Jeff Sanders

Cameron: [00:00:00]
If you are into human performance, you've probably heard of the 5:00 AM Club waking up early in order to prioritize me time so that you can set yourself up for success rather than stress. Now, how do we create this new habit? How do we become generally more productive, worthy scientist, and high performance coach to multiple world champions?
In this show, we unpack key insights on specific topics so that you are kept up to date with the latest science and practice of human performance.[00:01:00]
Time. It's the one resource we all have in equal measure, yet it often feels like there's never enough of it. Productivity at its core is about making the most of that time, whether it's a day, a year, or a lifetime. But what drives productivity? It's a cocktail of factors, motivation, personality, training, environment, time management, and even a little bit of good luck.
Add in the physical basics, exercise, health, eating, and good sleep, and you've got the ingredients for maximizing your efficiency. Some people seem to have crap. The productivity code breezing through tasks like natural born super producers and others face an uphill battle. Relying on strategies, habits, and a lot of often coffee to get things done.
At the heart of it all is [00:02:00] mental energy paired with the motivation that comes from knowing your efforts serve a larger purpose. While not every daily task may feel meaningful, keeping your sights and long-term goals can fuel your drive to power through the mundane. And one person who has spent his life walking and talking productivity is Jeff Sanders.
Jeff is a keynote speaker, productivity coach, and author of the Amazon bestseller, the 5:00 AM Miracle. He's also a plant-based marathon runner and self-proclaimed personal development fanatic. Jeff's award-winning podcast, the Five A Miracle Podcast, has topped Apple Podcast, self-improvement and business charts with over 13 million downloads.
Imagine what you're thinking is 5:00 AM is super early. I don't want to be persuaded to get up that early, but stay with me because morning rituals are really interesting and important. We'll explore [00:03:00] how morning rituals and intentional habits and a clear focus can transform your productivity and your life.
Let's get into it. Flow unleashed, unleashed, unleashed. This chat has been remastered from several years ago, so please excuse any discrepancy in audio quality.
Welcome Jeff. Creating and maintaining an award-winning podcast. Having millions of downloads is obviously no small feat. What do you credit to your success?
Jeff: That's an interesting question. I think there's a lot of angles to that. I would say that one thing I know that's allowed the podcast as an example to do well.
Is I committed on day one to launching a show that I wanted to do well. So I planned it for almost a year. I had scripts, I had formats, I had technology. I had all of these pieces of the puzzle, and I studied a lot of other [00:04:00] podcasters to figure out what were they doing, what was working, what did I like?
What's the format that I think I can stick to long term? Because my goal initially was to do the show once a week ongoing, and that's what I've done for seven and a half years now. And so I think a large part of what has worked is consistency, just sticking with it and not quitting. A lot of podcasters quit, and so to still be around seven and a half years later and be committed to the show and make it the best it can be, I think that that has helped a lot for sure.
Cameron: Yeah. Interesting. And has the pod changed over the years or is there that central message bang on as it was seven and a half years ago?
Jeff: It has weaved around in a lot of directions. It started off with this intention of early mornings sitting. Know the 5:00 AM Miracle in the name of the show. It's about waking up early to do awesome things, but that has shifted to personal health.
It's shifted over to productivity. It's gone into personal growth and development, lots of different angles and how they all kind of interact [00:05:00] with this. Really the core message of just being intentional with your time, but how all of that plays into just a variety of things that I'm interested in personally.
So I let my own curiosity just run the show to a certain degree, but I tend to stick to those kind of main core areas of healthy habits, personal developments and productivity. And that is the core of the show now.
Cameron: Yeah, and I love that. One of the messages that I get from what you talk about is creating the space to be able to have space.
Can you tell us a little bit more about the the 5:00 AM miracle?
Jeff: Well, in terms of kind of the story behind 5:00 AM which I is, where the whole thing begins for me was that at the time I decided that I wanted to do an early morning wake up call. I was not that guy. Like I was the one saying awake until midnight or 1:00 AM and sleeping in until the very last minute and hit me alarm clock before I had to be at work.
You know, 10 minutes later. And I got to the point where that was kind of stressful. I didn't enjoy my mornings, and I realized I had a lot more going on because at the time, this was about 10 years [00:06:00] ago, I had a full-time job, a side business, and I was training for my first marathon. And with all those things wrapped together, I realized I don't have time for all these projects unless my time shifts and I figure out how to fit it all into my calendar.
So that's when I decided to try an early morning run, and so I got out of bed at 5:00 AM this one day just to see if I could do a run before work, and I just fell in love with the whole process immediately. It was this instant just like, oh my gosh, here's this time of my day that I've been neglecting that if I use differently.
Now I have this amazing ability to get these things done. I care about, then I still have time to go to work. I still have time to do my side hustle business in the evenings. And all those things just fell into place a lot more nicely. Now, as time progressed, I shifted what I worked on early in the morning.
It wasn't always exercise. Sometimes it was personal projects or business projects, but it always was the same intention of. Use those hours, wake up early and do something productive. And then the rest of my day felt so much better because I was intentional with [00:07:00] those first few hours of the day.
Cameron: Those first few hours or first few moments are so important when we wake up, you know, we normally wake up without conditioning and habits.
Most of them unhelpful, and it's that kind of personal responsibility for self-leadership to wake us up out of that. Automatic mode. Okay, who's the person I wanna embody today? What does my day wanna look like and how am I gonna make that happen? And, and we often talk about spending time in the morning to get the heart rate up.
So there, there's endorphins around the system. Have a space for mindfulness where we can detach and diffuse from our thoughts and, and get that space that we're so often seeking over the years of you. That you found has been really helpful for.
Jeff: In terms of the early morning hours, I mean, I've tried a wide variety of routines and I have the one that I [00:08:00] tried at first that I thought was the most helpful was to pack in a lot of healthy habits first thing in the day. So I was doing everything from yoga to meditation to reading to anything on the list that I could just pack into my mornings.
And this was when I had the day job. And so I was trying to squeeze a lot in really fast. Which also felt kind of stressful to me, and it didn't really work as well. Then a few years later when I was a full-time entrepreneur and my time was more flexible, I was spending a lot of time in these healthy habits.
So it was like 3, 4, 5 hours of just stuff, because people said, these are good things, you should do them. And so I was just trying all of them and also realized that's not helpful either, 'cause now I'm wasting half my day and all this random stuff. And so I've come to this kind of realization that for me personally, for my morning to be effective, I wanna have one central focus.
I wanna do one thing, get it done, do it well, and then let the rest of my day flow from there. So I mean, there's plenty of habits. Everything from reading to yoga to meditation there, there are good for you to do. And some certain people will respond better to [00:09:00] those than others. And I feel as though if I could pick one thing and have my morning be centralized around that.
That for me, going deep into one thing is more beneficial than doing a lot of things really quickly. So that's the strategies that I've been teaching for years now is just how do you make sure that your calendar represents your priorities and you can't have 85 priorities. You really only have a couple.
And so can those few fit into your calendar in an effective way? And if they can't, you're probably too busy. That's been my life story. I'm always too busy, so I'm trying to figure out how to be less busy. By having fewer things to do, and to me the morning can represent that. It can be that starting ground for committing to focus first thing in the day.
Cameron: Is that space for you time to be productive in the things that are important to us or is that space that you are creating first thing in the morning to. Create that internal reward or that whatever we need to feel in [00:10:00] order to then go be productive in the day? Or is it a bit of both?
Jeff: It's a great question.
Uh, I think that the best thing that's worked for me is I'm pretty flexible when it comes to what I commit to. So there'll be some weeks or, or or months where I'm doing very productive activities. You know, wake up at five and by five 30 I'm doing a work task. There are other seasons in my life where I don't do those things at all, and I need space just to breathe.
I need time just to be, and when that's the case, I probably am too stressed out if, I mean I'm doing too much. It's also a good wake up call to, and in that reality of figuring out. Where am I right now and what's gonna suit me best for where I am emotionally, physically, you know, looking at my calendar, like what's going to give me the best boost for that day?
And it's not always the same answer. I think if anything, the answer changes every single day. So I plan my mornings the night before, and so tonight I will plan tomorrow morning and I'll pick one objective and make sure that's what I'm gonna do based upon where I am right now, which fluctuates so that I can let that ebb and flow.[00:11:00]
Cameron: I can imagine lots of listeners going, you know, this is great, but waking up 5:00 AM in the morning, are you kidding me? I've got PIs and mm-hmm. You know, I like the idea, but I might do it for two days. And then the reality is it doesn't work. And often my response is, well set an alarm clock to go to bed.
Mm-hmm. In the morning set one in the evening. So you make sure your head's on that pillow nice and early. What's your response to that kind
Jeff: of common? I think what you just said is exactly right. The evening routine is the thing. So if you get to bed on time, 5:00 AM is not early, just eight hours after you fell asleep.
And so if you got the sleep you needed, then you can wake up at any time you want to. And to the, the question about kids is a very common one. You know, I began The Five A Miracle, the podcast, and a lot of things I taught. Before I had my daughter, and so I got a lot of comments from parents who were like, well, you don't understand what it's like.[00:12:00]
Well, then I had a, a kid, and now two and a half years into it, I can tell you that waking up early is better when you have kids than when you don't. Because if you don't wake up early, you have no time to yourself in the morning. And so it's one of those things where it's really easy to just throw out an excuse or an objective or just say, well, that won't work for me because.
Versus saying, well, what if I was more intentional at the time I had, what would my best schedule look like? And I feel as though it's very easy to just simply say, I'm just gonna go to bed when I, when I'm tired, wake up tomorrow morning when it feels like I need to wake up. And everything feels reactive.
And if you're that reactive that often. It's actually pretty exhausting. I find it be much more fulfilling to be more intentional with get to bed on time, make sure that's early as possible, and then tomorrow morning I'm out of bed early before my daughter's awake. Well, now I have some time to myself to get some things done, and that for me has been very effective.
I.
Cameron: It's no wonder why most people fall into bed in the evenings [00:13:00] and it's not necessarily because we're physically tired, we haven't run a marathon, right? We're just mentally and emotionally exhausted. 'cause we're, as you said, we're so busy reacting, and I find that me personally as well, to prioritize ourself and give ourselves permission to go, hang on.
Space with me is important. Mm. If I get that dialed in straight away, then everything else from then is better. First of all. Is that a sort of a common issue or hurdle that people have to overcome? And if so, how do you help people overcome that?
Jeff: I think that a lot of people don't have the me time. They need.
You have a lot of people at home with your family. You go to work, you have coworkers. I mean, maybe during Covid you don't have as many coworkers I got with, but a lot of people are. Were surrounded by a lot of other people a lot of times. And to have time to yourself, that's for yourself. That was carved away just so you had the [00:14:00] time you needed.
That's really precious for a lot of people and really rare, and we can have that time on your calendar, make sure it's going to exist, and then be intentional about how that time is used to give yourself what you need. Well, then you've got such a huge leg up over what you used to do, and so for a lot of people that time might just be an hour long meditation just to chill out, or it might be time to work on that one project.
They have been postponing for such a long time. And if that's what gives you that extra advantage, then you're gonna feel that much more productive every single day. And then that adds up that one hour a day. You know, five days a week even would give you that much extra boost. And that could, you know, compounds week after week.
And I feel like once that schedule is there and you see that benefit, well then you want more of it. You wanna continue that practice because it feels so good to finally have that time for yourself.
Cameron: Yeah. Do you take this concept into the day? For example, when you feel yourself being stressful or reactive, you go, okay, let's take that five [00:15:00] minutes instead of the 5:00 AM miracle, maybe the five minute miracle or the five second miracle where you can take that.
That essence and you take yourself outside and back in the day, people used to smoke and go for the cigarette breaks, which used to give them space and deep breathing. And nowadays everyone's just so busy regardless, or most people are it. Is this something that you find is helpful when you take that essence into the day?
Jeff: I think it really depends on how you want to schedule your time. So the way that I perceive how my day flows generally is about my energy levels. So I know, for example, that my energy is, is highest about two hours after I wake up, uh, until like two or three hours later. So I have like a window of time when I'm like most alert, kinda most caffeinated, most ready to go for the day, and that's what I'll do my most important work.
And then I know I'm gonna have a dip. It's gonna happen. I may not feel fantastic. And so I wanna schedule activities that are just not nearly as as necessary for me to think a lot. So less [00:16:00] creative work, like afternoon hours, I'll do errands, I'll do chores, I'll do mindless tasks. I'll take a break and go for a walk.
Uh, I, I expect to experience that. And so I wanna plan my day around that. And then later in the evening I get another boost again. I'll do some more work or activity at that time. But I just wanna make sure that when I am my best, that's when my most important work is scheduled. And when I know I'm not gonna be, that's, I'll schedule other minor things, answering emails or whatever the case is, just so I know that the priorities are aligned to when I can give myself to the work.
Cameron: Yeah. Interesting. And how have you come to find that rhythm you talk about?
Jeff: Really, I found it just through kind of the awareness of, I'll reach a point in my day where someone's asking me to do something, and I'll feel intuitively like, I don't wanna do that right now. And then I'll ask myself the question, well, why do I feel like that?
Am I tired? Do I not like the task? Is it, is the actual activity not fun for me? Like what's the reason why I don't want to do it? And often for me it was just a sense of [00:17:00] energy. It was like if I had more desire to move, I wouldn't care as much. I would just jump on it, do it, and move on. And so that to me was a big, you know, realization was that my energy was one of my biggest blocks for a long time.
So I wanted to craft a schedule that allowed me to really accentuate those. That's times. And so it's, I think it really is a personal awareness thing to understand your rhythms. Know that my diet affects that in a big way, or my hydration levels. So for example, in the afternoons, I have a liter of water right here.
If I drink this liter of water in the afternoon, my energy goes up dramatically. I feel better, I get more work done. It's just a simple thing that if you need to push through, you don't need coffee necessarily. You might just need water or a walk break or whatever. But being in touch with yourself, you can figure out.
What you need and then you do enough personal experiments, you can learn quite a bit and then just apply those lessons to your schedule.
Cameron: Mm-hmm. And having that self experimental mindset of taking the time [00:18:00] out to, to give different things a go and not go for that mid-afternoon coffee or that mid, mid-afternoon sugar snack or whatever it is, to get that spike and try different things is an important discipline, I imagine.
What do you find are the biggest hurdles towards. Effective
Jeff: time management. Distractions tend to be one of the biggest things for people, which is very common, right? The phone rings or a coworker walks in the room, or we get, you know, we get pulled away from our work. But I think that even more important than distractions or, you know, looking at your phone or Facebook or whatever, is just a lack of knowing your priorities.
A lot of us are, we're, we are so reactive that we, we look at our email that came in, you know, last night. We look at our calendar and just kind of, we see a lot to do and we might have a stress reaction to that, or we just wanna move really fast because of it, as opposed to pausing for a minute or two to ask the question, like, what really has to get done today and how can I postpone everything else?
So my day is just the [00:19:00] things that need to happen today and when, that's the question you're asking. Your list is a lot shorter, and then you can breathe a little bit and then you can actually approach your work with a little bit more intentionality, a little more focus, and then the quality goes up. The actual work that matters gets done, and the things that don't matter as much are postponed, and that's okay because they don't matter as much.
I. And it's just, it's so common in the world of productivity to just check more boxes, just do more, and you feel like, well, because I checked more boxes today, I'm more productive. But really, you're just busy and stressed out and tired, and, and that's not going to lead to the end result you're actually going for, which is the important stuff getting done.
And hopefully you have some autonomy over your schedule enough to be able to make these choices. I know I'm speaking from the perspective of I own my own business, I choose my own time, and I've been an employee for many years. I know what it's like to have a boss and to feel like you don't have that control.
But I think it's the mentality of walking into your day saying, I'm going to be intentional the time that I have and the control that I have, and make the best choices that I can. [00:20:00] And I think that a lot of us, it's easy to just simply. Delegate those choices to someone else or just simply react. And if you can take those away and just say, I'm going to, you know, my day is my own, my time is my own, let me go be more intentional at that.
You're gonna make different choices and get different outcomes and think that's the, the real name of the game. So
Cameron: much of what you've talked about is the helpful compounding factors that help people towards flow and finding that, that optimal sense of functioning. And what does flow mean to you?
Jeff: You know, I, I was thinking of this question earlier, and I think that in my life flow has always been a time when I don't care about anything else besides what I'm doing right now.
Like there is a very clear sense of being in the moment and being very present, and it's this desire to wanna stay in that moment, like you're so. Into your work that just the idea of doing anything else just seems foolish because you're doing your thing and it feels good and it feels right. I feel like that to me is, it's a rare [00:21:00] state to be in because I tend to to do too much.
And so when I do experience it, it's such like a magical thing where it's like, this is the way that I wanna work. This is how I feel good when things are getting done well and I, that to me is flow. I feel that real core sense of the time I'm spending right now is on the right thing.
Cameron: What have you found that?
Enables you to find that space more often?
Jeff: There's a couple of things. I think the first is being able to block distractions so that I, I really can just do one thing. And the second thing, and this is one that I've realized over the years, is there are certain activities that are much easier for me to get into a flow state with.
Uh, one of them is writing, so I've written a couple of books and I've written a lot of blog articles and I do episodes of my podcast. And the act of writing for me is such like a. Cathartic process. It almost feels like therapy half the time where I'm just pouring out things I'm feeling, not like it's a journal, but sort of in the sense that I'm getting to a space where I'm just [00:22:00] letting myself be creative, be inspired by something, and then when I get deep into those moments.
That is like the ultimate flow state for me. That's when I feel the most connected to what I'm doing and I wanna keep that going for hours on end. It's hard for me to get that same sense of flow with other activities, but writing for me has always been a thing that when I do it and I do it well, flow just happens just so fast.
Cameron: Yeah. Lovely. Nice to have him the go-to activity, if you like. Yeah. Yeah. And he talked a lot about managing the distractions. And I, I think that's such an important topic because there's so many distractions that occur in our life that we may not ordinarily see as a distraction. Be it nice music that we like listening to be it our environment, it being class, whatever we're bombarded with over 4 billion bits of information per second.
The brain's absorbing coding and our conscious awareness is very narrow and linear and can [00:23:00] only really absorb micro moments. Often when people talk about focused attention, there's this. Framing around becoming tunnel vision, you know, everything out. So you just focus on the minutia. And the way I often look at it is, is not so much that kind of.
Tunnel vision where we might become blinded and, and narrow minded if you like, where we're choking our attentional bandwidth, but more choosing to focus on what's relevant. So we might see the elephant crossing the room in the distance, but we instantaneously don't deem it as relevant and we're choosing to stay focused moment to moment on, on what's in front of us.
What's your thoughts on that?
Jeff: I like the idea of being still fully aware of what's going on. I, I kind of, to your point of if you have tunnel vision on, it's almost dangerous to that certain degree of like, you're only, you're so focused. It's almost a, a problem. And I feel as though a lot of the work that I do, especially in [00:24:00] the kind of work I'm in now, like creative work of any kind, you're gonna, using a lot of your brain, there's a lot going on, there's a lot of connections that are forming.
And to be so ultra focused is almost, yeah, it's a handicap to a certain degree. 'cause they're gonna miss the opportunity to connect the dots in other places. And so I find that the more that I'm like open to, to being creative, to thinking with my whole brain, I can still be in the flow state and still be aware of my surroundings.
But there's one kind of focus to the work that I'm doing, even if it's utilizing a lot of different facets at the same time.
Cameron: And what sort of personal permissions do you give yourself to allow that personal focus? So when you're writing, do you allow yourself not to worry about. The grammar, the spelling, so you can focus on the meaning of the text, or is that really important kind of feedback to you at that moment that you need to get those things correct?
I.
Jeff: I'm a perfectionist at heart, and so for me, like, yes, I, I would love to be able to cut a person who just [00:25:00] writes and doesn't edit himself, but that's not me. Like I'm very much like a, a self critiquing kind of guy as I work, which is a fault of mine. I'm working on that because I think that a lot of the best ideas come when you don't hold yourself back like that.
You just let yourself go. And so that's one of the things that I've worked on my whole life. I will my entire life, is just trying to be that person. But I would, I would say to that degree that it's really that question of are you getting the output that you want? And I find that if I'm too critical on myself, then the, I lose the flow state because all I'm thinking about are the mistakes that I've made and not thinking about what the output really could become.
And so I think that I. A lot of us like we it, it's so much better to just let go and just kind of let things happen and then we can edit later. And so that's one thing that when that's done well, the output is better. Like you get better ideas, you get better creative work. And that's really, in many ways, the goal of being a flow state is to increase the quality of what you're doing.
Cameron: Yeah. Self editing is [00:26:00] allowing you to let go. I guess. It's almost like that self distraction is allowing you to attend deeper because you are. You know your brain's going, ah, but what about that thing last season and, yeah. Interesting. Interesting.
Jeff: There's a new device that I just bought that's called the Free Write, which I dunno if you've heard this before.
It's a, it's like a typewriter, but it's, it's a very small keyboard that all it does is give you a screen to look at and it will attach to the internet only to back up what you've written. I. And so the intention is that you can write, but you can't be distracted. There's no social media, there's no email, there's nothing else to do besides type the words, and then it will save it, and then you're done.
And I feel like that's the kind of blocks that I want when I'm able to create those boundaries that are helpful, that will help me get the work accomplished. Uh, without it being handicapped or holding me back, it will actually allow me to stay in one state for longer.
Cameron: Yeah, beautiful. That simplicity.
Most people have to. [00:27:00] Pay hundreds and thousands of dollars to, to go to some far remote place on the planet?
Jeff: Well, I mean, to that degree it's like the last, uh, two books I've written, I wrote both of them mostly in the library here in Nashville. And so I would go to the library to a, a corner of, of one of the floors where there's nobody around and I would turn my phone off and I have my, at the time, my laptop, I created a second user account on it that had nothing installed on it.
So it was just me being able to write and get my work done with nobody around. But I had to hide to do that. I had to put myself in that position because if I don't do that, I know my own tendencies. I know that I'm not gonna do my best work. And so I have to, you know, you figure that those things out.
Like you ask the questions, what distracts me? What pulled me away from my work? And then just one at a time, you go through and solve those problems and then you end up with hopefully a really good end result.
Cameron: Yeah. Awareness of self is so important in terms of us knowing ourselves, and you've said a couple of [00:28:00] times on this chat of really understanding your own rhythm, understanding how you.
Self-destruct, if you like, or how you self distract and putting things in place, you know, against that. And it's, it's one of those weird paradoxes. I often find that those places in the library, um, where we can isolate and shove ourselves off from the world work or going to a desert island where. There's only a few people on it, but there's also this sort of paradox of working in a coffee shop, for example, where there's just, there's constant distraction and there's almost too much distraction that the brain suddenly goes, ah, too much.
Can't handle it. And I want simplicity, focus. And do you find those sort of, whether it's at an airport or whether it's on the plane or whether it's uh, in a coffee shop where there is chaos happening around you, does that.
Jeff: Yes. Uh, have you ever heard of a focus at will? It's a music track system. It's basically, it's designed by [00:29:00] neuroscientists and they've studied people when they're distracted and try to create music tracks for them to focus.
And one of them, like I, I as a type type, a high energy guy, I tend to have more of like a techno beat in the background that keeps me going and that's what I'm best for focus. They have another channel on their system designed for people with a DHD. So if you just are so distracted, there's a thousand stimuli going on around you, you can't seem to focus the music that they play.
Is erratic. It's chaos. It sounds like a train station blowing up all the time. It's just a lot of noise, but that causes certain people's brains to focus better. And so I think that to the idea of the coffee shop or the airports or those places where it's busy, I have had those moments where I can easily tune out what's going on and get more work done then as well.
And so it's weirdly, for me, it's almost like based upon my mood or the, the way the work that I'm doing, I. But there is a sense that there is a lot of different ways to tap into what would allow you to focus. And I'm open to all of it. Like whatever's gonna get the work done, I'm fine with. I just wanna be able to [00:30:00] know like what tends to work best for me and then I can leverage those opportunities.
So if I am traveling, I'll know what to do then to get my work done.
Cameron: Yeah. On a personal note, I'd love to ask you. You've got a family now you are self proclaimed perfectionist and self-proclaimed productivity enthusiast. And often those two things don't go well with running a family. Um, your profession is around helping people to become more productive, and you're doing extremely well at that.
But how do you balance that out with how you want to be, uh, with your family?
Jeff: It was really tough that first year because I think that the style of the way that I was living and working was very intentional. My time was mapped out. I knew what was gonna happen when, and for the last about five or six years, I've worked by myself in my home office.
And so distractions don't happen very often when you're by yourself. But once you introduce a, an infant and you know, [00:31:00] now she's a toddler, and then my wife has been working from home for the last year and my dog is here, and then all of a sudden it's just like these distractions begin to mount up and the systems and flows and rhythms of the day are just, they're not the same.
They're not what I would prefer. And so I've had to find very creative ways to figure out, well, I'll work during my daughter's nap time. 1230 in the afternoon for the next two, maybe three hours. I'm lucky I'll have a little break there. And so I've figured out ways to optimize the time when I have it, which is much more of a, it's a reactive lifestyle, but it's also one that says, I can expect to have certain blocks of time that will be available.
And when they're, when they show up, I wanna be ready for those. So plan my day around the, the knowledge that that may happen, and be able to flex in a moment to do what matters. And that's a whole different way of, of working for me that I've done in the past. But I have found that it's still effective. I still get my work done.
I don't feel nearly as frazzled as I did in the beginning when it was all new. And so now that I have systems to acknowledge my current [00:32:00] reality and then work with those, it doesn't feel like I'm playing catch up all the time. It feels like I'm actually just living my life now.
Cameron: Hmm. The brain's wired and designed for order and security, and that confirmation that, okay, I've got those two hours coming up.
I've got that one hour, that three hour block where I can turn up, show up, do what I need to do, allows the brain to go well right now if it is all. Chaos. That's okay, because I know I've got that period. And it sounds like having those times where you know you're gonna be productive really allow you to let go in those other.
Is that,
Jeff: yeah, I would say that's actually fairly accurate to the degree that when I know that it's time to work, I can work. And when I know that I can't, well then I just don't, and I relax and just kind of hang out with my family and I find that that has been a lot more effective as opposed to being with my daughter.
But thinking about work the whole [00:33:00] time and thinking about what I'm not getting done, which was how I felt for a while. It was like, you know, I love my new daughter, but I could be doing this project that I'm not doing. And I used to do it during this time and like. All that kind of guilt that came with how my time was being managed differently.
I had to really figure out a new flow. And now when I have time with my daughter or time with the family, I'll schedule other activities like household chores, doing the laundry, doing the dishes, finding other things that can still get done. That's still important, but it's not mission critical. It's not gonna break the bank if I don't do it.
And so it's just figuring out how to optimize the time you have and what it is there.
Cameron: And what has been your biggest. Failure in life. So how have you overcome it?
Jeff: Biggest failure, uh, that's a tough for, I would say over the last probably 10 years, it's being unable to manage. The two biggest priorities that I care about simultaneously.
So my health and my business have been like [00:34:00] central for my life for the last 10 years, and I find it, for some reason really difficult to focus on both at the same time, I'm really good at running marathons or really good at launching a business, but I can't do both at the same time. And that kind of bugs me because I, what I've realized is that I'm really good at focus on one big thing, and if I try to have multiple goals at the same time.
They do get done, but I never truly get what I could out of those projects. And so what I would love to be able to do is to balance my life out better and say that over the course of the next 12 months, I'll have this like natural flow where everything will just fit together. But the reality for the way I work is I'm gonna mess up something if that's what I try to do.
And I'm better at just saying for the next two months. All I'm gonna do is this and then, and that's all I'm doing. It's gonna be awesome. It's gonna work really well, and I can basically guarantee that it will. But I can also guarantee that while I'm doing that, other things are gonna fail and I'm gonna be mad about it and it's gonna not feel good.
But it's almost like the trade off that I've allowed [00:35:00] myself to have now where there's just seasons of life that are different and being able to be okay with that. Knowing that if I drop the ball in some area, that that will have to be picked back up again sometime soon. And I can't just continually let fail because I had back surgery two years ago because I didn't take care of myself.
And it's like that was my fault. And so I don't want that to happen again. And so I'm trying to figure out like what do I do to maintain these things that really do matter?
Cameron: I Sounds like your natural reaction is do both and do it all that you've learned to accept those seasons is, I really love that phrase, accepting the, the seasons as nature comes and goes.
Has that been a difficult lesson or with penny drop and then you were like, okay.
Jeff: Well, it's always difficult for me 'cause I always have that sense of what else could I be doing now? Like I'm just one of, I guess like you can call it a failure if you want to, in the sense that I'm not as good at just accepting my realities I'd like to be, because I [00:36:00] always have that thought in my head of other things I could be pursuing instead.
And so it's this constant battle for me of. Making the decision of choosing something and being okay with that choice. And I find that for whatever reason, I just, I wanna do more all the time and I wanna check all the boxes all the time. But I know that that's not practical or possible. But my brain still says, but what if you did?
Wouldn't that be cool? And it's just so I, that's always an issue for me, but I feel like I have made some headway there.
Cameron: Yeah, incredible. I think most people listening to this will be having that exact same conundrum in the Yeah. How has that played out in your health and wanting to run marathons and wanting to get that body back to that place of physical autonomy?
Jeff: I ran marathons for probably six years, where that was a, a real, that was my focus. That was what I really cared about. That was my number one thing, and so I was able to commit myself to that really well. And then when that, basically that [00:37:00] season ended, it was then entrepreneurship and how do I launch this business and how do I get this content and launch these products?
And so since the business has started, I have not run a single marathon. And that really bothers me because what I really wanna be able to do is to say, hi, I'm Jeff Sanders. I, you know, have a business and run marathons and do this, and, you know, X, Y, z. Like I love that laundry list of my resume to all be things that are true right now.
But the reality is they're only true. If you backtrack my life in the last 10 years or more, then I can say, here are things I have done over time, not things I'm currently doing. And that to me, that discrepancy for some reason really gets to me. 'cause I wanna be able to say all that's true now, but I'm not.
He Superman here. I can't do everything. I don't have too much time in the day. So my question is, how do I. Choose the right things and make it work long-term so it's sustainable and not just this system of me feeling like I'm always failing.
Cameron: Yeah. Setting up businesses is, [00:38:00] you know, I, I've set up a few over my years and it's all consuming.
Jeff: Yeah,
Cameron: it is. It's, whether that's practically answering emails or whatever, or whether that's walking down the street and thinking of ideas and possibilities or reframing particular, uh. Presentation or looking at opportunities or looking at weaknesses or there's this, this constant attention that the new baby or creation or business requires to blossom.
How have you found, how have you found that whole process? There'll be probably listeners here who are entrepreneurs and some who would like to be, and some who are just starting out. How have you found that process of being an entrepreneur?
Jeff: It is a wild ride. I mean, there's no real sense if, if your goal is to just like wake up on Monday morning and just go do your job and feel good about it.
Entrepreneurship just has never felt like that to me. It's always felt like this, not chaos, but like this sense that if today is gonna be [00:39:00] great, it's because I did something, because like I made it happen. It's on me like I'm responsible for this business. I'm responsible for the money that comes in for the things that I sell, for what I create next.
If it's a bad quarter, next quarters because I screwed something up, like that sense of knowing that the buck stops with me really is at first this exhausting responsibility that really is like fear inducing. But then I discovered as I really got into it, it's also an opportunity for me to really own what I'm doing and B, the CEO of my own life and say like, I get to make these choices.
I get to jump in. And shift things and pivot when I need to. And that kind of freedom to do what I want and when I want is really addicting. And what I realized is that once I was an entrepreneur, I really do not at all miss being an employee. I do not miss having someone else tell me my schedule or my priorities.
Like I want to be the person who makes those choices. And I'm okay with the fact that if I make the wrong choice. I'll get the consequence. It's just, I, I can [00:40:00] accept that, but that's not for everyone. Like I fully understand, like there, it's a very different lifestyle and so I'm not even gonna say that I was born to do this.
I don't really know if I was, but I chose to do this. I'm doing this, it's working and I wanna keep it going. And so for me it's just that, that constant reminder that I walked into this myself and I wanna keep this thing moving. So I have to recommit all the time to saying yes to my business and yes to this way of living because if I don't like it will just over time fail on its own.
If I'm not there to keep it going. I.
Cameron: Yeah, no doubt. Your skills around productivity have have helped that. I really liked how you summarized the idea that responsibility at first can feel scary like a burden. And over time when we become empowered by that and we use it to go, oh, I can make a change, I can pivot, I can't, it suddenly becomes, uh.
Almost like a super power, if you like to, to [00:41:00] energize us and make decisions a lot faster. How do you find that decision making process as an entrepreneur? Countless decisions every day, and that can be taxing. You know, again, you can see that as burdensome and taxing and exhausting, or you can see that as invigorating and efficient.
And how do you find that process of decision making?
Jeff: I think you just hit the nail on the head with it, feeling invigorating and feeling like I get to make those choices. And one thing that I notice all the time is that I will send an email to a large corporation, 'cause we're working together on something and they'll say, okay, I'll get back to you quickly.
Well, in their world, quickly could be two months. In my world quickly is 20 minutes. And to, to live in a, a world that's literally so different than that is in the one sense that's kind of annoying that I can't move or they won't move as fast as I want them to. But at the same time, if I want to pivot and make a new decision, I can do so right now.
There's no one to stop me from just changing immediately. And so I do [00:42:00] all the time. I'm making constant choices and I love the fact that I have the flexibility to do that. I think that's what's kept this fresh for me. It keeps it interesting because I'm not just either waiting a long time for something or feel like I'm stuck in something.
I can really just say, well, this is not working. I'm gonna change it and do so today. And that kind of freedom is really, and, and that's, and that's kind of addicting too, because. Then it says like, if I change as a person or I change as an entrepreneur, then that's okay. The business will change with me.
And to be able to do that is really amazing. I.
Cameron: Are you looking to improve your performance, stress less and flow more? Do you want to improve the human performance in your organization or team? If so, we are here to help our team of experts specialize in helping individuals and business. Is integrate high performance practice and culture. So if you want to take your performance to the next level or integrate the [00:43:00] lessons and skills you hear on this pod into your leaders and teams, go to flow center.org today, the official site of flow training and flow coaching.
When we look at what makes an entrepreneur and I think a crystallized. Pillar for that is this idea of, am I comfortable with taking responsibility? 'cause ultimately, as you said, the buck lies with me. It, we have to, uh, be accountable for that and wear that jacket in a way that adds to our life rather than distracts or reduces the quality of our existence.
Is that a process you think other people can step into and learn, or do you feel like it's something that they need to be comfortable with from day one?
Jeff: I don't think you're gonna be comfortable. I think that the. Living in discomfort is part of it. And so for me, I was thrust into entrepreneurship on, on accident because I was laid off for my [00:44:00] job.
So I had been building a side business for about three years, planning to leave at some point, but never really felt like I had pulled the trigger, never feeling like I was ready. I never felt like I had the money or I had the systems or I had what I needed. And then when my, the company I worked for closed their doors and I was laid off overnight.
Then it was, well, I could go apply for another job or just keep this thing going that I've been building and ramp it up and make this my new reality. And so when I chose to do that, those are some scary couple of months because I didn't know what, what I was doing. And I was there. A lot of panic, a lot of fear, but also just so much excitement because I knew that.
I could pull this off there was I could take all the abilities that I had, all the things I had been building and just ramp them up and just make them happen faster. I had a lot more time in my hand. I had more opportunities to just put things together. So I did, and within three or four months I was back up to my old salary for my last day job.
And so it wasn't as if I was in the depths of despair or bankrupt within six months. [00:45:00] It was the opposite. Things ramped up and they worked. That's not the story of every entrepreneur, but it is what happened because I decided like, this is me now. Let's get to this. And it is not something you can say ahead of time.
I'm gonna feel ready for that moment when it shows up. Like you don't know how you're gonna respond until it's there. And then when it's there, it's still gonna be freaky. It's like knowing you're gonna go skydiving and you know, you'll be scared in the airplane before you jump. But when you're actually there, like I was about six years ago, oh man, it is freaky.
But I did it anyway. I still jumped. It still happened. I. I feel like just acknowledging that that could be possible and still doing it proves to yourself, like, I have that ability, whether I feel ready or not.
Cameron: Yeah. Interesting. What would be your tips to younger entrepreneurs?
Jeff: I. There's a lot I could say.
I think one of the things that's worked really well for me is that the business that I'm in is not gonna say it's all about me, but to a certain degree it [00:46:00] kind of is in the sense that what I pursue is based upon things I'm interested in, things I'm curious about, things that I want to be involved in.
And so I didn't start a business because someone said, you could make money doing this. Like I could be selling all kinds of things because those things make money. Instead, I chose things that I feel like I'm naturally called to do. Like they're leveraging my skills, leveraging my interests, leveraging my network, like taking what I already have and just figuring out how to make those things better and make them work.
And so it's not, yes, you're gonna take some time to like get out of your skin and try new things and experiment. But it's also the best and most successful companies come from people who are doing things they're like naturally inclined to do. Like I have a podcast because I have a background in theater.
I, I know what it's like to perform. I know what it's like to be in front of an audience. I'm a public speaker because of the same things, like these are things that leverage my background and skills and interests as opposed to other things I could choose that would not be a good fit for me. So I think [00:47:00] that if you want to have not only success in the business, but fulfillment in the work, you have to care about what it is you're doing.
Otherwise, it's just a pursuit for cash, which is so just, it's not me. Like I don't do things for money, and when I do, I could feel it and I know it's like not how I want to live. So I, I pivot. I choose something different because I wanna make sure that I'm always true to myself in the work that I do.
Cameron: A lot of the chats that I have around when we follow our interests, then life works.
When we're deeply passionate about what we're curious about, we have profit for purpose. We're able to actually, I. Put all our motivation and time into something and, and make decisions based on value and meaning that have the byproducts success and revenue and so forth. But it allows that sustainability, especially when times when, when times get up.
I've also heard you talk about using your strengths [00:48:00] being your natural inclination towards being comfortable speaking and so forth, and then building activity around those areas. How important it is to work with your strengths as opposed to improving your weaknesses.
Jeff: What I have found is that when you can leverage what you're good at, it's gonna be a lot easier to do more of it, and in the future always are just leaning on what you're bad at.
There's definitely an argument to doing that. There's definitely an argument to saying, if I spend time in things that I'm weak at, I, I'll have more discipline and I'll have more skillsets and I'll be able to work better like that. As a good example of that. Earlier this year, I taught myself how to code websites because I was stuck in Covid.
I wanted my website to be better, so I recoded my site myself. Not a good use of my time, like it was. I'm glad that I, it's done, but I'm not good at coding. It's not a good use for me. I should have paid someone to do it for me. And having gone through that is a great example of things you could spend your time on that someone told you was valuable, that someone [00:49:00] said, this will give you results.
If your website looks better, you'll get more traffic, or whatever the thing is. Just because that may be true for someone else does not mean that's for you. And it doesn't mean that the way it should be done is you spending your nights and weekends learning how to code HTML and CSS. Like you couldn't do that.
I did it, but it's not a good choice. But it happened. And so I feel like knowing those things that don't work, just reinforce the things that do, and they reinforce the things that you feel. Called to do, and then when you do them and they work and you can get success faster and you can scale and do more, but because it just fits what you were like, what you're trying to accomplish in the first place.
Cameron: Yeah. Yeah. But super interesting, especially for entrepreneurs, it's a common issue, right? 'cause there's not enough money, there's too many things to do and not enough time and wearing multiple hats at any given time. So you end up doing everything in order to make things work. But at some stage, you've gotta draw that line and allow experts or people who are good in that field [00:50:00] to to give you time.
And this theme of valuing ourself. Certainly in entrepreneurism, we try to, we do everything without valuing our time in it or putting a monetary figure to it. And I, I see countless entrepreneurs who are. Working really, really hard and they haven't valued their own time. And you know, said, okay, if I was to pay myself X and put that into the business, what would the p and l look like now?
And it's often a very common mistake of just becoming busy and then being trapped. This entity and then maybe you've started it 'cause you've loved it, but you feel trapped now 'cause everything's dependent on that. On that. So entrepreneur, is that something that you've struggled with or seen other people?
Jeff: I think that's my life story. I think you just hit it, that that's basically, I am the bottleneck in my business. If, if [00:51:00] I don't do it, it doesn't get done. And that is both an amazing freedom for me. But also it's the thing holding me back. And so if I allow myself to spend, you know, 50 hours a week on some project that somebody else should have done to begin with, well that's 50 hours in that week.
That could have been, I could been doing anything else. That's a much better use of my time. That probably pays me better. It's probably more enjoyable and they'll probably be a better end result long term. And so it's just knowing how you can acknowledge which things have to get done and then ask that question like, am I the person to do this or not?
And there's a pretty good chance that you're not that person long term. Now, when it first starts off, you might have to wear all the hats and be everything, but that can't be the long-term plan. You will, you won't be able to grow. You will be stuck in a very small place because all your time is spent doing everything and that just doesn't work long term.
Cameron: Yeah. Super interesting. What are the three pillars to your success? [00:52:00]
Jeff: Energy, enthusiasm, and focus. I think are the best ones for me. Ener, bring energy to my day, be passionate about my work, and being able to block distractions so I can stay focused on what matters most. If I can bring those things to my day, that's gonna be best.
I would say don't hold yourself back. The tendency for a lot of people is to have an idea and to have that self-doubt that says, well, I'm not this success, you know, this awesome person. I don't have that success. I don't have that resume. I haven't achieved all these things. I think that believing in yourself.
Initially to say, I'm gonna start, put myself out there and make it work. You can grow into that person You want to become over time, like I, to look at my resume now and say, well, I've published multiple books, give speeches, have a podcast that see millions of downloads. It, it is a lot of things I could say that have happened, but none of those things were true six years ago.
None of them. And for me to then say, well, [00:53:00] they, they have become true because I've done the work to make it happen. Only 'cause I believed those things were possible and I stepped into them. And so I think that if you want to tell a life story that ha includes these bullet points of things that have happened, you have to be willing to jump in and believe it's possible for you to achieve those things.
Cameron: And lastly, what book or film has had a massive impact on your life?
Jeff: One of the books that I go back to all the time is called Ultra-Marathon Man by Dean carna. He's a guy that I've interviewed my podcast before. He is one of the world-class runners, like he has done marathons at every continent. He's run ultra-marathons probably everywhere as well.
And the book, I think, beyond running the book is incredibly inspiring because it asks you to think about your own potential and to really ask like, what do I have in me that I'm not really. Like, what kind of [00:54:00] potential do I have that I'm not even tapping into because I'm not putting myself out there.
And so for someone like Dean to say, well, lemme just go see how far I can run. Lemme just go see what's possible. He tried, he put himself out there and then incredible things happen. I feel like as an entrepreneur, as a creative person, as somebody who wants. To do more, I have to be willing to acknowledge that like big things can happen and so what wouldn't it be cool if I was able to actually do them?
And I find that books like his just really challenge me to push my own buttons to really to, to push harder in a way that is beneficial and not just destructive.
Cameron: He reminds me of that quote by TS Elliot. I think we dunno how tall we are until we end over our head.
Jeff: That's, that's a good one. I like that.
Cameron: Thank you so much for this chat. What's your one reflection from this chat?
Jeff: I think it's interesting the questions that you asked really pinpoint. I think for me, what I'm thinking [00:55:00] of immediately is the things that I need to be doing differently, which is not a bad thing. I think as someone who really values personal growth, like I see opportunities to grow as opportunities.
It's not just, oh, Jeff screwed up. Here's a failure, here's a bad mark. It's. Okay, well you didn't do this as well, but tomorrow you could change things and pivot and be different and be better. And to me, like that's what's exciting about personal growth, about entrepreneurship, about being able to be in charge of my life, is that I can change tomorrow morning.
And so the things that you pointed out that I kind of, I highlighted as like, oh yeah, I'm not as good as this, or I'm bad there, or failed there. It's like, okay, well then how could I be better at those things? And I want to, to jump in and, and do those things better soon.
Cameron: Great stuff. Well, Jeff Sanders, thank you very much for your time.
No, thank you. A lot of fun. Flow unleashed, unleashed, unleashed. This conversation with Jeff was a powerful reminder of why it's essential to pause, reflect, and take control of [00:56:00] our time. It's all too easy to slip into autopilot charging through our days without considering whether we're truly prioritizing what matters most.
By carving out me time and stepping back to fill our cup, we gain clarity, perspective, and the energy to shape our lives intentionally rather than being driven by habit and reacting to the world around us. Procrastination. A common productivity hurdle often stems from personal traits and habits. Factors like poor time management, low self-control, or perfectionism can make procrastination more likely.
And research even suggests that individuals who are high in neuroticism and extroversion may procrastinate more potentially due to the intense negative emotions they're prone to experiencing. But there's good news. Evidence shows that highly productive people share behaviors we can all adopt. They set clear [00:57:00] boundaries between work and personal life, giving themselves room to recharge.
They're comfortable saying no when their plate is full, ensuring they don't overextend themselves and they prioritize regular breaks and time off to sustain their energy and focus. And lastly, they embrace collaboration, finding ways to create win-win scenarios with others. As you reflect on today's episode, consider which of these behaviors you could integrate into your own life.
Productivity isn't about doing more. It's about doing what truly matters with intention and balance. Until next time, take charge of your time and make it count. If you want to find out more about Jeff Sanders, please see the show notes.
Thank you for listening to Flow Unleashed. If you enjoyed [00:58:00] listening, please subscribe to get notified when our next episode drops. The more people that subscribe, the better I can make the show for you. Equally, please leave a review. Your review will go a long way to helping others. Find this pot. Until the next time.
Thank you for listening to Flow Unleashed.