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.

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.

I'm fired up to be here. I'm just happy to be

alive.

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?

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

You have a focus time and a refresh time. What's the

concept with focus time and refresh time?

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.

We've been talking a little bit about productivity,

but you also have a discipline score. How do you classify that?

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.

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?

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.

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?

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.

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?

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.

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

fire.

Thank you and come visit me in Puerto Rico!