Productivity is one of those words that can feel exhausting, especially if you’re a therapist juggling sessions, admin, and maybe even travel or changing time zones. In this episode of The Traveling Therapist Podcast, I sit down with Demir Bentley to talk about why productivity actually starts with planning, and why skipping this step is one of the biggest reasons therapists burn out.
We talk specifically about what this looks like for traveling therapists and location-flexible clinicians who are seeing clients across time zones, working from new environments, and trying to build a sustainable life while still doing meaningful work. Demir breaks down why tools and AI alone are not the answer, and how a simple weekly planning practice can completely change how your work and life feel. If you’ve ever felt like you’re doing all the right things but still exhausted, this conversation will hit home.
In this Episode, We Explore…
Connect with Demir:
Website http://winningtheweek.com
Facebook https://web.facebook.com/demirandcarey/
Instagram https://www.instagram.com/lifehackmethod_/
LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/demirbentley/
YouTube http://www.youtube.com/c/LifehackBootcamp
Lifehack Method https://lifehackmethod.com/
Connect with me:
Instagram: @thetravelingtherapist_kym
The Traveling Therapist Facebook Group: www.facebook.com/groups/onlineandtraveling/
Sign up to learn more about life as a Traveling Therapist: https://www.portablepracticemethod.com/free-training
Revolutionize Your Private Practice with AI Course: www.kymtolson.kartra.com/page/ai
Bill Like A Boss Insurance Billing Community: www.kymtolson.kartra.com/page/blab
Subscribe to the Podcast:
Apple iTunes | Spotify | Google Podcast | Stitcher | Amazon | Castbox
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Transcript:
[00:00:00] Kym: Hey everybody. Welcome back to another episode of The Traveling Therapist podcast. We have a very cool guest today. I was just, before I hit record, I was reading his bio. I was like, I want it all. I wanna buy his book. I wanted everything about him, all his methods and anything and everything.
[00:00:15] So Demir Bentley. So glad to have you here. Thank you for, for coming and being a guest on The Traveling Therapist podcast.
[00:00:22] Demir: Thank you, Kim. I mean, where are you currently located is the question?
[00:00:26] Kym: Well, it's not that like amazing or anything, but I'm in Cape Canaveral, Florida right now, so my boyfriend's daughter just had a baby and he's like five months old, and we're obsessed with the baby. So luckily with this lifestyle we can just kind of move around anywhere. So we're just kind of like planted in Cape Canaveral right now.
[00:00:43] Like loving this baby and just, yeah, we actually just signed a three month lease, which I never thought we would do just to like kind of be
[00:00:51] Demir: Be there.
[00:00:51] Kym: while for
[00:00:52] Demir: Well, you know
[00:00:53] Kym: so,
[00:00:53] Demir: that brings up a good conversation because very much like you, our community is focused, you know, people think it's about productivity, but it's actually a freedom lifestyle and resilience community. So our focus is. Living our freest best life. My mission in life is to help people get organized and productive so they can live happier than a billionaire.
[00:01:14] And often what people think, the first thing that comes to their mind when they think about freedom, resilience is traveling to Paris. Traveling to Asia, right? You know, getting free and travel is so synonymous with freedom. And believe me, it's as good as you think it is. It really is. But so often we also find that.
[00:01:36] It's the freedom to be with your daughter when they've just had
[00:01:39] Kym: Exactly. Exactly, exactly. To be able to just do whatever we want in our life really is just, it's amazing to have this flexibility and freedom to just go. So let's talk about, you kind of touched on it a little bit, but I wanna know, like a productivity coach, right, A product, an executive productivity coach.
[00:01:59] Let's talk about that. What is that? Let's just like dig in a little bit because I just love this.
[00:02:03] Demir: Because you can't go to school and get a degree in that. Yeah. So, we talk about this a lot in my book Winning the Week, which is a Wall Street Journal bestseller had to throw and a plug there. But for people who are looking to dive more into my story, the short version is, is that I was one of those people who was completely committed to the hustle culture, religion, and the tenets of that religion are the competition.
[00:02:29] Don't sleep. You will get the big reward at the end and very much like falling out of a religion. You know, I was so committed to it. I was so sure that if I worked those 80, a hundred hour weeks New York Finance, that I was gonna get that big payoff and be that big shot and. Not only did I not get that, what I ended up with was going to the hospital three times for surgeries around a sort of undiagnosed stress related illness.
[00:02:56] And my doctors finally came together and realized that what I was probably suffering from was so something called a something they call salary man, sudden death syndrome, which
[00:03:07] Kym: Oh
[00:03:07] Demir: working so much and moving so little that your body thinks you're dying and starts shutting down various organs and processes. So that was my big wake up call and it wasn't just, oh, I've got to work less. It was really the loss of almost a religion to me, because I was so, so much of my personality, if you knew me at the time, was tied up and how hard I could work and how long I could work, and giving myself the busy badge.
[00:03:36] So it wasn't just that I had to stop overworking, it's that I had to develop a completely new identity. Around who I was and what I wanted in life because it couldn't be around being the guy who could work 80 to a hundred hours. And so that sort of sets up the book where I talk about within one week, going from working 80 hours to 40 hours and then two months later working as few as two hours a
[00:04:01] Kym: Wow. Oh my gosh. I've gotta read your book.
[00:04:04] Demir: Nearly religious conversion to working more with systems and getting the work off my plate and finding my leverage. And I know you're really big about finding your leverage points and using the tools and technologies and systems that get work off your plate.
[00:04:18] Kym: Exactly. I mean, with the advent of ai, I mean I, literally try to figure out an AI system for everything I do in my life. That's why I'm really excited to talk to you. 'cause it's like what are the productivity hacks and then how can we like use technology to help us get there? You know, it's amazing.
[00:04:32] So this audience is therapists, right? A lot of them are entrepreneurial therapists and they're also traveling to a lot of different time zones and that sort of thing. And you know, rolling in and getting comfortable in a location and then having to just turn around and see clients like the next day. And that, that is like the biggest recipe for burnout that I've ever seen.
[00:04:51] And I, I try to preach it a lot, but I'd love to hear from your perspective, like when you hear somebody that's living that lifestyle. how can you help us? Like what tips, strategies, structure, mindset shift would you suggest around somebody that's just like burning the candle both ends, really trying to see the whole world, but also trying to see 40 clients a week, which is not even sustainable, you know, and, and make that money to be able to live this lifestyle. I'd love to just like, dig into all that.
[00:05:16] Demir: So let me, yeah, I want your help painting the picture here. I have had therapist clients, including, I'm very big on geo arbitrage, so I encourage a lot of my clients. Where possible to leverage geo arbitrage. And for people who don't know that word, it simply means making money in dollars and spending it in pesos so that you feel that your money goes further and that you're effectively richer than you actually are.
[00:05:37] Plus, of course, getting to travel. So I'm. All about that, but gone wrong. It sort of looks like, okay, you're waking up groggy because you just got into an Airbnb the night before and it was a mess and you didn't get enough sleep and you're sleeping in a new location. You get up. You can't make yourself the cup of coffee that you normally make yourself because you don't know where the coffee's at.
[00:06:00] Right. And you're
[00:06:01] Kym: have one. Or it's a weird French press that happened to me in the Dominican Republic. I'm like French, I dunno how to use the French press. You know, like,
[00:06:08] Demir: Totally. And you've got a full day of calls. You haven't scheduled it optimally, so you didn't give yourself bathroom breaks or lunch breaks, right? So you're now, you're straight through and you make the unwise decision of opening your email and you find you've got insurance claim projections and client schedule requests and overdose superbills and portal messages, and maybe even a few heavy stories sent by clients at like 2:00 AM,
[00:06:33] but you don't have time to process through any of that because you've got a session starting right now. So now you're gonna roll into a full day of sessions with all of that hitting you, right? So by the time you come up for air, you've told yourself, you know, in the afternoon that you're gonna do some of this stuff, but you just totally drained emotionally.
[00:06:52] And so now you're carrying that guilt. Oh God, I, I do have the time. To do all of that, but I don't have the energy to do that. And then you look at your schedule and think, oh, maybe I'll do it tomorrow. And tomorrow's the same and the day after is the same. And now you find yourself pulling that midnight oil just, you know, robbing from Peter to pay Paul. Playing that defense consistently to the point where you know that you're sort of circling the drain pipe and it's getting worse and worse and worse and you know you need to get on the front foot. You know you need to get on offense, but the way that you stack things into your schedule, you just don't have that extra capacity. Kim, I'm just gonna stop and say, am I understanding correctly? And if I'm not
[00:07:36] Kym: Uh, yes. I'm like, could you write the copy for my website? I mean, this is like, oh my gosh. I mean, this is every therapist's life. And then you add the traveling part to it. It's just, and then, and then you're in these places, and this happened to me and this is why we've slowed down with what we're doing.
[00:07:51] You're in these places and you literally. Don't even see the place. I mean, because you're too tired. Maybe you'll go out for like two hours, but you're exhausted. You come back, rinse and repeat, and that's time to leave and go to another place. And, and my boyfriend would even say this, he's like, like, what are we even doing?
[00:08:07] Like we're not even seeing these places. Like we're just in these Airbnbs in different places, like doing the same thing and not. Even like exploring, you know? So yes, I hear you completely. And the emotion, the emotional exhaustion, like people that aren't therapists, I guess, really don't get it as much.
[00:08:23] Like, oh, you just sit and talk to people all day, but it's really not, I mean, you're just like in it, you know? And the emotional drain and then now I've gotta go answer emails is just terrible. Yes. So you're right on. Yeah.
[00:08:34] Demir: Yeah, and I, and I just wanna emphasize before we get into tools and tricks and hacks and technologies, one of my big focus points is to say that all of this stuff is great, but you have to have a framework to make it all come together and congeal.
[00:08:53] Kym: Yes.
[00:08:54] Demir: you know, you've got those types of foods that you cook where if you don't get it right, it won't pull together.
[00:09:02] And this is the sort of contrast. I've got clients who come to me and they have all the right tools. They're using some ai, they're using Asana, they have a va, but their frame, they don't sort of understand a framework, logical framework that makes it pull all together. And so it feels like. A hundred different things they're doing that's commanding their time and attention.
[00:09:25] What it should feel like is riding a bike, and I love this analogy of riding a bike. Riding a bike. If you go back to when you first learned how to ride a bike. It was the most awkward thing in the world. It was like, you gotta hold your hands and you're steering with your hands, but you can't look at your feet because you, you need to look up, even though your instinct tells you look down and you're balancing with your core, but your feet have to pedal, so it's just so foreign.
[00:09:51] But when you get the muscle memory of it. Now when you get on a bike, you, you just sort of say, I wanna go that way. And you flow that way. You just flow and, and your muscles, and your hands, and your eyes, they just do it. And that's what you want your system. To be like, you want your system to feel like, yes, it's a chain and it's a gear and it's brakes and, and it's me commanding the whole thing, but it doesn't feel like that.
[00:10:17] It feels like I just will myself to go in that direction and I just go in that direction. And so this is what we really do. At Life Act Method is to give people not just the tools and techniques and technologies and all of that, but to show them a framework for how to put it together such that it just feels like riding a bike, that you just say, I want to go in this direction, and your tools and techniques and systems supports you in going that direction.
[00:10:43] Kym: Oh my gosh. It sounds like heaven. I'm still not there. Oh my gosh. Oh yes. Exactly. So tell us, so how do we get the framework and I, you know, 'cause you're, you're exactly right. It, the tools are a plenty, especially in the world of ai. Every day I get a new email about a different AI tool that's gonna change my life, you know, and then what do I do? I buy the tool and never use the tool and I still feel completely disorganized.
[00:11:08] Demir: Yeah. We can't
[00:11:09] Kym: tell us what's
[00:11:10] Demir: from tools. Yeah. We can't move from tools into a logical system. We have to design the logical system and then backfill in the tools. Does that make sense? It's a here's an analogy that I think helps. People are surprised when I tell my clients, please try not to read too many books.
[00:11:27] Kym: Mm-hmm. Mm.
[00:11:28] Demir: And the reason I tell my clients don't read too many books is you will get too many ideas in your head. So the way I ask my clients to think about books is stop, breathe first and ask yourself, what is the biggest problem in my life right now? Then go find the book that speaks to that problem. The best one, the most recommended one, and read that book three times.
[00:11:51] So I tell my clients, instead of reading 15 books this year, I'd rather you read five books three times to really get it into your system and make sure that those are the ones that. That really speak to you when you're letting the new technology sort of get advertised to you or the new book get advertised to you, what happens is you start to get too many ideas, too many concepts, notions, tools in your brain.
[00:12:15] So I at Life Hack, I'm really focused on my clients using fewer tools and having fewer ideas in their head, but making sure that it's exactly the ones that they need. So I think at the modern world, we need to put horse blinders on. We need to really block out a lot of the chaos and the news and the shiny new objects so that we could say, out of a big, crazy, beautiful world where there's lots of new tools coming out, I get to ignore those and just focus on the ones that really matter to me and master those ones.
[00:12:48] So you asked how do we do it with our clients? The first thing that we always do with our clients is we focus on planning your week. The cadence of planning is probably the simplest, dumbest forehead, slapping obvious thought, really quick insight. We surveyed 5,000 professionals who managed between five and 50 people, so that's just to say they're successful and they're busy.
[00:13:15] We asked them, in your opinion, what's the most important thing that you need to do to win your week? 94% of them said, I need to plan my week. In order to win my week. Okay, slap your forehead. Obvious nothing there, right? We followed up with them and we said, okay, if planning is so important, have you done it for the last four weeks in a row?
[00:13:39] What we are trying to find there is what proportion of people who say that planning is important have a regular planning practice in their life. The number was less than 1%.
[00:13:51] Kym: I was gonna say raise my hand think I have a plan, but I really don't. You know what I mean? Like, if, if you phrase it that way with that question, when I think back on it, it's like, no, I actually don't. I mean, I have a schedule, but it's, very willy-nilly, you know? I mean, there's like appointments, but other than that, it is a you know, pardon my language, A shit show. I mean, it's just like one thing and, and like you said, the noise, the notifications, the emails, it just pulls me in a thousand directions and everybody, I mean, I think a lot of people go through that too, you know? Um,
[00:14:22] Demir: This the cadence of planning, right? So there's weekly planning, monthly planning, quarterly planning, annual planning, and each one has a different role associated with it. It's a very different beast to plan a month versus plan a week, and I think we tend to think planning is, planning is planning, but actually if you're planning your day, you're a very different role and looking at very different things and occupying a very different mindset than if you're planning your week versus your month versus your quarter versus.
[00:14:48] Your year, we have a framework called the Scope Framework that really assigns an avatar role that you play with each one. And I'm not gonna bore you with that except to say that that's a big thing that we start with. Now. Why do we start with planning? You'd think that we'd start with AI assistance or some fancy AI tool, and the reason why is because of what I call the stupid tax.
[00:15:11] Now, Dave Ramsey came up with this term called the Stupid tax. The stupid tax is when you know a bill is due for months and months and months, and you keep pushing it off. Then it gets overdue, and now you have to pay it, but you also have to pay a fee, and you think to yourself, God, I feel so stupid. I knew that that bill was due.
[00:15:27] I dragged it again and again and again. Now I'm paying that extra fee, and he calls that fee the stupid tax. So what is the stupid tax in your productivity? The stupid tax is when you knew that your quarterly taxes were due. It's on the schedule. It's happened every single quarter. It's well marked, but because you're not planning your month, because you're not planning your week, you wake up one day and you realize it was two days ago. And you just, the, the stress, the fear, the anxiety that you have to, that that's the price you have to pay, not to mention any kind of consequences, like a late fee, right? So I, I call this a landmine. It's like you just stepped on a landmine and it blew you up.
[00:16:13] Kym: Yes.
[00:16:14] Demir: a good week this week when something like that happens.
[00:16:16] And so the cool thing about planning is when you plan the week ahead or the month ahead. You are getting a drop and you're going think about it as just going through and removing all of those landmines and those landmines, all the stress, fear, and anxiety. Not to mention the extra time, not to mention the extra money.
[00:16:33] That's all the stupid tax. And imagine just going through your life and just taking all of that out and saying, okay, there are gonna be some things that happen that I could not have foreseen, but I've taken all the foreseeable. Landmines out of my calendar. Let me tell you, Kim, that is so much more than you think it is.
[00:16:52] That is so much more to the point where after 10 years of productivity, coaching, teaching people, tools, techniques, systems, what we ended up writing a book about when it came time to write a book was the deceptive power of just having a regular practice of planning your week. But now for those people out there who are hungry for some kind of tool or tactic.
[00:17:14] Kym: Yeah.
[00:17:15] Demir: I've also written an AI prompt that you can cut and paste that takes you through planning your week in a fast and efficient manner. So can you use AI to make it faster, to make it more efficient? Of course you can, but the steps remain the same. So for anybody out there thinking, you know, what is the smallest thing that I can do to get myself some relief?
[00:17:37] Immediately, and I can tell you very easily, the simplest thing you can do is sit down on Friday, Friday evening, Saturday morning, whichever is your pleasure, and get into the regular rhythm of a 25 minute weekly scan. 25 minutes, that's it. I'm not asking for an hour and a half for three hours, 25 minutes to power through and run the right basis.
[00:18:01] And I'm telling you that small, simple practice. Is the smallest thing you can do to get the most leverage on your life and your lifestyle design and your productivity.
[00:18:10] Kym: So the 25 minute scan, what is it taking into account is like everything I did last week or is it like auditing your time or auditing the next week or like preparing for the next week?
[00:18:21] Demir: So we have very simple steps, right? So the first step is, let's just go back and learn one lesson from last week. A lot of people will waste an hour doing a postmortem on. It's like, come on now. This doesn't deserve an hour. Take two minutes. Look back at your week and just ask yourself, Hey, what went right?
[00:18:38] Because I should be doing some more of that. What went wrong, I should probably be doing less of that. And you're looking for lessons that can apply broadly? Like I said, yes to that thing. I told that client I would get it to them the next day. I could have as easily said I could get it to 'em next week. I overpromised.
[00:18:54] Maybe I should learn a lesson here and put a little bit more gravy on top of my time estimates. Next time, right? This is a nice lesson you can carry forward into next week, right? But also remember, there's good lessons too. A a lot of times we have a good day and we don't clock that. It's like, Hmm, that was a really good day.
[00:19:14] what happened such that I had that good day? Did I align my calendar in a way that I should maybe do more of in the future? Did I get a full night's sleep? The night before and not stay up on Netflix. You know, till 11. What was it that made that day so good? Because there's lessons in there too. We tend to have such a negativity bias that we only wanna learn lessons from went wrong, what went wrong, but it's just as important to look at the lessons of what went right.
[00:19:40] Okay, so that's step zero. Two minutes. We're not talking about a huge thing. Two minutes, learn a good lesson, learn a bad lesson, take it forward. The next thing is. Let's look into like the time supply that we've got this week because you can't set a priority for the week until you know how much time supply you have.
[00:19:58] And time supply is just saying like, what is the unclaimed, usable portion of my time with which I can get non therapy or non session work? Done. And if you've got a heavy travel schedule, that's gonna be smaller. If you've got a light travel schedule, maybe it'll be bigger. Let's just look at that and say, okay, before we set a priority, 'cause I, I have so many clients will set a priority that takes 10 hours.
[00:20:21] I'm like, do you have 10 hours? Oh no. So may maybe we're not gonna get that priority done this week. So first, let's look at your time supply, right? Because remember, even if you don't self identify as an entrepreneur, you are selling something. And as a therapist, you are selling your inventory of time.
[00:20:41] So you don't sell widgets. If you sold widgets, you'd have an inventory and you can't oversell your inventory. You can only sell as much inventory as you have when you're a therapist. Your inventory is time. So how much time sellable usable time do I have? And listen, let's be honest, if you know that you're no good to do work after five 30 or 6:00 PM don't count that time.
[00:21:03] It's not sellable time. It's not usable time. You might be awake, but you're not. That's not useful hours that you
[00:21:10] Kym: functioning
[00:21:11] Demir: not functional.
[00:21:12] Kym: in that way. Yeah.
[00:21:14] Demir: Great. So now after that step, we have a sense, okay, I have five good usable hours where I'm not in session, where I can do something. Great. Now let's go over and let's look at our priorities we for, for every client in the life hack method, we create something called a critical path, which is just a map, a model of where they want to get this year broken down into every quarter.
[00:21:37] Then next month, so this month, this week, today, so that you can look at it and say, what's my most important thing today? What's my most important thing this month? What's my most important thing? Q1, Q2, Q3, and Q4. And we do that to just net out and clear out all the cobwebs of the have todos and get a clear picture of what are, what are my leverage points, what's gonna make my life better, and really move the ball forward.
[00:22:03] So just grab a coffee. Look at that critical path and ask yourself, what's the big leverage point for me this week? Right? What, what's, what matters? Now, maybe it's urgent, but maybe it's not urgent, but it's really leveraged for you. Let's just get clear on what's the win this week, and here's a sentence that you can write down that really, I think is clarifying.
[00:22:24] How can I use my time? My limited time so as to do the most good this week. I'll say it again. How can I use my limited time so as to do the most good this week? The reason I say it with exactly that phrasing is that it reminds you your time is limited. It reminds you you're not gonna get everything done this week.
[00:22:45] A win is not, I got my whole to-do list done. A win is I will end the week having not gotten everything done, but can I still comfort myself that I got the most important things done?
[00:22:57] Kym: Wow.
[00:22:58] Demir: great. So now after this step, we've looked at our time supply. We know how much time we have available. We've set some kind of priority, and I'm using air quotes on that, but just a goal for the week, sort of a north star, if you will.
[00:23:10] Now, with that clarity in hand, we rip off the bandaid, and this is my least favorite step, and we open the to-do list
[00:23:18] Kym: Oh yeah.
[00:23:19] Demir: now. I just want to highlight here, when you start with the to-do list, you'll never work into clarity. It's a one way street. You have to start with clarity and then move into your to-do list because you, we all know the feeling.
[00:23:31] You open that email or you open that to-do list. You are now swinging the bat from the wrong end. You. Your brain is in a million different directions. You're feeling fear, you're feeling guilt, you're feeling anxiety. You're never gonna get from that place to clarity. So that's why that the steps are important.
[00:23:48] We start with time supply, then we move to clarity on what's important, and only then do we jump into our to-do list. The reason I say it's my least important step is nobody wants to see all of their I call 'em time liabilities.
[00:24:00] is the to-do list, if not a time liability, right? Either you put it on your own list or somebody put it on your list, but these are liabilities against your time. Whew. This is a tough one, but we go through it, we rip off the bandaid. I do this live with my clients every single week because the, the community support really helps when you do it this step, right? And, and we rip off the bandaid and we say, okay, let's do a spring cleaning of our to-do list. What? What needs to be taken off because we did it.
[00:24:27] What can get pushed into next week? Because it's just not mission critical. And you know what AI really helps here in my AI prompt. I have the AI work with you to create a little bit of an Eisenhower matrix so you can really understand what is mission critical for this week and push some things off.
[00:24:43] Okay? That's the hardest step. And then finally. The last step is calendarize. What does calendarizing mean? It means that it's not enough to have a to-do list and have some open time on your calendar. You need to slot time in, and I don't really care the order in which you slot it in. That's not the point.
[00:25:03] I don't care if you do task A at 10 o'clock and then test B at at 11 o'clock. The point is it's like packing your suitcase for a trip. When you pre-pack, what do you pre-pack to see if it's all gonna fit in the suitcase? Right? You know, when it's all laying on your bed, it's like, oh, that should all fit.
[00:25:22] But you don't know if it's gonna, it's not gonna, you don't know for sure if it's gonna fit until you do a trial pack to say, is it all gonna fit? So I don't really care what you do at 10 o'clock or 11 o'clock. I don't care what you do on Monday or Tuesday. What I care is that it will all fit into this week's allotted time.
[00:25:41] That's really the point of calendarizing is is it all gonna fit? And I can tell you 99 out of a hundred times, the answer is no. It's not all
[00:25:51] Kym: gonna try to fit it, but it's not, I'm gonna think it does, but it doesn't.
[00:25:55] Demir: And, and this is where the single tier has to roll down your eye. And I always say, if there's not a single tier rolling down your eye, you're not doing planning right.
[00:26:03] Because this is where. Magical thinking hits the hard wall of reality at full speed, and you feel that smack moment, which is okay. I need to go back and look at my list again and make some harder choices about what's gonna fit and what's not gonna fit into this week. Now, the reason I often like to say planning's like taking a slap in the face today instead of a punch in the mouth on Tuesday of next week.
[00:26:30] It's, I don't want either, but if I had to choose, I'll take the, the, the light slap versus the hard punch. And what I mean by that is I'm not here to paint lipstick on a pig and say, oh, this is delightful. You're gonna love it. You're gonna enjoy. It's like, no, this is adulting. It stinks, and I even don't like doing it when I do it because it, it beats back on my magical thinking and reminds me that there's not enough room and that I was over optimistic.
[00:26:59] But I'll tell you the quality of the week you have next week. You will thank yourself. You will look back to past version of Kim and say thank you past Kim, because you know what? I barely survived this week and this was the light version of the week that I designed right.
[00:27:16] Kym: yes. Yes. Exactly. It just makes so much sense to, to actually look at the numbers, like what are the things and how much time do I have and apply it according to that instead of, like you said, magical thinking is perfect. 'cause that's exactly what I was thinking when you were saying that.
[00:27:29] It's like, in my mind, I've got a hundred hours and I'm definitely gonna gonna get all this done, but until you like, put it down like you're talking about, you're not gonna see it. Right.
[00:27:38] Demir: the calendar is so useful. The calendar is your game board. It's your game board. It's showing you where the pieces are, and it's like a Tetris puzzle. And if you just put it all together, it will show you, because no matter how optimistic you are, your optimism will not create even one extra hour of time next week.
[00:27:58] There's 108 hour, yeah, 168 hours in the week. There's a certain amount you're gonna be asleep. There's a certain amount that you're awake and there's an even smaller amount that you're awake and useful and functional to do work. So it's not a mystery. It's very clear and delineated. I think people see their calendar as their foe, as their opponent, as their restrictor, as their limiter.
[00:28:22] Like I don't wanna look at the calendar. I don't wanna fill it up because it's, I don't wanna be reminded of the ways in which I am limited in life, but if you flip that on its head, you get to say, okay. That fact doesn't go away. If I pretended away, if I lean into it and I use it, then I get to have the kind of weeks where I actually won the week instead of getting the week handed back to me, you know, dumped back to me on my plate.
[00:28:48] Does that make sense?
[00:28:49] Kym: it does. Gamify it. Make it a strategy.
[00:28:53] Demir: So I'll just say when people think about I, I'm full of the tools and the tactics and the technologies and the techniques. A hundred percent. I could bore you to death. But think about in the game of basketball, this skill of planning your weeks and planning your months. This is like dribbling the ball.
[00:29:10] you could slam dunk like the best of them. You could shoot three pointers, like the best you could run plays like the best of them. But if you can't handle the ball, if you can't move the ball up and down the court, none of those tricks and tools matter.
[00:29:24] They're like cherries on the cake. And if you can't bake the cake, the cherries and the icing doesn't matter.
[00:29:30] Planning and having a regular planning practice, that is the cake.
[00:29:35] Kym: Yes. I love it. It's amazing.
[00:29:39] Demir: Now, can I say for your clients too,
[00:29:41] Kym: Yeah.
[00:29:41] Demir: this becomes especially important when you don't know where you're gonna be next week,
[00:29:46] Kym: Yes,
[00:29:47] Demir: right? Or when you know where you're gonna be, but you're gonna be in transit or you're gonna go to a new place, or there's a new circumstance coming up, or you're moving a time zone, then planning becomes triply important because remember, we're we are.
[00:30:02] In the end, mammals, right? We're homo sapien. We're an ape, right? So ultimately, when you move an animal to a different space or a different time zone, there's a physical stress that you're incurring upon yourself that a lot of people who travel try to pretend away, oh, that doesn't, it's not happening, or it doesn't matter.
[00:30:22] Let me just tell you, travel is the great destroyer of habits. And the great consumer of energy, right? When you travel, you can feel it. It's almost like your IQ drops a couple points when you're in a, when you're dealing with a new language or you're dealing with a new location, or you're moving through a time zone.
[00:30:38] So when I'm traveling, I'm even more hardcore about my planning because I know that I have to plan against, it's almost like the wind is blowing against me, and I have to really compensate for that.
[00:30:49] Kym: So smart. Oh my gosh. Wow. I need you in my life. I think most people listening to this too, it makes so much sense really to think about it that way, just backwards engineering from the exact opposite of the way most of us do it. Try to hold it all in your head and fit it all in when you can.
[00:31:08] And loosely go by a schedule and just really be burned out and exhausted all the
[00:31:12] Demir: Yeah, and all I would say to the listener is if we don't have good fundamentals in our productivity.
[00:31:19] Kym: Yes.
[00:31:19] Demir: Then when we layer on more tools and techniques and concepts and books and all of that, it sort of feels like this crashing sound where we're trying to operate this multifaceted tool, but we don't have a fundamental framework.
[00:31:35] And so the framework is pretty simple. I'm just gonna boil it down right here. If you think about a triangle, this is what I call the massive action model. To the left. The bottom left side is your time supply. The bottom right side is your time, liabilities, or demands, and the top is your priorities. And you can think about these as forces that don't wanna play nice together. They don't want to play well together, like three kids pulling you in each direction. Mommy, mommy, mommy, right? Your time supply wants to go in one direction. Your time demands wanna pull in another direction and your priorities want to go in another direction. And so you are the algorithm at the center.
[00:32:18] So when I say that planning is the fundamental, it sounds like self-serving and self-dealing. 'cause of course I wrote the book about it, but think about it for a second and see if it doesn't just gel with your common sense. Planning isn't just planning. Planning is the discipline and the algorithm that you run every week to resolve that poll. Every week. Your time, time demands, your time liabilities, and your priorities are all gonna pull in different direction and you've got to resolve them together. You've gotta make a plan for the week that says, given these polls. Here's how I'm gonna allocate my time to get as much of my priorities done to fulfill as many of my time, liabilities or demands as I can against the time that I have allocated for myself.
[00:33:02] So your plan for the week is your algorithm that solves that fundamental problem that you face every single week. We can put technology on top of that and it will work so much better.
[00:33:14] Kym: Yes.
[00:33:14] Demir: put technology on that and you don't have that algorithm, and you don't have that regular cadence and that regular rhythm, it is just going to be at more straws that are breaking the camel's back.
[00:33:25] Kym: It makes perfect sense. Absolutely. Will you tell us your AI prompt or how we can get it?
[00:33:31] Demir: So start writing now. I.
[00:33:33] Kym: you put that, yeah. You put that at the beginning and I'm like, okay, I wanna come back to that. What is the AI prompt, or how do we get access to the AI prompt? Because I think that would help so much.
[00:33:41] Yeah.
[00:33:41] Demir: I think right now we don't have it available just like publicly. It's mostly something that we give to our community. So where I would say that is a good starting place is we have a free training@lifehackmethod.com. So if you go to life hack method.com, we have a free training on how to win your week.
[00:33:57] The truth is, is you don't need ai. You wanna actually learn how to do it. Yourself first because it's always you first. Then ai, not AI first, then you, so go to life hack method.com. Watch your like 25 minute training on how to plan your week and see if it gels with you inside of our community for just, you know, I'm not saying join it, I'm just saying for people who join our community, we have ai, we have win the day, we do it live, and with ai, we have win the week.
[00:34:25] We have win the month, we have win the quarter and win the year because it's so common sense. People know they should be planning their days and weeks and months and quarters and years. The problem is twofold. One, they've got no accountability to do it.
[00:34:38] Kym: mm-hmm.
[00:34:39] Demir: So get some accountability in your life. Right? And two, they don't really know how to do it in a time efficient manner.
[00:34:46] I can't tell you how many of my clients say, oh, Damir, yeah, I planned my week. But the reason I abandoned it is it takes me three hours and I'm like, oh my God, what are you doing that's taking you three hours to, so of course, yeah, I wouldn't plan if it took me three hours to do so. You need to know the right way to run these bases in a time efficient way.
[00:35:06] So that you're covering as much as you can. There really is a cost benefit to planning. Like if you can run the bases in a reasonable amount of time, you will look back and say, I'm so glad I did it. But if it starts to take three, four, or five hours, you're just gonna say, this is not, the juice isn't worth the squeeze here.
[00:35:23] Kym: so I guess my mind's going to, In the beginning you said something about like. You've got it down to like two hours a week where you have actually have to be productive, right? Is that what you said earlier? And
[00:35:33] Demir: Yeah,
[00:35:33] Kym: like how do you get it from a 40 hour work week to a two hour work week? I guess is is sort of my next question. Like with the, I guess you scale out of you being the center of everything. I would imagine there's some method around that, but I'm just curious. I think people listening maybe heard that two hours too and they're like, how do
[00:35:48] Demir: Like how did he do that? And let me be clear, I'm not working two hours a week right now, so let me be very clear at that point. What I did, I was working in finance as an analyst. I went ahead and I basically did two things. One, I hired three CFA trained guys in India. I was making like $250,000 a year. I hired these guys for a total of about $35,000, and so I basically hired my own team.
[00:36:15] I don't know why it never occurred to me before where I said, would I pay? $30,000 of my own money. So the company didn't pay it. I paid it out of my own pocket, but is it worth it to me to get back my time? And the answer for me was a hundred percent yes. But I also had a programmer write some code because a big part of my job was vetting and evaluating and quality controlling data.
[00:36:37] And I'd known for many years that I could probably do this with code a little bit better. I just just didn't realize how cheap and fast it would happen. They turned around the code overnight. I thought I'd pay $500. He only charged me $50. And so what happened was I used to spend. Two weeks out of every month vetting the data.
[00:36:56] What ended up happening was all of that work was happening behind the scenes in a Python code with the push of a button. So everybody else would be working for two weeks, and I would just like, push a button. The code would all get quality controlled and checked. Then I would send that over to my team in India.
[00:37:10] They would do all this pre-work. So effectively what was taking me my entire month working 80 hours a week I, I was really sitting at my desk sort of thinking, what am I gonna spend my time with now?
[00:37:20] I don't know what to be doing. Now, today, I wanna be clear. After many years of working two, two hours a week, I actually realized for myself I don't really want to work two hours a week.
[00:37:32] not fulfilling. My target for myself is even if I won the lottery and I was a billionaire tomorrow, my ideal day includes four hours of really stimulating work.
[00:37:45] That's my target. Like if I work every day and do four hours of stimulating work, that's my ideal week. And so for me, that's about where I'm at today is I work four to five hours on work that I love to work on, which means that I feel like I've sunk my teeth into something worthwhile and really been a part of this thing called humanity and helped people and engaged in something, but somewhere between four.
[00:38:13] In six hours, I start to become a little bit grumpier and after six, I'm just sad.
[00:38:18] Kym: Yeah. It's like the whole day's gone. This is terrible. I, I love that so much because even in my, the portable practice method, the, my like signature course for the traveling therapist, it's the same idea. It's like, start with your lifestyle design, you know, start with that. And like you're saying, like you wanna actually work four hours a day.
[00:38:36] You know, some people maybe only wanna work two or they're fine with six. Hours for three days a week, but start with that design and then backwards engineer this whole thing. And then using methods like you offer to help with that strategy is just an amazing thought to be able to add that stuff in. But designing the life you want and then working towards it, I I
[00:38:55] Demir: and a, and a, and a funny tip. You know, I'm sure somebody here is listening and thinking like, but I look into next week and it's booked solid and not optimized, and I look into the week after and the week after, one little tip is go out a month, go forward a month, and start blocking. Little sections on your calendar and just say like, okay, you know, I'm gonna block after these hours and I'm gonna block bathroom breaks and I'm gonna block off Mondays, or I'm gonna block off Fridays, right?
[00:39:21] Start optimizing your calendar a month out. Now you may say, I don't wanna wait a month, right? But if you don't do it, it'll be six months, right? And that month will fly faster than you think, and all of a sudden you're gonna hit a week where you're like, Ooh, this week is feeling really good. What happened?
[00:39:36] You'll realize your past self sent a gift to your future self. I get it. You by this point, if you're listening to this podcast, the next two weeks are probably already fully booked. So get out into the future enough that it's not fully booked, and start optimizing there, blocking, controlling, you know, arranging your calendar.
[00:39:58] And I'll tell you what, those two weeks are gonna go fast. And before you know it, you're gonna be on that week where you say, oh, thank goodness, this is the week where I programmed in lunch and bathroom breaks for myself. This feels so much better.
[00:40:09] Kym: Yes, I, yeah, I love that. I mean, back in August, I was so burned out. I was like, you know what? I'm literally gonna mark off every other week from appointments completely. And I did that, and now I'm thinking myself so much like January. I mean, this month I've got every other week off. It's just, it's amazing to do that.
[00:40:25] So I can totally relate to what you're saying.
[00:40:27] Demir: you and I just did. I just finished my annual planning. It's probably the most popular planning of all the plannings we do like out of my 1200 person community, it's like 600 people show up to our annual planning. It's like both the GIS and I just did my own annual planning, and one of the things I did in the calendar review section is I went forward every month and every single month I blocked off the last week of the month.
[00:40:50] Or as near as I could get to it, considering vacations and travel, and I'm gonna be working on that week, but I blocked it off for appointments. And so this is my flex time week where I can catch up on admin, catch up on projects that are delayed, right? And so, just like you said, Kim, I used exactly that same tool to just get out there.
[00:41:12] And I planned our date nights and our regular planning cadence, right? So these things that you wanna bring into your life. A good place to put them is on your calendar, and if you can't put them on your calendar next week or the week after, or even this month, go forward to the point where your calendar opens up and start claiming that time.
[00:41:30] Kym: Mm. Love that so much. Oh my gosh. I hope you guys are listening to this and getting a lot of great ideas on how to get your life back. 'cause so, so many therapists are just so burned out and they just can't even make space, like you said, to even start doing this stuff. But that, it's such a good strategy to just go out, block it down. I love it.
[00:41:50] Demir: Now when you do that, guess what's gonna happen? You're gonna get that slack in the system. Little breathing room. Ooh, wow, I'm getting my sleep, I'm getting some rest. I'm getting lunch, I'm getting bathroom breaks. I'm going on date nights. I've got, you know, e either a Friday blocked off for flex time or a whole week at the end of the month, like your head's gonna pop out of water and now you're gonna be able to work.
[00:42:13] Some more of Kim's techniques, right? So a lot of times with clients I say, you could do X or you could do Y, or you could do Z. And they say, but I've just got no time. So what we have to do is we have to get in there, do some of the fundamentals of the calendar control,
[00:42:28] Kym: Mm-hmm.
[00:42:29] Demir: to get that slack, to get that relief, to get that time, and then you can start layering on the advanced.
[00:42:36] So many of my clients want to jump from, you know, really when I look at their tools, techniques, and technologies and systems, they don't have the fundamentals and they wanna learn how to slam dunk. And I don't know how to say this to you, but you're not ready to slam dunk my friend. You can't handle it.
[00:42:51] Even if I told you it, I would be doing you a disservice because you don't have the time or capacity or mental bandwidth or energy. To put this to work, so let's get that. Step one is let's get the time and the mental bandwidth so that you can actually take an hour and learn about some AI agent frameworks.
[00:43:11] Kym: Yes. Oh my gosh. Thank you so much. This has been such a helpful episode. It really has. So tell us again, where do people find you? Where's your community? How do they connect with you? How do they get your free training and everything you were talking about?
[00:43:25] Demir: So everybody should just go check out the free training, 'cause we show you how to plan your week in the most time efficient way in the right order. So that's at life hack method.com. So go to the life hack method.com, sign up for the masterclass, and Bob's your uncle. If you are the kind of person who's like, wow, I know that I need this in my life.
[00:43:45] You can consider whether our tribe is something for you. But again. Take the free masterclass and if you don't like any of the rest of the and cherries on the cake, then just leave it right. What I love about helpful marketing is everybody leaves with something useful that they can take into their future.
[00:44:02] Kym: Yes, absolutely. Even just listening to this episode is gonna be so helpful for people. So I really appreciate you taking the time today. Amazing. I can't wait to go sign up and do the, the freetraining myself and look into the life hack and the book and everything. It's just a, a lot of really amazing, amazing information here. So thank you so much for taking the time.
[00:44:20] Demir: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you, Kim.