Productivity & Results Secrets To Help You Stress Less And Do More

Is it possible to get an hour’s worth of stuff done in 30 minutes? How about creating a habit in 21 seconds instead of 21 days? According to our special guest, Blaine Oelkers from Selfluence, these are possible and he’s going to break down the how-to part of this for us today.

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Productivity & Results Secrets To Help You Stress Less And Do More

Tim Fitzpatrick: Is it possible to get an hour's worth of stuff done in 30 minutes? How about creating a habit in 21 seconds rather than 21 days? I have a special guest with us today. And his answer to both of these questions is yes. In fact, you can. And he's going to really break down the How-To part of this for us today. I am super excited to dig into this. Hi, I am Tim Fitzpatrick with Rialto Marketing, where we believe marketing shouldn't be difficult. All you need is the right plan. I am really excited to have Blaine Oelkers with me today from Selfluence. Blaine, welcome. And thanks for being here.

Blaine Oelkers: Tim, thank you for having me on the show. I'm excited to hear not you did give us a tall order there. People will leave today being able to do 30 minutes hours, get an hour's worth of stuff done, 30 minutes and 20. 1 second habits, creating new habits in 21 seconds, not 21 days. But I wanted to start off just by saying thank you to you for putting this together, putting it online, streaming it live, but then also putting it online for people to consume not only today but tomorrow in the future. So you are going to have what I call a big results ripple effect out there. And my guess is that some of your stuff, which I've looked at is so good that you're going to touch lives not yet born. Somebody's not even born yet. 20 years, 30 years from now, they're going to find these shows, maybe this show and their life will be changed. So thank you for that. And I'm excited to share today some things that I think people can walk away with and use.

Tim Fitzpatrick: Awesome. My pleasure. Thank you for that. And yeah, hopefully it is impacting somebody and we never even know it. So before we dig into some of these productivity and results secrets, I want to ask you some rapid fire questions, help us get to know you ready to go?

Blaine Oelkers: Let's do it.

Tim Fitzpatrick: Okay. When you're not working, how do you like to spend your time?

Blaine Oelkers: I'm in my home office and right over there is the Peloton bike. I love the Peloton bike. I bought it for my wife about 650 days ago and I've written it every day since. So it's something that I do enjoy and I like to stay in shape. I will say that I have bought a little attachment where a little thing that slides in and turns it into a desk. So if I need to keep working, I can because I made that way. But I do like that bike.

Tim Fitzpatrick: Okay. Does your wife still ride the bike?

Blaine Oelkers: Yes, she does. She did get to her hundredth ride where you get the free Tshirt.

Tim Fitzpatrick: Okay. What's your hidden talent?

Blaine Oelkers: I think my hidden talent is to help people take control of their lives by taking control of themselves. And that's why you mentioned Selfluence. More than a decade ago, I started this company to kind of help people do that. But that's where I think my little genius zone is.

Tim Fitzpatrick: What's the best piece of advice you've ever been given?

Blaine Oelkers: My favorite mentor is a guy named Jim Rohn. Have you ever heard of Jim Rohn? Okay, so he said and I shared the stage of mine. I booked him at event. I've shared the stage with him. And that night he said, It's not what happens to you that determines your life future. It's what you do about what happens. And he went on to tell a little story about a sailboat and the blowing of the wind and all that. But what it made me realize is that I don't have to worry about what happens. In life because my future is not going to be determined by circumstance. It's going to be my reaction, it's going to be what I do about that. And that made a big impact on me. And I try to share that methodology with others.

Tim Fitzpatrick: What's one thing about you that surprises people?

Blaine Oelkers: When people ask me that question, I usually say that I legally married my wife on her 7th birthday. Do you know how that's possible?

Tim Fitzpatrick: I don't. This sounds like a Riddle.

Blaine Oelkers: Well, it is a little bit.

Tim Fitzpatrick: Okay.

Blaine Oelkers: It was on her 7th birthday. We got married. I had a cake there for her birthday cake, but she was 28 years old because she's a leap day baby. So she only has a birthday every four years, and so she was 28 years old. So I'm not a weirdo. So we have a birthday and a wedding anniversary only every four years. So I better do something big on those years every year.

Tim Fitzpatrick: That's good. Okay. I might have figured that out if I had a little bit more time, but that's a good one. I like that. What does success mean to you?

Blaine Oelkers: You know, success for me is just progress towards my own personal goals. Right. So I think it's individualized for everybody, but I think it's progress towards where you want to go. I often talk about going from point A to point B, and you decide first, what's that point B? Where do you want to go? And if I'm moving towards that point B, then I feel like I'm a success.

Tim Fitzpatrick: I like that definition because you're enjoying a path, right. Not the final destination, right?

Blaine Oelkers: Yeah, I love that.

Tim Fitzpatrick: Where's your happy place?

Blaine Oelkers: My happy place? Well, because of COVID. It's on the Peloton bike lately. But before that, I'm in the Phoenix Scottsdale, Arizona, area, and I like to go to spas and just kind of pay the day rate and stay there all day. So spas where phones aren't allowed and you get a lot of kind of peaceful time, but steam rooms and saunas and all that stuff. That's kind of the place I like. And I try to go there at least once a month, and I'm hopeful that I can start that back up again.

Tim Fitzpatrick: What qualities do you value and the people you spend time with?

Blaine Oelkers: I would think the two biggest thing is they're authentic, right? They're who they are. They're not hiding. And I tend to like encouraging people, people that want me to succeed and are kind of like actively encouraging me to do so. Those are probably the qualities of the people that I like to hang around with. And I hang around with a lot of business owners. So I really like the entrepreneur mindset and entrepreneurs in general.

Tim Fitzpatrick: Now, you mentioned your company Selfluence. Blaine, tell us a little bit more about what you're doing, who you're working with, how you're helping them.

Blaine Oelkers: Yeah, well, Selfluence kind of the art and science of influencing yourself or the power you already have to influence yourself. It's applicable to anybody. But I primarily work with business owners and I'm working a lot with Mastermind Groups as their chief Results officer. We can talk about that story, how I became a chief Results officer. But right now that's what I'm doing. And my favorite thing is I have something called Super Results Days where a group of business owners come together from all over the country on Zoom and we meet every 3 hours and we use that kind of as an accountability call to knock out whatever's on your to do list, but then at the same time learning some new concept that's going to help you in your business. So that's what I really enjoy doing and basically helping people with what I call personal implementation, getting yourself to do those things that you know that you should do, want to do, and by design, can do. And I think today we'll talk about ways to make that happen.

Tim Fitzpatrick: I can't wait, man. Let's talk about America's Chief Results officer. How did this come up? How did you get labeled America's chief results officer?

Blaine Oelkers: Yeah, for a good ten to twelve years now, I've been working with Mastermind Groups, helping the members of those groups to get stuff done each week. I've got a framework that works week in, week out. And so they started saying, hey, you're really helping us get results. And they started calling me the chief Results officer inside these mastermind groups. And I said, hey, that's a pretty cool term and I don't hear a lot of people using it. So I went to the US Patent and Trademark Office and I got the registered trademark. So the R with the circle. So now I can say I'm America's only chief results officer, but basically it's because my little genius zone why I'm on the planet is to help people kind of take control of their lives by taking control of themselves. And over a number of years I got really good at it. And I would say there was one defining moment that opened up the door for me to be able to do this. And that was a while back. I still had a regular kind of job. I was in the software industry, my degrees in computer science from Purdue University. And so I came home from a rather long business trip. And my son was one year old at the time, Bo and my wife Beth, who I met at Purdue, we've been married 30 years. I said, hey, what's going on with Beau? Why is he giving me the cold shoulder? And she says, well, you were gone so long, he kind of forgot who you were. And I was like, what? I'm like, this is not going to stand. This can't happen. Then I remember when I was a kid, both my parents work. So I come home to an empty house sometimes if my brother wasn't there. Anyway, that night I made this clarifying decision. No matter what happens, I am going to work from home. Now, it took me a year. I started two businesses while holding down my full time job. But a year later, I was able to break free from the job. And that was 27 years ago. So I've been this kind of work from home dad. Now the kids are out of the nest. I have a lot more free time now. But what happened was because I didn't have a job anymore, it allowed me the time to really dig into self improvement, get mentors, read all the books, take all the programs, go to seminars and do all that stuff. And that's what really gave me the time to kind of Hone my skills as America's chief results officer. And today we're going to bring you two of those things that kind of came out of having all that time around the house.

Tim Fitzpatrick: I love it, man. Let's get tactical here. So you've trademarked the 30 minutes hour, which I touched on. So tell us about this. And how do we get an hour's worth of stuff done in 30 minutes?

Blaine Oelkers: Okay, so this is very powerful. And then everything we teach at Selfluence, we often say powered by Selfluence, but everything we teach from Selfluence, there's nothing new. You don't need anything else. You already know how to do it. You just need to focus in a little bit on it. This is really powerful what I'm going to share with you. So it's so powerful that I want to put a little caveat here and I want to make sure that it's used for good and not for easy. And so what I want to do is, let's say, Tim, that you and I, we had four of these 30 minutes hours in a row. So we got 4 hours worth of stuff done in just 2 hours. Now that leaves us 2 hours of guilt free time to do whatever we want. Now, you and I were probably type A. We get more work done but let's say we're not allowed to work. This is where I want you. I'll tell you what I would do, but I'm going to ask you, what would you do with two guilt free hours that are not supposed to be work? Now you can guess my first thing I would do is probably take a nice long peloton, scenic peloton ride. But the other thing is I do like nature. I do like hiking. So I might go out for a hike. During that guilt free time, I like to connect with friends. So connecting with friends and then working at home, I do kind of like the good old fashioned nap. So those would be things that I would do with two guilt free hours. What about you? If you had two guilt free hours, something that you like to do.

Tim Fitzpatrick: I would spend time with my family, my wife and two daughters. I, like you, I like to get out. So I live in Colorado. I can mountain bike, paddle board, anything to get outside.

Blaine Oelkers: Okay. Perfect. All right. So what I want everyone to do is everyone should be thinking about that. And I want you to take a little piece of those things and put those back in your day as you experience these 30 minutes hours. All right, let's unpack it here. So 30 minutes hour. There is a day during the year there's this day where people are three to ten times more productive than they are in a normal day. Now that's three X to ten X. We're only looking for two X. We're just going from 60 minutes down to 30 minutes. But your three X to ten X, three to ten times as much stuff done than your average day. So, Tim, do you know what day of the year that is

Tim Fitzpatrick: That's a great question. My initial thought was the new year, but I don't know.

Blaine Oelkers: So the new year is a productive time, but typically by the end of January, all the steam has gone out of that. But you can have some good days at the beginning of the year. But this is a day that for some people, it actually occurs more than once a year, but typically at least once a year for people. Any other guesses you're like, hey, Blaine, this isn't supposed to be a quiz show here.

Tim Fitzpatrick: I have no idea. The first thing that came to mind was just the beginning of the year because people have their goals and they're all jazzed and they're ready to go. But help me out.

Blaine Oelkers: Here it is. Whenever you think of the 30 minutes hour, I want you to think of this specific day, and then we're going to unpack it. So it's actually the day before vacation. So the day before vacation, people are three to ten times more productive than their average day. Right. And the reason is and I want you to think of I'm going to give you an acronym to help you unpack it and have these 30 minutes hours. And the acronym is going to be PDF. Now, most people say, hey, email me the PDF or print out the PDF. People understand that they remember that acronym. Now, it doesn't stand for in the computer world that stands for portable document format. That's not what we're going to be. But I want you to think 30 minutes hour, day before vacation mode, PDF. And the PDF stands for plan, delegate, focus. So let me unpack those. Right. So what happens the day before vacation, you plan way better than you normally do, and you do what we call next day planning. So I never let a day end without planning the next one. But what happens is the day before vacation, you got to run a tight ship, so you plan it out. And so the first way that you could have a 30 minutes hour is simply just to plan the day out, the day before, the night before. And when you wake up on the day before vacation, a couple of things happen. Day before vacation people typically get up 30 to 60 minutes earlier. So you want to have a 30 minutes hour off the bat, you wake up 30 minutes earlier and you just got an extra 30 minutes, right. One is you could wake up earlier, but then they mapped out their day very succinctly. They're up early, they've got a very clear vision for the day. And throughout the day, they're using the 80 20 rule all day long. Now, Tim, have you heard of the 80 20 rule?

Tim Fitzpatrick: Yes.

Blaine Oelkers: Okay, so that's paradox principle which basically says that 20% of what you do produces 80% of your results, and they stay on the day before vacation. You stay working on the 20, a high output stuff, and you focus on the 20 and you oust the 80, the 80, that only produces 20%. You don't have time for that stuff. Right? So you're planning out your day, you wake up early, you have a clear vision, and in the planning phase, you're chopping stuff down. In other words, it's the day before vacation. Somebody says, Blaine, could we meet for an hour to plan out this new project? I'll say, can we do it in 30 minutes? And nine out of ten times? They say, yes, Bam. I just took the hour down to 30 minutes just through planning, just by having what I call the day before vacation, being in what I call the day before vacation mode. That planning mode where you're looking to really plan your day in such a way that you're able to kind of chop things down into smaller chunks. So that's planning. That's number one, the D stands for delegate. So what happens is on the day before vacation, you become this, like, delegation machine. Right? So you're thinking who before do, right? So who before do before you go do something you think, who else could do this? Or you're like, someone else has to go do this because I'm not going to be here. I'm going to be on vacation. So you really become this delegation master, and you defer things. And so that's another way that you can easily have a 30 minutes hour is what can you delegate? What can you defer? What can you get off your plate? For example, my wife also works from home, and she'll be like, Look, I'm going out. Can I run any errands for you? 30 minutes hours. I don't have to leave here. And she can drop this up to the post office, pick up some other stuff, do the banking, whatever it is. She just gave me a 30 minutes. So I'm looking for that. Or maybe you delegate things around the house because you know what your value is, you have to get it done right. So if you're going on vacation and meals have to be ready for your kids or something like that, if they're staying home, you're going to kind of delegate that stuff out. So look to meal prep, look to anything that you can do to kind of delegate that can start to create the 39 hours. But the most important one and the one that has the most results is the focus. We got plan, delegate, focus. Now, on the day before vacation, people have this kind of eerily weird but powerful fierce focus on what gets done and realize, let's start with what doesn't happen. So on the day before vacation, there's no idle chitchat, there's no shiny objects chasing that new marketing shiny object. There's no long Internet searches, there's no super long conversations on the phone, right. You stay on point, you stay on task. There's no chitchat and water cooler chit chat and those things. So you're staying focused a lot. You also use the most powerful word that creates more 30 minutes hours or avoids 90 minutes hours. And that is the word no. So when people are asking me on the day before vacation, Blaine, can you do this? No, I'm just like a no machine. I'm just spewing no. I've adapted that to my normal day. So my knee jerk reaction is no, no. And I always say, I know, know, I know better to say no. And no is like embedded in the middle of the word K no, W. But in any case, you say no a lot more. So say no. No can create a lot more time for you. Day before vacation, your focus is such that you stay on schedule. And how do you stay on schedule? One is the plan that you made. But two, there's a high use of timers and reminders. So whether it's a meeting reminder or whether it's a timer, I've got an iPhone. So I'll tell Siri, set a timer for 15 minutes, 30 minutes, right? And I'll use timers all throughout the day. And then the other big thing that happens where you can create some 30 minutes hours is that you become an expert at tasking on the day before vacation. So this is one of the biggest ways to get 30 minutes hours is tasking. There are three types, single tasking, multitasking, and batch tasking. And so let's start with single tasking. Single tasking is something that only you can do. Let's say every month I work with these mastermind groups and they say, Mr. Results man, write us an article. So every month I have to write an article. That's kind of something that I like to do personally. It's in my voice. I have to do it. So I single task the writing of that article. But when I single task, I mean, I single task. I mean, no distractions. The phones in airplane mode, all the other screens on the computer are shut down. My wife knows the door is closed. Don't come in here. Right. So I'm really removing all distractions and going in just on that thing. And I'll tell you, if you just do that alone, that when you have single tasking work, that you shut the outside world down, you will get an hour's worth of stuff done in 30 minutes. And so typically an article that might take me 6 hours to write and get photos for and proofread and all that, I can do that in half the time in 3 hours if I'm undisturbed and no distractions can get through. I love airplane mode. I use airplane mode kind of all the time on my phone. But anyway, so that's single tasking. So when you have that the key there is to work only on that and to totally shut out the outside world. Now multi tasking gets a bad rap and people say you can't multitask. Yes, you can. Here's the key to multitasking, though. You're doing two things at once without compromising the quality of either one. Right. So an example, day before vacation, I've got a 30 minutes drive someplace. I'm not just going to listen to my typical 80s rock music. No, I'm going to be like day before vacation, 30 minutes. I can get these two phone calls in, right? So I can drive the car. I got a hands free phone, totally legal and safe. I can safely drive my car and talk on the phone. So I can do those two things at the same time. I love exercise. I mentioned that before. I want to get my exercise in. But I can also do work while I'm exercising based on what kind of ride I'm doing. If there's an instructor now, maybe I have to pay attention. But I ride a lot of scenic rides where I can put my little desk insert in. And I can do those two things at once. Whether you're doing stuff around the house, there's this synergy where you can do two things together. Like, I love family time but I also love exercise, so I taught everybody how to play tennis. So when we all went out and played tennis, we had the family time and the exercise at the same time, right? So 30 minutes of exercise, 30 minutes of family time and hours worth of stuff, but only in 30 minutes because we did it at the same time. We did the multitasking. And then the last one is batch tasking. It's kind of natural and you do it on the day before vacation, but then you kind of forget about it and you want to bring it back in. So batch tasking is where you batch things together. Like, I talk about running errands. If I have three errands to run, I don't run an errand. Come back. Run an errand and come back. No, you go out. You do all three together. If you batch your phone calls together, you can get an hour for the phone calls done in 30 minutes. If you batch and say, this is the amount of time I have, you don't let it run on. Computer work. Wherever there's a context for things to go together, you'll be more efficient by putting those things together. Or like, I like to stack all my meetings or podcasting things together all in one day. You batch it together and you're much more efficient by batching. You can also batch by context. And what I mean by that is that my wife and I, we both work from home so that we could be interrupting each other all day long. But instead we have a shared note in the iPhone and any thoughts we have for each other. We don't want to lose the thought we put it in there, then we typically have lunch together, and at lunchtime now we open up our list. Now when we're in the context, we're together, then we go through that same thing. If you have a staff, if you're running your business and staff can interrupt you all morning. But if you say, you know what, from eleven to 11:30, we're going to context. We're going to bring the context of us together and answer any questions from the morning. And maybe we'll do the same thing at 02:00. You can save a lot of time by giving yourself that single tasking time by putting in place a few boundaries with some good batch tasking. Anyway, there's a lot of technology you can use, like apps, and you can listen to podcasts like this at a higher speed. I talk pretty fast. You might not be able to do it on this one, but you can listen. I typically listen about 1.3 speed, so I save some time there. And the last thing, the last overarching thing that happens with the day before vacation is that you release your inner perfectionist. And that's what really gets a lot of stuff done. So you release your inner perfectionist. It doesn't have to be perfect done is better than perfect. You've got to get it done. You're going on vacation. So bring some of that back into your regular day. Again, plan delegate, focus, and you can have some 30 miles. And there's a lot to unpack there.

Tim Fitzpatrick: Yes, there is, man, Blaine, you just dropped some serious value. A couple of things come to mind here. It makes perfect sense. Once you start talking about the day before vacation, I think all of us can go. Oh, yeah. Okay. It makes perfect sense because we've all been there. I love the PDF acronym here. I especially love planning. And you know that from how I started this podcast, man, marketing planning is so important. So many people skip it. But the thing about planning is one, it outlines what your priorities are. So you have clarity because you know what your priorities are. It helps eliminate distractions and your stress goes down. There are so many people that don't plan their day and then they wonder why it goes off the rails. Right? So all of these things that you mentioned, it's all about how can we find and create extra time throughout the day? That's how we're getting 30 minutes, an hour's worth of stuff done in 30 minutes. Right. So I love that PDF acronym. What else did I write down here? Release your inner perfectionist. When we release being perfectionist, we just hey, this is good. Let's run with it. And honestly, when we run with things, we learn from it and they will continually get better and better. I also love the idea of the various tasks. I totally agree with you. You said multitasking gets a bad rap. Right. But one of the things I noticed when you talked about multitasking was it I think where multitasking gets a bad rap is when people are trying to do two different things at the exact same time. Right. Like I'm working on I'm in the middle of a meeting on Zoom and I'm trying to do email at the same time.

Blaine Oelkers: Those are two single tasking items and you're trying to do two single tasking items at the same time.

Tim Fitzpatrick: Right. So I wanted to bring this out because that's one of the things I noticed that you said you can multitask, but you have to multitask the correct tasks to get.

Blaine Oelkers: Right. Good point.

Tim Fitzpatrick: Super important point there. Wow. Okay. So I can't wait to dig into the next question here. So we just talked about 30 minutes hour. Loved it. Now let's talk about habits. You talk about a 21 second habit instead of 21 days depending on what you read. I've read anywhere from it takes 21 days. It takes 30 it takes 60 days to create a habit. Let's break this down for us.

Blaine Oelkers: Right. Okay. Now the latest research. You're right. The latest research says that to make a habit kind of automatic, no will power, it's about 60 days, actually. But we're going to hack that. We're going to hack that. So instead of 21 days, you're going to be able to do it in 21 seconds. And what I like to say here, like I said before, powered by Selfluence, is that just like the day before vacation, you already know how to organize your day and have a fantastic, highly productive day. You don't have to learn anything new. Just do some of that stuff. Right? Well, it's the same thing here with the formation and the creation of new habits. Now, I will say bad habit elimination. Like, that's a whole other topic. That's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about creating new habits, new habits that you want to create. So at some other time, we can talk about bad habit elimination. There's a whole strategy around that, and that can improve your life as well. But you want to realize that in creating a new habit, the first thing that I talked to people about is that you are already a habit master. And so when I'm doing this, like, in front of a big crowd, people will I can hear a little Hemming hawing on terrible habits. I'm not good at habits. Blah, blah, blah. So then I have to step back and I have to say, okay, let's answer this question. How many people here brush your teeth in the last 24 hours? Almost every hand goes up. Maybe there's a denture or two in there, but every hand goes up because they already did that. They already have it mastered. And so I tell this story about how I discovered the 21 second habits, and the key to it was actually my wife. And so, fortunately, this is not the case any longer. But at one point in her life, she had nearly daily migraine headaches, which were kind of debilitating. And so what the doctor said, they said, Beth, you have to keep this headache log. It's like a log. Like what you ate, what you think the triggers were, what was the weather like? What was the barometric pressure? Did that change? And all these different things. And so my wife would keep the log for a couple of days, and then she'd lose the log or she'd forget to do it. Then she'd have a migraine. Then I'd ask her about it. Bad move there realized during the migraine. But then one night, we realized that she's the habit master of brushing her teeth for the 2 minutes that the dentist recommend in the morning and at night. And so what we did and the first key to the 21 second habit is what I like to call habit linking. So she took the headache log, put the toothbrush and the toothpaste on top of it with a pen. And every time she brushed her teeth, she filled out the log and she left it there. So she always knew where it was. But she had it, linked it to the brushing of the teeth. And she went 90 days in a row filling out that log and getting all that information back to the doctors. And today, maybe every couple of months, she has a migraine. So that data was super important. But the first key to creating a habit in 21 seconds and really kind of almost instantly is to link it to something you're already a habit master at. And let me tell a second story to illustrate this one other component that is very key to that. When I discovered that, I said, okay, look, I want to create some new habits, too. Let's try it out. And so what I do is I said, look, I want to do this Bible app every morning, but then I also want to take a Mind shower. A lot of times people will wash their physical body. But do you wash your mind out? So I wanted to do I use the app called Headspace, but I want to wash my mind out every morning. And so I thought, what can I have it linked to? How can I create a 21 second habit here? And then I realized that in the morning, the first thing I do is I look at my smartphone. Now, sometimes the alarm is going off on my smartphone, but more often than not, I wake up without an alarm. But the first thing I do is I open my smartphone. Now, do I need any willpower to open my smartphone? No. Will I ever forget to open my smartphone? No. It's the first thing I do automatically. And so what I did is on the homepage for my iPhone. I pushed all the apps off except for those two apps. And what I did is I have it linked my opening of the phone for the first time in the morning to doing those two items. Right? Now, I like a ten minute Mind shower in the morning. But if I only have two or 3 minutes, I'll just do two or 3 minutes. But I can do two or 3 minutes for each one of those, no matter what. But here's the second key. So one is the habit lightning. The second key is that you need to surf some kind of an urge to make sure you do the habit. So in other words, when I open up my phone, why am I on my phone in the morning? Well, I want to see if my kids texted me. Did any orders come in? What's going on with the projects I'm doing? I've got a director of operations. Like, maybe she's emailed me. Like, I want to know what's going on. Maybe what's going on in the world. I want to know all that stuff. And so I surf that urge to want to know what's going on to do that habit. And the cool thing about these apps is they track it, right? So, like, today was like 1535 in a row, 1535 days in a row, that I've done that habit. Now it's an ingrained, natural habit. But in the beginning, when I first started, I didn't need any willpower to do that. It happened every day because I linked it to that thing that I do. Another good example is you bring up planning. And I had this one attorney, Anne, and she's like, Blaine, I know I should plan, but I just don't do it. And then I said, well, Ann, what's the first thing you do every morning without fail? Like you never miss it and you need no willpower. And she said, well, I have a cup of coffee. If I don't have that cup of coffee, I'm like a different person. So I said, great, let's have it like that. So before you can have the first of a coffee, you have to start your plan for the day. Now, I don't care if you drink the coffee or you make the plan, but you've got to start it before that first sip. You got to surf the urge to want that coffee and let that urge kind of give you the energy to drive you to do that habit. So anyway, that works for her. And she's off to the races. So there's lots of things you can have it linked to, things you do once a day, multiple times a day, like brushing the teeth, things you do once a week, once a month. I've curated a big list of things that clients have it linked to. But the key there is habit linking and then surfing the urge. And then if you can have some leverage on yourself to keep doing it, right. So there is this psychological concept. If you do something, it's about three or four days in a row, then you don't want to break the chain, right? So getting some leverage on yourself by putting a chain of the new habit together is one. You can also use penalties. You can get a buddy and say, look, if I break the habit, come up with some kind of penalty for yourself, whether it's you have to do 1000 pushups or there's lots of ways to have accountability around that, but something that stings a little bit, right? So pain is a motivator, but also pleasure reward. So you could say, hey, if I do this habit for ten days in a row, 30 days in a row, give yourself a little reward. Habit linking is the core. But then surfing the urge and then having some leverage, a reward or penalty as that habit grows is really the key. So what do you think about that, Tim?

Tim Fitzpatrick: I love it. The habit linking makes perfect sense. You're leveraging something that you're already doing to help you create that new habit. So the second step is surfing.

Blaine Oelkers: Like urge surfing, surfing the urge for something like in my case, it was the urge to see, like when I opened my phone. I see there's text messages, right. It could be for my kids. One lives in Denmark. I'm like, I want to know what's going on. Like, I surf that urge because I'm not allowed to touch those other things until I do those two apps on the home page.

Tim Fitzpatrick: Got it. The urge is bringing you there. And then because you only had that you have two apps. Right. On the home page.

Blaine Oelkers: Right.

Tim Fitzpatrick: You're writing the urge for the other thing, but it's taking you to what you want to accomplish.

Blaine Oelkers: Right. And just like Anne was surfing the urge to want to drink the coffee. And just like Beth is surfing the urge to get her teeth clean, she's wanting to go to bed with a gritty teeth feeling. So that urges like she has to brush her teeth. She cannot go to bed without brushing her teeth. But if she has to do the headache log as she's brushing or before she brushes, then that urge for the thing you want drives you into the action that you desire.

Tim Fitzpatrick: Got it. Yeah. So it's the urge is, okay, I've got to get this done. Then I can have this thing that I really want.

Blaine Oelkers: Well, the urge is for the thing that you really want.

Tim Fitzpatrick: Yes.

Blaine Oelkers: So I want to see what's going on in the world. So the urge is the thing you want on the back end of doing it's almost like your reward. But there's that excitement about what's in my text. See, on my home screen at the bottom, there's four apps, and one of them is my text messages. So I can see that there's text messages in there. And that excitement, that desire to want to see what those are, that gets me juice, gives me the juice to go do those other two things.

Tim Fitzpatrick: Yeah, got it. That's fascinating. Really, the habit linking, though, is the key, because that's how you can get that habit established in such a short period of time. Because you already have the habit. You're just using one habit to create another.

Blaine Oelkers: Right. Psychologically, we're battling the brain chemicals here. And you want to win early and win often. So even if you have to nanosize, your goal, still do it. Right. So I know that some people, they'll have it link exercise to their morning shower, saying, I'm going to do my exercise before I take my shower. Now, sometimes they might say, I don't have any time before my shower today. And that's when we say, look, instead of missing your habit, just do five push ups, five jumping Jacks run in place. Just do something. Do something for 1 minute. You got 1 minute or 3 minutes. I try to get into 3 minutes, but you have enough time. Keep the streak alive psychologically, and then your brain is going to reward you with good brain chemicals. But whatever you decide to have it linked to, keep that, even if you have to shrink it down. I like a ten minute mind shower in the morning, but I'm happy with a three minute one, if that's all I have.

Tim Fitzpatrick: Do you recommend people track their progress of that habit? Right. So I want to create this habit of having a ten minute mind shower. Do I actually write this down and go check it off today? Checked it off. I've checked it off for the last seven days. Right. Is something like that helpful?

Blaine Oelkers: Yes. Especially in this battle of the brain chemicals. Right. You get a little hit of dopamine whenever you finish something. You get a little boost in self confidence every time you extend a habit. Now, if you can get past three or four days, then there's a psychological power that you don't want to break the chain of those many days in a row. So I would say, yes, you want to track it now. There are devices, right? So I'm using headspace, and I'm using this thing called the Bible app. And both of those, they track your streak. How many days in a row have you done the thing? So it's automatically tracking there for me. Now, I do a daily day design sheet, which I go analog. I like to go analog, so I have a digital calendar and all my Stuff's in there. But when I plan my day, I'm analog. Piece of paper. I have a sheet that I use, but I'm by hand putting in my little calendar and things I want to do that day. But inside that sheet, whatever those habits are, I'm giving myself a little dopamine square because I have a checkbox that says, yeah, you took the mind shower, right? Yeah. So, yes, logging that in some way. Another method I like bullet journaling. And that's where you can kind of design your own little spreadsheet for the month in your bullet Journal, where you get a little check Mark every day and you can visually see how many days in a row you did it. So love tracking. And it work. When early, when often. Now, if you're tracking and you're failing, okay, if you're failing and this happens, we're human is you need to nanosize it. You need to make it small enough so that the resistance disappears and you win. There is a golden ratio to winning. Now, for me, the golden ratio is about 90 ten. I need to win, like, nine days out of ten. Now, I don't want to win ten out of ten because then I'm not learning. Right. So if I reach my goals, like, every day for a week, all the stuff I said I was going to do, I get done. Then I got to put in a harder day, right? I noticed this golden ratio when I was coaching my kids. They both played tennis in high school, and in tennis, it was like 70 30. So if they're winning more than 70%, of the time, their matches, they're not learning anything. Right. And so when they were winning 80, 90% of the time, I had to make them play in the age group, one up higher. And like, dad, I don't want to play in there. I'm like, you got to learn, keep learning. But the opposite was true. If they started losing more than 30% of time, 40% of time, 50% of time, 60% of time, they're going to quit tennis. So then I got to get them back into something easier and you got to win. So there's some ratio that works for you. Some people, it's 50 50. Me, it's 90 ten. But you want to be psychologically, you want to be winning. So dial down the resistance. If you don't meet the goal. Like if you say, I'm going to exercise 30 minutes a day and you don't do it, dial it down. If you got to dial it down to 10 minutes, do ten. If you can't do ten, dial it down to three. If you can't do three, dial it down to one. But my gosh, you're going to be able to do 1 minute of exercise, even if it's while you're doing something else, while you're eating breakfast, you're jogging in place. Whatever. I do get it.

Tim Fitzpatrick: Couldn't you say, like walking back and forth across the kitchen is exercise, right? I don't know. Blaine, this has been awesome, man. I love it. Any thoughts you want to leave us with today?

Blaine Oelkers: I just want to leave you with a couple of things. One is that you realize the power that you have already to influence yourself, and that your mindset and your mind. And I was saying, what you think about you bring about. I call it whiteeva. It's an acronym for what you think about you bring about. And I did a little TEDx talk about that. But the power of your mind is probably your biggest asset that you have. And I'll leave you kind of with this saying that I like is the bad news. The bad news is that time flies. The good news, you're the pilot. So take the reins, get some planning in. Like Tim and I, we love planning. Get some planning in and make that happen. And if you don't plan, it's like getting on the airplane and you look into the cockpit and there's no pilot, there's no pilot. How long are you going to sit on that plane? Well, that's what you're doing every single day. You get up without a plan, right. And you're losing all that time in the morning as well. So anyway, plan well and plan often.

Tim Fitzpatrick: I love it. And people can learn more about you. They can either go to selffluence.com, your website, or they can go to Blainetedx.com That's Blainetedx.com. What are they going to find ?Blainetedx.com

Blaine Oelkers: Yeah. So there's a little opt in there and you get a copy of my TEDx Talk. And so if you're not familiar. Ted talks are a big idea worth sharing but you have limited time so it's only like 12 minutes. But if you opt in there you'll get a copy of the talk and the transcript and you'll learn this one kind of hack to actually take whatever your main goal is, whatever the thing you're trying to bring about and program it into your subconscious mind about 100 times a day without having to do anything else. So that's a pretty cool little hack. You'll learn that there and that talk just went over 200,000 views so it is popular and then we'll be connected so you get to learn a little about me but if there's any way I can help you get results I'd love to do that. That's why I'm on the planet.

Tim Fitzpatrick: Awesome. Blaine, thank you so much, man. I appreciate you. This has been a fantastic conversation. You dropped a ton of value so thank you for doing that. It's been an absolute pleasure.

Blaine Oelkers: All right. Well, thank you so much, Tim. And thank you for helping business owners across the world to plan more and to get more done and to have better results. So I appreciate you and the opportunity to share today.

Tim Fitzpatrick: Awesome. And for those of you watching listening appreciate you as well. If you're stuck with your marketing you know you have opportunities for growth but you're not sure what to do to get there, head on over to our website. It's rialtomarketing.com. That's R-I-A-L-T-O marketing.com. Click on the get a free consult button I would be happy to chat with you. You can also head on over to growthmarketingplan.com. There you will find the 90 day marketing plan template that we use, the video instructions, the template sample plans, all the stuff you need to start working on your marketing plan today are there as well so thank you again. Till next time. Take care.

Connect With Blaine Oelkers

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Links From The Episode

• Selfluence
• blainetedx.com

About the host,?Tim Fitzpatrick

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