24- Daily Habit and Task Auditing

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Ryan: I’m Dr. Ryan Debell. This is the Health Fit Biz podcast. Thanks for tuning in to episode number 24 and this episode it titled Daily Habit and Task Auditing. It is essential if you wanna make steps forward in what you’re currently doing that you audit yourself in terms of your habits and the tasks or things you are doing day in and day out. Having a level or awareness is mission critical to your success so that you know what are you doing in all your time in the day. And once you actually do auditing of yourself it can be very revealing of things that you’re wasting time on that you should not be spending any time on. Either the task needs to be completely eliminated or somebody else should be doing it. So in this episode, Dr. Anthony Gustin and myself share our own experiences with daily habit and task auditing, how we do it, and how it applies to our businesses. So without further a do, let’s listen into episode 24.

Ryan: Welcome…

Anthony: Welcome… to another episode of the Health

Ryan: Fit

Anthony: Biz

Ryan: Ness Podcast.

Anthony: This episode is brought to you by Virgin America.

Ryan: If you don’t understand the joke please refer to episode 23 of the Health Fit Biz podcast. This is episode 24 and what are we talking about… Dr. Anthony Gustin, what is 24 all about?

Anthony: We are talking about how to audit your daily habits so that you can be the most effective and efficient… listen to that… What episode was that? Something? We talked about that before. Listen to that episode.

Ryan: Let me put that in the show notes. I’ll put that in a show notes.

Anthony: Why is that important, right? But being aware of what you’re doing day to day, how to do it effectively.

Ryan: You know what I’m aware of right now? The fact that we are still not recording this together in…

Anthony: Yeah. I’m aware of how sad that makes me.

Ryan: I am extremely saddened by the fact that I’m viewing you through Skype video rather than standing next to you recording this. I am…

Anthony: We could have been sipping coffees together…

Ryan: Oh my god! I’m just… Drinking ketones, eating just tons of fat and getting like our fog lifted. That’s a different episode!

Anthony: That is the daily habit that I want to, being next to you drinking coffee.

Ryan: That would be incredible everyday. I’ll fly down there roundtrip everyday. Okay, so why is it so important that we audit our daily habits or daily tasks?

Anthony: Well, I’ll tell you, Doctor. Humans are routine driven creatures. So when you start doing things that are meaningless, you just keep doing them and you are unaware of them. And I think that can be something that is that spirals out of control. Not good. Not good at all. So being aware of that and always thinking of, “Hmm, should I be doing this, really? Like on a daily basis?” is I think one of the most important thing that you can do from a productivity standpoint to get more things done. Whether this be, “Oh I have a clinic and everyday I send out this thing to the insurance company. Can I consistently do that?” Do you actually even need to do that? Can you batch it all together on one time? Just like being aware of things that you’re doing on a daily basis is pretty huge.

Ryan: And not just being aware too but reflecting on them.

Anthony: Right. Deciding what you can do about it, right?

Ryan: Yeah. So one of the some examples of your auditing like in terms of, can you think of things that you used to do that you audited in terms of you self reflected? Anyway, I should be figuring out a way to not be doing this this way or I should be having somebody else do this for me.

Anthony: Yes, I can. So a real sponsor of the episode is brought to you by Health Fit Business…

Ryan: Are we sponsoring our own episodes? Can you do that?

Anthony: The Daily Domination…

Ryan: Is this allowed? Does iTunes allow this?

Anthony: Why I want to plug this is because… and so the journal is  made, put that on the show notes if you haven’t, was just something that we were doing daily so we need the journal. We had an episode about it. You did a video about it in London and Paris which is very, you’re very handsome in that video. I was watching it a hundred times.

Ryan: Well, that’s because I was wearing my Abercrombie sweater.

Anthony: I saw it.

Ryan: That’s it.

Anthony: Yeah, okay.

Ryan: It was the moose.

Anthony: So one of the section, daily page we go through and keep on tracking, keep super productive, and one fourth on that open book page is about this whole task awareness thing. And so I just open mine to a random day, this is 12/22. I’m looking through it now. And so I had the things I… So I’m gonna do a mix of task completed/what I want to do that day. And there are things that I didn’t do because when I was doing it now I’m such in habit of thinking, “Okay, should I delegate this? Should I automate this? Should I eliminate it? Should I batch it with another task?” To think about what are the things that I’m doing. “Is this important? Is it worth doing? Is it deep work? Is it task work?” And some of the things were checking on affiliates for Perfect Keto. No, I shouldn’t be doing those. We have somebody to manage that. I just thought it would be good for me to reach out to these people. Now, I can use my time. You’re on accounting. Why is my accounting not doing that? Why was I gonna try to do that?  

Ryan: You’re gonna to do your accounting?

Anthony:There’s some like a little bookkeeping things that I could’ve done but instead I just send an email to my bookkeepers and said, “Hey, figure this out and send me like a recap.”

Ryan: I remember someone who’s a therapist. They posted a picture of them like reading an accounting book and I’m like, “Hire somebody!”  

Anthony: We shouldn’t be the ones to talk about that since we build our own websites and do all these stuff or whatever. And another one, stickers…

Ryan: Oh yeah.

Anthony: Design stickers and postcards. I have two designers that I pay. Why am I designing a postcard and a sticker? Don’t do that. And so these are just things that I’m looking through…  

Ryan: It makes me laugh thinking of you designing stickers and like getting excited about it.

Anthony: It’s fun. It’s a little treat. It’s just it’s completely unnecessary. Does not move the needle forward. Another one, return clothes to this store like in San Francisco Tailor Stitch. I don’t need to do that. I can do that sometime when I’m out and about like that was not on 12/22. That was not a thing I should be doing.

Ryan: Like make one trip out.

Anthony: Yeah. What the hell should I be…

Ryan: That should be batch with other trips where you’ll be in that area.

Anthony: And so writing all of these things down, either what I am doing throughout the day or what I plan to do throughout the day, then just taking like five seconds to think “Is this the best use of my time with all things considered?” The answer was for those things that I listed out just now unequivocally, “No!” Do not do those things like have somebody else do them or just don’t do them. But having this routine like, “Okay, here’s all stuff. Now take a step back. Is it worth doing this?” And so this is the audit we’re talking about of the daily habits and daily routines and daily tasks.

Ryan: And this is done on a day to day basis in the DDJ, in the Daily Domination Journal.

Anthony: Otherwise, without the daily habit of doing this you’re just gonna start reacting to things instead of thinking about why you’re doing them.

Ryan: And having that level of self reflection is really really valuable. You know, I realized two things doing this so far. By the way, so I start doing the book like a week and a half ago and you know, who knows when is this gonna air, but as soon as I got it I started going through it. I don’t do as many things as I thought did. Like…

Anthony: Easy, boy.

Ryan: Like I think in my head I do a lot more stuff than I actually do. Do you know what I’m saying? Like because you actually write down things that you’ve accomplished I was like and I think this is true for a lot of people.  

Anthony: Two lines.

Ryan: Yeah. Mine was like post my supplement consumption to my Instagram story and… And then I made coffee and then I took my spoon and put it in the coconut oil jar and then spoon it into my coffee.

Anthony: Did you really need to do that is the question.

Ryan: Well, I did because I need my brain to be like a high octane machine. But my point is this, I actually realized like I think I’m completing a lot of things but I’m not. And I know that you had mentioned this too where it like going to the journal you realized that you’re not doing a lot of the things that you intend to do. And what else, the point I was gonna get out was this- humans were really good at taking some things 90% of the way to completion and for some reason it is so hard to take it a 100%. Like to completely finish and wrap it up and tie a bow on it. That’s like really hard to do. And I think that I was realizing like I kind of do stuff but I have a hard time like finishing. So that was one thing I realized. The other thing that I think too like it changed my actions was design, like doing design working and things like that. Same were to you like I was making a lot of the photos that I put up on my Instagram and stuff or my podcast, my featured images all that stuff. I get so much, it’s so much better to have someone do that for you who’s actually like good at designing things like I’m terrible.

Anthony: Shout out to Margot!  

Ryan: Margot is unbelievable!

Anthony: She’s as awesome as the lady that we also use currently. Neither one of you are gonna be listening to this but shout out to you guys nonetheless.

Ryan: Yeah and I think we’re gonna be very selfish and keep them to ourselves.

Anthony: Yeah. I mean they’re names are Juliet and Diane.

Ryan: Yeah yeah yeah. But what I’ll do now is like when I have podcast released and especially like this podcast also I used to make the featured images. I’m like, “Why is Ryan making the featured images?” And there’s, by the way, there’s still a lot of stuff doing that I shouldn’t be and I’m much more aware of it now. Now Margot goes and makes all the images. She went in and made all the images for the previous episodes. She uploaded it all. She put it in, and it was, that would’ve taken us hours and hours and hours which we could’ve used.    

Anthony: Much better job than what you and I would’ve done.

Ryan: Oh yeah. I mean so much better. You know, I don’t think we’re gonna build the outsource us talking on the microphones.  

Anthony: I don’t know. Google has come out with some pre boss AI English instructor right now that you can rent.

Ryan: Eventually this is gonna be robots talking to each other. We could have Amazon Alexa talking to Google Home and like trying to have this conversation and we’re just like push the buttons.

Anthony: What will happen is they’ll scrape all of our social media, all of our emails and everything and get us a sense of our personality. They’ll upload it to the AI and they’ll be able to have the conversations from us. That’s what gonna happen.  

Ryan: Yeah and I’ll just be like, I’ll just sleep all day and have computers to everything. Now but, I’ll just workout and drink Ketones. Point being, I realized there’s so much stuff that I shouldn’t be doing and you need to know like what are the things that only you can do, what are the things that you are able to have somebody else do and what are the things that you shouldn’t even, that shouldn’t even be done. Like there’s a lot of things that we do not because they need to be done but because we’d just been doing them and never thought to ourselves like, “I actually don’t need to do this.”

Anthony: Yeah. There’s a lot of that stuff. Where it’s like it doesn’t need to be done. Period. It’s not important.  

Ryan: Yeah. I’m not gonna pay someone to do things that shouldn’t be done and I shouldn’t even be spending my time doing things or you know maybe there’s a way to make it automated so you can get some like some piece of software or system in place so that nobody has to do it. It just does it itself. But writing them down, I was thinking about this this morning. How like dug into our own processes we get in our own daily way of doing things and how do we break out of that? How do you do something that isn’t something that would normally do? Like for example if you actually wanna make a change you have to actually do something different. And that may be giving your tasks to somebody else to do or not doing them or by having somebody else do the design work that allows us to go do things that we wouldn’t normally be able to do because it frees up our time and more importantly our energy because the energy that I have to use and maybe you can relate to this Dr. Anthony Gustin. The energy that it takes me to make an image is like a lot because it’s hard for me so then it makes me…

Anthony: I don’t know how the hell sometimes ‘cause I just… And then I get frustrated and I’m like, “Ahh, how do I make this thing look like that?” Not important. Not important at all.  

Ryan: No I mean we could be recording other great episodes or working on a follow up book, you know, or some other unnamed thing that might in the works.

Anthony: Yeah. Maybe something secretive.  

Ryan: Something secretive. But doing the daily habit audit is so important. That self reflection is critical.

Anthony: So what we should do is, what it’s called? Show notes? What it’s called these days? Is that kids are saying these days? Show notes? Show notes?

Ryan: That’s umm…

Anthony: Yeah so anyways in the show notes if you don’t have a journal go get one.

Ryan: Are you saying you want me to put the link to the journal on the show notes?

Anthony: Yeah however what we should do those, I think we should take a screenshot of the PDF of what this section looks like and upload it so people wanna print it out or whatever they can do that.  

Ryan: So do you want me to upload the actual PDF of the like the task awareness?

Anthony: Yes. Just that or just that first, or it’s the daily one where it says the task completed/whatever.

Ryan: Like that part? Okay, so…

Anthony: Yeah yeah yeah. Just take a screenshot put it out there and then the challenge will be for this week…

Ryan: Fill it out?

Anthony: Start writing the things you’re doing or things you plan on doing and then thinking, “Does this need to be done? Can I delegate it? Can I automate it?” Like what is going on with my tasks currently.

Ryan: Okay, I’m just writing this down so I don’t forget. I don’t want like we talked about good customer versus bad experience. If I forget to put that in the show notes

Anthony: Oh man all 43 people?

Ryan: People gonna listen and then I got start giving away. I gotta go above and beyond. I’m gonna start giving people free books.

Anthony: Oh my goodness! We’re out of stock in a second.

Ryan: We have more that 36 in stock of this so we’ll be okay. Or whatever episode…  

Anthony: Everybody gonna have 5 books. Everybody going to have 150 books.

Ryan: Everybody could have a 50 books and we would have enough. Maybe, maybe not. We’ll keep it a mystery. So in the show notes, I will put the PDF so you can do yourself the task awareness. Print out 7 of those bad boys. Go through them…

Anthony: You need to write down.

Ryan: Yeah. Maybe I should

Anthony: It’s a critical point that people like, “Oh yeah I just think that I’m aware.” No, no. No, no. You need to write down.

Ryan: No, because that’s total BS. Can make this explicit? Like I do. I actually make every episode explicit on iTunes. Didn’t you mention that to me? They’re all… You need to like…

Anthony: Yeah. We’re all laughing. My mom’s like, “I was gonna listen to that but it’s all explicit.”

Ryan: I don’t know change that. I should hire someone to do that for me.

Anthony: That explains the 16 listeners.

Ryan: Yeah. Everyone thinks it’s like some terrible thing like, “Oh I have to this. I have that.” So yeah, if you think mentally, and this is why we won’t make this awareness, we won’t make an app that does this.

Anthony: No. Sorry guys.

Ryan: And people have asked, you know… And do we talk about this already? I don’t know I get confused.

Anthony: No.

Ryan: Man, the ketones are kicking now. I’m so pumped up right now if you can’t tell. So we won’t make this an iPhone app or an electronic thing because there is something magical that happens when you take your hand and you write down stuff on paper. In your phone it just disappears. So you just back out and it’s gone. It hides away in the phone interiors.

Anthony: So your hand motions right now people and I am not able to see it but…

Ryan: I just take the most incredible hand inte… Like the most…  

Anthony: I need exactly what you’re talking about.

Ryan: The interiors. You see those in wiggling? Look at that motor control there Gustin.

Anthony: They tell me to look on what cone chip looks like. That was great.

Ryan: That does. I mean I should work at Intel. So, look, it disappears in your phone. You write that poppy down on an actual piece of paper. It is totally different because now guess what? You’re like actually accountable for it and it sort of like it come to Jesus the moment you’re like, “Oh my gosh!” Like it’s actually hard when you have to write these things down because it becomes real. It manifest into reality. So point being, this is  the longest section ever on the daily or the weekly challenge. Print that off. Do it for a week. If you like buy the book. If you don’t like it well, I don’t know what to say about that. If you don’t wanna buy the book just keep on printing those things off but guess what? It’s probably cheaper to buy the book than print off a hundred sheets of this.

Anthony: Yes so stop it. Just get after it.

Ryan: Just get after it!

Ryan: Thank you guys for tuning in to this episode of the Health Fit Business podcast. If you found it helpful, please share with someone that you think it would also help and leave us a five-star rating on iTunes. Make sure also to go to healthfit.biz and sign up for the email notifications to which you can find right on the homepage so that you get all the updated podcasts and blog posts sent directly to you. Until then, we will see you next time.

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