Time Optimizing Your Lifestyle Business with Productivity Expert David Buck

In this episode, David Buck, author of The Time Optimized Life, shares his expertise in time management and how it can lead to a more fulfilling lifestyle.

He emphasizes the importance of being prepared and time efficient in order to achieve success.

Buck defines time management as a reactive process that often leads to delaying important tasks.

Instead, he focuses on time optimization, which involves investing time to plan and adapt to circumstances.

The biggest time management challenge for many people is distractions, particularly from smartphones.

Buck suggests logging phone usage and setting goals to limit screen time.

He also advises against multitasking and encourages prioritizing tasks and focusing on one thing at a time.

Buck's book offers a customizable strategy for time optimization and features real-life examples from successful individuals.

Key Takeaways:

Time management is a reactive process that often leads to delaying important tasks, while time optimization involves investing time to plan and adapt to circumstances.

Distractions, particularly from smartphones, are the biggest challenge to time management.

Logging phone usage and setting goals to limit screen time can help reduce distractions.

Multitasking is not effective, and it is better to prioritize tasks and focus on one thing at a time.

David Buck's book, The Time Optimized Life, offers a customizable strategy for time optimization and features real-life examples from successful individuals.

Chapters:

00:00 Introduction and Background
03:35 The Importance of Planning and Prioritizing
05:52 Managing Distractions for Better Focus
10:20 The Myth of Multitasking
14:00 Customizing Your Time Optimization Strategy
18:13 Client Success Stories: Improving Focus and Productivity
20:54 Conclusion and Resources

David Buck - The Infinity Lifestyle Design Program
Travis Greenlee - Master Lifestyle Business Growth Mentor

Click here to receive a free summary assessment that will highlight areas of time opportunity in 5 different categories (planning, task management, focus, organization, and personal care).

To Learn more about growing a Thriving Lifestyle Coaching Business, grab your FREE Masterclass Training Today! www.LifestyleBusinessQuest.com

Transcript

Well, all right. Welcome back to the Lifestyle Business Qued Podcast. I'm Travis Greenlee, your host. And as always, it is an honor to be with you. Today, we've got a very special episode in store for you. Let me tell you a little bit about our guest. David Buck is in the house with us. He is an author of The Time Optimized Life. He has 35 plus years of organizational time management experience.

that's led him to start the Kairos Management Solutions and the Infinity Life Design Program. David empowers business professionals to overcome the struggle and lack of flexibility in life. He also helps his clients to craft a strategy to optimize their time that defines a lifestyle that focus on meaning, purpose, and joy. Dave, it is an absolute honor to have you with us, brother. How's it going over

I'm doing well, Travis. Thank you as well. It's an honor for me to be here as well.

Right on, man. Well, let's jump right into it. Again, when I saw your bio and started learning a little bit more about you, I thought, a perfect fit for our audience because you're like the time management guy. You're like the OG, right? You're the guru, if you will, of time management. You've got your book, you've got your program, you're coaching, so on and so forth. So that really has been, sounds like your focus overall.

Tell us a little bit about you. Tell us a little bit about the backstory in terms of how you've gotten to where you are and especially why the focus on time management, why the focus on leverage, on lifestyle. I know you have a lot of talk around retirement and so on and so forth. Why is all this stuff just so powerful and important for

Well, when I started in quote business development many, many moons ago, that was I found quickly that these amazingly stunning good looks and charisma wasn't going to get me anywhere. And I learned quickly and heavy on the sarcasm there, heavy on the sarcasm. And so what what I found was it what granted me success in the sales world was being more prepared than my competition.

Yes, I'm with you baby.

And that required an investment of time. And then as I progressed in my career, I found that as I tried to be more time efficient myself, but then helped my clients be more time efficient, that also generated longstanding relationships and was a driver of my success. And so I found this opportunity like time seems to play a role in that. And then I found that I was helping friends, family member.

friends of friends with just helping them manage their time. And I said, there's there's there's a there's a business here. And so about four years ago, crafted a process and a business plan in which I now work with and want to help individuals, businesses and teams, but also individuals and couples either plan their in career lifestyle strategy or their post career around their use of time.

Fantastic. And so vitally important because I think so many of us are just wasting so much time. We've got so many distractions and notifications and so many opportunities to lose that focus and to lose the power around time management. So let's start with the basics then. What would you define time management as actually being? How do you see it from your

So time management to me is a reactive process that individuals do when something comes their way. They look at it, whatever the situation event is, and many of them will complete it well. But in the time management realm, it usually means they're delaying something else that could be of equal or greater importance. So I actually don't use the quote to term time management when I work with clients. We focus on time

optimization, which flips that script and it tells individuals you need to invest in time to plan what you think life is going to be. That then opens you up for opportunities when it doesn't go as planned because it never does for you then to be able to either negotiate with someone who wants your time or adapt to the circumstances that still allows you to stay focused on the important things, but then change and

just as you need to based upon circumstances.

Very well said, right? And it just makes so much sense. It's just so clear and so straightforward. A concept or a topic that really could get a little convoluted, I think for so many of us, is it time? Is it energy? Is it optimization? Like really pulling this together. What would you say, based on your experience, are the most common time management challenges for people within their careers?

So you brought up the first one, which is the number one based upon all the assessments that I have done that people take distractions are the single biggest attribute attribute that causes us to lose focus on what something is important and shift to something less important. And the biggest culprit of that is what I feel is our most amazing productivity tool, but our amazing distraction tool. And that's our cell phone or our smartphone.

If you think of that, it is designed to want you to spend time on it, whether it's texting, email communications and all of your social media apps. It's designed for you to want to spend time on it. And that can either be immensely productive, but in most cases, it's immensely unproductive because it takes us our focus away from something important.

Got it. So what would you suggest then would be some solutions for us? In this whole technology age where we've got the screens, we've got all these things vying for our attention. And like you had said, it's just so interesting. mean, these companies that are spending millions and millions of dollars to do everything that they possibly can to keep us addicted, to keep us on these screens. So what would you suggest would be maybe an action step or two that would help us to begin to move away from some of that to be able to become more focused?

to be able to create, of course, more energy and more passion to really begin to become as productive as we possibly

And that addresses the optimization element of being proactive. I think first and foremost is you have to say to yourself if you think that distractions are a problem or say your phone is a problem, spend a week or two and log the time that you spend on your phone.

And I think you will be shocked at how much time is spent there. Then you say yourself, if it's let's just say it's 20 hours in the last two weeks, I know I spent on my phone. Then you have to say, well, how much time do I have to really spend on that phone? Challenge yourself for a goal that says, I think I'm only going to do five. And if you do that, then you have 15 hours of quote found time that you get to fill with more. Productive.

and more enhanced activities. If you think, well, that's a little bit too tough for me to do, then I would simply say start this, then plan blocks of time in your calendar that specifically say I'm willing to do nothing but social media. And then you challenge yourself.

outside of those time frames when you pick up your phone and say, I need to put it down. It's outside my area. So those are a couple of ways you can do it. It all revolves around your idea of discipline and wanting and willing yourself to focus in other areas.

Yeah, that was so good. And so simple if we do it. It's one thing to have this idea and have a little theory around it. It's another thing to actually do it. so comments on that?

Well, very true distractions are mine. I'm supposed to be the time guru, so to speak. Distractions are my number one challenge. And so right now, for example, while we're recording this, my phone is in timeout. It's quarantined. It's not near me. Any other screens that are around me, notifications are shut down so that while I'm here, I'm not tempted if something comes through to say, what what is that? I think also you have to look

Most of the time when we're responding to stuff, it's not an emergency. It's not something that needs your defined attention. Even if it's a client and you respond back to a client two, three, four hours later, if you have any type of relationship with them, they're going to give you that grace. So just know, prioritize what's in front of you that's important and know that probably most of those other communications, they'll still be there

They'll be answerable a few hours later.

Yeah, especially you draw that line, right? You set the intention in terms of the communication on what works and what doesn't work for you, whether that's with a client or again, systems or software or whatever that might be. So just the importance, I think, as you're mentioning, of having time and to be as productive as we possibly can with that time so that we could create more free time and to be able to have lifestyle, to be able to truly be able to enjoy ourselves as opposed to being just so consumed with

the screen and the notifications and just the chatter, the constant chatter unless we get really intentional about it. Tell me about multitasking. Again, I got all kinds of different views on performance or lack of performance and the overall perspective of multitasking. How does it relate to

Yes.

I don't believe in multitasking. I think that it is all the research I've done from people who have written in that specialty, a lot smarter than I am, says our brains can really focus only on one thing at a time. Well, now I will give a caveat to that to say that.

The closest I will define multitasking is, a musician, someone who can play an instrument and sing at the same time or maybe multiple instruments. But that takes.

hours and hours of practice and it becomes really muscle memory where they're doing something because it's so familiar they don't have to think about it. Well that doesn't play well in my mind when you are trying to handle a client situation or build a strategy and a program for your business. So at that point I say own the fact you can only do one thing well and focus on that one thing even if it's only for a short period of time.

and you switch to another task, just know you're not going to do both well. Toggle back and forth if you have to, but as much as possible, own that one task and get that done before you move on.

Yeah, so good and so powerful. maintaining your focus, maintaining your power. We only have so much bandwidth and especially these days, we're just being pulled in so many directions. So the importance of understanding our lack of multitasking and then also doing it. Again, not just having a theory, but actually putting this into place. What would you suggest could be some action steps to start to do that? What are some simple things that we can

understanding the importance of it to begin to minimize or really to eliminate multitasking to become as productive as we possibly

The first element is, is you define what you want to do in a given time frame. So whether it's a day, a week, however you plan that out and you then prioritize, do the level of importance first for those tasks. And then in that prioritization, you define the have to's regardless of what happens this week. It's whether these three or four tasks, I have got 50 tasks defined for this week. I have got to get these four done.

I can live without those others and work it. So once you define what it is you prioritize and those have to's that allows you to give yourself some grace. If you don't get the others done, it's when you lift that list, those 50 things and they're all treated with a sense of equalness.

that then that becomes a challenge, because at the end of the week you might say, hey, I got 35 of those 40 tasks done. Yay me. And then you're going, wait, there were three of the five that now I have to try to figure out what I'm going to do or I have to either work tonight or into the weekend to cover up for those ones that got missed. So.

That to me is it's prioritized and then give your big have to's out of that, your must to's and start working it from

Yeah. What kind of software, what kind of systems would you recommend to be able to do this, to be able to manage this and keep this as simple as possible? Once we understand the importance of it and the theory around it, and then begin to put it into place, give us, if you would, some specifics. What kind of stuff, what do you use? What do you recommend as far as software or tools, or maybe it's even old school, pulling out a pad of paper with a checklist. What do you suggest is the most effective for us to be able to really utilize this and really get the most out

So I am totally trying to I try to automate everything that I can. But I do realize there are some people that use planners out there still. So if you're still in the planner phase, great. Know that in and out. Make use of it 100 percent.

Otherwise, for me, any person who has an email is on an email exchange server. That server probably provides a built in calendar and task tools. So the second thing I would ask you to do is before you go out and find the next level software, know that 100 percent so that you're fully committed to say, I know exactly how to integrate tasks and the calendar together. I'm confidently use both of those. And if you want to

there, that's fine. I'd say that's probably enough if you want to. But then if you want to kick it up the next level from an automation standpoint, you bring in collaboration from others, then that can be a software platform. I actually one I use myself is Clockify, particularly if you need to build clients for that particular timeframe. But there's others like it. Clockify has a great, robust, free version that lets you really understand how to use the system before you have

even commit to anything. That to me is particularly when you have a lot of balls in the air. You've got clients at various different stages of maybe whatever your system process and your systems are set up as. And that allows you to manage those. But what's great is it also shows you where you spend your time. So a calendar only tells you where you think you spend your time. A software tool like that actually tells you where you spent your time and helps you adjust to be more efficient.

So good. So good. And we've heard the phrase, right? Whatever we track improves. Wherever we get that laser focus improves and we optimize. So love it. Tell us if you would, let's kind of switch directions just a bit here about your book. Again, I know this is a big deal. You've got thousands of readers out there doing really well with At The Time Optimized Life. What is it that's different about it? What is it that's unique about it that helps people to improve their lives?

Thank

and especially around the conversation of time management.

Well, thank you. And the time optimized life, I wrote it based upon the assessment tool that I use to time management analysis. It's the outline of the book. So and obviously having hundreds of people take those. I had a built in data set to show that. So the uniqueness is it applies to real world applications. The second element that that I tried to make it unique was the the idea is this is not a 10 step program. I am not going to you're not going to read the book and say just follow

exactly what Dave says. And hallelujah, you have more time because we're all unique in how we do it. So the book is designed for you to customize your own strategy and plan based around some guardrails that I established with data based.

action plans and things for you to follow. And then the third element, because I didn't want it me to be the lecture person on it. I identified people who assessed really, really well in a particular category. They became the feature person in each of the chapters of the book. So not only do you get my to take on things, but then you get someone else's who's done really well in this area, who I've known, gotten to know and trust,

provides their perspective and guess what sometimes they're not exactly in line but that's okay because that's about developing your unique custom program.

Love it. So in that line of thought, how about some experiences that your clients have had in terms of time management and leverage and optimize their time and better performance and better energy and clarity and focus and all the benefits that go along with this? What are your students, what are your clients seeing as a result of working with you and learning these concepts?

So I readily admit that if I do my job, someone's going to get so good at their time that they're going to say, see you, Dave, I don't need you anymore. And so through that process, what I find is when someone we identify the person's biggest challenge or opportunity. And so let's say that is an example of saying, no, I can't say no.

Right? Yep.

We dive deep into that. Now, you may have five or six other things that are your opportunities, but when you stay focused on one of them. Great thing is the others naturally improve.

So if I have an opportunity where I don't do well saying no, but I learn to be able to practice that and understand that and be able to articulate why I'm saying no or providing alternatives, then I find.

I'm not as distracted as much because I'm focused or I'm not procrastinating or I'm coming on time to meetings more and I'm participating more in meetings because that one other element of saying no frees me up time to spend in other areas and focus. So great thing is start one area. And if you got a lot of other opportunities, you're to see improvement in those.

Dave, great information. Thank you so much. Again, time management, the importance of time management in terms of productivity and performance and energy and focus and all the things that are just so incredibly important to all of us as entrepreneurs and as coaches as we build our businesses is, man, it's time management. And be able to be as effective as we possibly can. If our listeners want to learn more about you, in terms of what you're up to and how you might be able to help and how

how you might be able to serve them. Where can they find you? Where can they get more info?

Well, first off, Travis, thank you again for the opportunity to come on here. It's been great to me. I know it's I've had a great time because time flew by. So happy about that. So where they can reach more if they want to learn more about me is just go to Infinity Lifestyle Design dot com.

Right?

Infinity Lifestyle Design dot com. There's a variety of things out there, but a couple of things that they can take advantage of at the top of the page is the link to learn more about my book. If you click on that, you can download a chapter one for free. Gives you a flavor of what it's about to help you understand this idea of time optimization. And then if you also on the home page, there's a ability to take either my time management analysis assessment.

or the retirement time analysis, depending on where you are in your stage in life, for you to get an idea. Well, what are those opportunities I have that I can work on? So encourage everybody take advantage of those to give you an idea of where to start on your time optimized journey.

Excellent. Wonderful. Wonderful. Thank you again for the resources. Thank you for your time. Thank you for your energy. Thank you for your expertise. Like you, it's man, the time went quickly. And we always know it's a great episode when we're learning, when we're growing, when we're getting something out of this and the time goes quickly. So thanks again, Dave. Really appreciate you being with us,

An honor and pleasure. Thanks.