Author, speaker, and serial entrepreneur Kevin Kruse shares advice he extracted from Mark Cuban, the 3-21-0 and 4-D email methods, the importance of making friends with the calendar, the productivity tips supported by Harvard research, taking the "I" out of getting things done, and using time travel to defeat procrastination.

There are writers, and then there are great writers,

and you are about to hear from one of the great writers of our

day, I think, Kevin Kruse, and he's the author of "15 Secrets

Successful People Know About Time Management". So Kevin,

thanks for being here.

I'm really looking forward to that this will be

fun.

Traditionally, you've been more in, like, the workplace

culture space and the leadership space. Why a book on time

management and why now? Like, what caused this?

I'm getting that question a lot because it is a

different subject matter form. You're from, what people know me

for, and this was really a passion project, because I saw

myself the impact of, you know, adopting some of these Extreme

Productivity habits, you know, had it had a tremendous impact

on both my business life, but also my personal life. And, you

know, to put it plainly, I mean, when you know, I'm, like, say, a

reformed serial entrepreneur. And when I was young and dumb in

my 20s and starting my first businesses, you know, I It

wasn't really my fault. I mean, I was kind of lied to. I believe

that it was all about hustle. So I would just outwork everybody.

And in my very first company, I mean, I literally was living

secretly in my one room office, sleeping under the desk and

waking up in the morning, showering at the YMCA, coming

back to the office to put in another, you know, 18 hour day.

And I did that for a year, and and that business crashed and

burned. You know, it showed that it isn't just about how, you

know, working hard, working, you know, every available hour and

the next business did a little better, but didn't do great, and

it was the classic mistake of letting myself get driven by the

never ending to do list. So there's more things to do. So I

would sacrifice sleep to try to get more things off of the to do

list. I would skip meals to get more things done off the to do

list, I was in that, you know, horrible emotional Yo yo, of

working late in the office and feeling guilty that I wasn't

spending time with the wife and kids, feeling stressed that

you're not working on the to do list. So, I mean, I came from a

horrible place of just not understanding how all this stuff

works.

I want to talk about the to do list thing.

This is what gets me more, you know, I hate mail

and trolls because people are so attached to their to do list.

And for the research this book, I didn't just want it to be my

own experiences. You know, I reached out and I interviewed

seven billionaires, Olympic athletes. I even interviewed a

whole bunch of straight A students from Ivy League

universities, always with the question, give me your number

one piece of advice for productivity. Tell me your

secret to time management. Very open ended. And nobody said,

hey, you know, write down a to do list and create a, one, a,

two, you know, b1, b2, you know, to do list. That's old school

technology. You know. The legend is that, you know, Ivy Lee kind

of invented the to do list over 100 years ago, teaching Charles

Schwab and the US deal executives how to run their day

and, you know, back then, and when it's lower time when

organizations had tons of executives and middle managers

and, you know, Secretary, they were held secretaries back then,

you know that that approach probably worked. And for people

who I mean, I'm not saying this in a negative way, but people

who have average responsibilities or an average

career, it can still work today. None of these ultra productive

people I interviewed talked about a to do list. What they're

using instead of a to do list is their calendar, and it's a

subtle difference, but a powerful difference. They're

still writing down, you know, getting it out of their brain,

kind of capturing it into a notebook or somewhere else. Oh,

I've got to do this thing. But they're immediately scheduling

it on their calendar, because the to do list as you know, I

mean, it doesn't have the duration of items on it. So we

tend to do the things that are fast doesn't have any weighted

properties to it. So we do the things that unfortunately, are

the urgent things, instead of the important things. And I

think the to do list really is contributing to our overall

stress levels. We're all running around so overworked and

overwhelmed that a psychologist called the zeigernik effect. It

when our brain knows that there's stuff that we need to

take care of, but there's no plan attached we I think it's

both conscious and unconscious. We're stewing on that. We're

stressing about it. That's why we go home and it's late at

night. I mean, we're so tired, but we're still wired, and we

can't fall asleep. So once it's on a calendar. You just move

that to do list, take all those items and schedule it. When it

gets scheduled, it gets done. And this is what the calendar

key was one of the first things. I just heard it, and we went

through and coded, you know, 300 responses from, you know, these

highly successful people you get, you know, Chris Ducker

saying, I simply put everything on my schedule. That's the

secret. 30 minutes for social media, 45 minutes for email, 30

minutes for quiet time. You know, Dave kirpan of likable

media, he says, I schedule out every 15 minutes of my day.

Shannon Miller, Olympic gymnast, won a bazillion medals. She

says, Every minute of my day is scheduled. So that's the

recurring theme. It's throw away the to do list and live from

your calendar. We all talk about what we value in life, you know,

oh, you ask anybody, oh, yeah, I value, you know, my faith and my

family, my friends, my finances. And yet, if you look at people's

calendars, you can truly see what they value by how they're

investing their time and back most people. But like I was

young and dumb, my calendar, you know, I would and answered. All

those things are important to me. You look at it, and I'm

spending 120 hours a week, just on my startup, just on my

career. And that's not a balanced way, and it's not a way

to be successful in your career either.

You want to know what someone really believes in, look

at their calendar and their checkbook.

Oh, I love that. Yep, those are the those are the

two things.

So one of the people that I know you got to spend some

time with was Mark Cuban. I think everybody wants to know

what, what was Cuban like? What was his thing?

Yeah, you're right. I mean, it would be, there's a

lot of great people in the in the book, but Cubans, the most

famous these days there was always asking that question. And

the interesting thing is, just to set it up. So, you know,

there were seven billionaires, I, you know, interviewed for the

book, and three of the seven, again, it's an open ended

question. Tell me anything that's a key to productivity for

you? Three of the seven, their advice had to do with meetings,

meeting time. So Mark, in his typical, you know, kind of

funny, snarky fashion, he says, Never do meetings unless someone

is writing you a check. So, you know, you can assume it's a

little facetious. I'm sure he has one on ones with his

colleagues, but he's basically saying, you know, meetings are

death. Unless there's money transferring, don't do them. One

of the, you know, early co founders of Facebook, he now his

new company is Asana Dustin Moskovitz. He says that, you

know, meetings again are lethal, and they've established no

meeting Wednesdays. So every Wednesday that's a creative day,

that's a maker day, that's a do it day. That's not a meeting

day. A friend of mine runs ARIA healthcare, which is a hospital

chain up here near Philadelphia. She has no meeting Fridays. I

mean, there it's literally becoming so bad in in

organizations that great leaders are saying, listen, we're going

to just ban those suckers. First of all, people think it's a one

hour meeting. Well, no, if there's 10 people in the room,

first of all, it's a 10 hour meeting. It's not a one hour

meeting. And then it's at the very least, the cost of, you

know, salaries and benefits. But the bigger cost is the value

that those people are providing, taking a salesperson away from

prospecting and into a meeting for, you know, something that's

not as important.

Let's talk about email for just a second.

Yeah, meetings and email are the big complaints,

the big problems. And the first thing that people identified or

shared when it came to email is, you know, they're not leaving

their email window open all day long. They shut off those, those

message notifications, so they're not getting buzzed or

dinged every time there's an inbound email. And, you know,

I've summarized it system. I call 3210, and for me and

everybody can adjust this. But you know, I've seen this work

wonders. Three stands for check your email three times a day, or

process your email three times a day. There's obviously, again,

prototyping ninja that say, Look, do it once a day, you

know, just, just check it once a day, and that's fine. And you

know, the Tim Ferriss followers will have that audit auto

responder go out all the time this day and age. I want to be

responsive. I move fast. So for me, it's like morning, noon and

night. I'm going to check it. I'm going to process it three

times a day. The two one stands for 21 minutes. So when I in

processing my email. It's kind of like a Pomodoro, you know,

I'm setting 21 minutes on that clock, and it's ticking down,

and my goal is to get back to email inbox zero by the time

that ticks to zero. And 21 minutes is not a lot of time.

And it sounds almost silly or corny, like, yeah, what's that

going to do? It is amazing. When you've got that countdown clock,

it's almost like a game, and you just pound down that list, and

you're always going through those, you know, the four ds of

like, can I delete it? Boom, yes. If not, can I delegate it?

You know, can I delegate this? Just forward it to somebody. Can

I do it? Do it right now, you know, touch it once within a few

minutes. Great. If not, then you want to defer it, which means

schedule it. You know, don't, don't leave it in your inbox to

just sit there gathering does. Don't, God forbid, don't add it

to the bottom of your to do list. Click that little button

that in Google Mail, in Gmail, it's, it's the More button, and

then you can turn your email into an event. So if you can't

delete it, delegate it, do it right now, then schedule time

for it right then and there. And I mean, it sounds corny, it's

worked for me, and I'm just getting great feedback from

people who adopted this system. And for some maybe they're going

to check it twice a day. Others, maybe it's four times a day.

Maybe it should be 25 minutes for you instead of 21 minutes

for me, 3210, is just an easy way for me to remember the

system.

So tell me about the Harvard experiment things. What

was that all about?

So as reported in Harvard Business Review, these

two researchers went into companies, started watching what

executives, middle managers were doing, primarily white collar

workers, and they realized that they had much more control over

their tasks than the individual workers thought. So they taught

them to look every morning, to look at their to do list or

their calendar and ask three questions around drop, delegate

or redesign. So for drop, they were trained to ask, How

valuable is this task. What would happen if I dropped it for

delegate? You ask, Am I the only person who can do this task? Who

else might be able to do it and redesign says, How can I achieve

roughly the same outcome, but in less time? Or what would I do if

I only had half the available time to try to get this thing

done? Just by training people to ask those three questions. On

average, people were able to save six hours of desk work each

week and two hours of meeting time. You know, can you just

drop them completely? You know, can you delegate things? It is

so powerful, and people will say, I don't have team members

reporting to me. I can't delegate anything. You know,

delegating to me is just another form of outsourcing. So whether

it's your solopreneur and you're hiring a VA, you're a stay at

home parent and have decided to hire the teenager to mow your

lawn, these are powerful tools. So drop, delegate, redesign

ended up, on average, saving eight hours of time each week.

Long before this book, you know, was even idea. I had a mentor

who was one of the ones who started to teach me the right

way to think about time and productivity. He went on either

an entrepreneur, you know, selling his last company to I

beat him for $1.3 billion and this guy, he was never frazzled.

He walked slowly, you know, he had time for everybody. When he

was with you. He was fully present. And one of the pieces

of advice he gave me is like, when I look at all the things

I'm supposed to get done. He said, You know, most people look

and say, How can I get this thing done? Or how can I get it

done in less time? He says, I take the eye out of it says, How

can this thing get done? And he says, As soon as you talk about,

it's not about, you know, it's just the result. How can I get

this result? Or how can this result occur? How can this

result happen and take yourself even out of it? It opens up a

whole bunch of new possibilities.

Okay, so we're running out of time. So the last question,

procrastination is kind of the enemy of self discipline. You

talk about your idea for the cure to procrastination is time

traveling to defeat your future self.

The Time Travel trick is, is a tool that we can

use when we're finding that we're procrastinating on the

significant items, you know, whether that be, you know,

eating healthy meals or or working out or, you know, moving

that big rock at work. That's going to really be the thing

that's going to lead to our revenue breakthrough. So this is

a strategy that we can deploy to overcome the negative kinds of

procrastination. And it's like this, the psychologists talk

about we have this time dissonance, where we're always

discounting our future selves. And, you know, it's a silly

example, but let's say, you know, I'm always, you know,

struggling with with health and healthy habits. And you know,

every Sunday I go to the grocery store and I say, this is the

week I'm going to get on the wagon. I'm going to eat really

healthy. I'm going to drop a couple pounds, and I spend all

my time in the produce aisle buying lettuce and carrots and

tomatoes. Going to be eating salads every night for dinner.

That's the plan. But the problem is the future version of Kevin

that actually arrives. I mean, he's gonna He's gonna sabotage

my best interest, gonna fight against the Sunday version of

Kevin. So when Wednesday night shows up, and it's seven o'clock

and I stumble into the kitchen and I'm hungry and. Tired, and,

you know, my willpower has been depleted. I'm going to say

what's for dinner. I'm going to open up that fridge. I'm going

to see the now wilting lettuce, because I haven't had any salads

all week. And I'll remember, Oh yeah, I'm supposed to be eating

a salad. But, and then you start, you know, rationalizing,

right? It takes so long to make, at least five minutes to make a

salad. You know, it's cold. I deserve something better. I know

I'll, I'll microwave this one minute frozen burrito because

it's so salty and fatty and cheesy, it's going to be

delicious. That future Kevin, that future self sabotages our

best interest. And whether it's, Hey, I'm going to work out this

afternoon, I'm going to, I'm going to put two hours into the

gym later this afternoon, and then, of course, later this

afternoon, that version of Kevin decides not to so we have to

think about all the ways we're going to sabotage ourselves, and

then come up with strategies now in the present to defeat that.

And this is an extreme example, and kind of funny. You know, I

have a friend. She likes to eat healthy, and I once we were out

at a restaurant and she said, Hey, give me a turkey burger

with no bun and a set of fries. Give me a salad. Okay, that's

fine. They bring it over, and they forgot to, you know, put

the salad down. It was French fries. Now, she could have sent

it back for something, but instead, she opens up the salt

shaker, takes the lid off and dumps the entire salt shaker on

top of the fries, like, what do you what are you doing? And she

said, Oh, I know that in three minutes, her future self, in

three minutes, I'm going to try to eat just one fry, because one

fries not going to hurt me. But then I know in five minutes, I'm

going to say, well, I'll eat two more, and then in 10 minutes,

I'm going to eat all the fries. So I'm going to defeat the three

minute from now version of myself by destroying all the

fries, by covering them up with all this salt. And a less

extreme example is, look, if I say I'm going to work out in the

afternoon or at night, I know all the tricks that the future

version of Kevin's going to do. So instead, I set my alarm early

in the morning. I put the alarm on the other side of the room so

I can't snooze it. I got to get out of bed. And when I get out

of bed, I'm stepping on my workout clothes and sneakers.

First thing I do is do my workout. Even if I try to tell

myself, oh, you know, got a little scratchy throat, it might

be getting a cold, I better go back to bed. Sleeps important

too, you know. No, I'm going to say, look, even if you're not

going to work out today, just get on the treadmill for and

walk for five minutes. You could always walk for five minutes,

and then, as you know, I mean, once you're on for five minutes,

all right, I'll go another five. I'll crank it up a couple more

miles per hour. So whatever the area is that we're struggling,

you know, whether it's writing that book we want to write, you

know, getting losing that weight, you know, banging out

those 50 cold calls, we just need to think about all the ways

we're gonna jeopardize ourselves in the future and come up with

ways to combat those right now.

I love it so Kevin Kruse, Kevin, thanks for what you're

doing, man, we appreciate you.

Appreciate the opportunity to share.