198. Peak Performers: Unpacking the Productivity Habits of the Famous

Okay, Blake and Verbs, I want to do something a little bit different today. Obviously, we are advocates for the full focus system, but productivity didn’t start with the full focus system. People have been …

Verbs, I need you to fact check that for me. I’m not certain …

Highly debatable. Highly debatable.

There may be a trademark pending on that, but continue. We’ll continue with this hypothetical mix.

Yes, that’s true. Yeah. Hypothetically, people before this were trying to be productive, and what I’d like to do today is look at some famous people’s productivity routines or tips and filter them through what we know is an effective system in the full focus system.

I like this. I like this.

All right, so let’s not waste any more time. Let’s just get started.

Welcome to another episode of Focus On This, the most productive podcast on the internet. You can banish distractions, get the right stuff done, and finally start loving Monday. I’m Verbs here with Blake Stratton and Nick Jaworski. Happy Monday to you both, my friends.

Happy Monday unto you, Verbs.

Happy Monday. Is there anybody that comes to mind for either of you when you think of productive people, celebrities, historical figures? Does anybody pop to mind of somebody that you’re excited about or you’d want to share something that you know about them?

The two people that come to my mind are, they’re both comedians interestingly, but the first is Steve Martin, which is hard to just call him a comedian because of how productive he has been in his career. He blows my mind because not only was he a successful comedian, but he essentially introduced a new era or a new style of comedy, which both of you know, when you try to pioneer your own way versus just writing in the current of what somebody else has already started, it is very, very difficult. You talk about having to be productive and resilient. Not only did Steve Martin obviously rise to becoming the biggest standup comedian star, or one of the top ones in his era, then he becomes this well-known screen actor. He’s written several books, and by the way, he’s a world-class banjo player.

For real.

Like legit. It’s insanity.

He might be the Jimi Hendrix of the banjo world.

The other person that came to mind was Seinfeld, only because he’s, it’s almost a different kind of productivity, which is perhaps not the diversity of Steve Martin, but the level of consistency and the returning to exactly the, you talk about building a habit goal over time, Seinfeld famously just writes jokes. I don’t know if he still does this every day, but he just writes a little bit every day, challenging himself to write at least one joke every day, just working that muscle, working those jokes, just pages and pages and pages of legal pads strewn about. He has a special, I think, on Netflix that in the ad or the trailer for it, what they did was they took all of his legal pad papers and strewn them about the city street. Did you see that Verbs? It was bananas, just how much the volume of work when you develop a consistent habit over time. That’s what comes to mind for me.

I got one person that popped in my mind. I don’t know if this is still what he does, but Dwayne Johnson, aka, the Rock, at one point, when he was in every single movie that came out in the theaters. I think in the interview he had mentioned, it was a magazine article, he had mentioned that his life has been scheduled down to just 15 minute time blocks to where he’s in the gym for, whatever, 30 working out. Then he goes to run scripts somewhere at a studio, but he’s basically got to the point where he had to segment his life out into 15 minute time blocks to complete all the stuff that he needed to do for the day, so I found that interesting. That man’s life is 15-minute blocks, 24/7.

Yeah, the Rock famously stole my workout routine and protocol. He has called me a few times for some tips about that, but I did my best. I said, “Hey, you got to write down your big three, your three key lifts.”

If I was you, I’d call him and tell him you’ll wrestle him for the routine back.

Let’s get started here. We’re going to, first a second here I thought maybe I’d surprise you with who it is, but I think that might be, it’s not going to be that interesting. Let me tell you, we’re going to start with Maya Angelou, part of her obviously. We’re going to, I’m going to read to you how she described her daily routine, and then what we’re going to do is we’re going to give it a score, not a score about her as like a creative person, but just how it stacks up against what we know and how we feel about productivity.

Oh, yeah. I’m totally qualified to judge Maya Angelou for sure. That’s definitely what people want to hear.

Now let’s be clear. Obviously this routine works for her. She said, “I usually get up at about 5:30 and I’m ready to have coffee by six, usually with my husband. He goes off to work around 6:30 and I go off to mine. I keep a hotel room in which I do my work, a tiny mean room with just a bed, and sometimes if I can find it, a face basin. I keep a dictionary, a bible, a deck of cards, and a bottle of sherry in the room. I try to get there around seven, and I work until two in the afternoon. If the work is going badly, I stay until 12:30. If it’s going well, I’ll stay as long as it’s going well. It’s lonely and it’s marvelous. I edit while I’m working.” Then she leaves at two, has dinner with her husband.

First of all, this is fascinating as far as the look behind the scenes of her process.

Yeah.

It sounds similar to what we would suggest for the quarterly preview getaways, but it sounds like she’s doing this every day. Right?

Every day she’s got a hotel room.

Wow. Yeah. I think just the whole thing of getting out of her regular space to do the creative work and obviously the readings that we’ve read and what people will be reading for the future. Just to see that and the process behind how that was produced is amazing. The thing I do like about what she said is there was a time, or just the getaway to the hotel part to be able to focus on what she needed to do, and she prepared herself around her to give her the tools that she wanted. It’s a bible, it’s a dictionary, a glass of sherry and something else, but how lonely …

A deck of cards.

A deck of cards. She was knocking out solitary by herself in the hotel room. Just that last line of how it was lonely, yet it was marvelous because you have to, in the pursuit of whatever we’re trying to do or complete throughout the day, maybe it does, it could be lonely, but being able to complete that thing is also a marvelous state to live in as well. Yeah, I think it’s just fascinating that you’re giving us an insight look into these people’s process. I don’t even know how to rate it. Is there a text …

We don’t have to rate them, but there’s a lot of good happening.

Twelve out of ten.

Right.

I mean, it reminds me of, I used Seinfeld as an example, but I think specifically when you are an artist and a writer like her, the treating that artistic work with reverence and with respect to lean into the habit and do whatever you got to do, we talk about a big three, someone like her, it sounds like many days has a big one. The big three is designed to determine, hey, what does success look like today and how can I remove distractions and prioritize appropriately? This is a woman that knows what’s most important and arranges her lifestyle to accomplish that as well as, we talk about the workday shutdown, I mean, she’s got her shutdown built into the hotel room, so she’s going to leave the actual space. She’s maybe going to polish off a little bit of that Sherry, right, and that’s my guess is kind of a ritual for her of completing the day. She can leave “work.” Again with this type of work, you’re never really off, right, so that’s why that context switching or that shifting from the physical space seems really wise.

Wait, I have one more thing I just picked up on that I like. It’s going back to that deck of cards, so this is my guess. Again, doing that creative work, and even as a creative, it’s necessary for you to let your mind take a break from trying to produce the words or the music or whatever it is, and think on something else for a moment, just so you can kind of reshuffle the deck, no pun intended. That, for her, it sounds like that game of cards or whatever she would do with that cards pulls her out of the writing mode into doing something else for a time so she can think on something and then go back to that writing work. All that to say is I’m going on Amazon right now to find a deck of cards.

Well, I don’t know about you, I’m calling this a 10. Literally everything about this is very deliberate. There’s nothing …

Okay. Yeah. Let the record show Nick is rating Maya Angelou lower than me. I said a 12 out of 10. He’s bringing her down a couple notches. Okay, Nick, go ahead.

Okay, next step, we’re going to talk about Thomas Edison. Now I’m going to read to you an exchange that he had with somebody else or someone’s recounting, and then we’re going to talk about his process. This person asked, “Do you have regular hours, Mr. Edison?” He responded, “Oh, I do not work hard now. I come to the laboratory about eight o’clock every day and go home to tea at six,” eight to six, “and then I study or work on some problem until 11, which is my hour for bed.” “14 or 15 hours a day can scarcely be called loafing,” this person said. He said, “Well, for 15 years I have worked on average of 20 hours a day.” When he was 47 years old, he estimated his true age at 82, since working only eight hours a day would’ve taken that time. Also, just to point this out, he also has known on occasion to work 60 consecutive hours and then take a very long sleep.

Yeah. Well …

Is this a 12 out of 10?

I think I didn’t come out in that interview. Thomas Edison was known to, I looked this up while you were talking, his low amount of sleep may have had something to do maybe with his love of something called Vin Mariani. Have you guys heard of this?

No.

Maya Angelou has her sherry, Thomas has his Vin Mariani, which is essentially wine with, wait for it, cocaine in it.

Oh, okay.

There you go.

Wait, this is a real situation that you speak of right now.

I mean, it’s on the internet, Verbs, so it’s true.

Oh, okay.

Who among us can, as I bask in the glow of my light bulb here, can judge Thomas Edison from a work output standpoint, however …

But would we suggest this routine as part of a daily, is this what we would suggest for people?

If you don’t also want to keep a cocaine habit, I would strongly advise you to get more hours of sleep than four.

Yes.

Just for the record, I also wouldn’t advise the cocaine habit.

Right.

Both of those.

We’re very clear on that.

Just very, we’re drawing a line in the sand as a podcast, this is, this is …

I’m going to have to get this approved by somebody. I don’t usually have to, but I do want to say, clearly, we are firmly against cocaine. I need people to leave this episode …

You’re taking a stand. It’s not a part of the full focus system.

It is not.

I’m not going to make this a commentary about Thomas Edison’s accomplishments, his ability to mobilize other scientists and people and drive incredible world changing results. Obviously, it speaks for itself. However, most people listening to this podcast or who pick up the planner do so because they are trying to have a double win where they’re winning at work and succeeding in life. It’s not good enough to just have accomplishments at work if our mental, physical, emotional, relational health suffers, so that’s the audience that we speak to. I would say that I can’t give, well, Tommy here, a full focus approval here of this schedule, only because if our listeners were to try to use our full focus system at that pace, it would be extremely short-lived and no double win would be had.

That’s a very, very good point.

Just for the record, guys, cocoa wine is a mixture of cocoa syrup and wine, a concoction that inspired the non-alcoholic Coca-Cola. Angelo Mariani invented Vin Mariani, the most popular cocoa wine in the 1860s. Produced in Bordeaux, France, Vin Mariani made its drinkers feel energetic, a symptom of the stimulating drug in every bottle. Coca-Cola, cocoa wine …

Again, everybody do not do cocaine. I just need to really hit that part. I’m giving that score, I’m just going to decide, I’m giving that a one out of 10. It’s not a statement on that medicine. It is a statement that you cannot get a double win on that schedule. It requires some extra external help that we do not support and yeah, I’m giving it a one.

Yeah.

Next up, we’re going to talk about Benjamin Franklin. In general, he would wake up at 5:00 AM and from five to 8:00 AM he would rise, this is his words, “Rise, wash, and address powerful goodness, contrive day’s business, and take the resolution of the day.” Now, one of the questions he would ask himself is, let me find it, every morning he’d ask himself, “What good shall I do this day?” At eight o’clock he goes to work. He works from eight to noon. From noon to two, he reads and eats and overlooks his accounts. He works again from two to five, and from five to 10, he puts things in their places, supper, music, conversation, examination of the day where he asks himself, “What good have I done today?” He goes to sleep at 10 o’clock. He actually has a list of 13 virtues that he’s tracking at all times that include things like temperance, silence, order, resolution, frugality, industry, sincerity, justice, moderation, cleanliness, tranquility, chastity, and humility.

Sounds like old Benny has mastered the art of the ideal week, not just an ideal week, but he said he has segmented out the flow of his week for certain things to be accomplished. I would also add that that workday startup ritual is a pretty strong one where he’s assessing what resolution is happening, needs to happen for that day. I forgot the other two that you mentioned, but it sounds like there’s a system of questions or a series of questions he goes through or presents himself with, so he can set the day up properly. Therefore, he can identify whatever his big three are, or the big two, or the big one that he’s looking to step into on that day. That’s what I hear from Mr. Franklin.

His evening ritual baked in there as well, right, a daily reflection on his wins, you might say. In full focus country, we call them wins. In Ben Franklin’s as he’s talking about the good that he’s done that day, or that he intends to do that day, which for someone who’s accomplished as him is really valuable. I think one of the valuable things about that, or a connection to the full focus system is the awareness of progress. The awareness of progress when you have big aspirations is so valuable, so critical, because if you’re someone that’s a high achiever, that dreams big, that wants to do great things as Ben Franklin obviously did, you will always have the option to be daunted by what you’ve yet to accomplish.

When you can on a daily basis identify a specific step towards those ends you want to take, and a specific win or good that you have achieved as an outcome from that day, you will have visible progress every single day, which will encourage your soul, reenergize you, and bring more focus and energy to the next day so that you can continue not just in spurts where you feel inspired in January, but you can have a lifestyle of growing productivity. That’s a very valuable thing from his workday startup and evening ritual.

We’re giving this a 10, right?

For sure.

We have tens and ones so far.

Tens and ones.

Defended the gap. Yeah.

Okay. Well, this next one, I’m curious to see how we will all feel about this. We’re talking about a Missouri hero. I’m talking about Samuel Clemens, who we all know as …

Samuel Clemens.

This is funny. This is because I’m from Missouri. Everyone in Missouri knows this answer, but no one else does. That’s Mark Twain.

Mark Twain, yeah.

Ah.

We’re going to talk about Mark Twain.

Good old Marky Mark and the funky bunch. Here we go.

Retiring to a farm in upstate New York every summer, Twain had a simple routine, eat a hardy breakfast every morning and then lock himself in a private room built for his purposes. Here he would stay till dinner at five o’clock, a prisoner of his mind, no lunch, no distractions, no excuses. The only permissible interruption coming from the blow of a horn under grave circumstances. After finishing at five o’clock, he’d eat dinner with the family, later retiring to the study to read aloud his writing from the day to win his family’s approval. Okay. I’m ready,

Blake. I’ll let you go first. I have thoughts on this one, but …

Locking himself in a room …

He locked himself in a room all day.

Okay, sounds great, and then he …

No lunch, no nothing. Somebody could blow a horn if they desperately needed him.

If it’s an emergency.

I like this.

An emergency.

I like this, yep.

Then at five, he would leave. He’d have dinner, then he would go to the study and read what he’d written that day to his family.

This is pretty strong in my opinion. Again, hilarious. I’m going to judge Mark Twain’s productivity. I have …

Again, we’re not judging the productivity. We’re just exploring how it fits …

Okay. We’re exploring how it fits in the system. Okay. Well, let me explore. Okay, so here’s some connections I’m seeing with the full focus system. One is a clear workday startup and a clear workday shutdown done by locking himself into the room. I’m here. This is what I’m dialed in for. This is what I’m doing. He has clear objectives each day, which again, like we talked about Maya Angelou, the writing habit is something that he’s working towards every day. He obviously had multiple projects, so each day he’s incrementally making gains on those different writing projects. He has a workday shutdown. He’s exiting this room, which who knows what it may have smelled like in there. Hopefully he had some candles or something. I don’t know. Bring the ambience up a little bit. But workday shutdown, he’s going to report. He’s going to have some accountability there. That’s pretty strong. You’ve got some key elements. I’m not seeing a weekly preview or anything like that in here. There’s perhaps no indexing of things, but he’s got some core elements there for a productive day.

I’m going to disagree with Blake a little bit on this one.

Okay. I’m ready for this.

Here’s what I see. Mark knew what he needed to do to focus on his work, but I don’t know if that brother was fasting or doing intermittent fasting, he did not take a lunch break. It sounds like this was just part of what he did. There was no nourishment for his physical body during his focus time. That’s number one. You need some kind of nourishment. Number two is though he did have a workday shut down, it sounds like he goes back into work mode to go and read his writings that he accomplished earlier that day to read back to his family. He shut down, went to have dinner with his family, went back into reading, going back into his papers and reading whatever he accomplished that day back to his folks. I feel like he shuts it down, then he starts it back up in the evening time. I don’t know if his kids were like, okay, dad’s going to read us a story again, whatever it might be, but he’s definitely still in work mode because he’s testing out his material on his family at that point. My humble opinion.

We used to call it front stage, backstage, wasn’t that part of the planner for a while. Yeah, it’s part of the system. It’s almost like he’s turned backstage into front stage at a certain point with his family. Here’s the thing. This is all I want to do. I’d love to have my family gather around every day, and I played the podcasts. I edited that day to them. That’s what I want to do every night.

What score you rated the …

Yeah, so the locking himself in a room, now, obviously this worked for Mark Twain. How do we feel about the not eating and the tooting of a horn? How do we feel about that? Well, I’m going to give this …

Look. If he had done this in 2021, he would write a book about intermittent fasting, all right, and people would be praising him for his productivity, so I give Mark a pass on that.

What, a seven and a half? Six? I don’t know.

It feels closer to six for me.

Yeah. It feels a little insane.

I’m giving him an eight.

I give him a pass on the horn, too. That’s a text, right, in today’s world?

Exactly.

Hey, don’t bother me if the kitchen’s on fire. Should be a text.

I’m working, intermittent fasting.

Yeah. It’s a do not disturb note. It’s on the phone.

Yeah.

Then they call you twice through the film.

Yeah.

Well, that’s all I have time for today, but we’ll just do this again at some point. There’s so many ideas. It’s fun to hear about how, and again, all these people were very productive.

Absolutely.

There’s not a knock on them. Just interesting to see how people have found things that work for them and how maybe they don’t necessarily always provide for the balance that maybe full focus planners users are searching for. That’s a nice diplomatic way to say that, right?

Sure. Yeah.

All right. Well, let’s wrap it up, Verbs.

Thank you for joining us on another episode of Focus On This.

This is the most productive podcast on the whole worldwide web.

We’ll be back next week with another great episode, but until then …

Stay focused.

That was very good. When you guys line up, it’s like the highlight of my day.