Kevin Harrington’s #1 Productivity Tip

Welcome everyone to the very first episode of the Extreme Productivity podcast. I’m Kevin Kruse and I’ve interviewed over 200 billionaires, millionaires, entrepreneurs, Olympic athletes, and even Ivy League straight-A students to find out just what their secrets to extreme productivity are.

Today we’re going to talk about how the number 1440 can change your life. I’m also going to share what Kevin Harrington, who’s worth a mere $500 million, told me was the secret to his massive productivity and success. First, if you want to achieve your goals faster than every before, grab your smartphone and text the word ‘achieve’ to 44222 and I’ll send you the 1 page planning tool that millionaires use to schedule their day. Just text the word ‘achieve’ to 44222 or you can visit the website, productivity-podcast.com.

What are the productivity secretes of self made multi-millionaires and other super high achievers? You’re probably interested in hearing about things to do. Habits, hacks, little time tricks, maybe a few apps to download, but the single most important thing when it comes to time and productivity isn’t a tactic or even some trick, it’s a shift in your mindset. Don’t bail out on me just yet, this will get practical. Our behaviors follow our beliefs. Write this down, this is gospel: Our behaviors follow our beliefs. Listen, if I believe smoking cigarettes makes me look really cool and keeps me looking skinny and good in my black Armani suits, I just might be up to a pack a day at this point. But, if my belief, if I believe that cigarettes are nails in my coffin, they’re little cancer sticks and they make me and my Armani suit stink, well, then I’m going to be less likely to take up the habit of smoking. Our behaviors follow our beliefs.

All of the highly successful people that I studied when I talked to them about time management, when I talked to them about productivity, the one thing they did all have in common is that they think about time differently. I would even say they experience time differently.

Kevin Harrington, he’s best known as the inventor of the infomercial. He’s one of the Shark Tanks original co-hosts, he had this to say, he told me, “Before I decide to take on a new project, I analyze it. How much of my time will this take and what is my financial upside potential? I create a dollar-per-minute analysis. Hopefully a million dollar per week upside.”

That is crazy. He’s looking for a million dollar per week upside. That catches our attention but that’s not the important part of his statement. The important part is he’s focusing on a dollar-per-minute analysis. He and ultra productive people really understand that time is our most valuable asset. It’s just not lip service. Money, we can go dead broke and make it all back again. I’ve seen that with friends and family members over and over again. We can lose our health; we can get sick, we can get our health back again. We can even lose the loves of our live and find new love. I know that sounds cold but think about what percentage of people fall madly in love and get married and then they get divorced and a year or two or more goes by and they find another love of their life. Even love can be replenished. As cold as that might sound. Time never comes back.

Tick, tick, tick, once it’s gone, it’s gone. This is why I say the number 1440 can change your life. There are 1,440 minutes in a day. Average performers, even good performers, they think about time. They’re aware of time, they do focus on time prioritization. I often hear people say, “Well, you can’t make more time. We’ve got the same 168 hours a week”. Right there tells me they’re not totally time productivity ninjas because they’re talking about hours. Kevin Harrington is thinking about minutes. Everyone I spoke to was talking about scheduling their days down to the minutes. At least in 15 minute chunks, other times, literally, down to the minute.

A few years back when I had my company Axiom, it was one of the companies that I founded and we were growing quickly, doubling in revenue every year, and when you’re running a company that’s growing that fast, you’ve got all kinds of quality problems. New people to hire, sales targets to hit, products to launch and get out the door, making sure you don’t run out of cash and raising money, dealing with banks and on and on and on. As the boss, trying to be a good leader, I also had an open door policy. Some people would say that that was just because I was micro-managing or overly detailed so I was training people to check in before they would get too far on their own, probably I’m guilty as charged. Hopefully I’ve reformed in some of those areas. Back then when I had that open door policy, there where 3 words I would hear over and over again that would send a chill down a my spine. Those words were, “(knock, knock) Got a minute?”.

Got a minute? I knew the value of being accessible to my team members. I wanted to be a good leader but all of those got-a-minutes, of course were followed not by 1 minute but by 15 minutes, 20 minutes, 30 minutes. An entire day would be spent on other peoples priority’s and problems because they would just walk in with them and I would address them. All of my priorities, all of the company priorities would slip away.

One day I had enough. I printed out a big 1440 sign. That was it, on an 8.5×11 piece of paper 1440 and I taped it up on the door. Really it was- I did it to be a reminder of myself as I walked into my office in the morning and through that door several times throughout the day. There are only 1440 minutes in a day. We never get them back. It’s the most valuable thing in our lives.

What happened was, all of a sudden people would start knocking and say, “got a minute”? I’d say, “Sure”. They’d walk in and they’d say, “Hey, what’s with that 1440 sign?”, and I would talk to them about how I was really trying to master my minutes and make every minute count and to really stay focused on priorities and all of a sudden, more often than not, they would say, “You know what, I don’t actually need to talk to you right now because I know we’re meeting at the end of the week. This can wait until then.”, or they’ll actually hit me with their issue but they would actually keep it to 1, 2, or 3 minutes.

At first, I can only assume that my crazy 1440 sign probably freaked people out. They probably thought I was being passive/aggressive with my open door policy and then shoving 1440 in their face or they just thought it was weird, but over time I started hearing other people talking about the power of 1440 and why they need to prioritize certain things because of 1440. All of a sudden this ‘mastering the minute’ culture really took hold in the company. To this day, I’m looking at my computer monitor right now and I’ve got, printed out now as a sticker, 1440. Just as a reminder that I need to master my minutes.

That was my first big takeaway from interviewing over 200 ultra-productive people. High achievers. They weren’t focused on just days or a goal for the year of trying to have a productive afternoon. They weren’t scheduling things, by default, by the hour or even 30 minutes because that’s what pops up in Google Calendar or Outlook Calendar. They are mindful of their minutes. 1440 is the most valuable thing that we have.

How can you apply this information? What will you take away from Kevin Harrington’s focus on the value per minute? What does my 1440 story mean to you?

Perhaps you’ll take Kevin Harrington’s advice and say, “Hey, I better calculate what my minutes are worth.” What’s your salary and bonus and benefits if you’re working for an organization and divide that by the number of minutes that you give them each year and find out what are they paying you per minute? Think about that. Is that going to change your behavior as you decide to attend a meeting or as you decide to call a meeting or as you decide to focus on different priorities. What are they paying you per minute? If you have aspirations to be an entrepreneur or you are an entrepreneur, you really need to know what is your target income level. Are you trying to become a 6-figure self-employed person? What does that break down into the minutes? You want to work 50 minutes or 5 hours a week? Do you want to be making a million dollars a year? Do you want to work 3 weeks a month or all 4 weeks of the month? Once you know what your target income is on an annual basis and how many hours you want to put towards it, you then can calculate what you need to be making per minute.

That just might change the way you view mowing your lawn on a Saturday. If you can pay $20 to the kid down the street to mow your lawn for an hour, that’s probably a lot less then the value of your time that you could be putting into your business.

Understanding the power of this 1440, jot down the number 1440 on a little post-it and stick it on your monitor or next to your phone and maybe you’ll think twice about just answering that phone when you don’t know who’s on the other end of it. Maybe you’ll think twice before saying yes to that coffee meeting that’s going to take 2 hours out of your day and not really advance you to your goals. Perhaps you’ll become more mindful and cherish that single minute when you tuck your child into bed tonight knowing that time moves fast and we’re never going to get it back.

Okay, that is it. Thanks for joining me on this very first episode of the Extreme productivity Podcast. If you’d like to get a ready to print 1440 sign, I’ve got an 8.5×11 one and then there’s the little wallet card sized ones, so you can stick them on your monitors or on your phones or on your car dashboard. If you’d like to get these ready to print signs, all you need to do is text the word achieve to 44222 or visit the website productivity-podcast.com and you’ll get these ready to print signs and a bunch of other little bonuses. Before we go, you’re going to love the next episode. We’re going to be talking about how to pick your priorities. The best way to tackle them and I’m going to be sharing advice from Olympic soccer goalie Briana Scurry and also social media guru, Chris Brogan and keynote speaker Randy Gage all packed into about 10 minutes of awesome applicable advice.

Thank you, I’m Kevin Kruse. Remember master your minutes to master your life.