it and it's time sensitive. We put that in the F box. Why? Because we gotta finish those first. Why? Because they're time sensitive. The next box, and this is the most important box, is invest focus. Here. It's the I box invest focus here. These things aren't necessarily time sensitive, or maybe they have more time to'em, so they're not like Do tomorrow. Right now. Right now. Right now. But also they must be you that makes the decision and takes the action to make them happen. And I'm gonna tell you, you get nothing else from any of these. Uh, time management, self-management, live streams. The most important question that you need to be thinking about evaluating, answering, checking and updating is, what would I do if I had more time? What am I optimizing for? Because if you don't know the answer to that question, if you're not ultra, ultra clear about what that is, you're gonna go and optimize and clear up time and get efficient and all this stuff. And the only thing that's gonna happen is it's gonna backfill with other junk, other busyness that is not necessarily impactful and most of the time does not contribute to growing and developing to the promise you are intended to be. So number one question, what do you optimizing for? What would you do if you had more time? That's what we're trying to build space for. And the answer to that question a lot of times it's a bunch of things. Beautiful. The answers to that question go into the I Box, which is in best focus here. We did the review. The F box, the I box, we talked about'em before. You can go back and watch that live stream or watch that replay to get all the nuts and bolts and details in there. And so what we're gonna focus on today is the R box in the Ebox R box is reduce anything that is time sensitive. But doesn't necessarily have to be you. We wanna reduce those things. Again, get all the stuff outta your head. What are the tasks? What are your commitments? What are the schedule requirements? What are the things you have on your calendar? There's a bunch of things, right? Walk the dog, wash the car, get the groceries, wash the dishes. Like there's a whole, there's a lot of things that you guys out there have on your plate to get done. Some of those things, a lot of those things do not have to be done by you. And that is the key. Um, uh, I know myself for a very, very long time. I had to do everything. I had this hangup, maybe not hangup, but it was just kind of a work ethic thing of any assignment I got, any commitment I made, I was gonna do it. It was not o, I was not okay with handing it off or delegating it. Which was, it's noble, right? It sounds great. I'm gonna do everything. But the problem was, it was in the way of me actually investing in myself and learning new things and building new skills, because I had all these other things that I wouldn't let go of. And so, oh, oh, oh, oh. We got a comment here. Miss Linda says, the R box reveals, oh, all of your control freak nonsense. No, it's not only you that can do it, Linda. Thank you sister. I don't know if you're calling me a control freak, but it's okay'cause maybe you've known me and yeah, I'm a little bit of a control freak and absolutely that is the, you know, I said it at the top right, that this is a deceivingly simple framework'cause it's very simple. What are the things that I gotta do that are time sensitive that goes in, that I can list that easily? What are the things that I gotta do that aren't time sensitive? Easy list. What are the things that are time sensitive that I don't have to do? Easy list. And here's the hard part. And just like Linda said, you, you'll become aware of your. Control issues right when you start getting into action. So let's, let's stay on that topic. So anything that is time sensitive, meaning it's due here in the very near future, I like to keep that within a week, that like the next five to seven days, you can make it longer, you can make shorter. That's your call, it's your life. But anything that's time sensitive and it doesn't have to be done by me, I wanna figure out. First, get'em outta my head and look at'em and say, oh yeah, these are all things that need to be done, but I don't have to be the one that does them. Awesome. So now the question is, how do we reduce that thing? Because it's gotta be done. Somebody has to do it. And so the first thing I think about is how do I optimize it? And so I have a real, uh, nerdy example. Uh, and if you're. If you spend any time at all scheduling meetings with multiple people, like, uh, virtual calls and so forth, that's a pain in the butt. I do not like email. Email is not fun for me, but I do like connecting with groups of people. I do like brainstorming on projects so that we can better serve the people that work for your organization. And that usually takes multiple decision makers to be on the call so we can design something that's gonna be meaningful and. Make a decision is gonna be impactful. The challenge is getting everybody finding out when they're available. So old school way, Jesse would send emails, send texts, make phone calls to find out are you available on this day? And And then you always get yes, kind of. No, not really. What about this time? Oh, well, and it's a whole bunch of back and forth. And all of that back and forth takes up time. Not just my time. It takes up their time too. So I automate it right, or optimize it, uh, and, and. I, there's a, there's all kinds of tools out there, digital tools. I've got a, um, meeting poll thing that I use, and I put everybody's email address in there and I'll identify three to maybe four different time slots in the future. I send it to them and I say, vote on the one that you can commit to, and then I send the calendar invite. It's very simple. It eliminates a whole bunch of steps. And so back to the image y. That is one way, like reducing the task. Trying to get everybody on the same page is gonna take a lot of back and forth and 1, 1, 1, 1, which is not fun. How can I optimize it? I use the little app. How can I automate it? I'm working on that. The other one that is super, super hard is to delegate. Uh, and I want to be ultra, ultra clear,'cause maybe I'm the only weird one. But for a long time I had a negative association with the idea of delegating. And it was because my bosses or some of my bosses at the time. They would come and drop a big old hot pile of poo poo on my desk that's due tomorrow, and they would say, Hey, I'm delegating.'cause I wanna help you get some visibility. And I'm like, no, you're not, dude. You've been sitting on this thing for two weeks now the deadline is here and you're handing it off to me. That's not delegating. So I didn't delegate because I had that negative association with it. Luckily I had a leader come across that say, no, no, no, Jess. Here's what you need to think about it is when you think about delegation. It is a method for developing other people's skillset sets. And I said, oh, he's like, so if you hand them the task with the appropriate amount of time and help them, give them the resources they need to figure it out and execute the task that's delegating. He said, oh, got it. And so that totally shifted my mind. I don't know if that helps you. It might just be me because I got a twisted head about a lot of things. I'm very sensitive. But in back to the idea, right? When you got a bunch of things that are your tasks, your responsi, or that are on your calendar, right, that are commitments that you made, that you responsibilities, chores are a perfect example of this. You can delegate that. And so my example is, I do not like going to the grocery store. But I gotta go to the grocery store. I mean, clear example. Today I just got back, I was in Dallas yesterday with an amazing group of people at, um, Kyles group. The day before that I was in Houston with McCarthy and I've been traveling around all week. I got home, and guess what? Reality has hit and my refrigerator is empty. So I need some groceries. I need to sustain myself. But I don't like groceries. I don't like going to the grocery store. I can't stand people leaving their damn baskets in the middle of the aisle. I love kids. I love their energy. They wanna run around and have fun, and all their parents are doing is nagging and getting after them, and it gives me flashbacks and when I used to get in trouble. So it's just not a great experience. Plus the time it takes to travel, get the stuff and come back. So I outsource that. I delegate it to somebody else. I found an app so that somebody else can do it. Another thing. Mowing the lawn. I'm not, I don't care necessarily about how beautiful the lawn is. Is it cheaper for me to do it? Sure it is, but really I got family. I got a brother who could use some cash and so I delegate it. Sure. I pay him to do it. But if you're a parent, guess what? You have ultimate authority and you can delegate the washing of the dishes, the folding of the laundry, like just those things that gotta be done. It doesn't have to be done by you. You can delegate that to them. And, and it is a life skill. You can help those youngins build some life skills that they are going to need so that they can be independent and get outta your house in some, at some point in the future. Anyways, main idea is get all the stuff outta your head. The things that. They're kind of time sensitive. You know, I gave the little example of me going to the grocery store when I'm running outta groceries. It's time sensitive. I need to get some food. Uh, but it doesn't have to be done for me. Optimize, delegate, automate, right first step. Get it outta your head, and then look at each one, one at a time and think like, really be creative about what, who can, how can I optimize it? How can I make it smaller? I wanna reduce it. How can I automate it? Not all things can be automated. Well, not yet anyways. Or who can I delegate it to? Again, another level of easy, but the hard part. The friction part, the growth part comes from when you actually take the, like decide, okay, this one thing, I'm gonna take action on it and I'm gonna optimize it, automate it, or delegate. It's gonna take a a bit of energy, right? It's gonna take some energy. So in the short term, it feels like it's taking longer. But in the long term, you have compounding gains because you ain't doing it no more. Like at all. You're just supervising or making sure the thing is functioning the way you wanna make it. And so, yes, in the short term it feels heavy because you gotta release control. Uh, in the short term it feels heavy because you gotta invest a little bit of time to maybe train and educate people on how to do the thing, right? But in the long term, you don't have to touch it anymore. You just kind of gotta check in and make sure things are happening appropriately, which is huge. And again, Linda ain't playing and she's bringing the real, real talk this morning. She says, the inability to delegate ruins careers. Amen. And, and folks that can't cross to senior leadership, it's always in the top three obstacles for them. Always. Yeah. It's, it's tough, you know, delegation is a big, hairy idea. Um, I think we all maybe intuitively understand the word and the intent of the word, but in terms of like practicing, developing the skill to delegate is difficult. There's trust issues, there's control issues. Takes a lot of practice. And actually I've got, uh, my, my buddy's over at the Lean Builder. They produced a phenomenal blog, and I, I always refer it to people because it, it breaks down, I think it's like four or five levels, levels of delegation so that you can progressively build the practice. of learning how to trust and learning how to delegate, and also managing the risk because you can't just delegate everything.'cause if it goes wrong, guess who's gonna get the attention. It's gonna be you. So it's a, it's a hairy issue. Anyways, if you want that blog, the link to the blog, drop a drop a note in the comments and I'll, I'll hook you up after the livestream. I'll get the link for you. Um, because it's, it's valuable. I share it with a lot of people and it brings clarity. And, and like a step-by-step process on how to delegate. Oh, look at that. Craig says, this sounds suspiciously like leadership. It's one of the main leadership principles, Craig, dammit, you let the cat out of the bag and here's what I gotta say. You know, sometimes people say, how is time management relative to leadership? And this is just my, um. Obnoxious viewpoint on leadership. A couple things. One, in order to be a leader, you gotta have followers. If you ain't got followers, you ain't a leader. Number two, in order to be a leader, you gotta have a direction. And so let's start with direction. Maybe I don't have followers. Maybe you don't have followers. So you gotta lead yourself first. How do you lead yourself? You pick a direction and start taking steps in that direction. That's gotta happen first before you have followers. In order to effectively and purposefully move in the direction that you have selected, you gotta be able to make, manage yourself. Self-management, also known as time management. What I'm bringing to you is all about managing yourself. You can measure that in time. It's not the other way around. If you ain't managing yourself and you're making poor decisions, it don't matter how much time you have. It all comes down to the decisions that we make and where we allocate our energy and our focus That. Looks like excellent time management. So anyways, that's my little view on it, Craig. Thanks for pointing that out. Uh, so we talked about the R box, and now we're gonna get to the E box. Again, this is just the second half of the firebox. and these two boxes are super, super important because time management. High performance is not about doing more. It's about really, really getting clear about the things that only you can do and building systems to facilitate the majority of your energy spent on the things that are unique and precious that come only from you. All the other things, finding a way to get. Other people to do them or other things to handle them is how you have the space and the bandwidth to go and do the amazing things. Uh, don't believe me, I, hell, you can read my book. There's like proof in the book of how I had made these transit transitions throughout my life anyways. So reduce again, if the thing is time sensitive, but it doesn't have to be done by you. Somebody else in the world in the universe can do it. We wanna. Figure out how to reduce those things. Then we get into the ebox, which is stuff that's not time sensitive, right? Doesn't necessarily matter when it's done. It's just things that somebody asked, request, et cetera, and they do not have to be done for you by you. These are things that we wanna extinguish. We wanna get rid of'em. Now I use the word extinguish instead of like, stop doing them because just stopping sounds sexy, right? So like no is a one word sentence, like, I, I, I get it. But how, how do we do it? So I, the reason I say extinguish is if you've ever been involved in a fire. It doesn't go out just like that, right? Like you gotta take some action and you gotta keep an eye on and make sure things embers aren't lighting back up and do take some more effort and eventually you extinguish the fire. And so, same thing here. It does. It's not a one shot, uh, wham, bam deal. What we wanna do here, anything that is not time sensitive and does not have to be done by you. Again, give yourself some permission to be flexible and creative in terms of, it doesn't have to be done by you because right now you probably feel it all has to be done by you, but like for real, for real. Can another damn human being, robot, ai, tech, whatever, do the thing. If the answer is yes, it does not have to be done by you. And so what we wanna do is extinguish, outsource, have a conversation, or just stop. I know from my experience, a lot of things are very difficult to just stop because there are other people that have an expectation of me continuing to do the thing, to continue to show up for the thing, to be present for the thing. So it's not easy to stop. You can stop, but before you can stop, you gotta have a conversation, right? And so that's kind of the, the, the meat here. What I want you to take away from this, anything that is not time sensitive and does not have to be done for you and you wanna stop it, have a conversation with whomever it is that has the expectation of you doing it, clicking the buttons, or doing whatever it is. I'll give you a perfect example. Um, I've had, uh, back, back in the day when I had a real job. There was one meeting I had on my calendar, and it was at a time that wasn't great. It, it caused me to stay later and fly out of the city that I was in later in the evening, which impacted my sleep, blah. Whoa, whoa, wow. But it was all, my boss sent me the invite, so of course I was gonna be there. I wasn't getting any value out of it, and I wasn't contributing any value. So I called my boss. I said, Hey, man, like I'm not, I've been on this meeting three or four times now. I'm not contributing anything and I'm also not getting anything out of it. Like, I need some help. Can you clarify what I'm supposed to be bringing to the table? Why I am on the invite? Uh, because I wanna make sure I'm doing things right, or can I get excused from the meeting because this is how it's impacting my travel. And my boss's like, oh man, we gave, he let me know why they wanted me in the meeting. And he is like, you're already doing that. I'm like, yeah. And I said, oh, okay. So that I understand the purpose now, but I still physically don't have to be present live when the meeting's happening. So are you recording it? He said yeah, we record it. So can I just get the recording of it? I can listen to that bad boy on the way to the airport on the airplane to wherever I'm flying to, and I'll be up to speed and I will continue to, you know, meet the expectation of, or the intent of me being on the invite. You say, yeah, man, that's cool. Like no problem. And I was like, oh my God, that was so easy. Where else can I do that? Bottom line, if there's things on there that. Don't have to be done by you. Like the commitments on your calendar, the commitments you made to other people, the expectations that you're, you know, uh, reading in the tea leaves, the first step to stopping them is having a conversation with those people. And, and Mr. Craig is dropping some wisdom here, says, and be okay with the idea that it may be done diff Oh my God, that it may be done differently than you would. Different but not wrong. He says. Excellent point, man. Oh, you just set the stage, Mr. Craig. And the, that's a, I think, a softer way of saying what Linda said, right? Like, this, this thing is going to, um, make you become super aware of your control issues. Right. Because, well, they, they just don't do it as good as I would do it. Control, right? Like I've read a book and again, if you want to hear some tips, tactics, and stuff from people, that's a person smarter than me, I highly recommend the book. Um, buy back your time. there's a lot of great stuff in there. Uh, but one saying that stuck out to me that I kind of hang my hat on relative to what Craig just said, is 80% done by somebody else. Is a hundred percent better than me doing it. Meaning they may not do it precisely exactly the way I do it, but if they're 80% of the way there, that's better than me doing it my damn self in terms of time, focus and energy. Right? And again, focus and energy for me is the most important thing. Um, so yeah, we're gonna have to get used to. It being done differently or not being exactly precisely the way we wanna do it. My little precious, right? And so the other thing to think about here is outsourcing it. And, and here's, I'm just gonna challenge some people out there, because a lot of times people say, well, sure. Outsourcing it if I had all the money in the world, like yeah, fair. I, I understand that, right? Outsourcing most of the time you're gonna have to spend some money to do the thing. And I'm gonna tell you, a whole bunch of people out there are already outsourcing. We're just not looking at it that way. So if you've ever ordered anything from DoorDash or Uber Eats or these services that like get the food and bring it to you, guess what that is? Outsourcing. And guess what? You've been spending money on it already. If you've ever taken an Uber to the airport or from the bar or just to go somewhere, guess what? You have outsourced the task of driving and you have spent money on it. So if you're already doing it, I, I just wanna let you know you are already know how to outsource and you actually do have some money to outsource those tasks. Now, I used this one earlier for the reduce, but also specifically for me outsourcing my groceries. Now I've outsourced my grocery shopping. I outsourced my meal prep and I, and I've even got a, a personal assistant, which is dramatically, dramatically helpful. Um, sure I do have a little bit of extra money to put into that is a business expense for me. Uh, but I didn't do it for three years because I go, what if they don't do it like me? Anyways? The thing that I had to get comfortable with that's related to what Mr. Craig said here, right? It may not be differently than you. I, I pretty much order the same groceries all the time. I like red potatoes, but I like the small ones because I want to cut a potato, chop it up, fry it up, throw some chorizo in there, throw some eggs, and I'm good to go. Well, when I outsource my grocery shopping, guess what they'd get me? They gimme the big giant, like the biggest red potatoes, like, oh my God, those are too big. I gotta cut'em in half and, and then they kind of get a little brown because I save them in the fridge for the next day. I just had to get over it because guess what? It ain't that big a deal, right? So no outsourcing it. They're not gonna get me, you know, the red potato that's 2.75 inches in diameter, or of course not like they're just gonna get me red potatoes. That is a very small thing for me to contend with. Because I am getting the three hours back of not having to go to the damn groceries and while they're getting my groceries and bringing them to my front door, I'm working on other stuff, or I'm taking a nap. I'm relaxing, I'm thinking I'm working out like all the things that I neglect, all the things that fall in the eye box. The invest time here, sleep, exercise, nutrition, relationships, connection with the human beings I care about. I was not doing them because I was spending two hours, three hours a week going to the damn grocery store or mowing the lawn or whatever. Now that I've outsourced that, guess what? I have time to spend on the things that are ultra, ultra important to me that are not time sensitive. And my life has transformed my mindset, my availability, the way I'm able to serve and connect with people. My energy, everything dramatically, dramatically different. And so that's the point. If you want the template, like the template that I was just showing, um, drop double D in the comments. If you drop double D in the comments, I'm gonna get you a link and it'll give you access to the Daily Domination Template. It'll give you access to the strategically selfish template. You'll also get the Guilt Free Future Planning template, and if you wanna sign up for a webinar to like. Go over the high level view of the whole system. You can sign up for that. Drop double D in the comments, and, and I'll get you hooked up. If not, you could just watch this and start doing, actually, I prefer that you just, whatever you nugget, stuck out to you in today's conversation, take action on that and then do the double D. Uh, because, you know, immediate action drives results if you just keep adding lists, generating the list, I wanna do this, I wanna do that, I wanna do this. You end up like not taking action on anything. Uh, so one step at a time, one action at a time is what changes the world. we will be back in a couple of weeks. Actually, I got a question for you because what I'm thinking about doing is going into like the, the dirty, dirty details, uh, on in terms of daily execution, but. I don't think I've ever asked you guys. What do you want me to dive into? Like there's three buckets. There's future planning, which is long-term planning. There's calendar management, right, which is part of the firebox is part of that, and then there's daily execution. So if there's anything specific, like a real specific topic or point in terms of time management or energy management, taking better care care of ourselves or more accurately self-management, let me know in the comments. If there's something like really confusing or something you wanna chew on and go back and forth on, lemme know in the comments, I'm happy to address it. Uh, so anyways, appreciate you very much, be kind to yourself, be cool and we'll talk at you next time. Laying on chicken.