and I'm a certified productivity expert.

If you wanna maximize productivity in your day,

you need to remove friction and increase efficiencies.

That's why I give myself no more than four minutes

to prepare for work.

Some people put butter in their coffee

because it provides long lasting energy.

I cut out the middleman and start my day

with a stick of butter.

My daily journaling practice is an essential part

of my morning routine.

I start by using my 37 step micro minute planning process

to map out every minute of my day in detail.

To the untrained eye it's tedious.

But to a certified productivity expert,

it's my intellectual property that allows me

to monetize my work in a way

that separates myself from the competition.

And now that it's 5:00 p.m, it's time to get to work.

Okay, so truth be told,

that is not at all what my days look like.

But if you're a subscriber to this channel,

you already know that.

While I'm not a certified productivity expert,

I am somebody who likes to geek out about productivity

and talk about it on this channel and dive into ways

that we can be more efficient with our days.

And one of the ways that I like to keep it real

is by showing what my actual days look like.

And so in this video,

I wanna share a productivity vlog with you.

This is what my days actually look like.

I walk you through everything from organizing my to-do lists

to planning out phone calls and everything in between.

And so I just wanna show you that productivity

isn't always what it seems like,

and you don't always get done

what you think you're gonna get done.

And so let's get into it.

(soft music)

(chuckles)

So this is how my hair looks when I wake up.

No, it does not always look perfect.

This is it.

So it's just after 5:30 a.m.

I usually don't wake up this early.

You know, most of the time I'd wake up between 6:00 or 7:00

but Natalie has been waking up around 4:00 a.m

because she has been working with clients

in the United States, we're currently in Sydney.

And so I wake up a little bit early, which is fine,

'cause I'm a morning person anyway, so.

Time to start the day.

(soft music)

All jokes aside,

I do try to make my mornings as easy as possible

to build momentum.

So I typically prepare my clothes the night before work

and I grind up my coffee the night before,

so I can start brewing right away.

(soft music)

(phone rings)

It sounds like you're on an airplane.

I'm doing a vlog, so say hi to YouTube.

- What up YouTube.

- Mark, so tell people what it's like to work with me.

- "Ugh Mark, I have this idea, we need it done tomorrow.

I hope that works."

#slowgrowth

So I've got a really busy day plan today.

I have six phone calls scheduled in for the morning,

try to batch all of them for one day.

And so it makes for a bit of a crazy day.

And so first thing I got 30 minutes here,

so I wanna quickly check my email,

see if there's anything urgent in there.

Go through my to-do list as well as my calendar,

just to make sure I'm across everything

that's happening today.

You can see the entire week from a bird's eye view here

in an app that I use called Teux Deux.

So I typically like to keep my to-do lists

each day to around three to five,

I would say primary items

like the most important tasks for the day.

But sometimes on a day like today,

there's a bunch of small things that I need to do

and I don't wanna forget about them.

And so that's why you'll see a list like this

that's a little bit longer than normal.

So you can see right at the top,

I've got phone calls from 7:00 a.m to 12:00 p.m.

I've got a little bit of a break in between there.

Filming productivity vlog, that's what I'm doing right now.

Write newsletter.

So I've written this week's newsletter

for my personal newsletter.

And then I'm gonna write next week's review,

Slow Growth newsletter.

That's a new little project I've been working on.

Review social assets, import productivity vlog,

send out trial projects,

that's for the people that I'm planning on hiring.

Just sending them out the test project to see how they do,

to see if they can kind of fit within the style

that I'm trying to create for Slow Growth.

And then finally talk about Slow Growth newsletter

in this video.

That's what I'm gonna do right now.

So over the past three months in secret,

I've been working with my team to develop a newsletter.

I wanted to make a self-development newsletter

that I would subscribe to it.

So my standards were insanely high with this thing

and I am so proud of what we've been able to create for you.

Start your week every Monday with Snail Mail.

In this once a week newsletter, you'll get original articles

on self-development and productivity,

as well as a digest of inspiring articles

from around the internet.

And yes, it's free.

It is, if I do say so myself, really freaking good.

I just wanna be able to provide

some really great self-development advice.

And yeah, I subscribed to it.

I think you should too.

Go check it out in the description below.

But yeah, you can see my day today

is really just booked up with lots of phone calls.

I've got six phone calls today.

These phone calls are with Slow Growth candidates.

So I've gone through this crazy process

where we got about 2,000 plus applications

in for some jobs that we're hiring for Slow Growth,

I'm really trying to build a creative team

to help me make really awesome self-development content.

And so that's been so much work.

This has been my life for the past really month or so.

Last week I got on about 25 phone calls.

This week you can see I've got about nine or 10.

But it's also a really exciting process.

I thought that I would hate this

'cause I'm kind of like, I don't know.

I work by myself often.

I don't do a lot of phone calls.

But speaking with other people, you know what it, it's good.

It's good for your soul.

And it's been great to talk with other creatives

and people that I've been inspired by.

And so, yeah, I'm excited for today actually.

I think it's gonna be great.

Hello.

Hey, how's it going?

Oh no, I'm just talking to myself.

Yeah, I know, this is just the role. Yeah.

Sometimes what you have to do is you gotta film

the role of yourself saying anything.

So let's talk about productivity for a moment.

So the two most productive things that you can do

when you look at your to-do list is to select an item

and either delete it or delegate it.

Deleting it is something

that's pretty easy for me, you know.

As somebody who's intentional,

I really like to think through what I'm doing

and making sure that I'm not just spinning my wheels

or doing something just to do it.

And so that comes naturally to me.

But delegating something,

it's something that I haven't done as much of.

Now, it's easier for the skills that I clearly don't have.

Whether it's something like design or coding for a website,

it's easy for me to hire for those things

because I don't know what I'm doing.

But when it comes to all the other elements

of making a video.

I find that in the past,

I haven't been really great at delegating it.

But I have also found that's really limiting for myself

just because when you delegate somebody,

when you find somebody who's amazing

who can do the job better than you.

Let's say it's a video editor or an animator,

they make what you're doing better.

And they also allow you to free up your time.

And so being productive is like allocating your time

and your resources appropriately.

And so that's something that I'm just getting into.

I think for the longest time,

I've been a little bit hesitant to do it

because yes, I'm a bit of a perfectionist.

I have very high standards for everything that I make,

as you might know, from watching my channel.

And so it's been something I've been hesitant to do,

but it's something lately that I've realized I have to do,

if I wanna reach my goals,

if I wanna create the things that I wanna create

without burning out.

Because I can certainly try to do it all myself,

but that's, I've tried to do that before,

and it usually doesn't work out well.

And so that's why I'm having all these phone calls,

that's why I've been doing all these interviews,

that's why I'm building the team at Slow Growth.

Because it's something that I really believe in.

And I think if I can pull together the right team members,

we can make something amazing together.

And yes, I might even be more productive in the process.

So that's kind of where I'm at right now

in terms of how I view productivity.

Deleting something is great, doing it yourself is okay.

Delegating something, that's where it's at.

(soft music)

Okay, so for lunch today,

I have some delicious leftovers from a local spot

in Bondi called the Char.

So this right here, some peri peri sauce.

Oh, so good.

Is it healthy?

I don't care.

I'm working hard.

I get to reward myself.

And right here,

I've got some beautiful leftover chicken and some,

is it called tahini?

Tahini, is that right?

Is it tahini?

Tahini, don't know how to spell it.

No, that's not tahini.

What is that?

tabbouleh, is it tabbouleh?

It's tabbouleh.

Tabbouleh, as everybody knows

is traditional in the Arab world.

So yeah, I'm pretty cultured, what can I say.

I eat tabbouleh.

Okay, real talk for a minute.

My wife Natalie, obviously from Australia,

from Sydney originally.

She would tell me about the wonders

of the Australian chicken shop.

I was like, yeah, I know.

Like we've got chicken shops, like that's of course.

Yeah, we've got chicken.

We do roast.

We do it.

We don't do it in America.

Like coming to Australia,

one of my favorite things are the chicken shops.

The chicken is unreal, the stuffing.

You go into one of these chicken shops,

they've got like 40 chickens.

To a vegan, this is gonna sound horrifying.