Episode Highlights

• Scheduling your day according to your energy and ultradian rhythms
• The importance of “margins”
• Creating an ideal daily calendar
• The basics of time blocking and why it’s important according to neuroscience
• Asking yourself, “Can this wait without consequences?”
• Working on low value tasks in batches rather than sporadically as they “come up”

About Guest

Amber De La Garza is The Productivity Specialist! Amber is a sought-after coach, trainer, speaker, writer, host of the Productivity Straight Talk podcast, and creator of S.T.O.P.! The Entrepreneur’s Success Solution. She helps driven entrepreneurs execute actionable solutions to maximize profits, reduce stress, and make time for what matters most!

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Transcript

Zack Arnold: I’m here today with Amber De La Garza, who is a productivity specialist, and she’s specifically sought after for coaching, training, speaking, writing, and she’s also the host of the Productivity Straight Talk podcast. Dear Lord, are you and I going to geek out today? I am so excited to have you on my show.

Amber De La Garza: Oh, it’s my pleasure. These are my favorite types of conversations to have with other productivity experts, where we can geek out. So, I think your listeners are in for a treat to hear us kind of give them some value.

Zack Arnold: Yes, I couldn’t agree more. And tell me, if you can relate to this, you’re maybe having lunch with colleagues or friends or people that aren’t specifically in this space, and they throw out something like, oh yeah, I tried this new productivity app, or I’m having a really hard time focusing during the day, and it takes every core of your being to not jump in and completely steal the conversation for two hours and walk them through an entire productivity workflow. Does that feel relatively familiar to you?

Amber De La Garza: Absolutely, there’s so many times where I’m like, just keep your mouth shut, just keep your mouth shut, because, because this is going to go in a totally different direction. Have I? Because you can’t just say like one thing, you have to explain it in its context, and why that may be a good idea, or not a good idea, or what they need to be thinking of, and it’s never a short conversation.

Zack Arnold: Yep, it’s like somebody’s like, “Yeah, so I’ve got this to-do list, you know, I’m doing it on pen and paper, just working through it in order, and I’m just biting my teeth right.

Amber De La Garza: Yeah,

Zack Arnold: So the reason I bring that up is because this is finally my chance to say all the things that I can’t say in those lunches or their social situations, so anybody that’s like, well, what would you really say if you just wanted to blurt out every possible important thing about the basics of productivity and time management, what would you say that’s kind of what this is.

Amber De La Garza: Oh my gosh, I’ve never, I’ve never heard it that way, but I guess that’s why I started my podcast, so that I can go and rant about the things that I believe about productivity.

Zack Arnold: Yep, that’s exactly where I started mine. It wasn’t so much about productivity, it was just more about mental and physical health in the creative industries, like I was dealing with all kinds of depression and burnout, and people were having me on their podcast to talk about film editing, they say, “What else do you want to talk about? I want to talk about health and all this other stuff. Like, no, we just want you to talk about editing and be like, “Fine, I’m going to do my own podcast. But here, I do like three, four, or five episodes, get it out of my system. Five years and 150 episodes later, I still can’t shut up.

Amber De La Garza: Oh my goodness, there you found your passion. That’s awesome.

Zack Arnold: Exactly, so the way that I want this conversation to go, and for anybody listening, this is really going to be about the foundation of time management and time blocking. So, basically, this is going to kind of be everything you ever wanted to know about time blocking and planning, but you were afraid to ask. So, where I want to start is the basics for anybody that’s never even heard this concept, and for anybody that’s ever listened to this podcast, or read my stuff. Dear Lord, if they heard this concept, but let’s pretend they haven’t. If I were to say to somebody, oh, if you’re having trouble staying focused on something, or getting your tasks done during the day, or during the week, or you just feel like you always have these things that you never get done that you keep putting off, you should try this thing called time blocking. What is that,

Amber De La Garza: Right? Okay, so I define time blocking as setting small goals for specific times on your schedule, and it’s being very purposeful. So, when you block out specific time on your calendar, you are setting an intention with what is going to be accomplished during that time, kind of like budgeting, right? Like, if you had a financial budget, you have all this money coming in, your budget is going to tell you how you’re going to allocate your resources of money. Your calendar should be an allocation of the resource of your time,

Zack Arnold: And I love the way that you put that, and the word that I want to pull out there, that’s more important than anything else, and you can talk about apps and all these things that you can connect and automation and everything else. To me, the foundation of productivity is intention. If you’re intentional about whatever task it is that you’re about to do, and you’re confident that that task is going to move you forwards towards whatever goal you’ve set, it’s easy to get stuff done, and it’s very difficult to procrastinate, because it all makes sense, but the problem is that most people are not intentional about the things that they’re doing, and they’re more in reaction mode.

Amber De La Garza: That is correct, I think that a lot of stress and overwhelm comes from living in the reaction to our days, to events happening, to clients, to just all these external factors, when we can find a lot of peace, if we can flip that and be much more proactive in our intentions on how we’re investing our time.

Zack Arnold: Well, so for most people, though, they’re thinking, yeah, but you don’t get it, like there’s so many things going on in my day and I’m so busy and I just. I have to do multiple things at once to get through it, like I’ve got to be checking my email and responding to text messages, and yeah, I’ve got to write this thing or edit the scene, or whatever the creative task might be, but I’m just better at multitasking, right? So, what do you think about that?

Amber De La Garza: I didn’t even ask if you have an explicit episode, so I’ll say I call BS on that. You are not special, and if you’re listening to this, we all have 1000 things that we’re doing. We all wear multiple hats, both personally and professionally. And as long as you keep believing the story that you have to multitask, or you have to do all the things at the same time, you are going to live out that reality.

Zack Arnold: One of the biggest side effects of trying to do that all day long is anxiety and stress, and you know, people just don’t realize it, just becomes part of who they are, and they.. it’s.. I talked about this analogy in my previous podcast that I just did with Cal Newport, where you have this general low-level anxiety that’s kind of like when you put a watch on, and at first you feel the watch on your wrist, but as the day goes on and the week goes on, you don’t even know that watch is there, but suddenly you might take it off and there’s a big red mark, and you’re like, damn, that was really tight, that hurts, right?

Amber De La Garza: Yes,

Zack Arnold: And I feel like low-level anxiety during the day because of all these things going on is kind of the same, where you don’t feel it until you relieve it, and you’re like, oh my god, I can’t believe how anxious I’ve always been.

Amber De La Garza: Oh my gosh, that is such a good example. Here’s.. I would have actually had, if you met me, maybe like 10 years ago, I would have absolutely had multitasking on my resume, like it was a.. it was seen as a very good thing, like someone that can handle more than one thing at one time. And what I know to be true is that we are not capable of doing more than one thing well, and my definition of productivity, and I’ll just invite your listeners, for at least the duration of this episode, is investing your best time into your best activities, and so if we want to be truly effective and efficient and do our best on our best activities, we can’t divide that and try and do more than one thing at one time. I even have the tendency now with all the reading I’ve done and research I’ve done and read fall back to multitasking at times, and the way that I catch myself is not the fact that it’s so blatantly obvious that I have multiple tabs open or multiple things in front of me. What catches my attention is the way that I feel, and so when I tune into feeling that anxiety or unease, I will literally take a breath and take kind of a step back and look around, and like I did it again. I’m trying to do more than one thing at one time, and so it’s the result of that stress that triggers me to look around to say, oh, you’re trying to multitask again.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, and I fall into the same trap as well, where I’m far from perfect, and I can talk about time blocks and explain advanced time blocking strategies, and talk about calendar management, and all this other stuff. But then all of a sudden I’m like, oh, hey, I just checked my Facebook comments, oh, I just checked an email, oh, I’m trying to write this. Ah, damn it. How did I? Why? How did this happen, right? And it seems to be our tendency, even though on a neurological level, and they’ve proven this, that the human brain is just not capable of doing multiple tasks at once. And I don’t remember the exact number, so I don’t want anybody to quote me. I don’t have the scientific studies in front of me, but I believe the number is roughly four to 5% of people that are actually capable of multitasking, so they’re clearly the outliers, but the vast majority of people were not multitasking, we’re just very quickly switching from one single task to another single task, but as we’re talking about already, that comes at a tremendous cost, not only to your emotional health, but your ability to stay focused as well.

Amber De La Garza: Yes, that’s absolutely correct. I think that time blocking is a great tool to practice the art of not multitasking by setting intentions. I think that we go back to multitasking when we don’t really take the time to prioritize what we need to be focusing on. It’s easier to feel like, oh, I’m moving a little bit of a lot of things forward instead of having the hard facts of nope, this needs my attention first, this needs my attention second, but that will always serve us best, because then we have our full focus and attention on completing, say, project A or task A, and then moving to project or task,

Zack Arnold: Well, also it helps to understand what takes true priority, because I think that we just become trapped in this thing called the theater of work, where we feel like if we’re spinning our wheels all day long, every single second that somebody comes by our door, we’re super busy, we’re banging away at the keyboard, there’s smoke coming out of our laptop, and at the end of the day, we’re exhausted. Well, clearly we were doing everything we could, but then all of a sudden, if you force somebody to really review their day or their week, and they’re like, “Oh, I actually didn’t do much of anything, that’s kind of embarrassing,

Amber De La Garza: Right? Right? You know, I have a personal belief, and this is how I work with my clients, and what I share. Is I don’t believe that we are meant to be productive all day every day, and some people are like, what are you talking about? Like, that would make me a great employee or a great CEO or a great entrepreneur. Like, I am productive all day, every day. I think that we have to be ruthless with what are actually our most productive activities, because everything we do is not our most productive activities, and again, with the definition of investing your best time into your best activities, it is your responsibility to identify the activities that are going to move the needle, meaning propel you towards your goal, and this can lay over your, your role in your company, this could be you as a CEO, and in your business, but this can also be like health goals, right, or relationship goals. I have a fill in the blank of what my highest and best activity is for each of the goals in my life, both personally and professionally. So, when you’re really clear about that, it’s, it’s true, you are not going to be productive all day, every day, if you really hold those few activities sacred.

Zack Arnold: My God, I could not agree with you more. This is something that I try to preach to everyone all the time, is they think, “Oh my god, you just must just get so much done, and you have all this energy, and I’m like, “Yeah, that’s because I’m budgeting my energy, and it’s only for about five or six hours a day that I am truly focused and truly productive, but I’m so laser sharp focused and productive that the rest of the day I just kind of do whatever I want. I socialize with people, I check emails, I take a lot of walking breaks, and I use that to think. And, like, for example, on the project that I just finished, I was working on the TV show Cobra Kai, and it was a really intense, difficult show to work on very high profile, very difficult calendar and deadlines, and I was there, and the creators of the show are listening, maybe they shouldn’t hear this, but I was there by far the least of anybody else. I used to make it a rule that I was the first in and the last out, and now my rule is last in, first out. So I put in by far the least amount of hours, and I didn’t get any overtime, no weekends, but that allowed me to play the long game and run the marathon rather than trying to do these sprints every single day and burning myself out.

Amber De La Garza: Yeah, I think that that is so smart when you’re able to flip that right and really see that, like when you said you took walking breaks, or you know, for me it’s not uncommon that I take my lunch and I work from home, so I’ll take my lunch, and I’m watching Netflix, like garbage TV, like I have to clear my head, get out of the doing and the working and the like real thinking, because that’s like my high value activity is thinking and creating, so I have to like step away from that, so that when I step back in, I’m able to laser focus on those types of activities, and you know, I don’t think that we should judge, like, how people show up as their best selves to be most productive, that is a big thing that I love to talk about, is that, you know, for you, Zack, you may find that you like, you know, quiet and uninterrupted time, right, like, meaning, like, super, super quiet, no distraction, and others are like, ‘Oh my gosh, like that quietness makes me want to just distract myself. And so maybe they would excel better in, like, a coffee shop or a noisy environment. So I think it’s our job to always find, like, not just when our most productive times are, and be laser focused, but how are we most productive?

Zack Arnold: Yeah, I couldn’t agree with that more. And, like, I am the kind of person that I need absolute solitude and silence, and then I put on a pair of noise cancelation headphones, and I have either some binaural beat or I have some very continuous instrumental music that it’s.. it’s almost like not listening to real music, it’s just these sounds and these tones that gets me in the zone. I could never ever go to a coffee shop and get anything productive done, because that would drive me crazy. But I don’t fault people that do that, because their brains are wired differently than me. I need a very specific kind of white noise. They need a very specific kind of white noise, which is why you can actually buy apps now, where all they do is play the sound of coffee shops, because that helps people focus.

Amber De La Garza: Yeah, I was that person, like before I started my business. I worked in corporate, and I was in management, so you know every good manager has an open door policy. You have all the cubicles outside of your office. So when I came to start my business, I was like, oh, I bet this is going to be amazing. It’s like quiet, uninterrupted, distraction-free. I was literally like cussing the birds out my window. I’m like, are you okay? I make like everything distracted me, even the birds chirping, the mailman that drove by. So I actually, anytime I wasn’t with a client, I was sitting in a coffee shop the first year and a half of my business. Now this was before I was like way ahead of my time, because now, like you said, there’s these apps that can imitate me in a coffee shop, but I actually drove to a coffee shop on a daily basis to try and create the environment that I worked best

Zack Arnold: Well, and environments are definitely something that we can go into even a little bit more later, but what I want to do now is I want to hone into the idea of time blocking 101 So, if somebody’s listening to this, and they’re saying, “Oh, you know what, I am kind of scattered and all over the place, and I am kind of reacting to everything that’s coming in. I love this idea, but where do I start? So, what are the basic fundamental steps of somebody that wants to start the practice of time blocking? How do they do? How long should it be? Are there apps you recommend? Like, I definitely have my favorites, but I want to get an idea of where you would start somebody.

Amber De La Garza: Okay, excellent. Well, first of all, do not be afraid of time blocked if you are a creative and you like to be free flowing and go with, you know, when you have the mood or the feeling to get creative, right? I think that many people avoid time blocking because they think it’s too structured, too rigid and all of these types of things, and I’m going to tell you that when you have a time block schedule that works for you, you will find the most freedom you probably ever had. And so I’m going to invite everybody to give this a try. And then, second, there’s actually two types of time blocking, so we are going to go into detail on the ideal week time blocking, and I have steps to create that, but another way to time block that I think would be worth telling our listeners about, Zack, is when we have specific tasks on our task list and pulling those off and allocating specific time on your calendar, so that to me is one way of time blocking that works really, really well, is you’re not just saying, “Oh, I’m getting these three things done today, it’s I’m getting thing number one done between 10 and 1130 and I’m getting thing number two done at two for 30 minutes, and so it’s forcing you to look at those three high-value activities, allocating a particular time to get that activity done, and then putting it on your calendar for the time slot that you, you’ve allocated.

Zack Arnold: Okay, I’m pretty convinced at this point that you and I are separated at birth. This is terrifying. If this, if this were reverse podcast, and I were being interviewed, and you were the host,

Amber De La Garza: Yes,

Zack Arnold: I would have said the exact same thing to anybody that’s listening. You and I have never met before.

Amber De La Garza: No,

Zack Arnold: Sent me one email four months ago saying I’d love to be in your podcast, and I said sure, that’s it.

Amber De La Garza: That is it

Zack Arnold: I would have answered pretty much identically the same way. And one of the things I want to do later, I was actually going to share what I call my ideal weekly calendar that I had built out, I was going to screen share with you, talk through a little bit of it, and then share a screenshot of that on the show notes, so people can actually see what it is that we’re looking at, and I’ve never talked to anybody that builds an ideal weekly calendar, that’s terrifying, like I can’t believe that, that’s so crazy.

Amber De La Garza: Okay, this is awesome. Okay, so what this does, though, both ways of creating your, your time block, actually, it actually made there’s there’s a law called Parkinson’s Law, and Parkinson’s Law says that tasks expand the amount of time given, and so what we’re doing is creating boundaries to each task, meaning if you don’t have boundaries to a particular task that should take 30 minutes, that’s when we let distractions or interruptions, or checking our email, or or letting somebody walk by our desk, and we green light them, like making eye contact, like, yep, come on in, because we don’t have in our mind like a specific time that task should get done, when we are so clear with the intention, again, we’re bringing this full circle to intention, you’re getting this task done, and you’re getting it done in 30 minutes. That is the time that you are going to be distraction, interruption free. And let me explain the difference between distraction and interruption. Interruptions is other people interrupting you. Okay, distractions, I define as when we self-destruct. So, what that means is we are, you know, working, working, and we’re like, oh, I’m getting bored with this task. Let me check Facebook, let me check Instagram, let me check my email. So we are always fighting external interruptions and distractions and internal interruptions and distractions when we are setting these intentions for the specific amount of time it’s you’re training yourself for that specific amount of time to be extremely focused and distraction free, so if you do that a few times a day, say for these three key activities, then the rest of the day it’s okay, like you’re going to find yourself multitasking or people coming into your office or putting out a fire, those are very real things in everyone’s day. What we want to do is hold these blocks of time sacred.

Zack Arnold: Well, in the couple of words that you threw out there that I think are really important are the words training and practicing, because people believe that whether or not they can focus is a genetically inherited trait. They think, well, I’m just not somebody that can focus, I’m so add right, and they don’t realize that it’s a practice, it’s something that you train, and to me, when I talk to my private coaching clients, and it’s funny that you talk about this idea of these creative, free-flowing individuals that don’t like the time block. I had a client that came to me and said the same thing, and I actually did a podcast interview with her recently, so for anybody. You listening, it’s my episode with Moni Salazar, and I will put a link to that in the show notes, but she came to me saying, “Oh, I could never time block, and I’m just a free spirit, and I just kind of do things when I’m inspired to do them, and I said, “That’s great, I’m the same way, I’m totally a free spirit, I just happen to get my inspiration at 10am every morning because I force myself to be inspired and creative, because that’s what my time block is, and she came back to me after a couple of months of working with her and said, “Oh my god, I feel so much freer now because of the structure and the schedule, which is what you mentioned. That having been said, going back to what I was talking about, where this is like a genetically inherited trait, the response that I give to people is, if I handed you a guitar, would you immediately be able to play it? You say, well, no, of course not. Well, that doesn’t mean you were born crappy at playing the guitar, because you haven’t had practice, you haven’t trained yourself to do it, and focus is exactly the same thing. And my belief is that if you’re going to learn how to be a focus and productivity machine, just like somebody that becomes great at the guitar or the piano or anything else, the very first place to start is one single time block, so before we go into this big macro idea of ideal weekly calendars and all the stuff that’s freaking all the creative people out right now, let’s go to the micro and talk about one time block and what that looks like. How long should I set it, and what should I, and what should I not be doing?

Amber De La Garza: I am so glad you asked that question, because I think that we throw the term around time blocking and nobody actually tells anybody what does that actually look like. So to answer your question, first of all, it’s ideal to have longer blocks of time, like we all want to be our most productive selves for longer durations of the day, but just like it’s january 1, and we don’t want to go on crash diets that are not going to sustain the test of time. This is the same thing for time blocking, and so my recommendation all the time is to start with smaller blocks of time on a consistent basis and build up to it. And this is completely tying into what you were saying, Zack, is that this, you aren’t either born with, you know, time management skills or being productive or not, this is a skill set that needs to be exercised and built upon, and that exercise is doing, scheduling your time blocks, doing them, and then building up to it. I am, it sounds like you work out a lot and have talked a lot about that, and like the benefits of it, but you’re not going to get me on a treadmill running 10 miles today, I would have to create a plan and build up to that to get there, and the same thing is true for time blocking.

Zack Arnold: Yep, I could not agree with that more. And if you jumped into my website, or my podcast, or my blog at all, then you know that I’ve been training for American Ninja Warrior for a little bit over the last year, and when I started, I was not in great shape. I’m almost 40, I’ve got two kids, and I spend 10 to 12 hours a day behind the computer, so I’m not exactly the perfect avatar for that form of sport. And I said, you know what, it’s not a matter of I’m going to go run a course tomorrow morning on january 2. It was, what can I do? Where can I start? And for me, it was, oh, you know what, my hips are really immobile, so let’s start working on hip mobility and just getting in a little bit of cardio, and let’s just get a baseline of where I am now, and with time blocking, it’s no different. So, what I tell people, and you can expound upon this if you want to, but I say just try it once, just try and shut everything off in your life for like 25 minutes, and if that’s terribly painful, try 15, you know, but you have to build in these small increments until you start to get the feel for what it’s like to actually allow your brain to get in the zone.

Amber De La Garza: I agree, and Zack, I think it’s worth saying too. So, for me, I think we all.. well, I’ll tell you, my sweet spot is about 90 minutes. I think we all have a different sweet spot because we’re all different, so you may never find. you may try to stretch that to 45 minutes, and then realize, you know what, my sweet spot is right at 30 minutes. It’s worth stretching yourself to figure that out. And then some people are like, you know what, I’m going to do the, you know, 25 minutes, five minute break, 25 minutes, five minute break. For me, that does not work at all. I, the kind of work that I do, I need to be like in it, like focus for long, and get into my rhythm, and go into deep work, and I can’t do that in 25 minutes. So I have built myself up to, you know, my sweet spot is 90 minutes, and then I get up and I take a break, or I change activities, and then you’ll see another hour or 90 minute slot on my time later in the day.

Zack Arnold: Well, as you probably already know, because it seems like you do a lot of the same research and go to a lot of the same blogs and podcasts and whatnot, there is actually a scientific sweet spot, and I’m not saying it’s the number for everybody, but they have done a fairly extensive amount of research, and technically the sweet spot is 52 on and 17 off, and I will put a link in the show notes to that research, is something that I’ve talked about quite a bit in the past, and my sweet spot is fairly close to that. I find that anything less than 50 to 60 minutes isn’t enough for me, because I’ve gotten to the point where, like you, I don’t quite go for 90 minutes, I’ll generally end up in the 60 to 70 range, but the way that I will block out a single block, and the way it is for me now, is I. Know, and this is something I want to go into more as well, so I’m kind of tipping off the next area that I want to go. Is that for me the most productive, focused version of me is from about nine in the morning to 1pm Different times of the day, I’m not going to be quite as productive, and we’ll go more into that. So I will just put a three or a four hour time block in, but that doesn’t mean that I’m going for four hours straight. It means that for these four hours I’m doing this specific project, and I maybe have broken it down into specific one hour blocks, but I have this intention in mind that it’s I’m building this lesson in the course, or I’m writing this blog post, or whatever it might be, whatever high value creative activity is going to move me forwards, but I also know that there are going to be breaks in there that are going to be 10 to 15 minutes long, where I go take a quick walk, or I just go to the bathroom, or I do a couple of pull-ups, or whatever it is, but I’m still, I’m not completely allowing myself to get out of the zone, so I’m still kind of thinking about what I’m doing, but I’m stepping away from the task, versus well, for those 15 minutes I’m going to go check Facebook and check email, and whatever it is, so it’s kind of like I have this master block of four hours, but within it there are many blocks with breaks, but I don’t allow myself to really reconnect to the outside world. So, do you have anything similar?

Amber De La Garza: Well, I have theme days, I would say that’s probably similar in that I have project days, I have podcasting days, and there’s huge benefits to that, and that is actually a great strategy for, you know, creating either your ideal week or even identifying things on your task list, and then batching them together, because it takes a lot less energy to stay in the same zone that it takes, like, to do podcast interviews or your creative work, right, because if you would have blocked out one hour for creative work, one hour for lead gen, one hour for working on your podcast. There is some inconsistency there, and it takes a lot of energy to switch from one to the other. And so I love that you’re blocking out the four hours and then having small breaks in between. I do the same by theming my days and trying to stack similar tasks together on specific days of the week.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, I agree with that, and that’s something that I do as well, where those four hours are going to be the exact same project, but I also will have themes where, for example, in general, I try to schedule podcast interviews either later in the evening when I know I don’t need to be in the middle of a creative task, or on Fridays, when I know that my tank will be relatively empty, and the thought of digging in for four hours to write something isn’t going to happen, but I can definitely carry a fun conversation like this, so I will have those themes throughout the week as well. But one of the things that you mentioned that I think is really, really important to get into next, and you’re another one of those people out there, this again is a whole switch to birth thing, where I don’t feel like enough people in the productivity world, or just in general, are talking about energy management. Everybody talks about time management, but they’re not talking about how do I blend time management and energy management together, and that’s kind of what we’re alluding to, is that people have these things called ultradian rhythms, and everybody’s heard of the circadian rhythm, but we also have an ultradian rhythm that happens throughout the day, and for me, kind of the master key that unlocked my brain and said, “Oh my god, I kind of finally figured out how I work and now I can get more done was unlocking my ultradian rhythm. So, do you want to talk a little bit more about energy management versus time management throughout the day and the week.

Amber De La Garza: I would love to, so for me, what unlocked it for me, and what I talked to my clients about once I figured it out for me. And I think, like you, like once you figure it out, maybe you’re a little different, you realize you’re not different, it could probably help other people. Is that I realized that certain tasks give me energy, and certain tasks deplete my energy, and I think that this is very much a personality. I think that it’s also where your natural talents, so if I’m doing something that I’m naturally talented at, it gives me energy, and it’s not – it doesn’t take as much energy to do the thing. Okay, so what I realized is that I am a people person. I can be exhausted, like I could be at the pit of my day, which is right now between like two to 330 I naturally have very low energy. If I was ever to put any kind of solo work during that time of my day, I can guarantee I’ll negotiate my way out of it. If I do it, it’s going to take way longer, and it’s depleting my energy, because content creation for me in a silo is very energy depleting. With that being said, I could be exhausted. I get on an interview like this, or a training, or a coaching session with a client, and I am on like 100% on high energy, and then I take that high energy from working with people, and then I go do something that takes my energy, so my energy management is that I am really, really clear with what takes my energy and what feeds me, and people feed me, so I don’t meet with people generally during the morning, because I already have energy, it’s the early part. Of my day I’m not depleted yet, so I put that energy into my focused work. When I’m already the energy, I reach out and I schedule, and so on. My calendar, you’ll always see appointments in the afternoon, because that will fuel my energy to keep going the rest of the day, and it’s the best use of my time during those periods of the day.

Zack Arnold: Well, you just killed my separated at birth theory, because I am an extreme introvert, so for me being around people just completely is the biggest giant energy suck ever. So I found a little bit divergent, but what’s funny is that I have changed the way that I schedule my week now, and like I said, we’ll dive a little bit deeper into this ideal weekly calendar, but what I found is that even though I’m not really a people person, and I’m not terribly social, if I’m in a social situation, I’ve learned how to become very good at it. So people don’t even believe me when I say that I’m antisocial and introverted, but that’s my nature, is that I love to be alone, I love to do solitary work, put on the music, shut the door. I could do that for days on end, and I would feel fantastic when I was done. However, what I’ve discovered in my coaching practice is that nothing energizes me more than coaching people, so I rearranged my whole day to now do my appointments right away in the morning, because once I do that, I get off the call, and I feel fantastic, and that springboards me into the next three or four hours, mostly because the work that I’m doing is so heavily related to what I’m doing in the coaching sessions, that I’ll learn something new or have my own breakthrough and say, oh, I helped the person solve this problem, that becomes a blog post, and then I’m off to the races. So it’s funny that you and I are actually doing the same thing, even though you’re extroverted and I’m very introverted.

Amber De La Garza: Yes, so that’s interesting. So it’s probably tied to that you’re extremely passionate about, you know, coaching, and that passion and interaction is fueling you. My husband’s an introvert, and so, you know, like, our idea of a weekend is always completely different. He needs, like, like not going to every event and doing all the things to recharge, and I’m like, what can we do, and where can we go, you know? So we’re always managing that, and so I love that you explain that you’re an introvert, because everyone listening here is on the spectrum of one or the other, meaning if you don’t know this, introvert and extrovert doesn’t always necessarily mean how you show up socially, what it means is where do you get your energy from, and you know, so for me, I was, I’m always really clear, like I’m writing a book that is energy depleting to me, even though I love the topic, I love the thing, I’m completely tied to the outcome, the act of doing that solo and by myself, I have to be aware of that, so in our listeners, I want you to think about and be aware of it, because I don’t think everyone’s quite aware, they just feel like I don’t like doing this activity, or I like doing this activity. Be aware of what those activities do to your energy level, and then look at how you can maximize ups and downs during your day.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, I think that’s fantastic, and I’m going to revisit my separated at birth theory, but now I’m thinking it’s you and my wife, that were separated at birth, because you just described every conversation we have, every Friday and Saturday. Oh, there’s this adventure, this family thing. I’m like, can we please just stay home, so I can just chill out and recharge and relax. She’s like, but that’s boring, like I just want to get out. I’m like, oh my god. So, after over a decade, we’ve figured out how to balance each other out, but that was the conversation every single week for the first, I don’t know, five to 10 years of our relationship. Both of us just being like, are you kidding me? And then we finally figured out, like, oh, we’re just, we’re different, and we have to accept that and work around it. And so, yeah, boy, do I know that conversation.

Amber De La Garza: Yep, I’m a decade of being married and my husband’s favorite words are that sounds great, so which one thing do you want me to go to?

Zack Arnold: Yes, I love your husband, I’m stealing that, and that’s what I’ll do with her too. I’m like, that all sounds great. Which one do you want me to go to?

Amber De La Garza: Yeah, because he’s not telling me I can’t go, he’s just saying which one do you really want me to attend with you?

Zack Arnold: Yep, I’m exactly the same way, so I will prioritize it, and she’s just come to the point where she’s like, okay, well, I know you’re probably going to be home for most of the weekend, and you’re going to recharge, but I’d really like you to go to this family dinner, or there’s this play, or whatever it is, and like, that’s great, but if she came to me and said, hey, we’re going to be going bowling at one with friends, and then we’re going to do this thing at four, then I’ve got dinner with my family, I’d be like, later, not happening,

Amber De La Garza: Yeah. For sure. Okay, there you go. So, I love that. This is like an unexpected aha. I think the listeners are going to be like they resonate with that, and they may have known it, but not known it, right? Like, they, they probably have been leaning into one or the other, not sure why. So now they can know why, and then maximize that, those times, even in their work day and their personal lives,

Zack Arnold: Exactly. So, going back to this idea of building this individual time block and starting to expand upon it a little bit, and figuring out the best place to put these different themes or types of time blocks. I want to go a little bit deeper into energy management. We talked about a little bit this concept of. The ultradian rhythm, and you talked some from the perspective of being extroverted versus introverted, but now I want to look at it as being an early bird or being a night owl, because this is something that most people don’t realize or understand. They get into the world of productivity and they say, oh well, Hal Elrod says, I must have a miracle morning and I must wake up at 5am and I must do these 10 different things. I don’t function at 5am in the morning, I function my best at 10pm at night, or 1am or whatever it is. So, when I talk to people about time blocking and building the ideal daily or weekly calendar, you first have to understand your chronotype. Are you somebody that functions better earlier in the day? Are you somebody that functions better later at night, and how can you organize your day, figuring out when you’re going to be the most versus the least creative? So, do you have any similar strategies?

Amber De La Garza: Yeah, well, first of all, I love that you’re recognizing that everyone is different. I think too many productivity experts and specialists are like this is the box, and if you want to get this result, you need to fit in this box. And then what happens is people jump into the box, and they’re like, why don’t I fit? Like, why does this feel not good to me? And then they think there’s something wrong with them. And if I could say one thing, there is nothing wrong with you at all. You need to honor who you are and lean into the best parts of you. That is essentially everything that I speak on, everything that I teach on, is that it is our job to know ourselves well enough, and then honor who we are, so we can lean into those best parts. So, to answer your question, if first of all, so this is the straight talk part of me, is, is if I said, or I had a client, let’s just say I had a client, and a client said, Amber, I’m a night owl, like I cannot wake up early. I want a morning routine. I’m late to the office every day, or I’m late to, you know, whatever that looks like. I’m just not a morning person. Well, before I believe that story, I’m going to say, is that true? And we’re going to dive deeper, because oftentimes I have found that we are not morning people because we don’t have nighttime routines, we’re not a morning person because we’re staying up till two or three. What would that look like if you were on a schedule where you put yourself to sleep at a, you know, at a specific time? Would you suddenly become a morning person? Now, for some people, they’re like, I don’t care what schedule you put me on, I will never be a morning person. I’ve tried it, I’ve given my good shot at that. Then great. How do we maximize your, your energy that you’re having at night versus in the morning?

Zack Arnold: Yeah, I agree with all of that, and yes, I believe that everybody is individual, but I also think that every single person can benefit from a morning routine. The difference is that when they hear morning routine and they read the blog post, oh, that means I must do it between five and 7am and my response is a morning routine is going to help every single person. Yours might be from 11am to 12pm that could be your morning based on your own chronotype, your own rhythms, your own creativity, and you’re always going to prime yourself for the day by having certain very specific rituals, and those are different to everybody, but I think the problem is that morning routine in this world equals must be waking up at 430 or 6am or whatever it is, and that’s where I completely call bull.

Amber De La Garza: I agree, I agree. So I quote Mike Varty. I’m not sure if you know who he is.

Zack Arnold: I do. Yes.

Amber De La Garza: Okay. So I had him on my podcast so long ago, and he said something that just totally resonated with me. He’s, he is a self-proclaimed night owl, and he said, you know, I’m tired of people shaming me into having to be a morning person, and I’m paraphrasing, I get done the night before, what you get done tomorrow, and I was like, oh, that is so good, because he just flipped the script, because night people are being told they’re behind the eight ball, early, you know, early bird gets the worm, like all of this stuff, and he’s like, well, actually, I’m getting done tonight what you’re going to get done tomorrow, and I thought, oh my gosh, that’s what people that are night owls need to hear, is that it’s okay if you’re being productive with the time. I think that a lot of night owls are staying up doing unproductive activities, or they’re not maximizing that energy, and they’re doing kind of non-valued activities because they’re just staying awake, and it’s.. and then it’s stealing potentially productive time the next day, so for him, he’s he is his most productive self at night, and so he totally maximizes that.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, if you’re binge watching Netflix for three hours from 11pm to 2am because you just can’t put yourself to sleep, you’re not necessarily a night owl. There’s a difference, but if you really find that you don’t get those creative juices flowing and you don’t feel that sense of being totally and fully alive and being immersed in the project, whatever it is that you’re doing, if you can’t experience that until 8pm 9pm 10pm but then you get in the zone, and then all of a sudden you look at the clock and it’s 2am there’s a good chance you’re a night owl, and that was me for a long, long time, until I had kids, and then I realized this is not going to be. Be so conducive to life with children, so I had to force myself to shift my circadian rhythms, and I’ve been able to do it by a couple of hours, but they’ve actually done extensive research and found that your chronotype is genetic, it’s not something that you can just change, it’s basically like your eye color, so you can modify what the spectrum looks like, where you can be productive and be creative versus not being productive or creative, but you can’t just change it, no matter what kind of biohacks or supplements or red light therapy, or all this other crap that’s out there now, a lot of which I try, by the way, and talk about, but there’s always this false sense of, oh, this is going to change everything, it’s like, no, you’re still going to be who you are, it’s just going to help shift things slightly, make things a little bit easier,

Amber De La Garza: Yeah, yeah, so when I’m looking at creating a block schedule, like we have a clean slate, one of the first steps that I want everyone to do is create boundaries, and this leans into your question of, like, what if I’m a night owl, what if I’m a morning person. Now, for those of you that are completely responsible for your own schedule, so maybe you’re a freelancer or an entrepreneur, or you have flexibility. This is you deciding, like, what time am I starting my day, what time am I starting work, what time am I ending my day at work, and what time am I ending my day. Period. And so when we create a block schedule, the very first thing is to create boundaries. I think that there’s so many people out there that creatives and entrepreneurs and freelancers that there is no boundary, it’s just endless. It’s like, oh, when I feel tired enough, I’ll stop, or when the work is done, or when I tackle my task list, and that is no way to approach creating an ideal week that’s going to sustain over time, so rehearsing is boundaries.

Zack Arnold: Exactly, I couldn’t agree more, which is the perfect segue to what I have been teasing this whole episode, which is, and this is something I’ve never done before. So, we’ll see if this is a huge value-added bonus or if it’s just a total, you know, total bomb, and everybody’s like, well, that was just dumb. But what I actually want to do, I’m going to share my screen with you right now. And obviously, this is an audio-only podcast, so for anybody that’s listening, if you listen to this and you’re in your car or wherever, please do not do, you know, what somebody else might do, and go on your phone, be like, “Oh, I must look at what they’re looking at while you’re driving. Like, please don’t do that. However, if you’re somebody that’s listening to this in a sedentary stationary state, or you want to look at it later, go to the show notes for this episode, and I’m going to provide a screenshot of what she and I are talking about. But this is such a visual experience and a visual way of organizing your life and your day that I think it would be just a complete disservice to the listener to talk about this, not have them just be able to visually see. Oh, I get it right. So I’m going to share what I have created as my current ideal weekly calendar, and this changes all the time. But because I just finished a job yesterday, the first thing that I did this morning was, I said, what does my schedule look like now? I know that for the next 345, months, I’m going to be heavily immersed in two different projects, but I manage my own time. I’m not going to be editing for a TV studio where they largely did take my time. So, I said, number one, I have to know what time blocks am I responsible for. And then I start playing a game that I call calendar Tetris. So, what I’m going to do is I’m going to share this with you, and you’re going to be like, oh yeah, I’ve got one of those. And then we’re just going to dig into this thing. So, let me know if you can see it on your end,

Amber De La Garza: I can totally see it,

Zack Arnold: And you’re like, I’ve got one of those.

Amber De La Garza: Yeah, I’m looking at mine. I was actually prepping mine too, like, like,

Zack Arnold: Oh, then we should share the screen. We should definitely share screenshots of both, if you’re willing to do that. So, what we’re looking at now is the way that I see the perfect week. My week never ever ever goes like this, but I do my best to get as close as possible, and it helps me be more intentional about, oh, you know, what I really don’t know what I should be doing right now. What does the calendar say? Oh, it says I should be in the deep work state right now versus, oh, I’m just having lunch, or whatever it is. So, what we’re looking at now is a full week where just about every single block, every single area of time for 24 hours a day has some color in, and the color scheme for anybody that’s looking at this, anything that’s reddish orange, that’s specifically related to my Ninja Warrior training. And then I have a different color for things that are business related, so that’s gray, and then I also do a coaching practice, so that’s like this dark red, anything that’s green, that means that that’s my personal time, and the reason that I do the different colors and not just the blocks is it’s a really good way to understand, is my life balanced in some way or not. If there’s no green on here, well, I’m going to burn out, because it’s all business, right.

Amber De La Garza: Yep,

Zack Arnold: So the idea here is that I am pretty much beholden and responsible to every single block that’s in here. However, I do have a few places where there are gaps, and this is a word that you had mentioned that I want to bring up, and you and I also talked about this before we went on the show. This concept of margins – this is one of the biggest things that I find that people don’t focus on enough – is actually building, building margins into their day. So I said to you, well, hey, I’m planning on going till about 2o’clock to do this recording, but do you have a little bit of room left over? And you said, well, yeah, I don’t record my next thing until 230 I’m like, ah, a fellow productivity specialist understands margins, yeah. So, and margins are such a huge part of the day. So, looking at this ideal weekly calendar, do you have any general thoughts?

Amber De La Garza: Yeah. Where are your margins? Show me, like, can you show me, like, a place, because I, my calendar has a lot more white space going into the week prior to actually planning the details of it. So, my, my ideal week had it never ends up that there’s white space, that much white space left, but I do pretty much schedule a lot of white space into my weeks.

Zack Arnold: Yes, and that’s a great question. So, you’ll see that there are white spaces between all the coaching sessions, because I like to have that space to send any notes to somebody, and also make sure that I grab a glass of water, whatever it is. I don’t like doing sessions back to back, but if we’re looking at something like the deep work, where you see on this one, it’s currently from 10am to 1pm like we talked about. I build in the margins in between there, so I know that from 10am to 1pm I’m doing deep work on whatever the biggest, most important creative project is that I have, but roughly every hour I’m taking five to 10 minute breaks, and margins were like I said, I’m going to the bathroom, or I’m doing pull-ups, or I’m doing kettlebell swings, or whatever it is, but I’m not allowing my brain to completely escape from that creative space. But then, like, for example, lunch to me is a margin, so I’ve got a full hour in there every day for lunch, but you’ll notice the way that I do it in the afternoons, I have multiple things that are stacked together that are competing for the same time.

Amber De La Garza: I love this. This 3o’clock family time, I don’t know what it is, but I can guess, because I freakin have the same thing on my schedule. Is that what time your kids come home from school?

Zack Arnold: That is when my kids come home from school. So, what I’m telling myself on this calendar is that from 2pm to 6pm I’m in a deep work state, but it only fills half of the vertical space, because I know my kids are going to come home at three, and I also know that roughly 430 every day I take a half hour walk around the block, and this is something I even do when I’m working at the studio. I always go out and I take a walking break, so again it’s the same as the morning, where I don’t completely let myself get out of this creative space, but I may take 20 minutes and help my son with his piano homework, or look at the drawing that my daughter did that day. Whatever that creative thought is, whatever I’m writing, whatever video I’m shooting, it’s still in the back of my brain, and I’m still letting the wheels turn, but I know that my afternoons are going to be a little bit more all over the place. So, really, there are margins in there, there’s just that empty white space, so to speak.

Amber De La Garza: Yes. Okay, so I had to do the same thing because I realized I was trying to get like projects done, like I would schedule it, and then my nanny would come home with my son, and of course he’s excited to come in and see me, and he wants to tell me about his day and hand over the papers, and it doesn’t matter how many times I tell him, like when I’m out of the office, like we can do the thing, and then I was like, why am I fighting reality? Like, give the kid 1520, 30 minutes, and so as soon as I flip that script and then put it on my calendar and change my expectations, I was able to have focused work before and focused work after, and so I have that same 30 minute block of time when my son comes home.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, that’s a lesson that, like, you, I had to learn the hard way, where I was mr. Productivity, and I’m gonna say hello, but I’m gonna go right back to it, and I’m like, yeah, but when my kids are in therapy someday, and they’re like, my parents were never around, but it was okay, because they had blog posts to write, like, that’s not gonna happen, right, like, you only get so much time with them, so, like, I said, I’m putting myself in that state of I know I’m doing this specific deep work, and the thoughts in the back of my mind, but for half an hour I might be walking away. Right.

Amber De La Garza: Oh my gosh, that’s so true. And then I do want to point out, so one of the things that I often teach too is to book out the lunch time, because you and I both know that if you don’t actually book that time on your calendar, somebody’s going to ask to meet with you that time, something’s going to run over, and I block an hour, knowing that because of margin time, I know for sure I’m getting 30 minutes, but sometimes I do get the full hour, and I put those that in there as a rock as well.

Zack Arnold: Yep, and I’m the same way. What I do when it comes to lunch is because I get a lot of requests for people that say they want to go out to lunch and pick my brain and all this other stuff, I’m happy to do that, and I always do it on Fridays. It’s the only day that I open my lunch to others, otherwise my lunch is recuperation. It’s me, you know, eating lunch and watching stand-up comedy on Netflix, or whatever it might be. So that’s recharging for me. But Fridays, you want to go out and have lunch with me? Awesome, like I’m basically planning and assuming that that’s going to happen at some point, so it’s not like, oh crap, now, How do I make this work? I’m welcoming that into my life, but it’s also very structured with boundaries.

Amber De La Garza: Okay, so Fridays are my day too, it’s the only day I’ll say yes to lunches as well, and I have a task that comes up that tells me to find someone to have lunch. With in the coming Fridays, like, so I block it out on my calendar, and then create a task that shows up regularly to kind of prod me into saying, okay, who do I want to network with, or who do I want to go have lunch with, and then I feel that block of time.

Zack Arnold: See, that’s where you and I, that’s that’s the extrovert versus the introvert. I’m totally going to steal that, because never, never in my brain is it wired in a way that it’s like, ooh, let’s seek out other people, right? But you’re totally right, that’s a brilliant idea, and I’m totally gonna steal that.

Amber De La Garza: I, okay, I didn’t do it because of an extrovert, I actually could go without lunches forever. I mean, like, that’s when the productivity side of me comes out. I am literally saying, okay, so I have to stop what I’m doing, then I have to get in the car, and that’s 2030 minutes, and then I eat, and that’s never just one hour, and then it’s 30 minutes back, like I am literally counting the time to say, is that worth my time? Well, as you know, with relationships, you never, you can never really quantify where they’re going to go and what that looks like, so I did the task, is actually the opposite. It was to make me stop and go schedule the time, because if not, I would not proactively reach out to leave my office and stop my work and go talk to people.

Zack Arnold: I love this, and I’m totally going to steal it. This is brilliant. I’m going to make it a point to try and actually fill my lunch with people on Fridays. So, for anybody that’s listening, if you feel like sending me an onslaught of emails saying I’d love to take you out to lunch and pick your brain, here’s your chance, because I need a list of people to have lunch with.

Amber De La Garza: Yes, yeah,

Zack Arnold: So because we’re both productivity specialists, I do want to be very conscious of your time. However, there’s one thing that we still have to talk about that I know is one of your fortes, and that’s the idea of the power block, because I think that what people are asking is, I’ve got all this crap that I need to do in my life, like all you guys are doing is being focused and productive, but what if I just want to reply to emails or Facebook comments or pay bills or whatever, like I think people need to understand that we’re not productive and creative for 24 hours a day.

Amber De La Garza: Yes, yeah, okay, so if they’re looking at your schedule, you see that he has a weekly review. I think those are that’s on Monday at 5o’clock So I do my weekly review on Fridays mid morning, and it’s always followed by a power hour. And the reason I do it after a weekly review is because, and I’m sure you probably had episodes about this and stuff, but like your weekly reviews, where you’re, you know capturing everything and planning out the rest of your week, and inevitably, if we are working at, you know, mock speeds and moving, and you know you’re in meetings and appointments, and you’re pushing away the busy work for focused work and deep work, inevitably there’s so many things that come up that need your attention that are quick and little, if you lean into those, so this is the difference between someone else that would say, you know, if it’s less than two minutes, do it, except for I don’t know about you, but I have so many less than two minute things that that would easily add up to hours and becomes very distracting, so I needed a home to put those in, and so I block out Fridays mid morning to do a power hour, and so as things come across my desk or regular tasks that are very quick to do, I ask myself, is there any negative going to come if this is not attended to till Friday? And mind you, that’s if something comes in Friday afternoon, that’s a full seven days, but usually it’s like Tuesday or Wednesday or Thursday, and you’re only waiting one or two days. All that goes into the power hour, and the power hour is meant to do all of these small, insignificant, not your high-value productive activities, and just like totally wipe them off your list to clear the slate, so that you can truly focus on these pockets of deep work, focused work, creative work, client work, without that nagging at you, and it also prevents fires if you’re right now reacting to your days with one fire after another after another, and generally those are rooted in something that was not that important, but when you didn’t deal with it in a timely manner became a fire, and I have found that if you regularly do a power hour and clear the slate and clean up the task list and get all those little things out of the way before they’re urgent, you can really stay in your proactive zone much more and really stay true to your block schedule.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, I couldn’t agree with all of that more, and I think, especially when it comes to the urgent part of it, everybody wants something from you urgently. Everything is a fire, everything is asap, so much that I’ve turned it into a verb, although people that I worked with, like, yeah, I got ASAP again, right? But really, very, very little of it is urgent. What I found is that if I know when that block of time is, I will tell that person, ‘Hey, you need me to sign this document or whatever it is. I’ll get it to you Friday afternoon. Okay, no problem. But if you just give them an open-ended, yeah, I’ll get to it, then they’re checking, and they’re checking the whys, and you’ve gotten to it. Why haven’t you gotten to it? But if you just said I. Expectations, 95% of the time, people are fine with it, and when they’re not, they’ll say, oh, actually, you know what, the deadline is Thursday, so I’d really prefer you get it in at this time, and you’re like, oh, well, then maybe I’ll just take care of it now, right, but it’s, I think this is going to be another deviation between our personalities, because you call it a power block, and you make it sound like fun, I call it my hell block, I hate email and social media and paying bills and paperwork. I just hate all the dit dit redundant stuff of life. So, when I wasn’t productive, I used to have what was called a hell week. It’s kind of like being a Navy SEAL, but for lack of productivity. That’s where I did my taxes and paid my bills and scanned all of my paperwork, and I only did it a couple of times a year. So, it was an awful week, and then I’m like, why am I doing all this horrible stuff, like over two weeks a year? Let me try and do it once a month. So I had a hell block, or a hell day that would be a Saturday that I would block out, and as I got became became more and more productive, they got smaller and smaller and smaller. So now I basically have a couple of blocks that are like two to three hours, once or twice a week, where I’m knocking out all this stuff, and usually I get it done in way less than that, so then I just kind of have this free open time to do whatever I want, but the game changer for me is somebody that’s been dealing with adult onset add for the last 20 years, and I just can’t stand redundant tasks like dishes and laundry and cleaning and paying bills and all this, so what I do is I just put all of it into a routine on Saturday morning for two to three hours, so that’s when I do my grocery shopping, I do my laundry and everything else, so I’m never thinking on Thursday I’m really anxious because I have laundry to do, that anxiety is gone because I know my laundry is going to get done at 9am on Saturday, so the biggest thing, which takes us full circle to where we started is that anxiety just disappears and I’m able to focus on other things.

Amber De La Garza: Yes, so I think words have power. I couldn’t imagine being excited about hell block time that that would just like creep me out. I would probably avoid it altogether. So yeah, I call mine a power hour, and it’s so funny you say that. I just interviewed a client to be on the podcast, and he, he said he divulged, he’s like, “Oh my gosh, I absolutely hate the power hour, like I mean, hate it, Amber. I’ve been.. I didn’t want to tell you this, but I hate doing it, but it’s like going to the gym, and when I’m done, I feel so much better, and I was like, “Oh my gosh, like, I never really thought of that, because I was always attached to the outcome, and instead of the process, like, kind of like grit in your teeth, and I’m sure I see a lot of workout time on your schedule, like, I’m sure that’s not something you look forward to all the time, but you’re attached to the outcome, and that’s what pulls you through the hell block of time,

Zack Arnold: Exactly, and it’s funny, because that’s actually where the name came from was my obsession with things like Navy Seals and people that train at the highest levels and I’ve run a bunch of Spartan races and Tough Mudders and like I said I’m training for Ninja Warrior, so for me there’s there’s almost something that I seek out where it’s like how can I put myself in an incredibly uncomfortable situation but I’m choosing the obstacles rather than the obstacles in life choosing me, so I can be ready for them. So, Navy Seals have Hell Week, so I have my Hell Block. So, it’s kind of.. I mean, obviously checking my email and social media is not quite what the Navy Seals go through in Hell Week, but that’s kind of where the name comes from. So, it’s not so much, ‘Oh, this is gonna suck, and I’m not looking forward to it. It’s, ‘Oh, this is really gonna suck, and I’m looking forward to it.

Amber De La Garza: Oh my gosh, that’s great. Yeah, so that’s pretty much it. You know, here’s the deal: we all have things that we don’t like doing, and it’s our job to figure out how we can do those, even when we don’t feel like doing it. I feel like at times, as adults, we act like toddlers, you know. I have an eight year old, and when he was a toddler, he would say, I don’t want to do it, and at some point you got to pull up your big girl, big boy pants and say I’m going to do it anyways, like that is not a choice to negotiate myself out of it, and at the end of the day, that’s what productivity is about, is you’re making a choice, and it’s a choice that we have to make every single day, and for some of us it’s every hour, like every time I transition from one block of time to the next, I’m making a choice, am I going to, you know, go back to bed, am I going to go, you know, look on Facebook, or am I going to do the thing that when I was in my best mindset I scheduled myself to do, because I know that when I do it, it’s going to get me closer to my goals, and when we do that, and we say yes to those things on a consistent basis, it’s no doubt that we’re going to slay our goals both personally and professionally.

Zack Arnold: Man, you just summed all that up like you’re a professional podcaster or something. Well done. I couldn’t have finished the outro any better than that. That was fantastic. So, obviously, I’m a horrible productivity specialist, because we’ve just gone 13 minutes over our allotted time, but, dear Lord, was it worth it? I hope it was for you as well,

Amber De La Garza: Because we knew we were going to totally geek out about this, and I think having people hear about, like, what do you do, what do I do, and they have to hear this one last time. We never met each other or spoken to each other prior. To getting on this call, and so, because we both live in this world, and we practice this, and we work with people, like, you have to know, like, these strategies work, and if you’re telling yourself that’s not going to work for me, you’ve got to release that story, and say, you know what, what would happen if I applied these principles and made it work for me.

Zack Arnold: Oh my god, I love that. For anybody that was just inspired high heaven by what you just said, How do they find you? How do they listen to you? How do they read your stuff? How do they work with you?

Amber De La Garza: Oh, thank you for asking. So you can find me over at my website, The Productivity specialist.com I have a podcast called Productivity Straight Talk. You can find it anywhere you’re listening to this episode, just search Productivity Straight Talk. I also have a template that you can download in Excel, and it has all seven steps that I teach on how to create your ideal week, and you can find that at The Productivity specialist.com forward slash optimize yourself, all one word, Optimize Yourself, and you just leave me your name and email, and I will send you this template, along with all the seven steps, how to create your own ideal week.

Zack Arnold: I love it. That’s fantastic. I cannot thank you enough for providing that for my audience, and for being on the show today, and taking an hour and 15 minutes out of your time for me and all my listeners. So, thank you so much.

Amber De La Garza: Oh, it was my pleasure. Thank you.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai