Our podcast guest, Alan Brown, is the Founder of Crusher TV and grew up undiagnosed with ADHD. Without solid study habits, he ended up engaging in high-risk behaviors such as dealing drugs to pay for college education and becoming a drug addict.Alan finally graduated with a B.S. in Economics after 10 years and cleaned up to land an advertising job at a big New York City ad agency at the age of almost 30 years old. Busting butt, working evenings and Saturdays, he couldn’t understand why everybody was zooming on by.After finding some wonderful books, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Steven Covey and Seven Spiritual Laws of Success by Deepak Chopra, Brown started learning to quiet his mind. Also helpful was being diagnosed with ADHD, and his career went from mid-5 figures low-level executive at 36 years old to Vice President/Management Executive making 6 figures within 2 years.During those pivotal 2 years, Brown developed some brain hacks and proper treatment around what his brain does and does not do. Two months after being named Employee of the Year, he left to found a startup which later sold for a substantial price. He also created ADD Crusher videos, which are instructional virtual coach videos that help teens and adults with ADHD, but more recently created Crusher TV, because all of us, and everyone listening, whether we’re ADHD or not, we feel ADHD. Find out why and how to creatively organize your work week in the full episode.Take the Unique Productivity Style QuizOnce You Know Your Productivity Style You Can Learn The Best Way To Become More Productive In Your Creative Business.Take the Quiz today and get your results!IN THIS EPISODE YOU’LL LEARN:Whether we’re ADHD or not, why we’re all feeling ADHD these days (especially entrepreneurs)How 200 billionaires, Olympians, straight A students, and top entrepreneurs plan their to dos (hint: it’s not with a list)Creative organization for your week with horizontal, daily, and weekly themesBioMeet mess-to-success entrepreneur, productivity coach and classic ADDer, Alan Brown. An unmitigated mess before diagnosis — booze, drugs, massive under-achievement and irresponsible space case. Now a successful executive, investor and entrepreneur, he crushed his own ADD using the proven ADD Crusher strategies. Personal mission: Help ADHD adults around the world live to their potential thru alternative ADD treatments and solutions. LinksSocial media:www.crushertv.comhttps://twitter.com/RealCrusherTV[email protected]https://youtu.be/NZjO_2j118EYou can also subscribe to this podcast on our Youtube channel.TranscriptShow Transcript (6,631 More Words)Minette Riordan: Have you ever said to yourself, “I don’t have enough time”?Brad Dobson: “I am so overwhelmed.”Minette Riordan: “I need more clarity.”Brad Dobson: “I don’t know how to do this.”Minette Riordan: “My to do list is miles long.”Brad Dobson: “I’m exhausted.”Minette Riordan: “There’s got to be a better way.”Brad Dobson: Hi there. I’m Brad.Minette Riordan: And I’m Minette. Not only have we said all these things ourselves, but we’ve heard our community of creative entrepreneurs say them over and over again.Brad Dobson: That’s why we created the Structure and Flow podcast. I’m structure.Minette Riordan: And I’m flow. This is the Productivity Podcast for Creative Entrepreneurs.Brad Dobson: We believe that doing more and working harder are not the solution to your productivity challenges.Minette Riordan: We believe in more play, more fun, and more profit. Join us as we explore the interplay between structure and flow so that we can bring more grace and ease to your creative business. It seems like it took us-Brad Dobson: Now I hit the record button.Minette Riordan: Now you hit the recording button? Oh my gosh. Hey, it’s Minette and Brad back with Structure and Flow. This is episode number 105.Brad Dobson: Nice.Minette Riordan: It’s hard to believe how fast this year is going by, and we’re right smack in the middle of telling you about our nine pillars of productivity. We’re taking a break from that this week, so so far we’ve talked about environment and energy and boundaries and support. Today we’re going to kind of talk about all of that with our awesome guest, Alan Brown, who is the founder of Crusher TV. We are super excited, Alan, to have you here. Thanks for being here today.Brad Dobson: Welcome, Alan.Alan Brown: Thanks for having me on. Great to be here with you.Minette Riordan: It’s going to be a ton of fun and a wild ride. It’s going to be kind of like that Grand Prix racing you were telling us about I’m sure as we get into this whole concept of theming and how theming can massively increase your productivity. Alan was telling us a little bit about it before we even started the recording, and Brad’s like, “I’m sold.”Brad Dobson: Yeah, I’m sold already. You haven’t even heard what it is, folks, and yeah. I’m ready.Minette Riordan: It’s going to be super cool. You want to read the quote?Brad Dobson: Yeah, definitely. This one was specific to today’s interview. From Steven Covey, who I’m sure you’ve never heard of, the key is not to prioritize what’s on your schedule but to schedule your priorities.Alan Brown: Bingo.Brad Dobson: I think, I’m guessing that matches pretty well with what you’re going to talk about to us today about theming.Alan Brown: Absolutely.Minette Riordan: I think so too. So Alan, we’ll have your bio, you know, filled in later, but I’d love for you to just take a minute and tell us a little bit about your journey of how you got here, because … I love Brad’s phone ringing in the background is always something. I love how you got to this place of what you’re doing today. You had a pretty amazing journey and some pretty big insights about yourself as a productive person as an adult, so share a little bit about how you got here.Alan Brown: Well, I started out as kind of a mess, and I was a pretty big ADDer, but growing up in the area that I grew up it wasn’t often labeled, so I was undiagnosed with ADHD and did okay in high school. Then, I got to college and I hit a wall, had no study habits. I’m a terrible reader, and I ended up engaging in a lot of high risk activities. I started dealing drugs to pay for my college education, a four year degree that took me 10 years. I became a drug addict. I was living in Jersey City and going to Harlem at the height of the crack epidemic to buy felony amounts of cocaine.I was doing a whole bunch of other crazy stuff that I won’t get into, but even after … It turns out I was self-medicating, because my grades were going up as my addiction got worse.Minette Riordan: Wow.Alan Brown: I finally ended up with a BS in economics. Even after getting cleaned up enough to finally get a job in the advertising business at a big New York City ad agency at the age of almost 30, entry level job, I busted my butt, and working evenings, working Saturdays and still couldn’t understand why everybody was kind of zooming past me. It was like that old lady in the fast lane with her blinker stuck on and everybody else is zooming by going, “What is that guy doing?” After about six years, you mentioned Dr. Steven Covey. Somebody gave me ‘Seven Habits of Highly Effective People’ on an audiobook because they knew I couldn’t read, and I also got Deepak Chopra’s ‘Seven Spiritual Laws of Success’ or whatever it is. I forget.Minette Riordan: Two of my favorite books.Alan Brown: Great, great book, and I learned in that audiobook just how to quiet my mind a little bit. I started to get a little bit of traction in my career and not long after that I got diagnosed with ADHD, and the light bulb went off. Wow, this explains a lot of the substance abuse, the risky behavior, all kinds of other stuff, my mediocre performance in school and in my career. My career went from mid-five figures low level executive at the age of 36 … Don’t tell anybody, because [crosstalk Two years with some what I call brain hacks and a diagnosis and proper treatment and understanding what my brain does and doesn’t do. I left that agency two months after being named employee of the year to co-found a startup which was later sold for a princely amount. Then, I also created ADD Crusher videos, which are instructional virtual coach videos that help teens and adults with ADHD, but more recently I created Crusher TV, because all of us, and everyone listening, whether we’re ADHD or not, we feel ADHD. It’s what Dr. Ned Hallowell, the author of ‘Driven to Distraction’ calls ADT, attention deficit trait.There’s all these busy creative entrepreneurs in particular will first of all be more likely potentially to be candidates for an ADHA diagnosis, but more importantly, just feel like there’s too much to do. There’s never enough time. It’s a constant state of overwhelm, and Crusher TV is an online tv show where just about every week we put out a new episode that helps people get more done in less time with less drama.Minette Riordan: I love the mindfulness piece, you know? As I was doing my research for the show today and looking at some of your different episode topics you cover a lot, so for me, one of the nuggets in what you just shared was that you looked at ‘Seven Habits’ and the ‘Seven Spiritual Laws’ and how mindfulness has clearly been one of the tools along with just positive thinking and really focusing on your thoughts and your beliefs. It’s such a beautiful, whole life approach, right, through mindfulness, through science, through health. It’s not like you picked one thing and that was the magic bullet, but you really looked at what are the pieces of my pie, and how can I create a whole practice here that’s really going to impact my life and others’ lives.Brad Dobson: Wait, you mean it’s not just sucking up and discipline, discipline, discipline?Minette Riordan: Yeah, we tried that, right, Mr. Iron Man?Alan Brown: Right, and it’s also not just get this app or get this complicated planning system or take this protein powder. I really am so glad that you observed that about the content that we’re putting out, Minette, that it really is about what I call the inner game of productivity and also what I call practical zen brain hacks. There’s so much you can do by just flipping some switches in here within our cranium to open the door to action, to reduce stress, etc. That’s why I talk about things like the power of self-compassion, the power of gratitude. By the way, everything I do is evidence-based. As I like to say, I don’t do woo woo with all due respect, and I don’t do rara even though I recently attended a Tony Robbins event.I really do like-Minette Riordan: You experience some major rara.Alan Brown: Yes. Yes. True, true, but there’s so much science behind this inner game, behind mindfulness as you guys well know. Meditation, self-talk, being compassion toward yourself, etc. That’s all good content and all helpful for the creative entrepreneur who wants to get more done in less time with less drama.Minette Riordan: So I have my own thoughts, but I’m curious your thoughts on why we’re all struggling with this ADT today, like what do you see for entrepreneurs in particular-Brad Dobson: ADT?Minette Riordan: ADT, right? The-Brad Dobson: Wait, which was ADT?Minette Riordan: -distraction, right, that he talked about.Brad Dobson: Oh yeah.Minette Riordan: That the sense that entrepreneurs, like the emotion that I get from so many of our clients is frantic, right? It’s like this frantic racing on the hamster wheel, and as someone who came from a very frantic world being in the big ad agency I know how intense that is to the startup energy, which is also frantic, right? How have you seen this impacting other business owners that you’re working with?Alan Brown: Well, we can also just go back a little bit further about 200,000 years where, you know, our ancestors back there were really only asked to process about the equivalent of about 50 kilobytes of information a day. It was really stay alive, get some food, etc. Now, we have these devices that have more computing power than the Apollo Spacecraft that went to the moon and back, and that’s a literal statement.Brad Dobson: Oh yeah.Alan Brown: What we have is our brains are basically outgunned. Since starting really in the 70s and 80s with the amount of information that’s coming in, with the amount of information that we’re expected to handle, and also, the fact that we are no longer the single income household. Now it’s everybody’s working. We are just expected to do more. There is the barrier between workplace and home has crumbled, but for our creative entrepreneurs in particular, the fact that we can now market ourselves, often build our own websites, or at least maintain our own websites, we can get Vas from anywhere in the world. The fact that we’re now able to do everything, we can go on an app like Canva and create our own graphics. There’s this incredible availability of things we can do ourselves, so we go, “Hey, I’ll just do this.” Then, we end up as creative entrepreneurs doing so many different things, and our to do list is just going out of control, and it makes it all the more difficult to decide what should I be doing today?What should I be delegating? This really does bring through this attention deficit trait where we just all feel like we’re ADD. We can’t stay focused. We don’t have any mental stamina, because we’re pushing too hard. We are stressed, so we’re not sleeping as well, and on and on and on.Minette Riordan: Yeah, sound familiar?Brad Dobson: yeah, oh yeah. This has been a challenge for-Minette Riordan: Like you’re speaking the Brad’s language about what-Brad Dobson: -the last two years.Minette Riordan: -he’s personally been really focusing on trying to improve.Brad Dobson: Yeah, it’s interesting, because I left corporate after working in a software position for … Well, I was in software for 25 years, cubicle land type of stuff, but obviously I always had a manager and tasks billed out to me and assignments and those things. Well, I built out lots of bad work habits in terms of mess around with the phone or social media or reddit or whatever. It wasn’t until I started working for myself that those were sort of exacerbated by what you just described where there is a huge to do list, and it’s really tough. It’s really easy to get mired in just trying to decide what the hell to do next. Yeah. That’s been a real battle.Minette Riordan: I didn’t know he’d came with all these bad habits when he became my business partner.Brad Dobson: Why, you wouldn’t have hired me?Minette Riordan: No, I wouldn’t have hired you.Brad Dobson: Oh. I think we’re going to have words after this.Alan Brown: Well, make sure one of those words is theming.Brad Dobson: Yeah, exactly.Minette Riordan: I know, so I love it, because you know, from the outside watching, it never seemed that he was not being productive at work. He was getting work done. He was working great hours, you know? At one point he was working full time and doing some contracting on the side, so it always looked like he was getting a lot done, so when he made this switch to being a solo entrepreneur, which I think happens to a lot of people who go from a corporate structured environment to working for themselves, when you have to manufacture your own structure it’s complicated, right? I’ve been doing this for 17 years now. I’m used to creating my own schedule and having my own deadlines, so it’s been a fun journey, and he’s totally a keeper. I would have hired him no matter what.You know, it’s been an interesting conversation, because I have often felt like I don’t know how to support him, because it’s not something I struggle with, so I’m super excited to dive into our topic today of theming. I’m so glad that you shared what you did, because I think it’s a beautiful segue. I’m going to just pause and say, “What do you mean by theming?”Alan Brown: Well, you know, think about so many of the tools that are available to us to help us organize our time and our day. Obviously, there is this double edged sword right here where we have a calendar on here. We have alerts that can pop up. We could have a planner. I actually use an analog planner that is also … I might refer back to this when we get more into the theming thing, but there is a tool that really resides appear mainly that we can put into our calendars called theming that helps organize our thoughts, our time, our calendars. I’m going to start by just giving one example of a theme.What if every day at, say, between 8am and 11am, and let’s say those are your strongest mental hours, and by the way, we all have a strong time and we all have weak times. Most people’s strong time is in the morning. Most people trough in the afternoon and some people have a recovery in the evening, but let’s just leave it at that. There are all these different chrono types that people talk about.Brad Dobson: Sure.Alan Brown: What if I had a theme. Every day, 8am and 11am and I block that theme off my calendar and that thing was called writing, and that’s what I do every day, and this is an example of horizontal theming. I have other horizontal themes in my day. At So at Anyway, every Monday, and you can’t read my handwriting here.Minette Riordan: That’s all right. Remember, a lot of people are listening as well.Alan Brown: Yeah, and I’ll point to it, or I’ll call it out. I’m opening up a blank page. This is next Monday of my planner, and one of my three biggies is already written in. Edit, right? Every Monday is an editing day. The next, I flip the next page, and next Tuesday is admin/affiliates. Every Tuesday that’s the theme of that day. Wednesday is guests. People that I want to have on the show, and also appearances, places where I need to be appearing and getting ready for those and etc. I’ll leave it at that. What this does is two things. One, it makes sure that the five or six things that are big, important things on any given day have a day where I make sure I handle those things. Now, mind you, on Tuesdays, just because Tuesday’s my administrative day doesn’t mean I can only do administration there.I still want to bang out two other big priorities, but here’s what happens. If I’m working on Monday on editing, which is tough mental stuff, can be, and I remember oh, that’s right. I need to renew my so and so, right? Instead of dragging myself away from that important task that I’m doing, and that task could have been writing in the morning. It could have been working on a big, tough email. Instead of pulling myself away from that and doing that administrative thing, I say, “No, that’s an administrative thing, and that goes to Tuesday.” It gives a place for it to rest, to reside, so that I don’t forget about it. Then, when I’m doing my administrative stuff, other stuff, renewing other things, reaching out to, I don’t know, the property assessor or the sewage management people, whatever those things are.Then, likewise, if I’m sitting there editing on Monday and I remember oh, there’s that great Facebook video I saw from so and so that has a great marketing idea in it. I don’t want to forget about that. You know what? Write it down on Thursday, because Thursday’s my marketing day. It helps you stay on task. It helps you feel less overwhelmed too, because once you can write that thing down on Tuesday or Thursday, boom, it’s gone fro your mind. It’s no longer an open loop, so now you’re able to more effectively focus on that one thing, and I’m a real big proponent of single tasks. That is daily theming, and if you were to step back and ask yourself, what are the big key things that I need to get done every week as a solopreneur, you know, they’re probably marketing, there’s probably administration thing. There’s probably a networking thing. I’m making these up.Think about that and see if you can theme at least five of your days of the week. Then, use it accordingly.Minette Riordan: I love that. You have a question. Yeah.Brad Dobson: Yeah, just to clarify, so totally get the daily part, and then you mentioned when we were chatting before the show about the horizontal theming and your sort of core creative hours, or your most productive time. Say that’s like you said eight o’clock in the morning or whatever that may be. So if it’s admin day, is your best productive time still related to creative things, maybe non-admin tasks on that day?Alan Brown: Great question, because every day, and that’s what makes it a horizontal theme. Every day, seven days a week so 8am to 11am is writing. I won’t do anything else in those hours, because those are my strongest hours.Brad Dobson: So that’s your creativity time.Alan Brown: That’s right, so I wouldn’t put administrative stuff in 8am to 11am.Brad Dobson: Got you.Alan Brown: But when I get done with my writing and research in the morning, I look at my planner and it says, “Yeah, it’s Tuesday, make sure you bang out your administrative stuff so your car insurance doesn’t expire, so that your health insurance is up to date, etc.”Brad Dobson: Right.Minette Riordan: No, I love that idea. Then, you also do your … We have a little different version of the three things, but I love how you said that. Are those three things, so admin, you said is one thing. It’s a category, not just three tasks.Alan Brown: That’s right, so separate these out. On any given day, you should really be identifying three biggies. When you get up in the morning, ideally, and this is what billionaires all do, and by the way, there’s a great quote from Kevin Cruz. I just used it in Monday night’s episode the dow of the to do list, five ways to make yours disappear, right? Kevin Cruz is a writer who frequently writes for Forbes, and he interviewed 200 billionaires, Olympians, straight A students, and top entrepreneurs. He says there’s one observation about all these people. Not one of them uses a to do list.Minette Riordan: Yeah.Alan Brown: They all live in their calendar. Their to dos are calendarized. Importantly, the other thing that all these kinds of people do is they get up in their morning, they look at their planner, and they say, “What is today about?” So that’s where the three biggies come in. Again, my week, my daily themes become one of those three biggies every day. They’re already pre-programmed in, so every day for the rest of the year, every Thursday for the rest of the year will be about marketing. Every Wednesday for the rest of the year, one of my three biggies will be about attracting new guests and making sure I’m appearing on other people’s shows, etc.The other two biggies for my day could be, well, I need to write episode so and so, or right now one of my biggies today was writing up some questions for a consultant, which takes a lot of mental work, and I made sure that fell into my strong time also. Does that make it clear that-Minette Riordan: Yeah.Alan Brown: -distinction between your three biggies and what might, on any given day, be your theme.Brad Dobson: Yeah definitely. I’m wondering whether you find yourself in a mental cadence after a certain amount of time. The reason I ask is I’ve taken to writing in my journal the night before my big three or big six items I’m going to get done the next day, and it sets it in my mind so there’s a better chance of it happening the next day. I think it would also probably help to know what the next day’s theme is. I got to assume at this point, and I’m sure you’re an old hand at it, that you know, by the end of a Tuesday your mind’s already starting to go into Wednesday mode. Do you find that where it’s almost like it’s pre-planned for you?Alan Brown: Well, I wish everything were as automatic, but you are definitely helping to make things more automatic by doing some journaling in the evening before you go to bed. There’s 40 years of research, by the way, on the power of journaling, of just writing stuff down. I won’t bore you with the research findings, but if you’re-Minette Riordan: Actually, that’s be another great episode to do one on journaling, because we’re both huge fans of journaling.Alan Brown: Yeah.Minette Riordan: So we’ll have you back.Alan Brown: Yeah, but the fact that you are journaling in the evening, you are priming your brain to be more focused the next day, so my planner is always with me when I go to bed, and I just look at it. I write a couple of things down, I look at tomorrow, and so then when I get up it’s not like, “Oh my God. That’s right. I got so and so today,” right?Minette Riordan: Mm-hmm (affirmative).Alan Brown: So yes. It definitely does start to create a little bit of a mental cadence, but you know, when we’re crazy busy throughout a number of weeks, especially when you get a week long business trip like I recently had, or you’re out with the flu for four days and then you get back into the swing, you sometimes get up in the morning and you’re like, “Oh my God. It’s Friday. I don’t even realize what day it is,” so all the more reason to have these things plotted out in a planner or in a digital calendar somewhere so you’re getting the pop in the morning that says, “Hey, good morning, today’s admin day, plus your two other biggies.”Brad Dobson: Is that the way you have it set up? If we get into the nitty gritty do you have your electronic calendar, whether that’s Outlook or Google calendar, whatever, is it giving you the notifications in the morning?Alan Brown: Yeah. I’m going to give you a “hack” that I use. Not really a hack, but something that I do that I have to do with an ADHD brain, but some of our listeners may want to consider too. I am big into redundancy, all right? When I went and scheduled this call with you guys using your scheduler link, I knew that was going to pop up on my calendar, because it gives me an option to click and have that show up on my calendar. What I’ll then also do before I go onto anything else I will then also write in my planner, and I won’t show this, because I know we’re mostly audio here, but in my planner it says I wrote down 12, noon my time, Minette, and I also the day before in my planner I wrote at the end of the day prep Minette. Then, also in my digital calendar there are two entries similarly, one in the morning that pops up this morning says prep Minette and one that popped up last night at eight o’clock, prep Minette.With my brain, I know that if I do this ridiculous amount of redundancy, which by the way, what I just described takes a total of maybe 45 seconds.Brad Dobson: Sure.Minette Riordan: Yeah.Alan Brown: I never miss anything. I’m never late for anything. I never have, “Oh my goodness. I forgot I have that thing in five minutes.” I can honestly say that that stuff really doesn’t happen to me, and it’s not because my brain is any good. It’s because I know mt brain doesn’t do this stuff, so I have to manually engage in this tremendous amount of redundancy. The answer is yes. I do analog and digital, and I’m just redundant as heck, and it really helps me keep my sanity.Minette Riordan: I love that.Brad Dobson: Yeah, that’s fantastic. You’re basically building up a machine around the whole effort.Minette Riordan: Mm-hmm (affirmative).Brad Dobson: Yeah, super effective. I like that.Minette Riordan: Yeah. So we’ve talked about horizontal themes. We’ve talked about daily themes. What other kind of theming are you using?Alan Brown: Well, you could do a weekly theme. Let’s say that there’s just this one thing … In fact, this week I’m sort of doing what I call a weekly sprint where there are three or four consultants that I’ve been meaning to get with, but before I get with a consultant, because I’m not really fast on my feet thinking, I need to sit down, get my coffee, get a little bit of my Ritalin, lots of protein in my tummy, and I need to really think about the questions I want to ask and what the outcomes are. I really have to think. Some people can just walk into a consultant meeting and go, “I need this, that, that, that, and I’ve got these questions.” I’m not like that. This week is sort of a sprint about getting these four consultants lined up with questions so that I can then go set time with them and make sure [inaudible That’s an example. The better example, I think, is the next level up, which is monthly theming. You think about some of the big to dos that are on your to do list, or in your calendar or in the back of your brain, like finish updating the website, or finish writing the outline of your book, or finish your doggone book. Anything-Minette Riordan: Yeah, finish, finish. That’s a great theme, to finish.Alan Brown: Yes, it really is about finishing. That’s the great thing about monthly themes. What if, and I did this last year when I promised myself I would publish my first book, and I just decided that January of last year was finish writing the book. Then, February was get the book published. Then, March was market the doggone book. What does that look like in my calendar? Where? Well, it’s something that could be written at the top of every day in your planner. It could be an alert that pops up every day that just says, “January, write the doggone book.” All this does is it just brings it back up to the front of our mind even if we don’t do any work on the book that day. We’re like, “Man, this is January. It’s now January 8th.” I’m making this up. “I haven’t really started on the book, but I just got the alert that January is about that.”Minette Riordan: I love that.Alan Brown: It gives you just … It’s kind of like a new month resolution if you will. It’s really important for all brains, whether an ADHD brain or an ADT brain, attention deficit trait where you just feel like you’re ADD, or even if you’re a real good linear processing thinker it’s always good to just have these visual and digital reminders that pop up and say, “Hey, don’t forget this big project is important to you, and you’ve made a decision that you really want to finish this in the next 30 days or whatever that is.Minette Riordan: Yeah, I love that. I think about that all the time, because when we just stay conscious of the project to be completed, our brain works on it all the time even if we’re not taking a specific action in that moment, but then it also helps with those three daily priorities as well, because if some of those aren’t connected to that project, it’s not getting any traction, so it was interesting, because I’m working on a new webinar on productivity. I’ve been reading about Newton’s first law of physics about how, you know, if it’s an object-Alan Brown: Object in motion.Minette Riordan: -in motion it’s hard to get it into motion. It takes a lot of-Alan Brown: Energy. Yeah.Minette Riordan: -uumph to get it going, but then once it’s in motion it stays in motion. So getting people into action is one of those biggest tricks getting ourselves into action. I think this concept of the 30 day theme is brilliant for creating both conscious and unconscious momentum towards finishing projects.Brad Dobson: Love it.Minette Riordan: Yeah.Brad Dobson: Yeah. You mentioned sprints. We do sprints as well. It’s a term from software agile type of work. I find them incredibly effective in terms of focusing the work for a short sprint of time. Yeah. Definitely.Alan Brown: Yeah, and Minette-Minette Riordan: You know, and I love the combination of the digital and the analog. That’s what works for me as well. He uses Gira, which is also an agile software, right? He likes more the digital as well, but you know, finding … So you modeled beautifully finding the combination of tools that works for you.Alan Brown: Yeah, and Minette, you said a couple of things that rung a bell with me. One is just that reminder that hey, if you’ve got that monthly theme written at the top of your daily planner, that is a reminder that hey, shouldn’t this be one of my three biggies today or tomorrow? That’s always there to remind you that hey, let’s make sure that I make it one of my three biggies so I’m spending time. The other thing you mentioned I hadn’t really thought about a lot, which is if you do have a monthly theme and even if you don’t work on it today, the fact that you know it’s your monthly theme, when you get in the shower or you go walk the dog or you go to the gym, you’re more likely to have, because this thing has kind of been brought to the forward of your mind you’re more likely to have an idea around that, because you’ve been thinking about it a lot more, so that’s another benefit of having a monthly theme.Minette Riordan: Yeah, I love that. So we’re about out of time here, and I know people are going to hear more about you, learn more about you, connect with you. Where’s the best place to send people to connect with you, Alan?Alan Brown: Well, definitely come to Crushertv.com where you can watch previews of the show. It is a membership. It costs just a buck to join. You can cancel at any time. Also on the home page you will probably be presented with a drop down screen that lets you sign up for a free video series that I call the productivity accelerator. It’s four brief videos that talk about how to … YOu’ll forgive my french. How to plan your day like a badass, how to run your day like a badass, how to stop procrastinating even when it comes to the hatables, what I call the hatables, and then a kind of bonus hack that takes that one to the next level. Stop by crushertv.com. If you ever have any questions, feel free to join Facebook.com/group/crushtv. Come and join the group, and post a question about theming or about anything else, and I would love to hear from you.Brad Dobson: Good stuff, and we’ll have all those links in the show’s transcript in this show’s episode post.Minette Riordan: I know Brad’s going to be going back and listening to this one over again and looking at how we can implement theming. You know, it’s something that we’ve done from a marketing perspective. We use monthly themes to help drive our content, but I love this idea of using it, and we were just having the conversation yesterday looking for how can we stay more on top of some of these bigger projects that are ongoing projects? I’m thinking a lot about a book, but it’s not a goal right now, right? I love-Alan Brown: Oh, another book.Minette Riordan: I know. What? I’ve only written four, so there’s more to come, lots more to come. Yeah. I realize that my creative output is my biggest gift, but it’s also my biggest challenge, right? My form of ADHD is this constant need to create something new, so I love this concept of theming. I think we’re going to have to try it out. Then, we’re going to report back to you and maybe have you back on the show again so we can talk about how this is going and how it’s working.Alan Brown: You bet.Minette Riordan: Yeah, it’s going to be super cool, and I can tell that even though you say you can’t read that you’re a veracious consumer of educational information mostly through audiobooks and through reading. Do you use a combination?Alan Brown: Yes. My technique is called the two pager. I can read about two to four pages every night, but my audio consumption is mostly podcasts, including yours.Brad Dobson: Nice.Alan Brown: Yeah. I’m just a very slow reader, so I’ve got a milk crate of books next to my bed, and every night I read two to four pages and then I have to reread everything. It’s terrible, but I make a lot of-Minette Riordan: It’s not terrible.Alan Brown: -notes in the margines.Minette Riordan: I think at the end of the day you probably retain a lot more of it as opposed to me who I’m going through them so quickly I’m not retaining as much as I’d like, but you mentioned some great ones. We’ll put all those in the show notes as well. I’m a big Kevin Cruz fan. I’ve been following him and reading a lot of his stuff online.Alan Brown: Great writer. Great writer.Minette Riordan: Yeah, some great, great resources that you shared that we’ll be sharing out as well. So we want to remind people that if you’re trying to figure out how to be more productive go take our fun quiz on determining what your unique productivity style is. No two of us do productivity the say, and I particularly loved what Alan shared today about how he has really taken a lot of different building blocks, tools, tips, and hacks and created his own productivity system. We’re big fans of finding the path that works for you. There’s no one path for everybody. You can take that quiz at pathtoprofitacademy.com/upsquiz.Brad Dobson: You bet, and once again, we’ll have that link in the show notes. Thanks again, Alan, from crushertv.com. Head on over there. He’s got some very cool stuff, you know, videos you need to watch to be more productive.Minette Riordan: Yeah, super cool, and next week we’ll be back with our nine pillars, and we’re going to be talking about goal setting and it’s going to be a perfect time of year to do that. It’s mid-June. We’re almost halfway through the year. When was the last time you actually even looked at or contemplated those goals you maybe set in January? It’s time for a review and potentially some course correction. We’re going to talk about that next week.Brad Dobson: Good stuff. Thanks again, Alan.Minette Riordan: All right. We’ll see you later, Alan.Alan Brown: Thank you.Minette Riordan: Thank you so much for your time. It was such a pleasure.Brad Dobson: Thanks for listening to Structure and Flow, the productivity podcast for creative entrepreneurs. To find out more about this episode and others go to pathtoprofitacademy.com and click on the podcast link. The post Episode 105: Alan Brown’s Creative Strategy for Organizing Your Work Week appeared first on Path to Profit Academy.