Transcripts
1. Class Introduction: This is an entrepreneurial
life fast pitch course, Fast fun, easy. Let's get started. Hey, how are you? I'm just
taking a few notes in my notebook here on my list of things that I need
to accomplish today. It's been striking
me lately that all of this seems so stressed. We seem so rushed and we just
don't have enough time in our days to do all the things we really feel that
we need to do. And it doesn't seem like
it was always that way. I'm not sure whether that's
reality or perception, but things seem slower
in the old days. But one thing I
know hasn't changed and that is the amount of
time that we have in our day. That's 24 h. It's the same for me.
It's the same for you. It was the same yesterday. It was the same ten years ago, in 100 years ago, and it won't be the same
100 years from now. We're not going to
change that factor. We all would like more,
but we can't get it. So when you have
something like that, that's a finite resource. How do you get the most out of a sitting at the biggest
bang for your buck. You do that by managing it as efficiently as you possibly can. So with natural resources, we try and be as efficient
with our cars and with their homes to
make sure that we use as little
energy as possible. With time. We want to be able to
use it as efficiently as possible to do the things
that we need to do. So we can get through those and get to the things we wanna do. We free up time
for the things we really love to do in our lives. And we do that with time, with organization, with a
time management system. And in this course that's
when I'm going to teach you, I'm going to teach you
the IV lean methods of time management,
which is super-easy. And that's one of the
great things about it. It's not complex, it's easy, so you can easily put
it into fourths and your life very quickly and
have it become a habit. So I'm going to teach
you that method. I'm going to tell you
a little bit about who I believe was, how he came up with a method. And I'm going to teach you
the actual five-step method. And I said it's only five steps. Really easy, simple. And you can learn it like
that. No problem at all. So the objective of the
course is to teach you who Ivy Lee is in
a teacher but his method and then have you
understand it and so you can put it into effect,
into your life. So we're gonna do that all
in 20 min or less because this is an entrepreneurial
life fast pitch course. So why don't we get into the
course right now. Thank you.
2. Who Is This Ivy Lee Guy?: Okay everyone, welcome
back to the course. So using your time more
efficiently, managing it. What does that mean? Well, of course it's
time management, which is a phrase that
all of us have heard. But what does it
really mean and how do we define that and
how do we do it? Which is the big question. And there's probably 1 million
different ways to do it. And what works for me
may not work for you. But what I find is that
the simpler something is, the more likely it is
to work for all of us. Things that are
complex really aren't that easy to enact in our lives. So especially with
time management. And the point is to get
more time out of your day. If we have something
that's really complex and difficult to do, we're
not going to do it. So we're not going to
be ending up managing our time very
efficiently at all. So the simpler something is, the more likely it is to work, the more likely we already
use it, because it's simple. Recently with regards
to time management, I discovered the Ivy Lee
method of time management, which is really easy. There's only a few steps
in anybody can do it, me, you and anybody else. But before we talk about
what the method is, why don't we spend a few moments talking about who Ivy Lee was. So you have a little bit of
background on the person. So I really was a person
born in the late 1800s, died in the mid 1930s. And he was a noted
publicists of his time. He did a lot of work for
the Rockefeller family. One of his things that
he was well known for was creating internal magazines. So if you had a large company
and you wanted a magazine geared towards your employees
in towards your customers. He was somebody who
pioneered that concept which helped employee morale in there for employee
productivity. But one of the other
things he was noted for was the Ivy Lee method
of time management, which is almost a side thing for him beyond the public
relations work that he did in the way he became well known for
it was that in 1918, the famous industrialists,
Charles Schwab, who by the way is not related
to today's stockbroker. I thought they were until I
did some research and realize that there are two
separate people and not at all related. He, Charles Schwab ran the
Bethlehem Steel Company, in which at the time was
the nation's largest, shipped older and the
second-largest steel producer. So clearly a huge, huge
multinational company, conglomerate in Charles
Schwab felt that he needed to get more
productivity not only out of himself but out of
his executive team. He felt there was a lot of
inefficiency in the operation. So he had heard about Ivy Lee. He called Ivy League to
his office for a meeting. They met and Charles Schwab
get right to the point, said, Hey, how can you make me
and us more efficient? And Lee's response
was very simple. Give me 15 min with all of your executives and I can
make them more efficient. In Schwab said That's great. How much is it going to cost me? And I thought this response from Ivy League was very interesting. He said it's not gonna cost
you anything unless it works. If it works several weeks down the road or a
couple of months, send me a check for whatever you think is worth to you and
to your organization. So Schwab arranged the meetings. Ivy Lee met with all the
executives and then left. Several weeks later, he got
a envelope in the mail. There was a check in
there from Charles Schwab for $25,000. And keeping in
mind, this is 1918. So in 1918, 25,000 dollar is worth roughly $500,000 today. So I think that really speaks to how effective Charles Schwab found this method with his employees and with
his executives. He felt it was damaged value there that they became
them much more efficient, that it helps their bottom
line by at least that much and I'm sure
a great deal more. But that's what he
saw the value in the Ivy Lee method
because it was so simple and it worked
so well for them. And as you will see, it is a
super easy, simple method. So anyway, that's
a little bit about who Ivy Lee is and was. Now why don't we talk a
little bit about what the actual Ivy Lee method is. So let's get right
into that now.
3. The Method In 5 Simple Steps: Okay everyone, welcome
back to the course. So in this lesson, let's take a look at the actual steps of
the Ivy League method. And as I mentioned in
the previous section, it is very simple. And that's a great
thing because we don't have to do a whole
bunch of work to enact it. It just requires a little bit
of discipline on your part. And if you're an entrepreneur or wannabe entrepreneur or just a successful business
person in your own right. You've got that
discipline in you. You've already got that. You've got all the tools you
need to successfully manage your time and to use this very simple time
management method from Ivy Lee. So why don't we get into
it and take a look at the five steps that
are involved in this. So step number one is at
the end of each workday, write down five or six of
the most important tasks that you need to accomplish
for the next day. And if you wanna do
this the next morning before you start your
work, you can do that. But preferably as you're
finishing off today's work day, sit down and think about what you need to accomplish
for tomorrow. And this is a really great step. This is a really huge part of managing your time because
what this step is going to force you to do it
was really drilled down and take a look at the things that
are most important. All of us are guilty
of doing a bunch of fluff things that are
just busy work that aren't really necessarily
contributing to getting to the goal
that we have in mind. And again, we all do that. I've done it. You've done it. And sometimes it's just the path of least resistance,
so we do that. But it isn't necessarily
doing the things that we need to really do to
accomplish our goals. With this step, step number one, it's really going
to force you to sit down and to think
with clarity about what are the things
you need to do tomorrow that are important
to achieving your goal? So cleaning up the refrigerator and the employee lounge is
not one of them. Alright? You need to think
about the actual task that things that are important to keep moving along your entrepreneurial journey
to accomplish your goals. So when you're sitting down,
take a look at each day, think Really deeply about what the things are
that you want to accomplish to get
the most out of your day and get that busy work, that fluff work that
really isn't important. Get that off to the
side if you can delegate that out, do so. But make sure you're
really concentrated on the core items that
are important. So five or six core items that you think are the most
important for you to do. Now. How do you keep track
of those things? You can put it on your phone if you want to your computer. I've got this really cool
notebook that I bought from Staples is called
the arc system. What I like about this
system is you can just tear the pages out and
they go right back in. So I'm not destroying the
page by taking it out. So you can put different
types of pages in, take them out, reorganize them. They have pages that
are structured around regular note-taking
or around calendars. You can mix and
match those things. So that's what I use. I like it even though
my handwriting is atrocious and I wish
I could improve it. But I do use
notebooks like this. I find that there
are times when using the phone or using the tablet are great ways to track things. My calendar a lot for regular appointments is
really electronically based. But taking notes, I loved
to sit down and have a notebook in my lap and
take notes like this. So I find this arc system from Staples works really great. There are other companies that make them a few others at least, but this is very affordable. It works very well and
it's convenient because it's staples which
is everywhere. So decide on what
system is going to work for you and then sit down and start enacting this thinking about what you want
to write down for your five or six goals for the following Workday,
that's step number one. Step number two is also
very important and that's prioritize those
five or six tasks. So whatever the most
important one is, you can rejigger it around and put that as the number one goal. And so when you come
in the next day, that's gonna be the
first thing you attack. So take a look at
those 56 tasks. Deciding which one is the most important thing for you to accomplish that
day was gonna give the greatest impact or has
the greatest degree of heat associated with it because it's a hot topic that needs
to be taken care of. Take care of that one first, and then prioritize
all the other tasks. So number 123456, and make sure you do them
in order and get them done, and try and stay
focused on those items. This is another thing
I'm guilty of your guilty of the times
we let ourselves have all these things coming in
at us and they distract us. And it's really difficult today to stay focused
on those things. And it's so easy to
then get off task and to stop what you're
doing and not complete it. And get off task and start going to do a whole
bunch of other things. But that's very inefficient. As best you can prioritize. And then as best you can again, make sure that you really complete that task
started and completed. If you have to be
called a way that's understandable but complete that thing that's
calling you away, come back and complete the task. So that's really important. And then number three, again, begin your work day
with the most important tasks. So prioritize them is
step number two and then begin your work day with
that number one, task. Number one is write down
the five or six goals and number two is prioritized
them, number three, begin each workday
with task number one, the one that's most important, and then see that
through to completion. Step number four is. Checkoff your tasks
as you complete them. You can check them off. You can use a highlighter if you want to
strike through them. If you're using something,
a time management system on your phone that has a
check mark capability. You can do that. Whatever you're doing. It works for you. I loved to a strike
through things with the, with a highlighter because it just looks like accomplishment. So this is a really
important step because you do want to have that
feeling of accomplishment. You want to feel like
you're getting things done, you're achieving your goals. So do something to make sure you're seeing
those things checked off. So at the end of the
day you can look at that list and see them for me. It's all the things that are highlighted through
on that page. If it's going to be
checkmarks next to the items on your
phone or your desktop. Whatever it is you're doing. You want to be able to
sit back and say, Hey, I did all those things and
see that accomplishment. So don't just let
it be that it's mentally in there that
you completed it, but actually have a physical representation that
you've completed this task by doing
something like checking it off or
highlighting it. Now one important
thing here is if you don't complete
something that day, you need a shifted over to the next day and that's gonna
be the number one tasks. So if you have five things on your list, you complete four. You need to still
complete that thing. So shifted over to
tomorrow's lists, and that's gonna be
the number one task. So it's okay if you
don't finish something, we're not going to finish all
the items every single day. Just shift them over, prioritize those tasks and
the top of the next day, get through them
and then move on to the other things you
have for that day. And then the fifth step
is rinse and repeat. We all know that when you repeat things and you do things
constantly, they become a habit. I've read so many times
that if you do something every day for 30 days,
it becomes a habit. I think there's variable
for different people depending on what it is, but I think there's a
lot of truth to that. The more you do it, the more likely you
are to keep doing. If you do it one day and
you stop, it's not a habit. But if you do it for 30
days or 40 days or 60 days, it does become a habit. And the other thing with
that is that when you do something that's new,
it's uncomfortable. We don't necessarily
know how to do it. So we are less likely to do it. We have a little
bit more resistance internally to doing it. But after a few weeks,
a couple of months, something that was foreign
to us in difficult now becomes quite familiar
to us in very easy, when something's easy,
That's than we do. And that's the great thing
about this method is it's not going to take too much time
for it to become easy. And therefore, you're
gonna be enacting it every day in your personal
and your business life. So rinse and repeat,
make sure you do it every day if
you want to do it five days a week with your business and then
leave the weekends off. That's fine. If you want to have a mix here where you're doing seven days a week and have both personal and professional goals in there. That's fine to do
whatever works for you, take this method and then personalize it
a little bit as need be to make it work for
you as best as possible. So there will be a download
with all the steps on it, but let's just go over it again. Number one is at the
end of each workday, write down the five or
six most important tasks you want to accomplish
the next day. Number two is
prioritize that list. So whatever is the
most important is number one, least important? Number five, number six. Number three is begin each workday with the most
important task and then work systematically
through that list until you get to the end. Number four is check-off
the work as you do it. So make some sort of physical representations
so you can look back and be proud of what you've accomplished throughout
the course of the day. That's a really good mental step to help you feel like
you've done something. And then number five
is rinse and repeat, just do it, do it, do it, and get used to
it, and make it a part of your personal
and professional life. And I think it will pay
really big dividends. Alright, so that's it. Why don't we just move on now to the class project is, again, I'll have a download
in this class with all these steps on
it and a little bit of background about Ivy Lee. So you can download that
and take a look at it. And that's it. Let's take a
look at the class projects. Thanks.
4. Course Project and Conclusion: Well I write congratulations, you made it to the
end of the course. The fact that you're here is actually a really great thing. It's a good predictor for your success because
people who are successful are people who commit to something
and see it through. So you're gonna be
really good with your time management because
time management is really about committing to something on your list and then seeing
it through to completion. So the fact that you're here, you made to the end of
the course is a really, really good omen
for your success. So congratulations. So why don't we talk for
a few moments about what the class project is
before we wrap up here, what I want you to
do as described in the description
of the course, is make up your first
five or six task list of things you would like to do. So write it out however
you would like. Again, there's a
lot of creativity, expressiveness you can
enact here if you would like to make up that list. And then I wanted to have you do at least a couple
of things and show us how you're going
to be tracking your progress and
checking things off. So if you want to put a
check mark next to it, you can if you want to
strike through what you can, if you want to highlight it
as I do, you can do that. Just show us what
you're gonna be doing and how you're
gonna be doing it, and how you're going to
track your progress. I can't wait to see it. If you want to be as
artistic as you want to be. If you want to put
pictures on there, if you want to put symbols, whatever you wanna do to
make the list something that you like looking at
and you want to look at. And so therefore you
use go ahead and do it. I can't wait to see what
you guys come up with. I'll be putting one
up there as well. Mine will be fairly basic
because that's what I do. I use sort of business
looking things. But if you want to be creative
with flowers, graphics, pictures, emojis, whatever it
is you wanna do, go for it. If you want to include a
sentence or two on why you think this time management system is really going to work well for you or what you like about it. Feel free to go ahead
and do that too. All right. So do that and upload it.
I can't wait to see it. If you guys have any questions, you can use the class
discussion board to do that. If you have any questions beyond this course for me or things
you'd like to see me teach, please don't hesitate
to reach out to me. I love to hear your feedback and things you'd like to learn. If it's something
I can teach you, I will absolutely do so. Now that we've
wrapped, wrapping up, what I wanna do is
finish off with a quote. I'll be finishing
my courses from here on out with
quotes that I think are inspirational and pertinent to the things that
I just taught you. So today's quote is
from Goldeneye year. She's the Foreign Prime
Minister of Israel. And the quote is quote, I must govern the clock, not be governed by it. Quote, I must govern the clock
and not be governed by it. In other words, I must
control my time and what I do not have the time and
the things control me. If you're not familiar with goldmine here, you
should look her up. She was an extremely
powerful and forceful figure in the history of Israel
and really in the world. And I think when you
see or if you're not familiar with, you'll say, Well, really she was the
Prime Minister of Israel. She was again, a very
powerful personality. And once you learn
about and you'll see why she was the Prime
Minister of Israel. Alright, so that's it. That's the chorus again.
Thank you for being here. I can't wait to see your
projects and I can't wait to see you in the next
course. Thank you.
Ken Howell, Entrepreneur
