The Double Win

To scale yourself, you need to delegate your work to others. But delegating tasks isn’t as easy as it sounds. No matter how hard you try, the results often don’t meet your expectation. It’s frustrating, and it feels like a waste of time. Good news: Delegation is a skill, and you can learn to do it well. Having risen through the ranks in a number of businesses, we’ve learned the secret to delegatin...

“Sure, I’d love to have an executive assistant. But I can’t afford one!” You’ve probably said that before. Or maybe you don’t know where to find one. Or you’ve had a bad experience with an assistant and are reluctant to try again. In the meantime, you’re stuck in multitask-mode, essentially doing the job of two people. There’s got to be an easier way to find and hire an executive assistant, doesn’...

Every leader needs an assistant to manage low-leverage tasks so they can focus on driving results. A world-class assistant can easily remove 15 or 20 hours’ work from your plate. But it’s not always as easy as it sounds. Many executives aren’t used to the daily rhythm of working with a right-hand person. Others have tried hiring an EA before and had bad experiences. You may wonder if really need a...

Leaders are problem solvers, and that means coming up with the right answers. The problem is that you may have no one to go to with our own inquiries. It’s tough to be the one everybody’s looking to for solutions when you’ve got more questions than answers! The longer we’re in leadership, the more we’re convinced that asking the right questions is far more important than always having an answer in...

Leaders thrive on getting things done. The problem is that there’s more to be done than any one person can accomplish. That can leave you feeling overwhelmed, even paralyzed. Ever found yourself procrastinating because you couldn’t decide what to do next? There’s a better way. We’ve got a simple plan for any time you feel overwhelmed at work. These four action steps will help you regain your margi...

Leaders like to plan their work and work their plan. The problem is that real-life gets in the way. Interruptions, distractions, and unforeseen problems can make a trainwreck of your week even before it leaves the station. By Friday, you can feel exhausted, overwhelmed, and wonder, “What did I really accomplish?” There’s got to be a better way to plan your week. Well, there is! And we can teach it...

We're happy to announce our new Michael Hyatt & Co. podcast: Focus on This ! It's the most productive podcast on the internet. If you want to achieve your big goals and return toyour most important priorities, focus is the key. Building off of the successful framework of the Full Focus Planner, hosts Courtney Baker and Blake Stratton will providepractical solutions to guide you back to focus....

As a high-performing leader, we know you love using productivity products like the Full Focus Planner. But any new system can seem overwhelming at first. Honestly, our planner can seem that way at first. With so many features built in, it’s hard to know where to start. You may wonder if you’re actually getting the full value from this amazing product. Not to worry. We’ll give you the inside track...

Leaders are driven to achieve. The problem is that our intense drive can backfire. We sometimes set unrealistic goals or timetables, which are impossible to meet. Not that we don’t kill ourselves trying!  When that happens, it’s easy to feel exhausted and discouraged. Why everybody else seem to make rapid progress? Is there a way to get unstuck?  There is, and it’s simpler than you might think. Ou...

Leaders create change. The problem is that not everybody wants change. You’ve probably faced the frustration of having your team be less than enthusiastic about a new initiative. That’s when you hear all the familiar lines: “We tried that before.” “It’ll cost too much.” “Why do we need this, anyway?” It’s exhausting. But there is hope! Here’s an easy way to get people onboard with a new initiative...

Leaders are achievers. But nobody bats 1.000. We all experience failure eventually. That can be discouraging—even humiliating! That’s why most of us react in one of two ways. Either we globalize our failure by thinking we won’t ever succeed. Or we sweep the loss away quickly and forget it. But what if there was a better way to fail? Failure doesn’t have to be fatal, and it should never be ignored....

Good leaders want to do the right thing. But sometimes we can be our own worst enemy. Have you ever made a really dumb choice that cost you a relationship or an opportunity? It’s so discouraging to realize you’ve made an avoidable mistake. It can even make you question your decision making ability. But you can recover. When we see people who seem to always make the best decision, it’s tempting to...

What do you do when you have a customer you just can’t seem to satisfy? Or a team member who seems resistant to coaching? What about someone in a personal relationship who seems to suck the life out of you? Sometimes it seems like you’re investing all your energy in the wrong people. What can you do about it? Good leaders develop people. The problem is that not all employees or customers are creat...

As a leader, you probably have a huge goal in mind. It’s the heartbeat of your ambition, the reason you get out of bed in the morning. Chances are good that you’ve thought about it long and hard, and you may even have a timetable and specific objectives for reaching it. The problem is that distractions, interruptions, and “business as usual” cause us to loose sight of our goals. Before long, anoth...

Leaders must motivate people. The problem is that everybody’s different, so what inspires one team member may demotivate another. It can be confusing to lead a diverse team.  But personality is not an unsolvable puzzle. And we’ve got three powerful tools to help you put it all together.  We’ve identified three personality assessments that give you a clear understanding of how your team members thi...

Every leader is motivated by a compelling vision for the future. There’s something you want to achieve. You know where you’re headed. The problem is that it’s hard to keep that vision real for your team. They’re busy and easily distracted. Before long, another quarter has slipped by and you haven’t made real progress on the big outcome you’re after. How discouraging!  But there’s hope! We’ve got a...

Do you ever have enough hours in the day to do all you need to do? If we’re honest, most of us would say no. Work, family, friends, rest, exercise, reading, relationships—something’s got to give. For most of us, that something is self-care. The result? We give more and more to work and others, and less and less to ourselves. It’s a recipe for burnout. But you deserve more than life on a treadmill....

Here’s the situation: one of your most lucrative clients has admitted to unethical behavior and is entirely unwilling to change. Do you keep the account and tie your name to their misdealings? Or do you terminate the relationship and lose over a million dollars in sunk cost? What about this: your top salesman is accused of inappropriate behavior toward team members of the opposite sex. You believe...

Has this ever happened to you? You get in the car and pull out of the driveway, just like you do every day. Then it dawns on you: “This is Saturday!” You’re halfway to the office when you realize you were headed to the store. Oops. It’s easy to drift along in the wrong direction. That happens in life. And it happens in business. That phenomenon is called the drift. Just like the current in a river...

Feeling overwhelmed? Wow, do we know what that’s like! When you’re caught in that whirlwind of tasks, it feels like you’re downrange at Top Golf! You’re pelted with a new to-do item every few seconds. It’s even worse when you don’t have a staff. With no one to delegate to, you just fall further and further behind. But there’s another way! Though we have a good-sized staff now, it wasn’t always tha...

Ugh, another meeting! Do you know the feeling? We sure do. We’ve sat through our share of bad meetings. But would you believe we actually love meetings now? It’s true. We got so sick of lousy meetings that we decided to do something about it. When we founded this company, we determined that meetings were going to be something more than a necessary evil. We wanted to make meetings productive and en...

To build a winning company, you need a winning team. A-players can skyrocket your success, and nothing will tank momentum faster than adding a B- or C-level player to the mix. We all seem to know that at some level. But when it’s time to hire, we always seem to be in a hurry. We feel some unstated urgency to keep the seats filled and the machine running. That almost always leads to a bad hire, as...

Has this ever happened to you? You land what you think will be your dream job. But after a few months, you realize . . . you really don’t like it. Aargh! That’s happened to us, more than once. Sometimes the job wasn’t what you thought. Sometimes the role changes as the company grows (or downsizes). And sometimes you just realize you’re in the wrong career. Either way, it kind of makes you feel stu...

Have you ever worked for a really bad boss? The kind that kind that makes you want to tear your hear out, or quit, or maybe both? Nearly everybody has at some point, including us! In fact, we’ve got a few of our best bad boss stories to share today—plus some from our listeners. So what do you do when your boss is really insufferable? In our experience a bad boss can do incredible damage to morale,...

What’s your biggest roadblock to productivity? Many people would say, “Interruptions and distractions! I can’t get anything done because I keep getting interrupted!” If that’s you, we’re going to solve that problem for you right now. First, a little celebration. We are so excited that Free to Focus made 4 major, national best-seller lists! That includes number one spots at the Wall Street Journal...