Today, Iâm going to show you a system to supercharge your consistency and discipline.
If you set up this system, youâll eliminate decision fatigue, better manage your time, and boost your productivity.
Unfortunately, many men donât have a system in place to optimize how they invest their attention and time daily.
So they end up taking plays off and never âplayingâ at their best for a full day.
“If you fail to plan, you plan to fail” – Ben Franklin
The system weâre going to set up today is whatâs called The Four Quarters Method for time blocking.
Time blocking is nothing new.
And youâve likely heard of it before.
But when you fail to time block your day effectively, you can expect:
- Greater decision fatigue
- Greater stress and overwhelm
- Decreased focus and productivity
- Decreased efficiency and effectiveness
- Decreased consistency and accountability
All things weâd like to avoid.
Fortunately, thereâs an easy fix.
Instead of winging it each day and bleeding your time, energy and attention dry, youâll execute each day with the calm, focused precision of an archer.
Here’s how step by step:
Step 1: Block your day into 4-hour quarters
View each day like a game with 4 daily quarters.
To get started, get out a sheet of paper and write down when you wake up and when you go to sleep.
Assuming you get 8 hours of sleep each night, that leaves 16 hours to play with.
Meaning you can divide your day into four 4-hour quarters.
Go ahead and do that now and label each quarter as quarter 1, quarter 2, quarter 3 and quarter 4.
Hereâs an example of mine:
Step 2: Choose Themes
Now you need to choose a theme for each quarter.
In other words – what will you focus on during each quarter?
Here are my 4 personal favorite themes:
- Lead myself
- Answer the question – what do I need each day to go from empty to energy?
- For me, this includes things like walking, training, meditating, journaling, reading, sauna, and cold plunge (to name a few).
- Pro tip – this is the #1 place I see men mess up. You donât create a quarter to lead yourself, so you end up burnt out unable to lead others. Think airplane – you need to put your mask on first. This is where you do it.
- Connection
- Humans are social creatures by nature. We need human connection to feel happy, alive and fulfilled. This is time to drive that connection by being with family, friends and loved ones.
- Deep work
- This is where I work on shipping new projects and ideas that will move my business forward.
- Admin
- This is where I work on tasks that must be completed to keep my business functioning at its current level.
Go ahead and assign themes and descriptions to each quarter now.
Hereâs an example of mine:
Step 3: Put it on your calendar
Add your 4 quarters and themes to whatever calendar and scheduling tool you prefer to use.
In Google Calendar, you can assign each quarter a different color and leave notes to remind yourself of what that time is for.
I highly recommend doing that to make focusing and getting started easier.
Step 4: Execute and audit
Execute your 4 quarter system daily and then at the end of each quarter, journal quickly on how you did:
- What did you get done?
- What went well?
- What didnât go well?
- What will you improve next time?
- If you had a bad quarter, how can you bounce back this next quarter?
This quick journaling practice at the end of each quarter is how you improve.
Donât skip it.
Step 5: Adapt
Over time adapt the quarters to fit your specific needs by adjusting how long each quarter lasts.
For example – I donât need 4 hours for the âlead myselfâ quarter. I can do that in 2 hours and feel great.
Start basic and then make it specific as you go.
Conclusion
Imagine each day of your life is a game with 4 quarters.
Iâve found most men only play 1-2 solid quarters daily because they:
- Donât have a plan
- Get derailed easily if things get off track
The Four Quarter Method will empower you to push that daily number to 3-4 well-lived quarters.
You now have a plan to follow, and perhaps most importantly, know you always have another quarter coming.
So if you have a bad quarter, who cares?
Win the next one.
Keep moving forward.
Keep winning one quarter at a time.
And youâll be ahead of 99% of people in 1 year.
âĄď¸ Worth your time
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This cool app I recently discovered called Yuka does just that.
You can scan food or household cosmetics and get a health score on it from 0-100.
With the amount of additives and chemicals we put into products these days this app is a no-brainer.
Small repeated insults add up over time.
Make sure you do your homework on what you are putting in and on your body.
đ¤ A quote to ponder
âFinish every day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunder and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it well and serenely, and with too high a spirit to be cumbered with your old nonsense.â – Ralph Waldo Emerson