Something I did this week to get two days worth of writing done in less than two hours. On this episode Russell talks about writing his upcoming Traffic Secrets book and how he’s been doubling his productivity levels the last week. Here are some awesome things to look for in today’s episode: Why writing a book is painful and people gravitate toward pleasure rather than pain. How Russell has managed to change the way he sits down to write and double his productivity. And how you can use...
Something I did this week to get two days worth of writing done in less than two hours.
On this episode Russell talks about writing his upcoming Traffic Secrets book and how he’s been doubling his productivity levels the last week. Here are some awesome things to look for in today’s episode:
Why writing a book is painful and people gravitate toward pleasure rather than pain. How Russell has managed to change the way he sits down to write and double his productivity. And how you can use Russell’s technique in your own life to get crap done.
So listen here to find out about Russell’s sneaky hack to help get stuff done faster.
---Transcript---
What’s up everybody? This is Russell Brunson, welcome back to the Marketing Secrets podcast. I am once again cruising in my Tesla to go pick up Dave from the airport and I wanted to share with you some of my thoughts.
Alright everybody, I hope you guys are doing awesome today. So I have been working over the last couple of days really, really hard on writing the Traffic Secrets book, which has been fun. And I’ve kind of talked to you guys a little bit about the process of some of the stuff I’ve been doing, but I’ve been also using instagram to tell stories and show behind the scenes of me writing the book, and where I’m doing it and how I’m doing it.
And it’s crazy because last week we were in an RV driving down 10 hours to Lake Powell and my wife was driving and I was in the RV typing the book away, right. And then on the way home she was driving I was kind of in the back seat making sure the kids don’t kill each other while writing the book. And then it’s funny because, if anyone’s every written a book, you know how hard it is, and I was listening to a podcast that Rachel and Dave Hollis did and they were talking about writing, I think Rachel was talking about writing her book and how the biggest key to writing a book is word count, word count. Getting the words in and getting the words in.
And it’s hard for me because I don’t know, I’m probably different than some people, how they write their books, but it’s not just sit down and write like crazy. It’s like for me, sometimes I sit there and for a day I’m just daydreaming. I’m a visionary type person. Like I can see it first, I’m looking, I’m doodling, I’m trying to figure out the concept and the framework and I’m trying to put all these pieces together. And when I see it I’m like, ‘Okay, now I have the framework.” And one of the stories is synced to each part of the framework, and how do I do it? And it comes back and then I actually start writing it.
But that thought keeps going through my head that I heard from Rachel was word count, word count. So I’m like, ‘How do I increase my word count each day?” Because my deadline is looming. It is getting close. My publisher wants the book to them in about two months, which would be awesome except for there’s two, three things.
Number one, I still run a hundred and something million a year company, which is like you know, not a tiny task. Number two, I’ve got an amazing family that I love and I want them to continue to love me. So I’ve got to be present with them, especially now that it’s summertime and they’re you know, not in school anymore. So I’m trying to take less hours and trying to work out in the morning with them and try to weave my kids into as much as humanly possible.
And then the other thing is that in less than two months from now we have a big event, which is the unlock the secrets event, which is an event for our coaching program, coaching members, which is a big thing as well. So it’s like, there’s a lot of stuff happening. Also that event is a three day long event, and I’m teaching all the sessions except for I think, 90 minutes of being taught by other people. But the rest of it is 100% me, which means I have three days worth of presentations that I’m doing. And they’re not tiny presentations, in fact, I might do a podcast just talking about how I’m preparing for the event and just all the stuff I’m doing for it. But it’s a big ordeal too. And on top of that, I have to write the book.
Anyway, so it’s just like if I don’t keep it moving, I’m going to get into a lot of trouble and have to pull 22 all nighters in a row from the time the event’s done till the book is actually due, which I don’t want to do. So word counts been this thing. So I’ve been trying a bunch of things. I’ve been trying to get up early. I’ve been trying to stay up late. I’ve been trying different things.
But this week, what’s been really, really good is one of my buddies John Parkes, he gave me this gift a couple of years ago, it’s been sitting on my desk. It looks like a big dice and there’s different numbers like, 5, 25, 30, 50, 60 all these different times. And what you do is you sit down and you turn that to, if you want 60 minutes you put the 60 up, if you want 10 minutes you put 10 minutes up. But it starts a timer and then you just do the task for a little while right.
Because there’s something, Ican’t even remember off the top of my head, there’s a whole bunch of studies that I remember reading about this probably a decade ago, but basically the human mind can focus for like an hour at a time. I think it was like 57 or 58 minutes or something like that. So the whole concept of this is like sit down, flip the thing over for an hour and then just focus for an hour. And then as soon as it beeps you have to stop, jump up, run around and reset, then come back down and do it again.
So I was like, “I’m going to try that this week.” And so I did that. I totally got the, and I think if you go to Amazon and type in like Cube Dot Timer, or Dice Timer, you’ll see one for like a buck or two, they’re not expensive. But I did that and I flipped my phone upside down, I turned off all my instant messenger, Skype, Facebook, everything that somebody could possibly contact me on, and then I flipped it to 60 minutes and I was like, “Go time. Word count. Go.” And I just focused on writing during that 60 minutes.
And it was cool because I made a rule for myself, like during the 60 minutes I can’t deviate. I can’t go and flip my phone over, I can’t all these different things. Our human minds, we always want to go towards the, wherever the least resistance is. We want to move towards pleasure and away from pain. And writing for me and for a lot people I’ve talked about who write as well, is very much pain. So it’s like you’re moving towards pain. It’s like, ugh. There’s all this pleasure around and you want to jump to all these other things. But I basically made it where all those things are shut off now and all I have is the book. And pleasure is in 60 minutes when I’m done writing. And I’m going to be angry if I get to the end of 60 minutes and I haven’t done writing. There’s a lot of pain there. So it’s like, I gotta write to get the pleasure. And it forced me to write.
And what I found is that it compounds the attention. Like normally I’m writing for 5 or 6 minutes and then I’m checking my phone. Every 5 or 6 minutes checking it and my mind is jumping. Whereas when I focus for an hour and everything else is done, I just got an hour, but I know in an hour I get freedom. Man it was like writing for 3 or 4 hours in that hour. And then as soon I heard that thing beep I jumped up, I checked my phone, checked my Facebook, checked my everything, ran around the office and said hi to everybody, went and got a drink of water, went to the bathroom and just move my body and like smile, and have some fun, then went back in, sat down, turned everything off, flipped the thing, boom, another hour.
And in those two one hour sessions I got more done than I typically get probably in two days worth of writing. But then after that I was beat up. I was like, “Well, I’m good. I’m not writing anymore today.” But it was okay because I got two days worth of writing done in two hours.
Anyway, just a thought because I know that, you know, you may not be writing a book, but I do know that whenever you’re moving forward in any project in business, you’re building a funnel, you’re writing a sales letter, you’re trying to create a product, like all the things, our brains are always running toward a path of least resistance. It’s always moving away from pain towards pleasure. And it’s tough because the creation of the thing usually we all associate a lot of pain with it in our minds, so our brains are always looking for other things. So this is just a really simple, easy, $3 way to make it simple. And you wouldn’t even have to use a dice, you could literally set an alarm on your phone and flip the phone over, which maybe is an even easier thing to do, but just the concept of blocking out that time.
I don’t remember exactly, oh I remember. When we were first launching clickfunnels, I was trying to convince Todd and everybody to move to Boise because I want all my friends in Boise and that makes total logical sense. And about that time there was a book that came out called the re-work and it was all about Base Camp, how they all work remote. Anyway, it was really interesting. And I remember we were at that and we kind of made the decision like, “Let’s actually make this a remote team.” So we did that and that was kind of the decision.
And it’s been good but I remember it was interesting in the book Re-work, and then I also, oh, excuse me, not Re-work, it was Remote. Those are both their books and both of them are amazing, so read both Re-Work and Remote. Remote was the one about working remote.
But anyway, when I read that, and I also watched, he did a Ted Talk about Remote as well. It was interesting, he talked about how when you have to get something done, where do you go? No one says, “I go to work.” They say, “I come in earlier” or “I stay late.” Or “I work from home.” Or whatever, to get something done. It’s like, work doesn’t actually happen at work most times because there’s so many distractions and things happening. And you know, I was looking at that, if everyone on my team, I mean, just for me, I wrote for 2 solid hours, and I got more done than I did in two days because I forced myself to block everything off. If everyone on my team, we all sat down and just blocked out 2 hours of dedicated time with nothing else, I wonder what would get done? How much faster things would move?
Anyway, I thought it was kind of interesting and fascinating all wrapped into one. Anyway, I wanted to share that with you guys and hopefully that gives you some ideas and some ways to get some stuff done. It’s one of my new productivity hacks. I’ve done it two days in a row and this book is going to get done on time and it’s going to be amazing because of it.
So all I want from you guys is a commitment right now that the second Traffic Secrets goes live, you go buy a billion copies, or at least one. And that way you can support all the work, because I am killing myself and it’s going to cost you a couple of bucks to get all this stuff that I’m doing. And hopefully it will be a good exchange and value for you.
Alright, that’s all I got guys. Have an amazing day; I’m almost to the airport with Dave. I might record another episode with you guys before I go see him. So with that said, appreciate you all, have a great day and we’ll talk to you all soon.
