 You've probably heard that time is your most valuable asset. And whether you're trying to build a business or find love, be great at sports or become a doctor, becoming productive is something that's absolutely essential. But the problem is 95% of the productivity advice you're gonna hear is complete bull. And in this video, I wanna share why that's true. What's up guys, Alex Hein here, author of Master of the Day. Now, before we jump in, I've put together a free journaling worksheet that will help you become the most productive person you know. So it's the first link right below this video. It's gonna help you figure out how to be productive, how to design your dream life and how to get your life together. So check it out right below this video. It's the very first link there. So let's start with the punchline here, all right? 95% of productivity has nothing to do with what you do or any kind of productivity hack. It's about sleep, energy and how well you feel. So I'm gonna recap that. Any productivity hack you do is minor in relation to how good you feel on a daily basis, which is primarily sleep, exercise and what you eat and I guess if you enjoy your life. I see all these people that will sleep five hours a day as an entrepreneur and then they're gonna wake up, drink three cups of coffee, they're gonna stir in their butter and their MCT oil, do these nerdy tech boy rituals, trying to become more productive and you're gonna try to out optimize evolution in some way, right? Your body will naturally be the most productive when it's the most rested and the most energized. So starting with the foundation, you know, you have like Maslow's hierarchy of needs, right? You have like the survival needs and the self actualized needs. Well, this is like the productivity pyramid, right? The base, which is really the 80%, the 80-20 rule is if you feel well and you're rested and energized, you're gonna be way more productive than any tactic, any at all you take, any other strategy that you try. So that's the most important thing to start. Now, there are two pieces of advice I wanna share here. One is a more philosophical piece of advice and one is more practical. So the philosophical side is chase the Dilbert creator's idea of productivity. So if you guys know the Dilbert comics, this guy wrote a book on why he thinks he became successful called How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big and he describes this idea, he has a whole chapter on this called the energy metric. And the energy metric is very much aligned with what I was just starting to talk about, which is that he found that he was trying all of these businesses because honestly, he wanted to be rich and he wanted to be successful. But he said that it's very difficult, especially at the beginning, because almost everyone has a full-time job. It's very difficult to be productive because you're already tired and you're working nine or 10 hours a day. So he said, I found that the businesses that were most likely to succeed were the ones where I was naturally most excited to work on them. So for him, one of his businesses he was talking about was having a restaurant and another one was doing these Dilbert comics and he found that he was able to do these at five or six a.m. every morning only because he was excited about the topic itself. And I think, again, people try to push themselves or do these tactics and these strategies and these hacks for productivity when they're missing the foundation, which is feeling well and having energy by doing things you actually wanna be doing. And I know that's not always possible, but think about the difference if you wanna get fit this year and for the next 90 days, you're doing some challenge with a friend and you're doing these brutal workouts that you absolutely hate to do or you're eating nothing you wanna eat, that's gonna be hard and anyone can do it for a short period of time. But for that, the last, the long run is very, very difficult. Or let's say you're an introvert, right? And your number one goal is you wanna find a girlfriend, you wanna find a boyfriend. And rather than finding that in an organic way by doing hobbies you're really passionate about and trying to meet like-minded people, you're like, me the introvert, I'm gonna start going out five nights a week, which is something that's not normal for you. And you're pushing yourself every day, exhausting yourself, trying to meet someone by doing things that don't feel very good. So, chase the energy metric. So I wanna show you guys the most effective piece of productivity advice that I've learned. And it's a method that I've used for six years now, right? It's a method I use to build a six-figure business while having a full-time job. It's a method I use to go through a four-year doctoral program while still running and growing that business into the six figures. Basically, I've gotten a lot of things done. And the method, besides what I've just shared, is very simple. So this method is called the Ivy Lee method. And it's based off of some supposed consulting advice that one of the, I think the Carnegie Steel Empire was given, one of the managers or one of the executives. And basically it's really as simple as I pick effectively five things to do each day. And I use just a little piece of paper. It's a typical eight-by-eleven or whatever and I fold it up until it looks this small. And then basically I divide it into a visual sort of to-do list. So I divide it into five blocks, right? So let's say one, two, three, four, five. And then I list out the five things that are gonna make the biggest difference in my life. Each block is one hour, okay? So you can adjust it based on your schedule. But today, for example, we're shooting videos, right? So we're shooting for three hours. So I'm gonna write shoot, shoot, shoot. And I'm gonna number them one, two, three. And then after that, I have some patient stuff to do. So I'm just gonna write patient stuff, four. And then the last thing is what I just call free study, which is just studying difficult cases in my private practice. You know, I've put together this five critical things that I have to do on a daily basis. I've organized them from what's gonna be hardest, what takes the most energy to what takes the least energy. Just so that earlier in the day, I'm getting the hardest things done. And I've numbered them so that I know this is them, basically this is the mission, right? This is what I have to do. And then when I complete them, basically, I shade out the box. And this is just a neurotic type A person's feeling of satisfaction, right? From looking at the sheet by the end of the day, I know it has to be completely done. So for me, this whole process of writing these things down in a little piece of paper, hardest to the easiest, no more than five things. And if I wasn't able to do that, I reduced the number of things I do on a daily basis. For me, the secret is, first of all, starting with what energizes you in terms of your health, starting with the actual projects that energize you, which you're not always able to do. And then using a really simple productivity system that works. So I elaborate on this more in that free journaling worksheet right below this video. But otherwise, guys, I want you to comment below. Let me know what productivity hack or system has worked best for you. And then I'll see you guys in these related videos right there.