What is the highest and best use of my time right now?

Kyle Hunt: Thanks for tuning into the Remodelers on the Rise show. Whether you're listening or watching, I appreciate you being here. If this was helpful, make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss the next one. We're putting out new episodes every single week focused on helping you build a better remodeling business with real stories, practical ideas, and things you can actually take and use. If you're on YouTube, hit that like button and turn on notifications so you know when new episodes drop. All right, folks, here's a question for you. What is the highest and best use of my time today? What is the highest and best use of my time right now would be another way of saying it. If you are leading a remodeling company, if you are a business owner, maybe putting that on a sticky note, maybe making that part of your day in and day out routine, Here at Remodellers on the Rise, we've worked with hundreds of remodeling companies. And one of the patterns we see again and again is this. When a company fully implements job tread, their business gets clearer. They know their numbers. They know where the jobs stand. They know what's making money and what's not. We've watched members go from guessing about profitability to having real-time visibility into their projects. That changes how you price, how you plan, and how you lead. would be wise, what is the highest and best use of my time right now? When we think about prioritizing your work day, it is something that, well, Kyle, I get interruptions all the time. Well, sometimes I make a plan and then it just gets derailed within the first 10 minutes of the day. There's all kinds of excuses that we can make on why planning out your day, prioritizing your work, If you're listening on a podcast app, a five-star review goes a long way and helps more remodelers find the show. We've got great links below or in the show notes where you can connect with us, check out our remodelers community and learn more about our coaching and resources. Appreciate you very much. See you on the next episode. JobTread brings estimating, scheduling, job costing, and invoicing into one connected system, and it works great. If you want more clarity and better control of your business, check out JobTread at JobTread, T-R-E-A-D, JobTread.com. figuring out the highest and best use of your time is maybe a fool's gold, a fool's errand. Nope, let's get rid of that mindset. Let's take that soundtrack that you play in your head. Why even plan? Because it's just gonna get this phone call or that interruption or this fire. No, no, no. We're replacing that soundtrack with a better soundtrack. I am somebody that evaluates day in and day out and throughout the day what is the highest and best use of my time. I am a business owner. I want to tell you about something that we see all the time in our coaching work. A remodeler joins, remodeler's on the rise, feeling overwhelmed. Projects feel scattered, financials feel fuzzy, systems feel patched together. Then they implement JobTread. And over time, things start to change for the better. Their estimates get tighter, their schedules get clearer, their job costing gets more accurate, their invoicing gets more consistent. We've watched JobTread help our members move And I need to work hard to make sure that what I am working on is the thing that I ought to be working on. So we're coming right out the shoot today. It's just a solo show with me. It's going to be a little shorter show just ⁓ to kind of keep the energy going and give you a little flurry of clarity and hopefully some ideas to help you better navigate your day. So highest and best use of your time. from chaos to control, not overnight, but in a sustainable way that supports growth. It's an all-in-one platform built for remodellers who want to run a real business, not just stay busy. If you're ready for a better system, better decisions, learn more at jobtread.com. prioritizing your workday. I have eight different thoughts related to this. The first one, identify your top three. At the start of your day, what are the three most important outcomes that you must accomplish? I harken back to early in my business, of my early remodeling clients, Ken Simon, Premier Building and Remodeling over in the Kalamazoo, Michigan. area. Yes, some people are going Kalamazoo never heard of it. It is an actual city. It's right over yonder. It's right over yonder on the west, west side of Michigan. And I remember going over and seeing Ken in person and he had just a simple index card and he consistently would think through his top three for the day would write out those three items and he would carry that index card around as he visited job sites or as he's working in the office or wherever he went. It was a consistent thing that he did that helped him pause to prioritize his day, the outcomes that he wanted to accomplish. And he didn't have six things on there. He didn't have one thing on there. He didn't have eight things on there. He typically had three things, top three things. Slow down enough, evaluate your workload, evaluate what you need to get done and pick three things. Maybe even just pick two things. No matter what happens to me today, no matter what interruptions I have, I will get these three things done, or I will get these two things done. If you can be consistent with that, that is a great daily kind of prioritization system. That is a good way for you to continue to answer the question, what is the highest and best use of my time? So that's number one, identify your top three. Everything else is secondary to that. And also you kind of heard what I said there. Your most important outcome, the thing that you need to get done, identify that and practice that. The more you practice and the more consistent you get with that, the better. Number two, eat your frog. Your frog, most important thing you need to get done that you're most likely to put off. Can you identify that frog and can you eat it as early as possible in your day? If you put it off, it will distract you. It will drain your energy. If you just eat that thing, that hard phone call, that finalization of that estimate, that change order right up that you don't really want to present to the client because they might get a little feisty about it. If you can identify that frog and you can eat that first thing, that's going to give you energy and lead to a strong day. So number two, eat your frog. This is all about prioritizing your work day. It's all about finding the highest and best use of your time. ⁓ I think we're doing great so far, folks. The third one, the third one, schedule your time. Now, this can look like a little bit of block scheduling where you do not do initial visits for a remodeling project any day of the week. You actually do your visits on Tuesday morning, you have a few slots, and on Thursday afternoon. Those are the two times Mr. and Mrs. Homeowner that we do our in-person initial ⁓ meetings and conversations where we visit your home. This week is booked, but we have some slots next week. That's an example of blocking your schedule. So instead of this fragmented, well, I've got a sales call on Tuesday morning and Wednesday morning and Thursday at noon and Friday afternoon, you are a little bit more structured with it. Another example of that could be on Thursdays from 9 a.m. to noon is estimating time. ⁓ On Tuesday afternoons from noon to two o'clock, fill in the blank. Maybe there's an hour of on the business time mixed in there. If you are feeling like you're running to and from that you're all fragmented, consider taking the approach of block scheduling your time. The other thing I've seen is just be very successful for a lot of my clients. The other thing to consider is sometimes people start block scheduling and they grab like a four hour block. I'm gonna do estimating on Thursday morning. And when you have that big of a block, it's very easy for you to not turn your phone off. Go into cocoon mode is what I like to call it where you have alerted the most likely people who would call it to interrupt your focus time and let them know that you are. out of service for a couple hours. You have put your phone in do not disturb mode. You have paused your inbox. You have gone into cocoon mode so that you can focus, truly focus on that estimate. And it can have your undivided attention. Grabbing those times in a 60 minute block, in a 75 minute block, in a 45 minute block, you have a much better shot at staying truly in cocoon and focused during that time and getting more done in that, let's say one hour. than you would if you said, I'm gonna grab a three and a half hour block here. That doesn't work. You're gonna need breaks. You're gonna check your phone. You're gonna get distracted much easier. So consider block scheduling in general and get real clear with little 45 minute focus sessions around specific things. Maybe around some of those top threes or eat your frog items. Cool. So prioritizing your workday, identify your top three could be an approach. Number two, eat your frog. could be approach. Number three, schedule your time. A little bit more block scheduling could be absolutely an approach. You don't have to use all of these. These are just an assortment of ideas that have worked for me and that have worked for your remodeling brothers and sisters out there. All right. Number four, focus on high impact work. I have a phrase that I've used for a long, time called $10 an hour work, $100 an hour work, and $1,000 an hour work. And I'm not saying that you are above $10 an hour work, quote unquote, $10 an hour work, taking out the trash, you know, depositing that bank, that thing in the bank, doing some journal entries or doing some bookkeeping work. But when you consider that you only have 44 hours a week for you to work, wouldn't that be nice for some of you? And some of you are going, yeah, that is about it. Let's run that up 45, 45 hours a week to work. and you are doing estimating project management, sales, marketing, bookkeeping, et cetera. Something has to give you only have so much capacity. And if you're going to support your business and your team and continue to grow it, you need to make sure that more and more of your time is being focused on your highest and best use that quote unquote $100 work or that $1,000 an hour work. ⁓ Bailey and I earlier in the week, we were making some decisions on some changes. were tweaking to our peer groups and how we're going to communicate it. And we're going to add this monthly training and we're going to prune down this a little bit. And we're going to add a little book club that's open to all five of our peer groups. And while we were doing that work, that was straight up thousand dollar an hour work. That was the highest and best use of our time. And then it's easy for me to go into my inbox. And all of a sudden just, all right, I guess my next priority is whatever emails at the top of my inbox. No, you fool. There's more thousand dollar work. There's more higher priority things. That is not the highest and best use of your time. Be careful and work hard. High achieving entrepreneurs focus on that high impact work, prioritizing the things that generate revenue, that move projects forward, that improve the customer experience, that solve problems that you have in your business. Make sure you're not getting a big percentage of your time sucked into not high impact work. You may have people on your team that can handle that for you and you need to delegate it. You may need to hire somebody to help take that off your plate. You may just need to stop being distracted by low impact work, even distracting work. Like, they just checked Facebook for the last 28 minutes. Come on, we got work to do. Avoid spending too much time on those low impact $10 an hour ⁓ work, especially if you are avoiding the $1,000 an hour work. All right, that was number four. ⁓ Number five, actually let me pause there. How's everybody doing out there? I'm so serious, I'm so serious, just focused, getting through ⁓ It's kind of some weird, little bit of weird times out there. As I talk to a lot of my remodeling clients, there's ⁓ some that are seeing the marketing side, the leads not be quite as plentiful. There's some that even though the stock market has kind of come back up real nice and strong in April, people are still kind of reeling from it going down in March. And we got, you know, things going on overseas and we've got just all kinds of stuff going on. And as far as signing work, it's been a little bit of a tough season for some folks. Other remodellers that I'm working with are just going guns a blazing and continuing to kick butt, take names. So wherever you fall in on that path and that what you're experiencing, a lot of the antidote to it is marketing and sales. If things are slowing down a little bit or you have enough leads, but they're not converting to paying project, marketing and sales, marketing and sales. How can you improve your sales process, differentiate yourself, build know, like, and trust, build up the value in what you offer. There are all kinds of ways that you can continue to tweak and improve your sales process. And then on the marketing side, are all kinds of things that you ought to be doing more consistently on the marketing side. So keep that in mind, marketing and sales, marketing and sales. You need to spend more time. Some might even say that you spending more time on the marketing and the sales side might be the highest and best use of your time. talking to a client earlier today and going, hey, I know you're getting sucked into some project management. but you have two project managers that you need to empower and that you need to butt out and that because you sir, need to focus on the marketing and sales side. I know you enjoy the PM work, but your highest and best use is sitting there getting that project across the finish line to sign so that you can have that work lined up in the coming months. So hopefully that was helpful to a couple of people listening. Other than that, so that was a little halftime break. Number five. use the urgent versus important filter. So this is a little principle that you may have heard of, of do now, urgent and important, schedule in that important but not urgent, delegate, urgent, but not super important, or eliminate if it's neither urgent nor important. I think the biggest thing here is Do what I've been doing lately where I'm sick of all of the reminders that I set for myself popping up. I'm sick of, this is a cool idea. ⁓ that's an idea. Hey, maybe we should consider this. And going, you know what? I don't have time. My team doesn't have time to do everything. I have got to identify more regularly the important and the urgent items. I need to spend more time doing the important things so that the urgent stuff doesn't pop up as much. Let this one be just a reminder that you need just evaluate all of your workload. Maybe you have a stack of ideas and papers on your desk that you literally need to rip up and throw away. ⁓ it feels so good. Maybe you need to go through your list and go, you know what? There's 10 different things I could be doing as far as working on the business. I am just going to put all of those in the parking lot. I good ideas, but I'm not going to do anything with them right now. And I'm to pick this one and I'm going to drive it to completion. Pay attention to your urgent. versus importance. Number six, ⁓ pay attention, work from your energy. Here's what I mean by that. There's a guy named, ⁓ there we go, Tony Woodall. Took me a second to recall. I'm like, Tony, Tony, what's the last name? ⁓ Woodall. Tony Woodall, ⁓ buddy of mine in Chicago area, he came and spoke a few years ago to one of our groups and was referencing a book that spoke about green, yellow, and red zones. Green, yellow, and red zones. This one related to prioritizing your work day, identifying your highest and best use of your time, and a lot of the things we're talking about is pay closer attention to when you are in your green zone. You probably have two, maybe three hours of green zone time. This is the time where the coffee is hitting just right. where you are in the zone, you are very focused, you are very productive, you have high energy, you are cranking. For me, that 830 to 1030 window is pretty consistently green for me. I'm recording this at 1248 PM. It is getting to be just about afternoon coffee time. I'm feeling a little yellow energy, maybe even moving towards a little bit of red before I get some caffeine and just my normal energy level that... just my circadian rhythm, if you will, if that makes sense. You're gonna go and have some times that are green zone time, some yellow zone time where you still have some energy, but you're probably easy, more easily distracted. And then you have some red zone time where you either need to go take a walk, you need to recharge, you need to ⁓ take a quick break, whatever the case might be. What we end up doing a lot of times is we try to do our hardest work, our highest brain power work, where we need the most energy and focus. And we do it during our yellow or red zone time. You save that estimate for your lowest energy time. And you wonder why you're so easily distracted or why you're not making progress. Do your hardest work that you need to get done during your highest energy, highest brain power, couple hours. Save your job site visits for when you're kind of in the yellow red, because you'll have plenty of energy to kind of get out there and do it. So pay attention to your green, yellow and red. Put your highest and best use, put your high brain power tasks for the time that you are in your green zone. There we go. A couple other things. Get a little timer. Here's a little timer. Sometimes I'll trick myself and put 10 minutes on this little timer and that helps me focus. Earlier today, Remodellers on the Rise, Bailey, Cassie and I were doing a focus mate session. We literally dial into Zoom. spend 30 minutes and... ⁓ We usually kind of break it up into two or three little segments. Hey, what are you going to work on? What are you going to work on? Awesome. And we have the videos on and we put it on mute and it really helps us focus and crank out work. Especially very helpful when you're in your yellow or red zone time. All right. Number seven, seven, number seven, ⁓ reset tomorrow before you leave today. Identify it's a best practice for most of us. If we can schedule our day that follows and make sure that we're prepped for it, that we've already identified our top three or that we are identified our frog and we can have that already figured out. It quiets our mind for the rest of the day and the evening when we want to be in home mode and family mode instead of work mode. And it also helps us hit the ground running a little bit more proactively versus reactively when we start the day. Worst case, make sure you take five or 10 minutes at the start of the day to truly review what is your highest and best use of your time. So reset tomorrow before you leave today. So number one, again, around prioritizing your workday, around thinking about this highest and best use of your time is identify your top three. Eat your frog. Schedule the time. Consider some block scheduling. Focus on high impact work. $10 versus $100 versus $1,000 an hour work. Use the urgent versus important filter. Pay attention to what is urgent. Pay attention to what is not urgent. Pay attention to what is important. And also, maybe consider eliminating some things. We all have too much work to be done, and if we focused on fewer things, more focus on fewer things will probably be productive. Work from your best energy. Green, yellow, red. Pay attention to that a little bit and adjust what you're working on based on that. Number seven, reset tomorrow before you leave. And then number eight, number eight, give yourself a little bit of grace. Pat yourself on the back a little bit. Consider some wins. You wanna prioritize your work day. You wanna think through your highest and best use. You wanna be quote unquote your best self. Maybe you ought to be your biggest fan and give yourself a little bit more kudos. Find some positives. Man, focusing on the negatives constantly drains your energy. and makes you less fun to be around, myself included. Sometimes this mindset thing, how do we work hard to stay in a positive frame of mind? Frankly, think listening to this podcast hopefully allows you to do it. You're learning new things, you're hearing ⁓ reminders on things that you need to consider. But let this last one, you wanna prioritize your day, prioritize your mindset. Work hard to remain in a positive mindset. Find things that you're grateful for. ⁓ Find the wins, not always the losses. ⁓ When you sign a job, instead of just going, okay, cool, and worrying about the production side, actually celebrate that a little bit. Find the good things your team is doing and notice that for them. Find the good things your spouse is doing, not the thing that's annoying you. And thank them for that. All across the board, your mindset. If you want to prioritize your day, if you want to be more efficient, productive, a lot of things we're talking about here, focus on that mindset. how you're viewing things, a little bit more glass half full, not ignoring the negative things in your life, but maybe just maybe if we put a little bit more focus on the positives, that might have a positive impact on how you're viewing things. So there's a little podcast episode around prioritizing your workday. Hopefully there was a nugget in there that was helpful. Haven't done a solo show in a while, that was fun. And thank you for listening. Leave a little review wherever you're listening to this. Go to remodelersontherise.com if you want to learn about our coaching and our programs. Come to the Rise Conference in August. It's going to be fantastic. And don't hesitate to reach out if you're stuck on something or if you need a little pep talk. I'm here, people. See ya.