Written by Fara Rosenzweig

February 3, 2020

One of the biggest challenges marketers and business owners have in common is time. 

There are only so many hours in the day and only so much you can accomplish. Prioritization is essential to succeed, and it goes beyond your most-important list. It’s about how you prioritize. 

Mike Yan, our CEO, sits down with Max Gibbons, Senior Video Marketing Manager to share his insights of prioritization, planning, and goals.

How to Plan Like a Boss 

Max Gibbons: Just as you say, if you really do want to do something, you want to become more educated, you want to gain a hobby, you have to put the time into it.

Mike Yan: That’s what a lot of people do not really realize how important is time. 

MG: It’s the most valuable resource.

MY: It is, but I feel like a lot of people are saying that without really reflecting on that. If you want to wake up earlier, it’s not about setting the morning alarm, it’s about setting the bedtime alarm. How are you going to live your life today to create the states that you need to be in your peak performance tomorrow? And how you’re also managing that it’s not boring or that it’s not creating unnecessary tension. Examine what you need to do and what are the levers that you can pull to actually keep yourself in a somewhat balanced state.

You have to start eliminating the stuff. And you will not be able to learn that third language or learn whatever hobby that you wanted to learn, you got to focus. There is this amount of time, of focused time, that you have to actually do something and where you’re going to put that. And if you’re going to put that somewhere consistently, then you’re going to create some changes in your own life.

MG: How much time do you give yourself to just think about Mike?

MY: I keep a log of all the activities throughout the day with a five-minute resolution.

MG: This whole time block that we’ve been interviewing, you’re just like, lost time?

MY: No, it’s doing the video with Max.

MG: There we go, yeah.

MY: Think about this way. What if life was a sport and what if you wanted to become professional at that sport? What professionals do is they practice and then they would film themselves. They would review the footage and they would make notes and they would try and play the next game or the next time better by correcting the mistakes.

MG: Yeah, so this is your log to circle back and say, “How could I do better?”

MY: It’s an honest look at, what would I want to create, what do I want to achieve, what needs to happen to get there? Having those repeated, honest conversations to polish that understanding, what is it you actually want?

And once you know what that is, then there’s going to be no conflicts within, in terms of like, why should I do this? I hate this, et cetera, et cetera. You don’t hate this. That knowledge actually creates alignment within your actions and within yourself. Every step that you’re making, you know that you are moving towards your goal.

MG: If you have any questions you’d like to post Mike, please leave it in the comments below or post in our Facebook community. We’re always looking there for prompts that we can ask Mike.