Joe: Hey, what’s going on, guys? This is Joe, REI in your car. Hope you’re doing well. Today is Monday and I have a little productivity hack for y’all. And some of you, this may not be as big of a deal to others, but for me, you know, I’ve always gotten frustrated with Mondays. No, I like Mondays. I mean, being an entrepreneur, running my own business, I like work. Right? I like what I do. I love what I do. So I’ve never looked at Mondays as like, oh, man, I got to get back into the grind like I used to with my job. But Mondays have been frustrating for me sometimes in the past when I’ve let it get out of control. And so here’s why it’s been frustrating for me and what I’ve done to kind of help it a lot. And this is, I think, a simple hack that I think can help a lot of you guys as well, right?

Joe: So in the past, you know, it seems like a lot of things on Friday that don’t get done, you know, on Thursday or Friday that don’t get done, just kind of get put off to Monday. And so my my to do list, which I’m very, very bad at managing my to do list, but all of a sudden I have all these things that pop up is due on Monday. Right. And I, it alerts my phone and that’s bothered me. But also it’s kind of the start of a new week. So you’ve got some goals you’re planning on what you’re going to get accomplished this coming week. Well, when you add on top of that a bunch of calls that have been scheduled on your calendar, Zoom calls, phone calls or whatever, it can be just really overwhelming and stressful. And so I have found for me personally and I think maybe the point is you guys need to find out really what works for you personally as well, because we’re just all different, right? But for me, when I see a calendar full of appointments and a task list that’s a mile long of things that I got to do. And I feel like coming from the weekend where I really do try hard not to work on weekends, I need that Monday to just kind of decompress and get back into the flow of things, you know what I’m saying? Like, for me, Monday has always been very, very unproductive days. If you have the secret to turning out how to turn Mondays into productive days, let me know. But for me, I guess, is my body clock or whatever. Like, man, I just. I just cannot get much done on Monday because I’m just thinking too much of all the things I got to do. Well, anyway, few weeks ago, I decided, you know what, I’m just going to block my Mondays off. I’m not going to let anybody schedule calls with me on Monday. I’m not gonna let my team schedule calls with me on Monday. Not going to look at students. I’m not going to do podcasts, I’m not going to have appointments. And it’s been really, really nice because Monday morning I’m looking at my calendar, I see an empty calendar. I’m like, Oh, breathe a sigh of relief. And then I’m just way more productive on Tuesdays. And I feel like, you know, a lot of it is whenever we kind of give open to our calendar, you’re going to find space. Like, what’s that saying? It’s that logos of like everything will expand the space that you give it and that with time management and calendar management and to do lists and all of that, it’s the same exact thing, right? If you give yourself 40 hours to get something done, it’s going to take 40 hours to get it done. But if you give yourself 5 hours to get it done, it’s going to get done in 5 hours and it’s going to be done just as well.

Joe: Anyway, I’m sure you guys are all productivity ninjas, right? And you just get everything done and you feel so proud and accomplished of all of the work that you get done in a day. You feel efficient, you feel proficient, and you’re just on top of the world. But if you’re like me, welcome to Crazy Town. So take Mondays off or don’t take Mondays off. But just like keep your calendar clear. Take the stress off of trying to get everything done on Monday. It’s only the first day of this was first day of the week, first day of the workweek. I’m a Christian, so I think Sunday should be the first day of the week. It always bothers me when I see calendars that have Mondays as a first day of the weeks. It’s anyway, but like your first work day, week, day of the week. Well, chill. Have a couple extra cups of coffee. I did work out this morning, but I’m just telling you, it’s feels really nice to see a day with no calls on it and I will get some stuff done today, but I don’t have this pressure of like, Oh, I got to get all this stuff done. And then mad and frustrated at the end of the day when I didn’t get anything done because I had so many calls.

Joe: All right, guys, take care. By the way, let me say one more thing, too. I use this tool called Schedule Once, which is a game changer, and it helps with my calendar, right? So if people want to talk to me, people want to do a podcast. People want a coaching call or whatever. I say, Hey, listen, why don’t you go to this link here? I’m going to send you this link and you can look at my calendar and schedule the time. It’s convenient for you. But the cool thing about Schedule Once they don’t even call it that anymore, I think it’s called Once Hub. And there’s another tool called Calendly. The cool thing about that stuff is like you can say, all right, so I only show people availabilities on, you know, Tuesdays from 9 to 12, Wednesdays 9 to 5, and then, you know, you can block out an hour in the afternoon for lunch. And you can also say you so you can put it give it the times that you want it to show available. And you can also say, don’t allow people to schedule more than using this link. You know, don’t allow people to schedule more than three appointments of this appointment in one day or no more than five in one week. You could also say don’t let people schedule out further than one or two weeks. It automatically syncs with your calendar so it’ll block off. If you have any time already blocked off in your calendar, it won’t show them that availability either. So I don’t know, some it’s it’s a little impersonal, right. But you know how frustrating it is when you’re trying to talk to somebody on the phone and schedule a time that works for both of you. It’s just easier for one of the two parties to give a link to the other party to just look at the calendar. And I got a domain. I don’t want to give it all to you. I don’t want to give the domain to you all right now. But I get you can get a domain. Let’s say your name is Nancy. You could say call with Nancy dot com, dot net. Nancy call. 15 minute Nancy calls dot com. Something like that. Right. Like you could come up with a URL. So when you’re talking to people, I do this all the time. You can get a link for a 30 minute call, 50 minute call, an hour call, and you can just give people that simple URL and they can schedule it. It’s pretty nice, pretty cool tool. That’s all I got, guys. Have a happy, productive week. It’s Monday as I’m recording this. I don’t know when you’ll be listening to this, but yeah, don’t be afraid to block off your calendar, take a whole day where it’s just you working and it’s not you on the phone helping other people. Work for yourself. See ya.