What's up, champion? This is your host, Neal, and I want to welcome you back to another podcast episode. Man, we got something fire lined up for you today. Today, I want to challenge you to break out of the box with your thinking when it comes to your time, specifically your schedule. I'm going to lead you through a concept of a one little change you can make today that can revolutionize the way you work. And it's so big, it won't just change the way you work, but it can shift entire cultures around you at the office and help your productivity shoot through the roof. Man, I am fired up for today's episode, and I pray you are too. Get ready. This is your captain speaking. We want to let you know we've been cleared for takeoff. We have clear skies today with no winds, so we are expecting a smooth and highly enjoyable flight. However, should you experience some personal turbulence, don't worry as you've chosen the right airline. As we are trained in navigating unexpected bumps, our destination today is high performance and success. Sit back, relax, get hyped, or do whatever you do. As we too are pumped for today's flight, we understand you have options when you fly, and we are grateful that you have chosen to fly with us today. We recognize by choosing to fly no Reyes, you are committed to growing personal development and reaching higher than you ever have before. Enjoy today's flight. Be blessed, and remember, the best is yet to come. What's up, champion? This is your host, Neal Reyes, and I want to welcome you to the Executive Perspective. For years, I struggled to answer the question, what do you do for a living? Why? Because most people who ask only expect to hear one thing. I am an executive with a deep level of understanding of business, operations, leadership, and technology. I'm also the president and founder of a worldwide ministry and CEO of an executive coaching and consulting firm. My number one passion is people, and I receive significant gratitude in life from sowing into others and encouraging them as they grow to achieve their fullest potential. If you're a high performance individual like me, or you're simply ready to take your business leadership or inner potential to the next level, then strap in because I'm locked in and all in. This is the executive Perspective. Hey, what's up, champions? This is your host, Neal Reyes, and I want to welcome you to the Executive Perspective. Today, I'm going to be speaking with you about a topic that's dear to me. It's what I refer to as breaking out of the box with your schedule. I'm going to say it again today, I'm going to talk to you about breaking out of the box with your schedule. Specifically, what I'm referring to is how to manage your schedule more efficiently by making one small change. I'm going to tell you that this is something that I switched to a couple years ago, actually a few years ago, and as I did, it has absolutely revolutionized the way I work. Now, I know that's a big statement right there, but it has. It's also changed how people work around me. It's something you have to stay on top of. Not gonna lie about that, but if you do, I believe this one small change can make a massive impact in the way you work. When I'm talking about breaking out of the box with your schedule, what I'm really challenging you to do is to think differently about your time. Specifically, though, and this is something I felt really impressed lately to touch down on, is time. But specifically today, what we're going to be talking about is your actual schedule that you use. I'm going to bring up some things to you, and some of you may already be making this change, and hopefully we add some value to that, which I know we will. But for those who haven't made this change, it's going to challenge you in a profound way. That's something that I believe you'll be eager to do. And even though you may feel like you don't have 100% control over your schedule, like really, your schedule is reactive to other people's schedules, I believe if you step forward with what I'm going to show you today and you actually share it with those around you, you'll be looked at as a thought leader. Within whatever space or environment you're in, whether you're the business owner or whether you're the employee, you will be looked at as a thought leader. You know, that's important to me because here at the executive perspective, we focus on three main areas within this podcast, we focus on leadership, business strategy, and personal development. And when we're presenting information and when we're helping our people. My desire, the greatest desire of my heart, is to help people. I'm passionate about people, and I want to see people connect with their best life. That means their best performance, their best life, their best work, their best productivity, their best everything. Because here in the executive perspective, we move one direction. We move forward and upward. I just heard many people say that with me because we have people who will listen to this day in and day out. We move one direction forward and upward. And so today I want to help you with this, because when I'm trying to give you information, it's to help you based off the things that I've learned and the things that I've employed or deployed, I should say to my people or the environments I'm in. And these are things that I have found as recipes for success. Now, there's a lot of different ways to do things, and there's more than one way to get to the same result. But these are the things that have been true to me, and they're not just things I've read about or that I've heard about, but these are things that I've actually done. And so I want to share them with you because they've made dramatic impacts on my life and my performance and those around me. And I want to see you successful. And that's why I'm sharing these with you. So today we're going to talk about the concept of breaking out of your schedule. Breaking out of the box, I should say breaking out of the box of your schedule. In other words, don't be structured to the way other people always think about something. So I want you to understand this specifically we're talking about today is your calendar. And I want to start off with the statement that default calendars lead to default leadership. Oh, man, that's powerful. And I'm going to say that again. Default calendars lead to default leadership. What do I mean by that? Well, let this breathe a little bit. Stay with me for one second and you're going to see what I'm talking about. If you want to lead with clarity, efficiency and authority, then you're going to have to know how to master your schedule and how to steward your time. I'm going to say that again. If you are desiring or if you want to lead with clarity, efficiency and authority, then you have got to learn how to master your schedule and be a great steward with your time. Now, there's the key term that we're going to focus on today. Your time, stewarding your time, mastering your schedule. You see, most people, the way they build their calendars is they build their calendars or their schedules based around everybody else's needs and not their own. You know, I'm going to tell you that when I was working with my coach, one on one, this is a long time ago, but when I was working with my coach, now, now I have a coach I work with regularly. But a while back, I was working with my coach, and she helped me understand something that was Profound to me. One of the things she helped me recognize was that anytime I had something. Now this is talking about Neal. I'm being transparent with you. Anytime at that point, up to that point, anytime I had something that someone needed my help with, whether if it was my family, whether if it was someone at work, in business, whatever it was, networking, whatever it was, if someone needed my help, where it depended on Neil showing up, I always made sure to move mountains to help them out so that they could get done what was important to them. But when it came to Neil's priorities, while I was highly effective and a high performer, there were certain things that I would just kind of tend to put off or even if I put them kind of on my schedule, at one point, I wasn't even scheduling them. I was leaving the leftovers of my time for those things that were so important to me. But as I started to schedule them, even then I was still a little flimsy on whether I would actually follow through with it or not. Because if another pressing matter came forward that was for someone else, I would push my stuff aside and focus on theirs. And what my coach helped me understand was that I had a pattern of if it was something that someone else was depending me on, I showed up and focused full force with my best efforts to help that be a success. But I wasn't showing up the same way for myself. And what she helped me understand was that for me to truly serve others around me and to serve them at my highest potential, which is the greatest desire of my heart, I must first show up for myself before I show up for others. Man, that's a big unlock right there. Now, as I share that with you, maybe we'll dedicate another podcast just to that, because that's a really big subject and it helped me a lot. So I know there's some of you out there that it'll help as well. But today, specifically, I want to talk about mastering your schedule and stewarding your time. This is a specific topic that we're talking about, but it's important because your schedule reflects your schedule. In other words, your schedule reflects your time. The things that represent what you need to be giving your attention to. And yesterday's podcast that I talked about, I introduced something that I refer to as the 6040 rule, where I have now moved to 60% of my time goes towards needle moving activities that move my needle on the things that are the most important for me, my highest priorities. And I save 40% of my schedule to be able to help others. Move their needles, but not needles that cause me noise, but needles that help to their success, that in the end help me succeed as well. Because these are people who either work for me or these are people who I work alongside of, or people who just genuinely need my help. But I use a 6040 split now when I do that. And that podcast, just in case you're wondering what it's called is, your schedule is either your scoreboard or it's your graveyard. And your schedule is either a scoreboard or a graveyard. And what I mean by a graveyard is your schedule can be a graveyard of your dreams. Whoo, man, that's a big, big, big statement right there. Your schedule, if you don't learn to guard it, it can either be your scoreboard for success, or if you look at your schedule, if all you're ever doing is being busy, busy, busy and working on other people's stuff, or just being just not diligent with your time, or not stewarding your time correctly, it can be a graveyard of dreams, meaning the things that are your goals, your dreams that mean the most to you, you'll never accomplish. And your schedule is what will be able to go back and look at, to be able to track that. That's a powerful statement, but I'm going to tell you is true. And it's strong. It's strong, and it should be strong. And if that hits you strong, then all you got to do is make little tweaks and we're going to give you some little tweaks a day to help you out with that. So what I want you to understand is let's start off with this concept. First of all, did you ever ask yourself who decided that all meetings need to be one hour in length? Remember I told you at the beginning of this podcast at the top of the show that I was going to show you one little thing that if you made an adjustment on, it would make a massive difference within your performance. This is the one thing that I'm talking about, you know, when it comes to schedules. And man, I can really get into some advanced topics with scheduling with you and time management, things like that. But today we're just keeping it simple and we're keeping it high level. But it's the simple topic of why do all meetings need to be one hour in length? Man, I'm going to tell you that's a strong one right there by default. Now understand, I recognize some meetings do need an hour. In fact, some meetings need a little more than an hour, but only when they really need it. But have you ever noticed that when you look at your schedule, and I don't care what you use, and this is agnostic to any kind of scheduling tool you use. But whether you use something like a Microsoft Outlook for your calendar or if you use the default calendar from Apple, whether it be on one of your Apple devices like a phone or a MacBook or iPad or something, have you ever noticed when you go to set meetings, it's like they all default to one hour increments? Now, there's some settings you can play with to adjust some of the different calendars that are out there. They're not all created equal, but when you look at the most common types of calendars that are used, and I do that from my consulting space, but when you look at that most times when people schedule a meeting, it automatically defaults to an hour, especially in the work and office environment. But who says all meetings have to be an hour? You know, what I will tell you is oftentimes meetings do not need to be an hour. In fact, what I made a shift to a while back in my schedule and I stay guarded over this. But I will tell you, sometimes it floats back to an hour and I got to pull it back in. But a while back, I made the change with my scheduling to only allow 45 minute meetings. Not an hour meeting, but 45 minute meetings. Now, if someone wants to schedule an hour meeting, that's totally fine. But what I give them, unless it's someone that I really need to knock a lot of work out with, what I give them is 45 minutes of my time. And I announce that to them before I get to the meeting, before I accept the meeting. And when I go into the meeting, hey, I've got a hard stop at, and I give them the time I got to stop at because I Give them 45 minutes. Focus. Now, here's why I do that. If a meeting truly needs an hour, no problem with that. But most times, most meetings could get done a lot sooner. But if you notice when you go into a meeting, most meetings they go an hour or longer because people learn to just fill up space on that. And we're going to talk about that here a little bit later. But when you have a meeting that takes an hour, and let's say that meeting could have been done in 30 minutes, who's paying for all that extra time? You know, that extra 30 minutes that you were in the meeting, that's not saying that you sat there in silence. But when you're there and it's filled with other talking or other things. Who's paying for all that wasted time? And it's usually not just you in that meeting, it's usually you and at least one other. But if you have a conference room full of people, it's like dollar signs. It's like you count what the dollar signs, dollar sign, dollar sign. I mean, it's like if you go around and start looking at the people, you may not know what they make or maybe if you're the business owner or the boss, you do. But if you just calculate the hourly wage, you look at all the money you're burning in that room. Now, I'm a proponent. Meetings. I have a very heavy meeting schedule. When I say heavy meeting schedule, I guess let me correct that. But I have a very active schedule that's filled with meetings and I like that. I personally enjoy meetings. The reason why I enjoy meetings, because meetings are very effective to me. It's when I accomplish a lot of work by helping and working with others and collaborating. But if all you're ever in is meeting, meeting, meeting, and you're just wasting time, that's not an effective way to work. And you're burning money, whether it be for you or for the organization you work for. And you need to rein that in. Now let me ask you this. Who's paying for that time when you don't have enough time to finish your work? Now here's what I mean. If you're stuck in meetings all day long, if you have an eight hour workday and you spend seven to seven and a half hours of that workday and nothing but meeting, meeting, meeting back to back. Well, when are you getting your work done? Well, that usually means for most people, they now have to either stay late or they start working through their lunches or they turn around or working through their breaks or they're turning around and having to work evenings or weekends or something, and that means you're paying for that time, that means your family's paying for that time. You know, in 20 years, if you have children, and let's say you have children who are small, let's say they're early, elementary or something like that, but you have children who are small. In 20 years, nobody's going to remember you working late and the emails you responded to, nobody you work with is going to remember when you stayed late that one night or those multiple weekends in a row. Nobody's going to remember that. Nobody's going to have any track record of any of that extra time you put in except for one group of people. You know who that is? That's your family. Your family, your children, when they grow up, they may not know what you were working on. They may not know what it was about. But what they will know is that daddy or mommy wasn't home, or if they were home, they weren't available for them because they were always working late. Man, that hits hard right there. But I'm going to tell you, that's a significant conversation. I will tell you that as an executive, I work long hours at times and have for many years. But there's a difference between when I need to and when I'm choosing to. In other words, there are times where maybe I feel like working late and I have the availability, and so I do. But there are other times where you just kind of get in a groove and you're working and you got to stop and ask yourself, am I here late because I need to be right now, or is it just because I'm choosing to be. Because I'm choosing to be here instead of somewhere else? And you have to realign your priorities when you do that. Your family needs you. And I will tell you that you need to unplug from work. There are those who love work so much, they're like, well, I just want to work, work, work. That's okay. There's nothing wrong with that. However, even the people who work, work, work, work, work, and maybe have no children because they're all grown or they never had children. If you just work, work, work, there are studies to prove what that does on your body because you're not doing the other things you need to to take care of yourself. You know, there are ways that people can be fit on the outside that you can look at them and they got the muscles or they got the small waist or whatever, and they're like, that's a healthy person. But, you know, sometimes even those people still have heart attacks or they have health issues and conditions. And you're like, how'd you do that? You're like the model of fitness. And it's because you were measuring from the outside, but inside there were other things going on, whether it be stress or lack of sleep or high anxiety or things that just really, really overwhelm and stuff like that that really does things on their body. I'm telling you, we're speaking about some deep topics today, and I didn't intend to go into necessarily these areas, but clearly there's some need for it out there. And every time I do one of these Sessions. I say sessions. But every time I do one of these podcasts, I always seek the Lord on what he would have me speak to you about. Now, you may not be a believer like me, but I still respect you the same way by asking him, hey, what do these people need to hear about today? And oftentimes when I'm speaking, he'll take me down certain little rabbit holes some people could call them. But there's things like this that we need to speak about. And I believe there's some people that this is hitting hard on. Now, if you are that person already that your children are grown and what they remember is all the times mommy worked late or that daddy worked late and they don't know what it was about, they just know. And maybe they're not bitter about it even, but they just know that you work late. They're the only ones who keep record of that. You still have time to make up that time. You can't go back in time. But you can start to shift and change your priorities now by helping them know that they are a priority to you. Anyways, we'll move on. But these are some things that are rising up in me that I know are extremely important to be able to talk about. But just understand, as we talk about this today, we're focusing on the adjustment of not all meetings need to be one hour. Now here's your first leadership truth bomb I have for you today. If your schedule runs you, you're not leading, you're reacting. Whoo. I'm going to say that again. If your schedule runs you, you are not leading, you're reacting. Now here's what I want to do so we can break or bust this one hour myth that all meetings need to be one hour. First of all, default 60 minute meetings are technically an outdated standard. Now, not trying to say that you have to break away from tradition on all your things you do, but a 60 minute meeting, it's an outdated standard. It was created that way because some programmer designed a calendar at some point and it was easiest to code it, that when people set a meeting, it defaulted to an hour because someone had to give feedback into that. That's how that started. Just so you know, I know I employ programmers, I interview programmers, I hire programmers, I have programmers that work for me. I know the programming world well. That's where actually these things first started at, was with the one hour schedules. Now someone could say, well, long before that we still did that before we had computers maybe. But in today's modern culture, this is the primary thing that's reinforcing it. And so now most people think that all business meetings need to be one hour in length. You know, I want to refer to you to something that's referred to as the Parkinson's. Parkinson's Law. Now Parkinson's Law or the Parkinson's Law, this is something that was created back in like the mid-1950s, around 1955 or so, but basically it focuses on that work, tends to expand to fill up the allotted time. Here's what that means. The Parkinson's Law is a theory that they came up with that says that however much allotted time you give for a particular activity, you'll tend to fill that up, whether that's what's needed or not, to actually get the activity done. And that's actually what happens with 60 minute meetings, meetings or discussions that could actually happen within Mayme 27 minutes, 30 minutes, 35 minutes, constantly go to an hour because people feel it needs to just have the hour block on the schedule. And what happens in Parkinson's Law refers to that anytime you give an allotted amount of time to something, it'll fill up that time anyways, even if it's not needed. Just because it tends to fill up with stuff, it fills up with extra talking, it fills up with extra conversation. I will tell you in a lot of work environments and we're going to touch on this in a little bit, a little bit deeper in a minute. But a lot of times, and what I've seen in meetings is people show up unprepared for meetings, especially their own meetings, all the time. And so they have this ramp up period where they just kind of talk and talk and talk and ramble on at the beginning until they hit the meat of their meeting and then they get going with it. But they'll waste 15, 20 minutes doing that before they even get to the meat of the meeting. What it needs, don't do that. Show up prepared, hit that thing, get it in and out. And I will tell you that if you want to be a hero, not just seen as a thought leader within your environment, by suggesting something other than 60 minute meetings and showing people how to do that. But if you want to also be looked at as a hero, if you schedule a meeting and it happens to have an hour block, show up with an agenda, show up with clear initiatives and know what you got to do, be a great moderator to keep the meeting on track. And when you turn around to everybody and say, okay, well we finished in 40 minutes, I'm going to give you 20 minutes back in your day, people will love you. People will love you because they thought they were going to be there for an hour. And when they get 20 minutes back, that's huge. They now have time to do whatever, run to the restroom, check their email, you know, grab a snack, go for a quick walk, or just simply go back to their desk and just be calm before the next meeting and prepare for the next assignment. Or maybe they get to sneak in a little extra work so they don't have to work late that night. I mean, these things matter right here, the things I'm telling you. The other thing is, and just going back to that Parkinson's Law, it's not just with meetings even, it's with tasks. Now, one of the things I've trained my staff to do is whenever we assign something to someone, so my leaders, whenever my managers are assigning work to their employees, I always tell them, give them a due date. Because if you don't give them a due date, they're going to turn and just kind of put that on the back burner and work a lot of other things before they work on that. That's not all employees, but it's most, even the really good ones. And so I say give them a due date. And I even tell them, and when you sign something to yourself, give yourself a due date. We use different productivity softwares that we use. There's different ones out there. I'm not going to name the one we use because I'm not trying to plug for them, but we use one that it's a collaboration tool. It can be used for project management and collaboration. But you can assign yourself tasks, or tickets, so to speak, in there and put due dates on it. And I tell them all the time, do put due dates on there, and then look at your dashboard every day. And if you see something's popping up or if it's coming due, and if it shows red, that means it's overdue. But it helps you stay on track with things. Don't leave everything to your own memory. Use this for your people as well. But if you give someone a due date of, say, seven days to complete a task that really only takes two days to complete, then you need to understand that most likely you're going to get that task done in seven days. Why? It's the Parkinson's Law. People usually fill up the time they have to work on something if allotted more time than needed. Now, I'm not saying to drive your employees and redline them so hard that you're always like two days, two days, two days. No. Sometimes you need to give them that flexibility because not everything can be on fire or a priority at the same time. But I'm sharing with you how the Parkinson's Law works. That people will fill up the allotted time given to them, even if it doesn't require that much time in the beginning to complete that task or assignment. The other thing I want you to do is here's your solution to the one hour meeting. Learn to cut your meetings to 30 or 45 minutes if you can, and watch how your focus increases. You know what I tell people, in fact, I do touch bases with my people, I call them one on ones. And at one point when I first started, in the current environment I'm in, I used to have about eight one on one meetings every single week with just my staff. But it was what was needed as I was building my leadership up. And eventually what I did is as I built my leadership up, I created just a couple direct reports that report to me and everyone else reports to them. And so now those eight meetings that I had per week went down to like two or three meetings. Real small. Because now I'm meeting with less people. In other words, I have what is referred to sometimes as a SPOC, a single point of contact. I created SPOCs in my departments for certain areas. If I'm looking at, you know, the developers or if I'm looking at DBAs or something, I have one person that does that. If I'm looking at someone who manages all of our data center and infrastructure activities and support, I have another person who does that. If I have someone who needs, who manages my schedule and does, I have another person who does that. But the number of touch points that I have, it's real significant. Sometimes when people are applying for jobs, they think that, especially if it's high level jobs, they think that the more direct reports that they have shows that they're working in a bigger organization or they're a bigger manager than what they are. That's nonsense. I'm going to tell you when I'm looking at things like that, the fewer direct reports they have. Now that's interesting. I want to learn about that. Is it because their org structure is small and if it is, that's okay. Nothing wrong with that. Just because it's small doesn't mean it's insignificant. But if I find out that what they did is they developed a leadership or org chart structure that's deeper than it is wide, they learned the value of Managing their time. So they created just a couple direct reports that report to them, as opposed to a real wide infrastructure. A wide infrastructure of direct reports can gobble up your time, man. I'm speaking some high level stuff here. Hope all my executives are listening or all the people who are trying to break into those executive ranks. I hope you're listening. And for the ones who are saying that's not possible, it is possible. I've done this in environment after environment after environment, and even with my consulting, I've shown people how to do this as well. It's not overnight. And sometimes you got to build up your bench or build up your people like I had to in the beginning. I had to sow significant amount of time in the beginning to build this structure where I'm at now. But it's paid off and it's paid off for my people. And I'm not going to go into all that. But it's doable. You just have to have a plan, structure on exactly how to do it. Now, as we're talking about breaking out of the one hour myth, the next thing I want to share with you is actually a story that I heard of someone else who encountered this same thing. Oh, don't know if you guys heard, but I think Libby might be walking into the studio. For those who haven't been following us or not sure who Libby is, Libby's one of my dogs and she likes to walk into my studio sometimes. That being said, though, a while back when I made this change, and first of all, understand my schedule just felt like my time was being gobbled up by so many different things. It felt like it was being gobbled up by other people's needs. And then that's when the Lord, I started praying and seeking his guidance. And I was asking him, lord, in my quiet times, before him, lord, there's got to be a better and more efficient way on how to do this. I want to be the most efficient I can and the best employee and executive I can for you. How do I fix this? And that's when he started speaking to me about my 6040 split in my schedule and about focusing on needle moving activities. So it first started with that for me, but shortly after that, I recognized that, Lord, I'm focusing on the 6040 split, but everything just seems like it's an hour and it's still taking up time. Is there a way that now that I have this in effect that I can dial it in even further? And that's when he gave me the revelation for the first time that not all meetings have to be one hour in time. Some do. I get that. I've already said that some do, but not all do. Those should be the exceptions and not the norms. And as he began to show me that, and he began to minister that to me, and I began to map it out on paper and looking and seeing what that is using a time map. And I'm not going to go into that today, but I know I just, you know, tickled some ears. I don't know. People are like, who? Time map? What's that? I'll talk about that later at some of my advanced time management stuff I go over. But as I started to kind of just look at that and see what that looked like, it started to stir in me and grow. And the Lord's so faithful because usually when he does something like that for me somewhere later on, I then hear someone else talking about it or something very similar, and it reconfirms and gives me a different angle or perspective on how they're doing it. And this particular person who I heard was actually Ed Mylett. Not sure if you're familiar with Ed Mylett and the Ed Mylett show, but he is a just a dynamite speaker. He's one of the world's. In fact, I think he's rated right now the number one coach in the United States. Maybe in the world, but in the United States for sure. And anyways, he's someone I listen to very often. And as I was listening to Ed Mylett, this was at A Mastermind and he was one of the speakers who was there at A Mastermind I was at. And he started sharing his story about his calendar and how he had changed, how he started doing his meetings. One of the things that opened his eyes. And Ed, if you're listening, hopefully I get this right and do your story right. But what I remember Ed talking about was that he had to have a meeting with Apple. Now Ed has one of the largest podcasts that exist in the world. And in his podcast around personal development and things, he happened to have a meeting with someone from Apple. And they called him up and they said, hey, we need to have a meeting. And it was a young lady. And he's recounting the story about this young lady calling him and said that she needed to meet with him, but she only needed to schedule a 28 minute meeting with him. And it caught his attention because it was so specific, 28 minutes. And so he gave her his time and she turned around and she jumped on the Meeting with them, she had an agenda. It was very clear what they're going to be about and she knew exactly what she needed to ask. And boom, boom, boom, boom, man, they got in and out of there. And for a person who's a high powered person like that, this is a very, very prominent person, Ed. Boom, boom, boom, boom. He respect that so much. He was in and out of there. And when the 28 minute hit, she's telling him, thank you for your time today. And she hung up. Right at 28 minutes. He said that thing blew him out of the water because a 28 minute meeting. So it made him start questioning if him and his people were being as efficient as they could be. Because he recognized and he had already been speaking in him, had been stirring in him. That man, does every meeting have to be an hour? So they made a shift in culture, in his environment and his business. And as they did, he said, they started focusing on coming to meetings ready with an agenda, ready to go and knocking them out. And they moved away from the 60 minute meeting. And then he started sharing a story with us where that they had had to have a meeting that normally they would have scheduled an hour and instead they scheduled a smaller block for it. I think they even scheduled maybe a 30 minute block. But they showed up in that meeting ready to go, jumped right on it. Didn't have any preamble or rambling on, just jumped right on it, got into the meat of the conversation and he said within eight minutes the meeting was done and they didn't fill up the rest of the time. They all looked at each other and said, got what we needed done. Everybody go about your day. And everybody, remember I told you about being the hero in that everybody got 22 minutes back in their schedule because that meeting only took eight minutes that they had scheduled 30 for. But keep in mind, that's a meeting that normally they would have scheduled for one hour because by default it goes to one hour on the block. And due to Parkinson's law in the past, not showing up really prepared, they would have filled up that whole time and taken up an hour. But as they learned to shift their mindset as it came to managing their schedule, that normal one hour meeting that they actually scheduled 30 minutes for now only took them eight minutes. Now that's one example. But in eight minute meeting, and you might say, like, well, that must have been just kind of a minor conversation, didn't even need a meeting. No, he said this was a specific thing they were talking about, very important, but it was the girl from Apple that helped open his eyes to this thing. And as they did that, when you think about, man, they got 22 minutes back out of the 30 minutes. No, they actually got much more than that because it's actually like they got 50 the two minutes back. Because normally that would have taken them a one hour meeting. Man, I'm telling you, this is significant right here. If you learn to make just this one little adjustment and break away from the 60 Minute myth in your meetings, it'll change everything for you. Next, I want to talk with you about setting the standard that every meeting needs structure. I'm going to say that again. Next, we're going to talk about setting the standard that every meeting needs structure. And there's three specific things I'm going to go over with you here. Clear titles and descriptions, written agendas, and appoint a moderator. Gosh, that might be the most important thing, but they're all very important. But clear titles and descriptions, written agendas, and appointing a moderator. So let's break this down. First thing we're going to jump into is clear titles and descriptions. If you jump on your calendar and you look up and see that you have a meeting this week and it's titled something generic like weekly sync, Weekly sync is not enough. In fact, I'm going to tell you that if you're the one doing that and you're saying weekly sync and you might be saying, well, my employees know what weekly sync means. I'm still telling you that's not enough. Not if you want to break free from the 60 minute myth of meetings. And what I'm going to tell you is when you learn to break free of 60 Minute Myths or the 60 Minute Myth of meeting times is not you who's just getting time back, it's all your staff who works for you as well. And as that catches on, you're now talking about a culture shift, which is massive. That's huge right there. And if you own the company and that starts hitting multiple departments, or if you're working within an environment and that starts cross pollinating to other departments, you have now shifted a massive culture within that organization and shown them how to save lots and lots of money by being more effective, man, I'm telling you. And I will tell you that when you're more effective like this, you're even more direct about what you're talking about. Oftentimes you can show up to a meeting and if no one's expected to have to have an agenda because they think they've got Time to ramble on. They'll even forget sometimes important things that they needed to talk about in that meeting. But when you show up in a concise nature, knowing you have a limited amount of time and you're practicing brevity within those meetings, and as you're doing that, you know you have to have your agenda ahead of time. You're not forgetting as many things because you're being more direct on what has to be talked about from the beginning. So use a clear title and descriptions for your meetings. In fact, here's what I will tell you. There is a period within my own leadership where I was scheduling meetings and my schedule was so busy, I was booked back to back meetings the entire day, every day. I was at the office for anywhere out of a month and a half to two and a half months out on my schedule. And so when I would tell my executive assistant to please help me schedule a meeting, I would tell her what to name the meeting. And I'd get to that meeting three and a half weeks later. And I'm sitting there like, what is this meeting about? And I didn't even realize what I was at the meeting for. I knew I needed to be there or I wouldn't have put it on my calendar. But I wasn't using real cloer titles on my calendar. And that was on me, not my executive assistant. And after we'd kind of talked a little bit, we'd realize what we need to talk about and we'd knock it out. I only had to have that happen once to me to fix that thing, only once. And I went back to my executive assistant and said, you and I got to have a talk. I need your help. And this is a me thing, not a you thing, but I need your help and you're here to help me, so I need your help. And she was so happy to help me. And I said, going forward, whenever I tell you to schedule something for me, we need to be real clear on the title. It's got to be so clear that anyone who reads it, they know exactly what we're talking about that day. But we're not going to allow ourselves to only rely on the title. I need you to start putting in the description a mini agenda, at least some bullet points. Doesn't have to be real detailed, but at least some bullet points of what we're going to be talking about that day. And when I say not real detailed, I mean it doesn't have to be overkill on that thing. She doesn't need to wordsmith it we just need to turn around and put on there so people know exactly what the meeting is about and why and in the agenda what they need to come prepared, ready to speak about. We do this, we're going to start winning in our meetings. And guess what? We started winning in our meetings right away. So don't be vague, use clear titles and use clear descriptions. The next thing is write agendas, man. I require all of my people now to write agendas when they come into a meeting. And when I have a weekly meeting with my managers, I have a weekly meeting with my top people, my direct reports, and then I have a weekly meeting with all my leaders because they still need some time with me. But all those touch based meetings I told you about, I shrunk them down to one meeting once a week. And when those people meet with me, I have them send in to my executive assistant all of their meeting agenda items that they need to talk to me about the day before so that I have time to review them before going into that meeting. And when they show up, they show up prepared. And another thing, this is just something I've learned with my people. When we gather around that conference table, I used to just have one person go and give me all their stuff and then the next person, and then the next person. But you want to know what I found out? The cross collaboration wasn't happening the way it needed to because I give my people good technology. So they have their laptops or their iPads or things they come in with. And while person one's talking, person four over there in the corner, they're answering emails or doing things or checking the news or whatever on their, on their computer because they got bored or they zoned out because they had attention deficit disorder. Who knows, I'm just, I'm not speaking something over them. But they just, their attention got lost and as they did that, they weren't paying attention. So I said we're not doing that anymore. We're going to go rapid fire. These are going to be rapid fire meetings. So you're going to come ready with your agenda and we're going to start with person one. And I'm going to pick randomly who they are. And as I pick you randomly, we're going to go and then we're going to go on a counterclockwise or clockwise order every single time we choose it in each meeting. And so person one goes. But they might not be sitting right next to me, they might be down at the end of the table on that side and they go and they give us their thing and then the next one and the next one and the next one. But once I started doing that, the cross collaboration of the department, man, we came up to a whole nother level because now everyone's engaged and they're asking questions and now the right hand knows what the left hand is doing and we're much more effective. And we've done this for a considerable amount of time now. But one of the other things I taught them, as I said, when I step in a meeting with you, don't assume you have my attention for one hour. Now, these are one hour meetings that we hold. Actually, they even go a little longer for these because the amount of stuff we sometimes have to talk about. But I told them, don't ever assume you have one hour of my attention. And when I go with my touch base, my direct reports, don't assume you have 45 minutes of my attention. Because while I'm certainly going to block that off for you, at five minutes into the meeting, if I get called by my supervisor, the CEO of my company, and they need me and they've got to have something, I've got to stop what I'm doing here so I can go take care of them. And they understand that it's part of being a good steward to the people and giving honor where honor is due to the people I report to. And as I explained that to them, I told them, most people, when they create an agenda, they start off with whatever the. In other words, let's say they create an agenda of 10 items. They put the most important item down at number 10 and the least important item at number one. That or they don't order them in any particular thing. They just wrote them down as they came to them, but they didn't rank the items on there. Now, I'm going to show you that I first learned this from watching soccer. Man, I'm telling you, this is going to help you out. And for all my people across the pond, football, okay? For all the people who are watching soccer or football, depending what part of the country you're in or the world you're in, I was watching. I remember this was, I believe it was either a World cup or, or a Euro cup that I was watching one time and I was watching the national team of Portugal play, and they had a player on that team that I was a big fan of and still am, and it's Cristiano Ronaldo. He's one of the best in the world. And at this particular time, it was a strong argument of whether him or Lionel Messi was the best in the world. Dan. They were just both the elite of the elite and Portugal. At the end of the game, the game ended in a time, so they went into extra time, two 15 minute extra times. They then still didn't have a clear winner. So then they went into penalty shootouts. And the way penalty shootouts work in soccer is they give each team five penalty shots and they flip to see who's going to go first. And as they do, you have or you have a home team and a visitor, but one team goes first and the next one. So they take shots one after another, rotating back and forth. Well, I watched them play this team that I really felt they should have beat in regulation, but I watched Portugal make a critical mistake that cost them that game, that time. And here's what it was. What the team that they were playing did is the team turned around and they selected their five best penalty shooters, and Portugal selected their five best penalty shooters. But what the other team did, the opponent, they selected their five best penalty shooters, and then they ranked them and who was their strongest penalty shooter to their least strongest out of those five. Although they were all strong, they still ranked them. And their strongest penalty kick shooter came out and kicked the first kick for them. And then it went to their second strongest and the third and so on to where when number five came up, that person wasn't their strongest kicker, it was their least strongest kicker out of those five. Portugal did a different thing. Portugal came out with their top five kickers, but they put them in the rank of that number one was the least strong, then the next one, then the next one. And what they did is they built them up in rank to where by the time they got to number five, they had their strongest penalty kicker, which was Cristiano Ronaldo, arguably the best player in the world at this time. And here's how that penalty kick shootout worked out. That shootout, what happened was team number one comes up, and these are high pressure situations. A lot of fans, they're on tv, it's a big deal. Opponent comes up with their best kicker, and he comes out and absolutely drills it into the net. And they're up 1 0, and everyone's cheering. The Portugal guy walks up, and as you're watching him walk up on tv, you can see the nerves and pressure all over that guy. He comes up to take his kick, and as he comes up to take his kick, he kicks it and he misses his first shot. What happened? The pressure Got to him. Now, all of a sudden, the other team's up one zero kick. Number two kicker, Number two comes up second strongest kicker on the opponent's team. He comes in and smashes that ball into the net. They're now up 2:1. The kicker from Portugal comes up. And as he comes up now, you can tell he's kind of nervous and stuff like that. And he goes and kicks it, and the goalkeeper blocks the shot. Man, they're now up. They're now down two to zero. The third kicker from the other team comes up, nails his shot. Third kicker for Portugal comes up. He nails his shot. And now what you have is a score of 3 to 1. So mathematically, you have to be able to have enough kicks to be able to come back in order to win. Anyways, what ended up happening in this one, and I may have not got that exactly right in that order, there may have been, like, the block first and then the missed kick, but this is how it worked out. Okay? But here's what ended up happening, because the opponents sent their best people in first. The reason why they did that, it was a strategy. They knew that there was a lot of pressure in this, but they knew they needed to build the standard and set momentum. And the best way to do that was to send their most confident and best penalty kicker in there, because when he made that, everyone else on the team was going to relax a little bit more, the pressure was going to come down a little bit more, and they were going to be a little more hyped because they knew they could win. Portugal did the opposite. They sent their weakest player in, and he couldn't handle that pressure. And then the next one. And it was a tough thing because these were all good players. But what ended up happening was the opponents scored more goals earlier on than Portugal did. And what ended up happening was they didn't even get to the fifth kicker. So Cristiano Ronaldo, arguably the best player in the world at that time, never even got to take his penalty kick. Why? Because they had him ranked in the wrong order. In their mind. They thought that was going to go to five penalty kicks, and they wanted the strongest guy kicking at the end. But the other team understood they wanted to win it as fast as they could, and there was no guarantee they'd get to the end. So they needed to start with the strongest guy, the top. Now, here's where I'm bringing that story up. When you set in a meeting agenda, don't start with your weakest items at the Top and the most important at the bottom. Because if five, 10 or 20 minutes into that meeting, that meeting gets interrupted and you've got to go somewhere else. You ensured for your team that you're only talking about the weakest things or the things that need the least amount of attention. And the things that were the most important to your success and the success of your team and your organization you never even got to talk about because they were at the bottom of the list. Man, I'm telling you that right there was worth showing up for today's podcast. This is years and years of executive experience telling you this right now. Put your most important items at the top. And another thing, you shouldn't have frivolous, non important things on that agenda anyways. But put it at the top. And I have my employees send me those agendas ahead of time for one specific reason so I can show up prepared. But two, so they can show up prepared which is even more important. But three, or at least as important, but three. So that way, if for some reason the meeting doesn't even happen, I still know what's going on. And I've told my people, when you send me an agenda, if you just send me bullet points, that means nothing to me. You need to do it just like we schedule the meeting. It needs to be a clear topic and then you need to have some real concise details of what you want to talk about relating to that topic. And here's why. If all they send me is a list of bullet points, those are just memory joggers to them, so they know what to talk about when they get in the meeting. But if we don't get the meeting or the meeting has to finish early, I don't even know what they were trying to talk to me about. And now it wastes my time and theirs because we got to circle back around to another meeting. Because what I needed was a real clear topic, what they wanted to talk to me about, and the details of what they were planning on talking about. So it's a true update. So whether the meeting happens or not, I know exactly what I need to know. This is how you create an effective agenda. And the other thing an agenda does is it creates accountability and time awareness as well. And then the last thing about this, as far as setting the standards. So every meeting has structure, every meeting needs structure. You must appoint a moderator. Now if you're leading that meeting, you should be a great moderator. But if not, bring someone in with you, someone who must be in charge of the time. Is What a good moderator is. This is someone who knows how to be in charge of the time the meeting transitions, but most importantly, keeping the meeting on track. And understand that with leadership, that equals stewarding other people's time. Well, leadership means you're not just in charge of managing your time, but you have to be respectful and manage other people's time as well. So you need to have a strong meeting moderator. The next thing I want to talk to you about is the leadership side of scheduling. A calendar will always be a reflection of your priorities, your focus, and your authority. That's a big one right there. A calendar will always be a reflection of your priorities, your focus, and your authority. If your calendar doesn't reflect those three things, then it's not a scorecard, it's a graveyard, man. I'm just going to tell you that right now. That's a big one. The other thing is that you'll recognize that your team will treat time the same way you do when they watch your example. So set the tone early. Someone's always watching you, and you're a leader, and your people will follow your tone because they'll think that that's the best way to lead because that's the way they see you manage. And if that's the way you're going to lead, they're going to follow your example whether you want them to or not. They're going to follow your example. Here's another leadership truth bomb I have for you. Meetings without purpose are just disguised procrastination. Whoa, that's a big one right there. Meetings without purpose are just disguised procrastination. Be purposeful when you walk into a room. Now, I want to give you a couple real quick practical action steps that you can take to help you with this. The first thing I recommend you do is audit your schedule over the next seven days. It's just simply look at what you've already got on there. And if someone's saying, I don't even use a schedule, that's a great place to start. But if you have a schedule, and if you're a leader that has a schedule, audit your next seven days of meetings. Ask yourselves these questions. What can you shorten? What can you eliminate? And what can you reformat where needed? In other words, what can you shorten? Everything's going to be an hour, most likely. Does everything need to be an hour, though? What can you shorten? What can you eliminate? Or maybe it's. It's a meeting that needs to happen, but you don't need to Be there. Delegate someone to be there for you. Show them you trust them, let them lead. Give them an opportunity to lead. Or maybe it doesn't need to happen at all. And what would normally take a meeting, Just answer it in a quick verbal conversation over a phone or do it over an email and be done with that and move on. The next thing is build a meeting manifesto. What is that exactly? Well, this is a meeting manifesto that your team can use as something that they recognize. It has information like title, agenda, and timekeeper. These things are mandatory. In other words, what you're saying is our meeting manifesto. It's almost like a motto, but it's your meeting manifesto where you basically tell them, every meeting that we go in, we're going to have a title that's real clear so we can understand what we're meeting about. We're going to have a real clear agenda, and we're going to have to. We're going to know what we need to show up prepared about. And someone's going to be assigned as the timekeeper, who's going to be our moderator as we walk into this meeting. Now, some closing thoughts as we get ready to finish today's podcast. And man, I'm really enjoying this. I feel, no doubt, like I could talk another two hours on this subject, easy. And I feel like even though I've given you so much, I have so many things to sow into you and share any of you about this topic, but I don't want to keep you here all day. And so we're going to turn around and get ready to close this, because this is how I did it. But maybe we'll revisit this subject. But the first thing I have on closing thoughts, you don't need more time. You just need more structure. Oh, I'm going to say that again for the people who feel like there's not enough time in the day or there's not enough time to get your stuff done. Now, this isn't in every situation, but for most of you, in most situations, you don't need more time. You just need more structure. And that's not a knock. That's not pointing fingers. Remember, I'm telling you, I learned this on my own, and that's what qualifies me now to share it with you in public. And I'm being transparent about my own things. I've been very transparent. That's just how I am. But understand this. You don't need more time. You just need more structure. But if you have more structure and you're more guarded with your time, you're going to get the time back that you need. It's a supernatural time accelerator. I'm telling you, it's a biblical principle, but it's a supernatural time accelerator. The other thing is, I want to challenge you and again, encourage you to break out of the box. Don't let your calendar lead your life. Instead, you lead your time. I'm going to say that again. Don't let your calendar lead your life. Instead, you lead your time. I'm talking to you, champion. You lead your time. And I have a final leadership truth bomb for you today. For today's podcast, better structure always equals better focus. I'm going to say that again. It's simple, but it speaks. Better structure always equals better focus. Guys, as I let you go today, I first of all want to just share with you and remind you that I believe in you. I believe that you have greatness living on the inside of you. You just need to continue to cultivate it and let it show up on the outside and then go smash it. Whatever that thing is you're working on, whatever your vision is, whatever goals you've set in front of you, go and smash it. I believe in you and believe you have everything inside of you. You need to do it. You have greatness on the inside of you. You just need to continue to cultivate it and then show it on the outside and go and smash it. Guys, as always, I also want to encourage you to go by our website@neal Reyes.com where you can connect with all of our teaching resources. There's a bunch of them on there. There's many. In addition to that, if you're enjoying this podcast, then I invite you to follow it. I also invite you to leave us a rating and even leave us a comment when you do that. This podcast has taken off like wildfire. So thank you for already following us and listening to us. But at the same time, when you do those things, I'm telling you, by following and leaving us a rating and leaving us even a comment on there, that actually helps us go up in the rankings on the podcast platforms. And it gets to go out to even more people, which means that my reach now it gets expanded and I get to help even more people with the same things I'm helping you with. And if you find that helpful, then share it with a friend as well. Guys, I'm so grateful for you. I just want to let you know that I am so grateful for you and I want to remind you one more time. I believe in you. I believe in you. Champion. Go out and smash it today. Thanks for taking time to stop by and grow with me today. Have a blessed day.