The Five Keys of Time Management 1. Create a Habit Machine: Lower the Bar A stable routine is always helpful, which is why having a habit machine is essential for those who are trying to maximize the efficiency with their time. Your habit machine, which is simply a system to help you build positive habits, will help you to begin adding more value to your daily routine. The first step is a little counterintuitive to some: lower the bar. Tell yourself, "I'm going to do this a minimum of one minute today, two minutes a day tomorrow." Set the bar low, but continually raise it to build momentum, which grows and accelerate when you are consistent and persistent. 2. Save 4 Minutes a Day One of the practices that I've instituted into my habit machine is every day I set a goal or an objective to figure out how I can save four minutes a day. Four minutes a day is a magical number for me because I know it represents three full days of productivity each year. Most people are productive for 8 hours or less every day. If you can save 4 minutes every day that is 24 hours of time, which is 3 full days of productivity. I know any positive habit that I can create or any system or process that I can implement that saves me just four minutes a day has a compounding effect on my results. 3. Be a Student of Your Calendar One of the biggest changes in productivity came for me when I started studying my calendar. This isn’t taking a look at what you have on your schedule, there are three areas to focus on: Study the things you have planned for the day. For the tasks that you regularly plan, look to create efficiencies with your habit machine. For example, I have a 5/20 Rule where I try to schedule five-minute phone calls and keep my in-person meetings to twenty minutes, creating situations where the people that I interact with are ready for our interaction and focused. With a predominance of virtual meetings today, instituting something as minorly different as a 4/19 Rule could allow for more production, creating an extremely effective way to save 4 minutes a day, which results in an extra 3 days of productivity during the year. 4. Master Prioritization As you're studying your calendar, you it helps to understand what I call the “Do It Now” rule. There's an old saying, “Ask a busy person to do something for you and you'll be much more likely to get it done.” It goes beyond that, though. You have to evaluate your tasks by urgency and importance in order to determine priority. You do this by analyzing the actuality of the situation or event considering your own personal values, not the urgency perceived by others. 5. Eliminate Distractions What you focus on, or what you pay attention to and give intention to, will create coincidences in your life, whether you want them or not. One example is I was once given the opportunity to drive around at a real track, in a real race car, with a real professional driver. They had cones set up for us to maneuver around and I kept hitting the cones. My driving instructor told me to stop looking at the cones, to which I replied, "Well, I don't want to hit the cones." He told me to look at the road in front of me, focus on where I wanted to go and not where I didn’t want to go. After that, I didn’t hit a single cone. If you're focused on the distractions you face, you're going to put attention and intention on it, eventually receiving the coincidence of the distraction. Pay attention to what you want for yourself and your business, as well as the tasks you need to accomplish in order to get those results. Stay focused and realize that you will hit the cones if all you're looking at is the cones. Tweet me @davidmeltzer your favorite takeaway from today's episode and come ask me questions live every Friday at 11:00 am PST / 2:00 pm EST. Text me at (949) 298-2905 or email me at [email protected] to join! Click here to follow the Road to Revenue playlist on Spotify
No persons identified in this episode.
This episode hasn't been transcribed yet
Help us prioritize this episode for transcription by upvoting it.
Popular episodes get transcribed faster
Other recent transcribed episodes
Transcribed and ready to explore now
#2425 - Ethan Hawke
11 Dec 2025
The Joe Rogan Experience
SpaceX Said to Pursue 2026 IPO
10 Dec 2025
Bloomberg Tech
Don’t Call It a Comeback
10 Dec 2025
Motley Fool Money
Japan Claims AGI, Pentagon Adopts Gemini, and MIT Designs New Medicines
10 Dec 2025
The Daily AI Show
Eric Larsen on the emergence and potential of AI in healthcare
10 Dec 2025
McKinsey on Healthcare
What it will take for AI to scale (energy, compute, talent)
10 Dec 2025
Azeem Azhar's Exponential View