How CEOs Get Sh*t Done - 5 Productivity Rules to Do More in Less Time

This is how CEOs get more done in a week than most get done in a year.

When I was in my 20s and 30s, I wasted so much time traveling,

and I would use it as an excuse to fall behind on my commitments,

until I implemented these five CEO productivity rules that helped me compress decades into days.

So here's how to compress time like a CEO.

Welcome to the Martell Method.

I went from rehab at 17 to building a $100 million empire

and being a Wall Street Journal bestselling author.

In this podcast, I'll show you exactly how to build a life and business you don't grow to hate. And make sure you don't miss anything by subscribing to my newsletter at martellmethod.com.
Number one, daily non-negotiables. The first CEO rule of productivity is keep your commitments.
If it's in your calendar, do it. When I was starting my coaching program, I sat down and I outlined all my daily non-negotiables that made it impossible to fail.
And then I followed them and it made my results inevitable. So here are three non-negotiables that any person can use to absolutely accelerate their life.
Number one, read every day. 10 pages.
Without fail, if you follow me on social media, you will see me post about my morning reading. Why? Because A, it's accountability.
So I'm reading to find the gold nuggets I can share with everybody that follows me. And two, I'm feeding my mind.
I'm ramping it up so that I'm connecting these different parts of my psychology so I can be available for conversations. Number two, work out.
Exhaust the body, tame the mind. If you're struggling with focus, struggling with creativity, struggling with your energy, it sounds crazy, but if you go and work out, you'll have more energy when you leave.
And number three, review goals. I have 12 goals for the year, 12 massive things I've decided to do, personal, professional, community, contribution, revenue.
And I look at these goals three, four times a day, and I'm looking at my calendar and I'm asking myself, does my time reflect these priorities? I use my calendar to guide my actions, to hold me accountable, to set my priorities. And when it shows up, I do it.
It's not a negotiation. If these are the goals I want to achieve this year, have I properly allocated both my bank account, my resources, and my time to those goals? If not, I changed something.
It allowed me to build the business as a byproduct of the daily non-negotiables that I committed to. Because I'm keeping them front of mind, it's impossible for me to fail.
At the end of the day, we build our confidence by keeping the commitments we make to ourselves in private and that's why i have these non-negotiables every day which leads us to number two which is plan the play i first learned this by watching richard branson the billionaire that every other billionaire wants to be like operate his day to day i had the privilege of spending a week with him in his home in verbia switzerland and i watched him execute every day every minute there was no time that was unallocated now did he also allocate time to come skiing with us sure did but did he have time with his assistant in the morning so he could respond to the hundreds of people that want his attention yep he tries to squeeze as much life out of life see most people freestyle their day and they wonder why they don't get anything done. They literally don't put anything in the calendar because that way it feels more freeing.
But the truth is, is sometimes constraint creates freedom. Knowing what I gotta get done and doing those as early as possible in the morning means that I feel free for the rest of the day.
A goal without a plan is just a wish. So many people say, I have this goal this year to make a million dollars.
I'm like, what's the plan? If you can't back out your goal into weekly and daily actions and activities that make that goal inevitable, then it's just a wish. Everybody wants to be successful, but success is where preparation and opportunity meet.
Think about this. Most people would win in life if they actually just took a little bit of time in the morning to prepare for their day.
Think of it this way. We plan our work and then we work the plan.
If you don't, then life will happen by default. If you do, life will happen by design, which leads us to rule number three, which is create a cadence.
I used to travel 200 days a year. My schedule was packed, but the truth is it wasn't efficient.
I used to think that because I was busy, I was being productive. Couldn't have been further from the truth.
What I realized now is my life is a marathon, not a sprint. Because if you sprint and then fall and sprint and then fall, you're actually not making as much progress if you just set up your life to be this ongoing, never stopping marathon.
Success is not achieved in births People that do that to themselves in many ways, it's self-sabotaging behavior. They burst into new opportunities instead of saying, okay, what could I commit to every day? The sustained effort over time that on the back end of that would make my goals and my dreams inevitable.
Like they would just have to happen. So what did I change in regards to my travel? First off, one trip per month.
Maximum seven days away from my family. Because I have that constraint and I have that rhythm, I'm very diligent about what goes into those seven days.
I'm talking to people, I'm coordinating, I'm reprioritizing because that is the one shot I have on goal for FaceTime with people. I batch all my speaking, my podcasts, my founder's dinners, my events, my book meetups, all of it into as little time as possible.
And when I land in a city, I make sure I take it over. I see all the people I want to see.
I do all the things I need to see, including the fun stuff like going to a comedy show, but I make it part of the rhythm. So it's sustainable over the long run.
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Find it at martellmethod.com, which leads us to rule number four, which is curate connections. I first learned this strategy reading a book called Never Eat Alone by Keith Ferrazzi.
He talked about the idea of getting people together to break bread. And I tell you, as an introverted programmer, when I started, there was no way I was gonna do this.
What value could I give them? I had so little self-confidence that I convinced myself out of it for so long until I finally did it. And I remember my first is with a guy named Larry in that meal.
It was just him and I, I felt all this pressure, but at the end of it, I thought to myself, that was the most valuable two hours in a long time. I learned a lot about the industry.
I learned a lot about myself. I realized I didn't have to talk that much.
I just had to ask really good questions. So now I always host either founder lunches, founderes founder dinners founders hikes but connection for me is so valuable because you can't get away from in person i used to go to cities and then just stay in my hotel room and then i would leave feeling like man i didn't see all these people that live there here's what i've learned the biggest opportunities will come into your life through loose ties to other people it's not the people you know well your big opportunity is probably going to be introduced to you by somebody you haven't seen in a while.
You just have to make an effort to see them, invite them to a meal. The more people that you know, the more opportunities you create.
Think of them like little seeds that you're planting. Every time you see somebody and ask what's new and you tell them, they go, oh my gosh, my buddy Mark needs to talk to you, right? If you think about it, your number one job is to solve problems.
The best way to solve a problem is to know the person who's the best in the world at solving that problem. And here's a crazy part.
A lot of people talk about it's who you know. I would say it goes even further than that.
It's not who you know, it's who knows you. How would they know you? Because people will talk about you if you show up and you do good.
If you invite them to a meal and you share your progress and things you've been up to, they're gonna be impressed. They may mention you to somebody else.
That is the highest form of leverage. So the way I do it is I just ask my community, when I go to a city, who should I meet with? Send me some names, tell me some people, give me some ideas, I'm always open to it.
And usually those recommendations are great because there are people that know me and credible people to chat with. Before we get back to the episode, if you actually want to know what my real life looks like and see the people and the businesses and the companies I buy and my family and just like how I make it all work, go follow me on Instagram, Dan Martell, 2Ls and Martell on Instagram.
It's where I show the behind the scenes, the real deal, real time. I'd love to see you there.
Have an amazing day. Which leads us to rule number five, which is intensely integrate.
I used to go to a city for one reason. And what happens over the years, I got more and more people reaching out.
There was more demand on my time. And there's things I want to do.
There's new companies I want to start, people I want to invest in, or just things I want to experience with other people. So what I do now is I integrate it intensely.
When your work is part of your life's purpose, every moment becomes meaningful. I'm always trying to integrate every aspect of my life so I can show up for people.
It does require people around you, but it is one of the most productive things I do. And that's how CEOs get more done in a week than most get done in a year.

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