December 6, 2024 • 9 mins
Is your packed schedule holding you back? In this episode, I challenge the "busy equals productive" mindset and share how strategies like delegation, batching, and automation can help you reclaim your time. Drawing from my journey as a business owner and family man, I reveal how simple adjustments, like hiring a virtual assistant, transformed my productivity and focus. Tune in to learn actionable steps for working smarter, achieving balance, and focusing on what truly matters.
NOTABLE QUOTES
"We are so busy as a society anymore that we really wear it as a badge of honor. This is a sad thing." – Philip
"Stop wearing that busyness badge and start thinking smarter, start thinking about that future." – Philip
"You can find ways to streamline your process." – Philip
RESOURCES
Philip
Digital Course: https://www.speakingsessions.com/digital-course
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamphilipsessions/?hl=en
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@philipsessions
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/philip-sessions-b2986563/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/therealphilipsessions
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
hold on.
I got to take this.
Yeah, yeah, okay, okay.
We are so busy as a societyanymore that we really wear it
as a badge of honor.
This is a sad thing.
We wear busyness as a badge ofhonor from the corporate world,
where it's meeting after meetingafter meeting.
(00:23):
If your calendar is not full ofmeetings, that means you aren't
busy, that you aren't somehowproductive.
And then, from the businessowner standpoint, if you aren't
constantly fighting fires, ifyou're not constantly trying to
figure out the next thing andyou're basically you got water
up to your nose.
You aren't doing enough.
And what's sad is that the mostproductive people, the people
(00:47):
that get the most done and havewhat I would consider to be the
most success in life, don't havethat on a daily basis.
Now, yes, you are going to havetimes where you are slammed
with back to back to backmeetings.
You're going to be slammed withputting out fires and you can't
think about the future andfocus on the future and have
that vision for where you'retrying to go, whether it be your
business, your family, yourfinances, whatever it may be.
(01:10):
There are those times.
But if that is constantly you,to me that is your ego getting
in the way that is you saying Ineed to look busy, I need to be
perceived as being so busy, Ican't do anything else, I can't
take on anymore when in fact youcan.
There is a lot that goes on inmy life and for those of you
(01:33):
that actually know, you alreadyknow this already, but if you
don't, I'm a project manager atBMW.
I have two businesses that I runthe speaking, coaching as well
as a virtual assistant agency.
I've got five people about tohave five people that work with
me currently and I have sevenclients with that.
I've got my family, my wifewe've been married for five
(01:56):
years.
I've got a three-year-old girland an eight-month-old girl, not
to mention I get involved withmy church and all the other
little hobbies and activitiesthat I like to do, such as this
podcast.
This is something that's funfor me, but I have to take time
to do two episodes a week,scheduling that with people, and
now I have some people in placeto help me with some of these
(02:16):
things.
But it is still a lot of stuffthat I do and I don't say that
to say, look at Phillip, he's sobusy, he does so many things,
he's so great because all thesethings he does.
I say it because I have foundways to be able to cope with all
those things.
I say it because I have donethings and this is not going to
(02:40):
be a podcast to tell you thatyou need to start delegating
tasks, because you do if you'redoing them all.
But I say it because of thefact that I've started to
delegate things, I've actuallybeen able to take on more, in a
sense, that I am now spreadingmyself out to do multiple things
and be really the CEO andvisionary of a lot of it.
While I still do certain things, I'm able to let other people
(03:03):
do their part in that.
So you need to stop wearing thebusyness badge of honor.
Stop wearing that busynessbadge and start thinking smarter
, start thinking about thatfuture.
So how do we actually do that?
Because, yes, I can say, hey,start thinking about it, hey,
start delegating, hey, do this.
But how do you do that in thefirst place?
(03:24):
You're going to have to settime aside, and this is exactly
what I did to help me startgetting started with that in the
first place, whether it beautomating something, whether it
be delegating something,finding a better system or a
better process for your day.
To do that, you have to startthinking through that whole
process.
So, take 15 minutes to 30minutes.
(03:47):
You can find that time.
Don't tell me you can't.
You can find some time, whetherit be at the beginning of the
day, the end of the day.
I suggest more at the beginningof the day, but even at the end
of the day taking the time, andI'd probably even do both, but
at a minimum once during thatday taking the time.
Okay, what are the things thatI need to get done today?
What am I working on?
(04:07):
And then going through that oreven taking one process?
So I'll use my podcast as anexample here.
Okay, I've got a podcast, whatare the things that I'm doing
with it?
Well, I'm doing two pieces ofcontent a week.
I have one guest episode andone solo episode.
Okay, I'd probably knock out.
Well, I can do that every week.
I can find a guest, I canrecord with them, I can do the
(04:27):
editing, I can post it.
I can go on and record my soloepisode and I can post it.
And I can do those.
Let's say, monday, I do theguest, I post it.
On Wednesday, thursday, Irecord the solo episode, friday
I post it.
But guess what?
I could actually probablystreamline that.
What if I did the guest episoderecording and the solo episode
(04:49):
recording on Monday, and thenWednesday and Thursday I posted.
So I had it already scheduledahead because luckily the
softwares and the websites thatI use allow you to schedule in
advance.
So then on Monday I couldprobably do all that and guess
what?
I've got the rest of the weekto do other things that I want
to do.
So that alone I just started tosystematize that one thing.
(05:10):
But then I decided, you knowwhat, I want to make this video
editing better.
I want to not have to deal withall that, I want to just hit
record and be done with it.
So I hired a virtual assistantto help me with my video editing
.
And guess what?
On top of that, I told thevirtual assistant hey, I don't
want to touch it.
(05:30):
I mean essentially what I did.
I didn't really tell him this,but I said you know what, once
you get done editing it, youalready have it.
Upload it to YouTube, upload itto Buzzsprout, which is my
hosting platform for the podcastcord.
(05:52):
I then upload to Google Drive.
He's able to download it.
Do the edits.
We'll do some checks in therejust to make sure everything
looks good, and then he'llupload those to YouTube and Buzz
Sprout for me.
So then I'm basically done.
I was able to then just do therecordings and then have
somebody else take care of therest of it.
For me it was more streamlined.
Maybe it wasn't quite asstreamlined for my assistant at
the time, for my video editor,to be able to handle that side,
(06:15):
but even then and we workedthrough that as well so he was
kind of just doing the guestepisode.
He would edit it, he wouldupload it, all this stuff and
then he'd go back and do thesolo episode and then he started
actually editing both the guestand solo episode and going on.
And then what I did on my sideas well as you know what I'm
going to knock out several soloepisodes, because I can control
(06:36):
my time when I do that, and now,even today, actually, this is
the third solo episode that I'verecorded today, and so I was
able to do that and so you canfind ways to streamline your
process.
But it took me thinking throughthis big picture.
Okay, I need to do two episodesa week, but I also don't have a
lot of time.
So when can I start doing those?
How can I batch the contentessentially of creating these
(06:59):
solo episodes, of doing theseguest episodes?
And even then, when I was doingthe guest episode two, I was,
oh, any day, you can get me anyday, any night, da-da-da, and I,
you can get me any day, anynight.
And I started saying no,wednesdays and Saturdays,
wednesdays and Saturdays.
And that helped me be able tofocus in on other things,
because there was a point aswell where I needed to get some
coaching stuff done and somecontent creation done.
But I had another podcastepisode and it was like every
(07:22):
night I was having a podcastepisode.
So I started finding ways tostreamline it.
But I had to take this 30,000foot view, and that all started
from a 15 minute dive into whatdoes my day look like, what does
this process for this one thinglook like?
So, for you wearing that badgeof honor, if you're wearing the
busy busyness badge right now,take 15 minutes and assess one
(07:47):
thing that you do constantly andhow can you make that a little
bit better.
How can you batch that, how canyou systematize that process
and then go on to the next thing, if you can get up to 30
minutes, that's awesome.
And then, if you can do 15minutes or 30 minutes in the
morning and 15 to 30 minutes inthe evening and go through, okay
(08:07):
, or, after you got done withthat, do an assessment.
Okay, hey, I thought throughlike maybe this would be better.
Not, I've done it for a coupleof weeks, or that day when you
did it.
Has it gotten better?
Did it seem to be better?
Did it seem to save me sometime?
And you continue to refine thisover and over again.
But that's how you can get ridof that busyness badge of honor,
and so I want to be able tohelp you here today.
(08:27):
I don't want to just go on thisrant about the busyness badge of
honor, but too many of y'allmyself included at one point
wear this busyness badge ofhonor, this busy badge of honor,
as something that's worthwearing when it's not at all.
We should not be so busy that wecan't do anything.
So stop trying to wear busynessas a badge of honor and learn
(08:53):
to delegate, to systematize, toautomate whatever you need to do
these tasks, so you canactually start doing more rather
than doing less, because nowyou're staying busy and you're
so busy and you're so great.
No, you're really not thatgreat.
If you're that busy that youcan't get away from your phone,
you can't get away from thecomputer, you can't spend time
(09:14):
with your family, you can't doany actual work, you're not that
great.
I hate to break it to you, butyou're not that great.
So stop wearing that busy badgeof honor and start learning to
automate busy badge of honor.
And start learning to automate,delegate and systematize the
(09:35):
things that you're doing todayand watch how much more you're
going to get done, and thenwatch how you become this great
person that people want to be,just like.
hold on.
I got to take this.
Yeah, yeah, okay, okay.
We are so busy as a societyanymore that we really wear it
as a badge of honor.
This is a sad thing.
We wear busyness as a badge ofhonor from the corporate world,
where it's meeting after meetingafter meeting.
(00:23):
If your calendar is not full ofmeetings, that means you aren't
busy, that you aren't somehowproductive.
And then, from the businessowner standpoint, if you aren't
constantly fighting fires, ifyou're not constantly trying to
figure out the next thing andyou're basically you got water
up to your nose.
You aren't doing enough.
And what's sad is that the mostproductive people, the people
(00:47):
that get the most done and havewhat I would consider to be the
most success in life, don't havethat on a daily basis.
Now, yes, you are going to havetimes where you are slammed
with back to back to backmeetings.
You're going to be slammed withputting out fires and you can't
think about the future andfocus on the future and have
that vision for where you'retrying to go, whether it be your
business, your family, yourfinances, whatever it may be.
(01:10):
There are those times.
But if that is constantly you,to me that is your ego getting
in the way that is you saying Ineed to look busy, I need to be
perceived as being so busy, Ican't do anything else, I can't
take on anymore when in fact youcan.
There is a lot that goes on inmy life and for those of you
(01:33):
that actually know, you alreadyknow this already, but if you
don't, I'm a project manager atBMW.
I have two businesses that I runthe speaking, coaching as well
as a virtual assistant agency.
I've got five people about tohave five people that work with
me currently and I have sevenclients with that.
I've got my family, my wifewe've been married for five
(01:56):
years.
I've got a three-year-old girland an eight-month-old girl, not
to mention I get involved withmy church and all the other
little hobbies and activitiesthat I like to do, such as this
podcast.
This is something that's funfor me, but I have to take time
to do two episodes a week,scheduling that with people, and
now I have some people in placeto help me with some of these
(02:16):
things.
But it is still a lot of stuffthat I do and I don't say that
to say, look at Phillip, he's sobusy, he does so many things,
he's so great because all thesethings he does.
I say it because I have foundways to be able to cope with all
those things.
I say it because I have donethings and this is not going to
(02:40):
be a podcast to tell you thatyou need to start delegating
tasks, because you do if you'redoing them all.
But I say it because of thefact that I've started to
delegate things, I've actuallybeen able to take on more, in a
sense, that I am now spreadingmyself out to do multiple things
and be really the CEO andvisionary of a lot of it.
While I still do certain things, I'm able to let other people
(03:03):
do their part in that.
So you need to stop wearing thebusyness badge of honor.
Stop wearing that busynessbadge and start thinking smarter
, start thinking about thatfuture.
So how do we actually do that?
Because, yes, I can say, hey,start thinking about it, hey,
start delegating, hey, do this.
But how do you do that in thefirst place?
(03:24):
You're going to have to settime aside, and this is exactly
what I did to help me startgetting started with that in the
first place, whether it beautomating something, whether it
be delegating something,finding a better system or a
better process for your day.
To do that, you have to startthinking through that whole
process.
So, take 15 minutes to 30minutes.
(03:47):
You can find that time.
Don't tell me you can't.
You can find some time, whetherit be at the beginning of the
day, the end of the day.
I suggest more at the beginningof the day, but even at the end
of the day taking the time, andI'd probably even do both, but
at a minimum once during thatday taking the time.
Okay, what are the things thatI need to get done today?
What am I working on?
(04:07):
And then going through that oreven taking one process?
So I'll use my podcast as anexample here.
Okay, I've got a podcast, whatare the things that I'm doing
with it?
Well, I'm doing two pieces ofcontent a week.
I have one guest episode andone solo episode.
Okay, I'd probably knock out.
Well, I can do that every week.
I can find a guest, I canrecord with them, I can do the
(04:27):
editing, I can post it.
I can go on and record my soloepisode and I can post it.
And I can do those.
Let's say, monday, I do theguest, I post it.
On Wednesday, thursday, Irecord the solo episode, friday
I post it.
But guess what?
I could actually probablystreamline that.
What if I did the guest episoderecording and the solo episode
(04:49):
recording on Monday, and thenWednesday and Thursday I posted.
So I had it already scheduledahead because luckily the
softwares and the websites thatI use allow you to schedule in
advance.
So then on Monday I couldprobably do all that and guess
what?
I've got the rest of the weekto do other things that I want
to do.
So that alone I just started tosystematize that one thing.
(05:10):
But then I decided, you knowwhat, I want to make this video
editing better.
I want to not have to deal withall that, I want to just hit
record and be done with it.
So I hired a virtual assistantto help me with my video editing
.
And guess what?
On top of that, I told thevirtual assistant hey, I don't
want to touch it.
(05:30):
I mean essentially what I did.
I didn't really tell him this,but I said you know what, once
you get done editing it, youalready have it.
Upload it to YouTube, upload itto Buzzsprout, which is my
hosting platform for the podcastcord.
(05:52):
I then upload to Google Drive.
He's able to download it.
Do the edits.
We'll do some checks in therejust to make sure everything
looks good, and then he'llupload those to YouTube and Buzz
Sprout for me.
So then I'm basically done.
I was able to then just do therecordings and then have
somebody else take care of therest of it.
For me it was more streamlined.
Maybe it wasn't quite asstreamlined for my assistant at
the time, for my video editor,to be able to handle that side,
(06:15):
but even then and we workedthrough that as well so he was
kind of just doing the guestepisode.
He would edit it, he wouldupload it, all this stuff and
then he'd go back and do thesolo episode and then he started
actually editing both the guestand solo episode and going on.
And then what I did on my sideas well as you know what I'm
going to knock out several soloepisodes, because I can control
(06:36):
my time when I do that, and now,even today, actually, this is
the third solo episode that I'verecorded today, and so I was
able to do that and so you canfind ways to streamline your
process.
But it took me thinking throughthis big picture.
Okay, I need to do two episodesa week, but I also don't have a
lot of time.
So when can I start doing those?
How can I batch the contentessentially of creating these
(06:59):
solo episodes, of doing theseguest episodes?
And even then, when I was doingthe guest episode two, I was,
oh, any day, you can get me anyday, any night, da-da-da, and I,
you can get me any day, anynight.
And I started saying no,wednesdays and Saturdays,
wednesdays and Saturdays.
And that helped me be able tofocus in on other things,
because there was a point aswell where I needed to get some
coaching stuff done and somecontent creation done.
But I had another podcastepisode and it was like every
(07:22):
night I was having a podcastepisode.
So I started finding ways tostreamline it.
But I had to take this 30,000foot view, and that all started
from a 15 minute dive into whatdoes my day look like, what does
this process for this one thinglook like?
So, for you wearing that badgeof honor, if you're wearing the
busy busyness badge right now,take 15 minutes and assess one
(07:47):
thing that you do constantly andhow can you make that a little
bit better.
How can you batch that, how canyou systematize that process
and then go on to the next thing, if you can get up to 30
minutes, that's awesome.
And then, if you can do 15minutes or 30 minutes in the
morning and 15 to 30 minutes inthe evening and go through, okay
(08:07):
, or, after you got done withthat, do an assessment.
Okay, hey, I thought throughlike maybe this would be better.
Not, I've done it for a coupleof weeks, or that day when you
did it.
Has it gotten better?
Did it seem to be better?
Did it seem to save me sometime?
And you continue to refine thisover and over again.
But that's how you can get ridof that busyness badge of honor,
and so I want to be able tohelp you here today.
(08:27):
I don't want to just go on thisrant about the busyness badge of
honor, but too many of y'allmyself included at one point
wear this busyness badge ofhonor, this busy badge of honor,
as something that's worthwearing when it's not at all.
We should not be so busy that wecan't do anything.
So stop trying to wear busynessas a badge of honor and learn
(08:53):
to delegate, to systematize, toautomate whatever you need to do
these tasks, so you canactually start doing more rather
than doing less, because nowyou're staying busy and you're
so busy and you're so great.
No, you're really not thatgreat.
If you're that busy that youcan't get away from your phone,
you can't get away from thecomputer, you can't spend time
(09:14):
with your family, you can't doany actual work, you're not that
great.
I hate to break it to you, butyou're not that great.
So stop wearing that busy badgeof honor and start learning to
automate busy badge of honor.
And start learning to automate,delegate and systematize the
(09:35):
things that you're doing todayand watch how much more you're
going to get done, and thenwatch how you become this great
person that people want to be,just like.
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