Productivity and How to Say No, with John Lee Dumas – Episode 178 of The Action Catalyst Podcast

John Lee Dumas, founder and host of the award-winning Entrepreneurs ON FIRE podcast, returns to The Action Catalyst, with insights on what defines productivity and discipline, doing serious self-evaluation, the Pomodoro Technique, focus & refresh time, the lasting impact of his military service, avoiding O.P.A.  (Other People’s Agenda), and going from success to significance.

About John:

John Lee Dumas is the founder & host of Entrepreneurs On Fire, an award-winning podcast that interviews inspiring entrepreneurs. He is also the author of The Common Path to Uncommon Success, a 17-step roadmap to financial freedom and fulfillment, as well as The Freedom Journal, The Mastery Journal, and The Podcast Journal. He’s interviewed over 3,000 incredible entrepreneurs, including Tony Robbins, Seth Godin, Gary Vaynerchuk, Barbara Corcoran, Tim Ferriss, and many more.

John graduated from Providence College in 2002 and was commissioned as an Officer in the US Army. After a 13-month tour of duty in Iraq as an Armor Platoon Leader and a total of 8 years in the Army, he tried law school, and after one semester dropped out. Next, he took a job at John Hancock in Boston, then a tech start-up in NYC, before heading to San Diego where he worked in real estate before developing the idea for what would become Entrepreneurs ON FIRE. The podcast launched on September 22nd, 2012.

Two fun facts about John; he once won a car on The Price is Right in 2011, and he was featured in the 2009 Bollywood ‘Movie of the Year’, “Yuvvraaj”.

Learn more at EOFire.com.

The Action Catalyst is presented by the Southwestern Family of Companies. With each episode, the podcast features some of the nation’s top thought leaders and experts, sharing meaningful tips and advice. Learn more at TheActionCatalyst.com, subscribe below or wherever you listen to podcasts, and be sure to leave a rating and review!

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(Transcribed using A.I. / May include errors):

Host
John Lee Dumas is back on the show, I’m sure you know him or you should know him host of Entrepreneur on Fire, EO fire, millions of downloads, he has a new thing that’s called the mastery journal that helps you kind of stay on track and to use the words master productivity, discipline and focus in 100 days. So John, welcome to the show.

John Lee Dumas
I’m fired up to be here. I’m just happy to be alive.

Host
Obviously, discipline, productivity is what we’re talking about here on The Action Catalyst. But what are some of your favorite episodes that you’ve recorded on productivity, discipline and focus? Who are you learning from in that way?

John Lee Dumas
The two that I can really say popped to mind was Brian Tracy and Darren Hardy, like both of them just took the interview on EO fire, and just turned it into this lesson, this course, on those things on productivity, on discipline on focus. And I was just like, man, these are the pros. Every day, I wake up in the morning, and I start my morning routine, you know, I say to myself, John, Eat That Frog, which, of course, is a Brian Tracy ism. And you know, every time I’m like, should I really be doing this right now meaning like, you know, it seems small and insignificant. I think of Darren Hardy in the compound effect, and how small things add up to huge results, then, you know, I just say those two people really rise up to the top. And I think about those three words, and I’ve just continued to learn from them.

Host
What is your definition of productivity? How do you define productivity?

John Lee Dumas
Well, I think it is important that we talk about the definition because you’re right, everybody does define it differently. And that’s fine. And that’s actually great. But for me, I love going to the roots of these words. And for me, the root of productivity is produce, what are you producing on a day to day basis, I mean, you can be the most efficient person in the world. But if you’re efficient, doing the wrong things, producing the wrong things doesn’t really matter. So productivity is producing the right things on that day to day basis, so that you can reflect upon your day when that Sun starts going down. And you can say, you know, what, I produced the right content for my audience, it doesn’t mean I did a ton of work, or I did all this, like mountains of episodes, and copy and etc, it’s I did the right work, I produced the right content for my audience today. A lot of people I think, look to people like myself, you know, he’s had a lot of success, and they just want us to give them answers. And, you know, we’re not just here giving you answers, what we’re doing is we’re giving you systems, we’re giving you frameworks so that you can self evaluate yourself. And those two words self evaluate are so key within the mastery journal, that that’s what I have you do, because what’s productive to you is not going to be productive to me, we have to self evaluate. So every single day within the mastery journal, you are going to be producing specific work. But the most important thing is actually at the end of that day, you’re going to be self evaluating yourself on that production level. So you might not be that productive, by my definition I just gave you on days one through seven, because you’re trying to figure it out, you’re trying to understand, get your finger on the pulse. But hopefully you’re learning so that by day 815 20, you now start knowing through your self evaluation, what being productive means to you, and your business and your life, on that whole scheme of things. So self evaluations key is something that I really drill into, within the mastery journal.

Host
You know, you hear 21 days to form a habit, you hear 30 days, you hear sort of 90 days, and I think there’s some powerful psychology behind the 100 day deal.

John Lee Dumas
There is and you know, go back to those two words, self evaluation. I mean, in 2015, when I was coming up with the idea for the Freedom Journal, which is accomplish your number one goal and X number of days, you know, it’s now 100 days was trying to fill in that X, I did some self evaluation, I said, How long has it taken me to accomplish a big meaningful goal in my life in the past, and I looked at EO fire, and it took me three and a half months, I looked at podcasters paradise. And it took me just about three months, you know, I looked at all these different things that I’ve done that had been meaningful, and that timeframe just kept coming up. And so I said, you know, there has to be a timeframe because otherwise as Parkinson’s Law states, tasks will expand to the time allotted, we definitely we know that. So I had to have that time bound. And I just knew that, hey, 100 days is going to be great for a number of reasons. Number one, is going to give that endpoint so we know that we’re going to have a start a start line and a finish line when it comes to that number one goal so we can focus on those things. Number two, as I’m driving forward within this, I can have nice, neat checkpoints along the way, at day 10, you know, we do a 10 day sprint every 10 days. So every 10th day, you’re accomplishing a micro goal every 25 days, you’re looking back on your quarterly review to what you did over those 25 days to see your wins, amplify those your losses, figure out solutions to them. So that by day 100, you’ve done 1010 day sprints for 25 Day quarterly reviews, it just worked, the more I thought about that, and the more I realized, I’ve been able to accomplish big things in 100 days. And that can set up a framework where others can, too. That’s where the number 100 came from. And I realized that that system works. So I said, why not just take that apply the 100 day methodology to the mastery journal, and come up with a framework that I can guide people in mastering the three skills that I’ve mastered over the last four and a half years, productivity, discipline and focus. And we’ll have them do it in 100 days.

Host
You have a focus time and a refresh time. What’s the concept with focus time and refresh time?

John Lee Dumas
So during 2016, I spent the entire year doing the research on productivity, learning the ins and outs of that of discipline, and a focus really just becoming a students of these three skills. And the thing that just kept coming up over and over again, was the Pomodoro Technique. And I said, you know, I feel like I’ve done that sometimes in the past with success, but I’m gonna commit to it for three weeks. And so I committed to the Pomodoro Technique, which is essentially in a nutshell, basically setting a timer for you can fill in the blank for the timer, they kind of recommended with a Pomodoro Technique, traditionally, 25 minutes on 10 minutes off, where you’re definitely having this timer countdown while you’re doing one specific task completely focused, it didn’t work for me. And I was like, you know, I need to play with this a little bit, because 25 minutes just seems too short of a period of time, I just am getting into my flow, getting some great work done thing goes off, and I gotta stop. So I started playing around with it and ended up for me, I found my sweet spot, which was 42 minutes of focus time, 18 minutes of refresh time. So now I have the session of one hour with 42 minutes of pure focus. But my brain knows that I’m going to get this beautiful 18 minute relief break refreshing time where I can go, you know, check the sport score, or jump on Facebook real quick or go take a walk outside in the sun, you know, just do one of those things. And I did that for three weeks. And I was shocked at what happened. I was just like I’m getting more stuff done during these 42 minutes than I would get done in 400 minutes throughout the week, because I’m just clicking to this different gear. So I knew that I had to implement the Pomodoro Technique heavily within the mastery journal. So every single day within the mastery journal, I’ve set up for sessions, where and I have not filled in the focus time or the refresh time because that is for you to figure out what works for you. Again, for me 42 minutes of focus, 80 minutes of refresh, you know, we check back in and a year, it might be an hour of focus and 10 minutes of refresh, or 30 minutes, I don’t know where I’m going to be at that point. But you got to stay attuned and continue to self evaluate yourself. And then during that focus on that you figured out, nothing else matters, but you’re a wonderful guest. And then during your refresh time you give yourself the gift of refreshing and then guess what self evaluation at the end of that session, you give yourself a productivity score, you give yourself a discipline score, at the end of your four sessions, which maybe do two in the morning, two in the afternoon, however you want to break them up, you have now all of these scores from those four sessions, which you average out, because you add up your your four productivity scores, your four discipline scores, obviously, then you divide it by four and you get your daily score, which you then flip to and again, we train you at the beginning part of the mastery journal, how to do this, you flip to that 10 Day recap. And you fill in that day is a little bar chart, you fill it in. So as you’re going towards that 10th day, you’re seeing your ups and your downs, you’re seeing how you’re flowing, and you’re starting to get understand the rhythm that you’re getting into as an entrepreneur.

Host
We’ve been talking a little bit about productivity, but you also have a discipline score. How do you classify that?

John Lee Dumas
So discipline is something that was hammered into me at a young age. I was a military officer for eight years for active foreign reserves. You know, I did a 13 month tour of duty in Iraq. So I realized at a very young age, that I had to be disciplined. And that’s one of the big touchstones as a in the military. So that was something that I learned that I was then able to with some work, transition into entrepreneurship when I started EO fire back in 2012. But the reality is I like to go to the roots of the word just like I did with productivity and to produce discipline into disciple you as the individual. You have to be a disciple of your day. And what that means for me is I sit down and I craft a plan. I have a plan that I am then going to execute upon so you set a plan and then execute that plan. And for me, I realized the days that I wasn’t doing that, that I didn’t have a plan that I’m just like, You know what, I’m just gonna let the day kind of come to me. What was I doing? When I was OPA all day long other people’s agenda, I would just be like, you know, I don’t know what to do right now, because I don’t really have a plan. I jump in my inbox. And I spent the whole day just putting on other people’s fires. I jump on Facebook, I spend the whole day responding to people’s comments and questions, which is, by the way, things you have to do at some point during your day. But I wanted to be intentional about it, not just haphazard about it, I wanted to spend the best parts of my day disciplined to producing the right content that matters. So having that plan of action, so for me disciplined, setting up a plan executing step by step.

Host
So between the military and then you’ve been on this sort of personal self journey, why do you think people struggle so much with this? Is there something that you think that people who do push past and they do have the productivity and discipline and focus that that there’s, there’s some reason they break through that barrier?

John Lee Dumas
People struggle, because we’re human, I mean, we’re human, and to err is human, that’s just a phrase that will always be with us. And so that’s why I want to take out as much as possible. The fact that, hey, we are going to air we’re going to draft you know, we’re going to not be accountable to ourselves any given day, that’s just part of it. And what I wanted to do is to give people an anchor that would draw them back in, you know, we’re all going to drift and slide I do that, and I’m the creator of the mastery journal, but the mastery journal is your anchor to draw you back in and and say, Listen, you might have had crappy things happen yesterday. But now you know that you can wake up this morning and follow the steps step by step by step, I’m guiding you, just holding your hand through this process of what is going to make a productive, disciplined and focused day is always there for you. It’s your anchor, when you don’t have the days that you want. Just you know, don’t be too hard on yourself, realize that you’re going to have those days because you’re human, but just know you had that anchor to go back to as therefore you.

Host
The mastery journal is kind of an interesting project because it supports Pencils of Promise. And so can you tell us a little bit about where should we go to learn about it? How does it support Pencils of Promise?

John Lee Dumas
Stuff that really mattered to me was education. I knew that education was a huge part of my life. I’m not talking traditional education. Like I went to college, I went to law school like, that wasn’t what made me a success. What made me successful was self education, but the ability to be educated, and there’s so many people out there that don’t even have access to the best educator in the world, just that Google search bar, you know, or just just somebody that actually cares is going to take them those first few steps. And Pencils of Promise is just doing amazing things around the world. I had Adam Braun on the show now multiple times, and he’s now become a close friends. And I just loved it. His mission was was which was to bring education to developing countries to give the gift of education to those less fortunate. So with the Freedom Journal launch, we partner with Pencils of Promise. And every time we had a funding goal, we wrote a big fat check to Pencils of Promise on behalf of the supporters to build a school in a developing country and we ended up writing 320 $5,000 checks to pencils own amazing what’s you know, you can do with dollars in developing countries when they’re spent in the right manner. And we’re doing the exact same thing with the mastery journal. We’ve partnered with Pencils of Promise, and we just want to keep giving and going from success to significance.

Host
Okay, so my last question, last very last question for you, John, is just what is that thing maybe it’s advice or an area or this thing that just you can never lose sight of because you know, you’ll go off track if you’re not like extremely intentional about it?

John Lee Dumas
Nutrition. Absolutely. Without a doubt nutrition is my Achilles heel. I mean, I’m very healthy, but I have to work really hard at it. You know, I have a personal trainer that I meet three days a week, virtually online. I’m extremely focused on the foods that I put into my body because if I if I slip up and I’m not disciplined with nutrition, everything is going to fall off the tracks. And I mean that like I’ll become overweight, I’ll become unhappy. I’ll become lethargic. I’ll get unenthusiastic like it all starts for me with nutrition because if I’m eating right, I’m feeling right. I’m exercising right everything then starts that domino effect. So that’s huge for me. That’s something that I keep a really sharp eye on.

Host
I love it. Keep crushing it and keep lighting people on fire.

John Lee Dumas
Thank you and come visit me in Puerto Rico!