There’s 98 days until 2027...Do this and you’ll thank yourself on Jan 1st

My First Million

The hosts discuss strategies for maximizing productivity in the final 99 days of the year using frameworks like Parkinson's Law and personal

Key takeaways

• Parkinson's Law suggests that work expands to fill the time allotted, so shrinking deadlines can increase efficiency.
• Instead of trying to change weaknesses, create systems—like pre-paid trainers or scheduled business meetings—to neutralize them.

Main topics

• End-of-year productivity
• Parkinson's Law

Notable quotes

Work expands to fill the time you give it.

Conclusion

Success is driven by consistent systems and the ability to balance cre

Transcript preview

Speaker 3 (0:00) There are 99 days left in the year. 99 days. I almost feel like this 100-day left in the year is more important than the New Year's resolution. Speaker 1 (0:10) I feel like I can rule the world. I know I can be what I want to. I put my all in it like no day's off. I just encourage Speaker 3 (0:18) anyone, man, it's the end of the year. Use this last sprint. Treat it like an athlete does the fourth quarter of a game. And really ask yourself, like, What do I want this year to be all about? Have I kind of made my mark on the year? And 99 days might sound like a short amount of time, but that's an eternity. You can make so much happen in 99 days. And I just encourage anyone to just hear that today and just ask yourself the question, like, have I made my mark on this year yet? And if not, let's, you know, there's one sprint right here we can use. Speaker 2 (0:49) I have two comments on that. The first is I think the idea of quarters is so stupid. quarters should be months. Don't make it Q4, make it like M6 and then M7. Like four weeks is a significantly better. I've like the time that something takes is often dictated by like the increments that we measure them in. Speaker 1 (1:09) Yeah, Speaker 2 (1:10) I can't stand that. Like in Google calendars, it defaults to 30 minute increments. I'm like, don't make it five minute increments. The second, I joke with a bunch of my Jewish friends, one of the reasons why they're so successful is the Jewish New Year is in September. So Rosh Hashanah, I can't even say it correctly, that was in September. And so I'm like, dude, you guys have like three months head start in terms of New Year's resolutions, like reflecting on your year. So I was thinking about that where like, I've actually liked that where you make New Year's resolutions like two months in advance. And so you got a two month head start on everyone. Speaker 3 (1:45) Well, there's a, I think it's called Parkinson's law, which is like a work expands to fill the time you give it. It's like, um, it's like modeled after physics, like a gas will expand to fill whatever container it's in. So if you shrink the container, the gas will be more compact. If you have a bigger container, it'll spread out. Your projects take the work the same way. And so if you default to, like you said, Google calendar, if the default meeting is 30 minutes or an hour. Guess what? You'll find a way to talk for 30 minutes. If you had moved that same meeting to 22 minutes, Speaker 2 (2:15) you Speaker 3 (2:16) would have got it all done in 22 minutes. So yeah, I think take this 99 days and make it happen. I don't know. Where are you at with that? Do you think this way? I know you're trying not to be the kind of ADD entrepreneur or the cortisol entrepreneur anymore that's like spiking in stress. Yeah. I'm trying to fight my natural instincts. Speaker 2 (2:35) How's Speaker 3 (2:35) that going? Speaker 2 (2:38) It's good. I think my theory is that you can't change your weaknesses or it's really hard to make your weaknesses a strength. You can potentially neutralize it, but that's like the best case scenario. And so instead you do something where you just create a system where your weakness like can't really show itself. So like, for example, if you don't work out, you're like, well, I'm never going to be self-motivated. But if I prepay for this trainer to show up at my home, like I'm still going to be lazy, but like they're going to, I just have to do this. Like there's no choice. So with me, I've got a CEO, my co-founder, Joe. And so we have set it up to where. We only talk mostly about personal stuff throughout the day, but there's only one day of the week where I can come and complain to him or suggest improvements for the business. And that one day a week, it's only 45 minutes and I have to write it out in advance. And so because of that, I'll see something and get pissed off. And I'll be like, six days later when we talk about it, I'm like, I'm not actually that angry. And so I'm a big fan of creating systems. So it's worked for me. Do you have anything major that you want to do over the next 90? Speaker 3 (3:44) Yeah, there's like one more event I want to create. I've realized that... As the world is so online, so digital, I think it's just put premiums on everything that's IRL. So I want to create one more IRL event. We have Hoop Group, which is our basketball event that we do once a year. And I want to create a second. And that thing's been like such a blessing, right? It's like super fun, super fun to do. Unbelievable crew of people that come to that thing. And it's built this awesome network around something that I would just do for fun anyways. And I want to do another one of those. The problem with that one is it's so exclusive. Like not only is everybody there like. kind of like the top of the top, like, you know, in terms of their careers. But also, you have to be like really into basketball, which is fundamentally limiting for a lot of people. They're just not that into basketball. So I want to create another event that is not limited in that same way. Speaker 2 (4:41) Launch it or host it? Speaker 3 (4:42) Yeah, Speaker 2 (4:43) it's going Speaker 3 (4:43) to happen before the end of the year. Speaker 2 (4:45) Okay. Speaker 3 (4:46) And I don't even have the concept yet. So that's okay. But you know, how long does an idea take? That's how long an idea takes, right? How long does the decision take? A decision takes that long too. So, you know, I kind of, people would normally say, oh, that's not enough time. If you ask any professional event planner, they'd say that's not enough time. Thankfully, I'm not a professional event planner and I will make it happen in that amount of time. Speaker 2 (5:08) I think the best way to become successful is to see how other people did it, whether you're going to copy them or just use it as inspiration, because then now you know what's possible. So starting at the age of 24, I did this relentlessly, and I was very methodical about it. And I created a spreadsheet where I tracked roughly 50 people who were uber successful. And I looked at the year that they were born, the year that they started their apprenticeship, and then the year that they started the first thing that made them successful, finally. the year that they broke through. And I aggregated all this data along with the stories of what they did to be an apprentice and what they did to finally break through, and I put it together in a database. And HubSpot went and found this thing that I frankly even forgot about, but it did change my life. resurfaced it, they made it even better and they put it into a thing that you can download for free right now. So if you click the link in the description or click the QR code right here, you can see this database that I made when I was 24 and it changed my life. And so if you're looking to become successful or you're already successful and just want some more inspiration, check it out. So for the listener, my last company was The Hustle. It was a newsletter, but it started as an event. And it was basically one event that I would host basically when I needed money. So every nine months. Speaker 2 (6:17) Like I would do it, use the money and go hang out for like two months and then like do it again. I did that for like three events in a row and then it became a newsletter. But the first event that I hosted, I'm going to try and get the dates correctly. The event happened, I think on July 1st. I started working on it on May 15th. So it was roughly six weeks. And so I sort of had first mover advantage. And so I could kind of be crappy and it still be kind of interesting. And I think I charged $300. And I think roughly 350 people came. Speaker 3 (6:50) I'll frame it differently. I think what you did brilliantly was the name of it was HustleCon. And the vibe of it was scrappy entrepreneurs, the real deal. And the beauty of that was you didn't have to provide a polished, luxurious thing because Speaker 2 (7:05) that was off-brand. Speaker 3 (7:07) So thank God I don't have any of that because that would be off-brand anyways. It's like I have a friend who created Summit Series, the big like... event they do on like the mountain. They bought the event where they ended up buying the mountain. They bought a summit, yeah. And he said the best thing Burning Man ever did was create the ethos of like, hey, like it's a piece of dirt. You create the town, you clean up the town. It's like, there's no signs. If we didn't have the right sign where the bathroom was, people would get upset. Burning Man, they just changed the expectation where it's like, of course, we're not going to baby you. You, you've set up your own tent. You survive. You bring your own supplies. You clean up everything. And then he's like, he's like from an event planning perspective. Brilliant. Yeah. Speaker 2 (7:53) It's great. And so I'll be eager to see how you pull this off. It's definitely pull-off-able. It's just like a lot of pressure. It is a very stressful period. And it's sort of like running a marathon where leading up to it, you're like, this is kind of cool. It gets closer and you're like, I'm scared. This sucks. Never doing this again. The day happens. You don't really remember a lot of it. It was a lot of work. A week later, you're like, I can do this again. and I can make it better. You know, it's like giving birth and hosting an event and running a marathon are all kind Speaker 3 (8:22) of similar. Speaker 2 (8:22) Hosting an all-male tech conference. Speaker 3 (8:24) Those are the two similar events. Yeah. I also think, you know, constraints are very, very important. So time constraint is one constraint. You said money, you know, we do the events out of pocket. We don't make any money off of them intentionally. So that's a little bit silly. Why do you do that? Well, because the constraint is, What is an event that is so good, that is so fun, so valuable, so meaningful to us that we'd be willing to spend, you know, 150 to 250 grand to make it happen? And that literally just eliminates like 99 options of what you might do if the goal was to try to make 100 grand or try to make 200 grand, make 300 grand or make a million dollars. And so using the constraint of what's an event so good I would pay to host it is what's led us to creating some very unique events so far. And that's kind of what I want to Speaker 2 (9:19) do again. I want to give you a little anecdote that I thought was pretty interesting. So there's this guy, Joel Greenblatt. Do you know who that is? He writes books on stock picking, right? Speaker 3 (9:29) Yeah, he's like one of the best. Speaker 3 (9:32) investors, you know, of all time. So like, like Warren Buffett, he outperformed the market for decades using a different strategy, but, but, you know, nonetheless outperformed and did really well. So he goes to give a talk and he puts in the front, in this, like in the front of the, of the auditorium, he's got this jar of jelly beans inside. And so he says, Hey, I'm going to, anybody can come on up, come on up to the front, take a look at the jar. and I want you to write down an estimate. Don't show your friend. Don't show your neighbor. Write down an estimate for how many beans are in this jar on this piece of paper. And he said, you can't open it, but you can do whatever you want. Come up here and take a look. So everyone goes, they take a look. Some people are counting the beans in the row and then the height and just kind of try to estimate it. And so he tallies up, he gets all the results, and the guesses are 1,771 beans. Speaker 2 (10:29) That's the average of the guess. That's the Speaker 3 (10:30) average of all the guesses. Now, guess what? That's only five off from the actual. There's 1,776 beings in there. The average of this group of 100 people was incredibly close. But he doesn't tell them how close they were. And then he goes around the room and he says, actually, you know what? Let's make this a little faster. Why don't you just tell me how many you think are in this thing? Say it out loud. So the first person says 850. So the next person who might've been thinking 2000 was like, oh shit, 2000, maybe that's way off. 1300. And then the person who was thinking 1700 is like 850 and 1300. And so they all say their guesses out loud. When they all said their guesses out loud, They went from being off by five to being 50 % off. The average, I think, came down to like 900 or something like that. So they were off by a mile now. Same people, same jar. The only thing that changed was hearing what other people thought. And he gave this example. He goes, this is the stock market. For most of you, if you were able to independently think and analyze a business and try to come up with what you think the true value of that business is, You're smart people, you do pretty well. But the reason smart people don't do well in the stock market is because they're listening to the news and Jim Cramer and the analyst reports. And then they look at the ticker and it's going down. I guess it's bad. And as it gets going up, I got to get in. And so it's going to go higher, right? And they let everybody else influence their thinking as to what the business is actually worth. And goes, if you remember one thing about how to be a great investor, it would be to look at the jar. and write down the number on the piece of paper, and know that on average, you will be much closer to the true value than if you just listen to what everybody is saying. And he goes, now this is so difficult. There's a reason Warren Buffett says you should buy low-cost index funds, even though he doesn't. And I say you should buy low-cost index funds, even though I don't. Because it is so hard to Speaker 2 (12:29) do what I just told you. So we had Joe Hudson on the other day. So I consider myself to be a fairly easily influenced person. Like I'll hear about Sam Newhouse and I'm like, that's awesome. I love that. I'm easily excitable, maybe is a good word. And so he said something that was interesting where he was like, I forget exactly how he phrased it, but whatever, the way he phrased it, I went and started reading this book called Untethered Soul, which is... kind of a fine book. It's only fine. But there was like one concept that I found was interesting. So have you heard of transcendental meditation? Speaker 3 (13:05) You basically sit down and instead of being quiet with your thoughts, you're chanting and you're chanting something. It doesn't even matter what you're saying, but it's the rhythmic auditory thing almost drowns out the other thoughts in your head. I've done this before. There's a Buddhist practice that's like this that I was once taken to. I thought it was pretty awesome, but I don't do it regularly. Speaker 2 (13:24) Yeah, and I've done it as well, and I don't do it regularly anymore. But there was one line from Untethered Soul where he talks about the guy who created TM, Transcendental Meditation. His last name was Yogi. But he tells the story where he's basically like, the most important key to have a happy life is when you have these thoughts in your brain, you should treat that thing in your brain as a roommate. And so if you were to have a roommate that said, you totally screwed that up. You suck. Like that was not good what you did. You are never going to make up for it. Like everyone has these like negative thinking. You have to be like, dude, you are not me. You are