Purpose, Passion, Profit, retreat for men.

In this episode, we dive into the concept of productivity through prioritizing your tasks and tackling the hardest things first.

A study from Harvard Business School shows the significance of starting your day with the most challenging tasks to maximize long-term performance and profitability.

Join us as we explore the "4th pillar of productivity" and gain insights on how to slay your dragons and eat that frog for a more productive workday. Stay tuned for valuable tips and strategies to boost your productivity and achieve your goals.

And finally, we come to our 4th pillar of productivity.

Slay your dragons. Or in the words of Brian Tracy, Eat That

Frog. Great little book if you haven't read it. Eat That Frog. Again,

author Brian Tracy. What we wanna focus

on in this, in eat that frog or slay that

dragon, is prioritizing your workday. Well, it's

easy often to start the day with the low hanging fruit, the easy

stuff like email or, you know, checking our social

our business social media so we can, you know, say it's business

stuff. The most productive entrepreneurs focus on

getting their most important work done first.

Mark Twain said, if it's your job to eat a frog, it's best to do

it first thing in the morning. And if it's your job to eat 2 frogs,

it's best to eat the biggest one first. In other words,

what he's saying is tackle the hardest things before you do anything

else. But, how does this stack up in real life? Does it really make

sense to do the hardest things first? I have a couple of

examples for you. 1 from my own experience in in working

or going through 75 hard right at the moment. I'm on only

on, like, day 12, and I've got feels like 70 bazillion days

to go, but we're we're getting there and working on it. And the other

example I have is actually a study that Harvard Business

School released in 2017. So, in

my example, when I'm getting down on the bench press, when

I'm going for it, I can do more weight at

the beginning of the workout than I can as the workout progresses

because I get more tired. I lose strength. I lose

willpower because I'm tired and I've been working out hard. I

can do a lot more at the beginning and by the end,

as I'm trying to get the reps in, I'm down to about half of what

I started out with because I'm trying to get those reps in.

My power is diminished. I am not

as productive at the end as I am at the beginning.

Now, going to the paper that Harvard Business School released, this paper, if you want

to look it up, I I have a link in the show notes, but it's

called task selection and workload. A focus on completing

easy tasks hurts long term performance. The study

was done, in the emergency department of a metropolitan Hospital

and they gathered the data over 24 months between

2,000,6 and 2,007. And this involved over

90 1,000 distinct patient encounters.

This study was done to try to discover how starting with

easier tasks versus the harder ones affected productivity.

And they concluded that completing easier tasks does

create short term sense of satisfaction, but it can negatively

impact your long term productivity. As explained

by the paper, by selecting the easier task, an individual

gets work done quicker and likely feels good doing it

and they call this exploitation. However, by

choosing the harder task, they call this exploration, one

creates an opportunity to learn. Although always

selecting the harder task may not be optimal, if one

continually chooses exploitation or the easier path,

then longer term performance suffers. In other words,

short term victory feels good in the moment and it makes a person feel productive

when they accomplish something. But because they're not pushing themselves to

learn and overcome the harder task, they're limiting their

potential. Okay? And that's the opposite of what we're

trying to do here. We're trying to maximize our potential.

Not only did they find that out, but they found that physicians

who always chose the easier task were actually less

profitable to the hospital to the hospital in the

long run. So what that's saying is you can be more productive

and make more money if you do your harder task first, if you eat the

frog first thing in the morning. Once you know what your

most difficult or complicated tasks are, do your best to take

those on first. Hit them first thing in the morning when you're strongest.

Like myself at the beginning of the workout, I'm pushing a lot more weight than

I am at the end of the workout because I'm stronger at the beginning and

weaker at the end. Even if your difficult tasks don't take you the

longest, they're gonna take a lot more effort. Just like

when I'm working out, I can maybe only get 3 to 5 reps of the

heaviest weight at the beginning. I can't even get

one of those reps at the end of the workout, but I can get

5 to 10 of a much lighter weight, and I can keep

on getting it done. As the day goes on, your ability

to focus diminishes. Your willpower falls apart, and

you begin to, like, putting work off till the next day. It's like, I just

I don't wanna do anymore. I'm done. If you choose the

hardest jobs first, then the hard work's over when you're getting

tired and you're able to finish up the day with your easier work.

That gives you a greater feeling of productivity

because they're easy tasks and you can get them done easier and that gives you

a boost moving into the next day when you're ready to start it

all over again, slaying the dragons, eating the

frog, however you wanna put it. That is the

4th pillar of a productive person.

Now, if you like this little series that I did on the 4 pillars of

productivity, you're gonna love the purpose, passion,

profit retreat that I'm hosting for men in September in

a little town in North Carolina. We're gonna be talking about productivity.

We're gonna be talking about how to live your purpose, find your

passion, and create profit doing work that doesn't suck. We are

becoming better men, better leaders, better husbands, better fathers,

better all around people through this event. And we're gonna go white

water rafting on one of the days too. It's a 3 day event. I'm gonna

drop a link down in the show notes where you can go check it out.

If you have any questions that aren't answered on on the site or questions about

the podcast or if you have a topic you'd like to hear about, send me

an email coach atkennethash.com. Love

to hear from you. Can't wait to see you at the event in

September. Do good work.