Many years ago, a friend once remarked to me “You’re successfully underemployed”. He was remarking on my light work schedule, during my DJ career.
We’re so overwhelmed with overwork messaging. There’s that old joke that entrepreneurs “quit their 40 hour a week job so they can work 80”. Guys like Elon Musk brag about 100 hour work weeks.
It’s simply never been my experience. I can perform when it’s crunch time, and I’m good with a deadline, however, most of my work weeks have always been pretty open.
I’ve learned that I have about 2 good hours in the morning of inspiration and productivity. I’m writing this article at 7AM as I just woke up and feel inspired to do so. It’ll be done in about 20 minutes.
I’ve published 2 books in the last 3 years. My most recent title, “Unorthodox Success, Secret Shame”, was created and completed in less than 60 days using this method. I’ve also written over 150 articles in that time frame.
Anyone who answers “I’ve published 2 books in the last 3 years” doesn’t have anything they need to defend against.
And yet there’s a devil on one of my shoulders, and a voice I hear, not unlike “The American Investment Banker” from the Mexican Fisherman story, yelling at me about what more I could be doing.
I have to be mindful to resist that voice. It’s a societal voice, and also partly my father’s voice. That voice says money comes from hard work, and time is traded for money. That’s how it is for most people.
Back when I was a DJ, I promoted 5 of my own raves per year. I played for other promoters less than once per month. That meant, that even as one of the biggest selling DJs of my time, I was only performing 10-15 times per year. A top-tier DJ performs 4 or 5 times per week.
What that meant for me, was I made every single performance count. I knew lives could change, and I brought that intensity with me every single time. And here we are decades later, and people still talk about me and my story was worthy of a 480 page memoir.
I can see I bring that intensity to Zooms that I host today. I don’t do it very often, but every time I do, I come in with the intention that this is going to be life changing, because it is for me. I don’t churn through them.
“Busy work” doesn’t exist for me. I don’t have “to do” lists, I only create “done lists”. Check out the list of articles I’ve written – that’s a done list that makes me proud.
When I created my webinar software, my goal was to add something to my “done list” each day. At least 1 thing. And if I was done by 10 AM, with something added to my done list, then that was all I needed to do. I worked on what I was moved to create in that moment.
That might sound crazy, but in the end I created a multi-million dollar piece of software used by tens of millions of people and a business that has been profitable for over 10 years (that I’ve now transitioned to being completely hands-off of). And I did it with a huge amount of freedom in my life, and be there for my family in the ways I wanted to.
And am I really that different? How much productivity does an average person actually have? What do they do with the rest of that time? The only difference is I know when I’m operating at peak efficiency and let myself leave my desk, when my productive output is over. And I’m not going to feel bad about it.
What impact would it have on your life to stop chasing “to do” lists and only keep “done” lists?
