Todd Westra (00:02.53)Hey, welcome back to the show. And today we are gonna jump right in to be more timely and more efficient because that is the theme today. Andrew, would you let us know who you are and what do do?

Andrew Hartman (00:13.23)Yes, absolutely. Thanks so much for having me, Todd. So great to be here. Andrew Hartman, I am the founder and CEO of TimeBoss. We help leaders and teams get the results that they want without overwhelm. That is our primary focus. And the ways that we do that is through group coaching, workshops, and one-on-one coaching to help people get those results and again, do it all without overwhelm.

Todd Westra (00:35.502)I love it. Honestly, overwhelm is a killer. It's a killer. So we don't really need to go into why do you do this business, but how do you do this? mean, how do you build a marketplace around people admitting that they're not as efficient or they're a little more overwhelmed than they'd like to be? What does that look like?

Andrew Hartman (00:39.67)is absolutely a killer. It is.

Andrew Hartman (00:55.064)Well, I love what you said, I love what said of admitting because it's really important, know, we, because we look around, we see overwhelm everywhere, right? I was a COO of early stage software companies, and everywhere I looked, people were overwhelmed and burning out. And so we think when things are common, they're normal. And it's a critical thing for us to understand that just because it's common does not mean it's normal. And so what I found, I mean, really, you know, my process was, I had to first admit

Todd Westra (00:59.938)Right.

Right.

Todd Westra (01:10.562)Totally.

Todd Westra (01:20.259)Right.

Andrew Hartman (01:24.538)Like there has got to be a way out of this where we can get the results that we want and we can do it without overwhelm. And that was the foundational hypothesis for me for building a product for myself. I was not building a business called Time Boss. I was trying to solve my own problem. And I think the most powerful products are the ones that actually solve our own problems. Yeah, because we feel the use cases, right? We feel the edges. We are the consumer. The feedback loop is so tight. And so I just started building. So really a lot of what I do

Todd Westra (01:34.828)Right.

Todd Westra (01:38.828)Right.

Todd Westra (01:44.386)Amen.

Todd Westra (01:50.818)Yeah. Yeah.

Andrew Hartman (01:54.562)It's funny how we started Todd where he said, hey, we all know we're overwhelmed, we don't need to talk about it. But actually when I go into businesses, the first thing I help them understand is how much overwhelm is costing them. And they don't even realize, because again, they just think it's table stakes. is the tax on whatever results we're getting. And so here's what overwhelm does. Overwhelm creates cognitive overload, which in turn impacts the decisions we make. We don't seek creative solutions.

Todd Westra (02:10.104)love it.

Andrew Hartman (02:22.276)we seek very deliberate on-hand solutions because the average person has 121 items on their to-do list and they're thinking, I have got to get this off my plate because I got 120 items behind this one. So again, I'm very deliberate in my decision-making. I don't seek creative solutions. I don't collaborate. People are a hindrance because I already feel overwhelmed. I don't have time to go ask Todd for help. Yeah, I don't know.

Todd Westra (02:42.67)Totally. You don't have to teach them. Yeah, yeah. What you need done is it.

Andrew Hartman (02:48.046)I don't have time to ask Todd for help because Todd might have ideas that are going to take more time than I have anyways. I just need to make the solution happen. I don't have time to delegate because last time I delegated, they did a bad job anyways, and I'm already out of time anyways, so I just have to make it happen. So for all these reasons and more, not to mention multifocusing, right? Where we try to shuttle through multiple things just to keep all the balls in the air, losing 20 to % of our productive time backed by science. I mean, that is done. At this point, if anyone thinks that they can actually...

Todd Westra (02:55.736)Right.

Todd Westra (02:59.298)Yes.

Andrew Hartman (03:15.992)multifocus and not burn time, they're totally kidding themselves. So my pro- Yes. Could be true. Could be true. I don't know if the science went into that, but that could be true. So again, my first move when you talk about building a market, Todd, my first move is the knife twist of we have just got to be honest with ourselves that the way that we're operating has real impact on our business. Not to mention the fact that your employees cannot shut their laptops and go home

Todd Westra (03:19.926)Especially if they're

Andrew Hartman (03:45.678)and rest and relax, they go home and they cope with alcohol or food or Netflix or TikTok or whatever, and come back and do it all over the next day. Not to mention they do the same on the weekends, so they're not actually resting and recovering, bringing their best self to work. It's bad in every direction. And so I just twist the knife and help them. And they all know it. I'm just...

Todd Westra (03:48.962)Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Right.

Todd Westra (04:00.546)Right. Right.

Todd Westra (04:06.424)Well, Andrew, this is painfully true. And I say, for those of you listening, this is not just a harp session on Todd, because this is, think, everybody's problem, right? I I'm listening to you talk and I'm thinking, okay, yeah, yeah, okay, yeah. I got all that stuff, doctor. Help me out here. What do I gotta do next? And so you actually took this and built a business model out of doing this, which I think is exceptional. And for those of you listening,

Andrew Hartman (04:09.978)Ha!

Andrew Hartman (04:27.086)Right.

Andrew Hartman (04:34.426)tracks.

Todd Westra (04:36.288)Truly, the cost of overwhelm is enormous. And I've felt it, you've felt it. Andrew, clearly you felt it. That's why you set out to solve this problem for people. How are you solving the problem for people? Because I think everyone knows that they're overwhelmed and everyone feels it, but very few people do anything about it. Where's the best place to start on this?

Andrew Hartman (04:59.214)Yeah, and it's totally true. You're absolutely right. So the reason why people don't make change because they don't know what to do, there's no examples on hand of what should I actually do. And so the challenge that we're up against is that all of us are trying to manage infinity. All of our to-do lists are infinite. Our email inboxes are infinite. The problems in our businesses are infinite, which means that simply shoveling faster, it's true, right Todd? I mean, we're never gonna grind to the bottom of our list, but we believe

Todd Westra (05:21.537)So sad. Yeah. Yeah, totally true.

Andrew Hartman (05:27.994)that if we grind to the bottom of the list, we will feel safe, right? It's like there's a fire in our house and we don't know how to sit still until the fire's put out, but it's an infinite fire that will never go out. So what we have to do is we literally have to change the way that we think about work. And it's fascinating. Again, I know that we're talking about scale here. It's really as fascinating. The first move is being honest with yourself about how much time you have. And this makes total rational sense. Think about if you had a million dollars of capital

Todd Westra (05:39.854)Ugh.

Andrew Hartman (05:56.944)to deploy in your business. The first thing that you establish is I have a million dollars. That is the amount of capital I have to deploy. When someone raises a fund to go to investment, they only raise so much. And then the question instantly shifts to how do I deploy this capital in a way that's gonna give me the greatest return on my investment? And so the most rational thing we can do with our time is to do the same.

Todd Westra (06:15.842)Right.

Andrew Hartman (06:20.688)I am making a powerful decision myself to say I have 50 hours a week of income generating activities because in the rest of my time, I have kids that I care about. have a wife that I care about. have ministries in my church that I care about. have sports teams that I care about, you name it. So I'm managing a portfolio. That 50 hours is totally arbitrary. You could say 40, you could say 80. There's people that have done Time Boss working 80 hours a week and their hearts are on fire doing the best work of their life.

Todd Westra (06:27.276)Right.

Todd Westra (06:34.723)Right.

Todd Westra (06:38.05)Totally.

Andrew Hartman (06:50.096)Time has no bearing on overwhelm. is the way that we approach that. It's the way that we approach that time that impacts us. So if I say 50 hour.

Todd Westra (06:52.961)Interesting.

Todd Westra (06:57.654)I like that perspective. You're saying look at your time as a fund. You just raised this fund, you've got these limited amount of resources to work with. How do you optimize that resource? And in this case, you're using time as that asset.

Andrew Hartman (07:05.294)Yeah. Yeah. Correct.

Andrew Hartman (07:14.116)Just an asset. And so the problem is, the reason why we don't do that is because I look at, I know I've got to answer email, and I know I gotta help my team with some problems, and I know I gotta call clients, and I really want to grow my business by 25%, and you know what, man, I also really wish I had a better relationship with my daughter. And all these things become fuzzy and jumbled, whereas if I have a million dollars,

Todd Westra (07:34.498)Yeah. Yes.

Andrew Hartman (07:37.688)and you tell me you have a $250,000 investment you'd like me to consider, I'm like, okay, that's gonna take a fourth of my capital and I'm gonna do something with it. So what we have to do when we approach it Todd is we have to get clear on what are all the things? What are all the things that might compete for my time? And it's all those things I mentioned, email, clients, employees, strategic priorities. And we have to realize that they all cost the same thing, they all cost time. But it only works if we actually manufacture

Todd Westra (07:44.546)Right, right.

Todd Westra (07:56.387)Right.

Andrew Hartman (08:05.84)that down into units of time that makes sense in our world. And what makes sense in our world is literally blocks on our calendar. And we do this all the time, right? Right now, we do it all the time. You sent me an invite for this podcast, it's an hour long. I said yes, I made a choice of the hour of my time. So we have the ability to do this, we just have not built the muscle to learn that we can literally do it with our whole world. So I'm not gonna block every single email on my calendar. I might say, you know what?

Todd Westra (08:13.653)I was gonna say, yeah.

Right, right.

Andrew Hartman (08:33.456)for me to stay on top of my email inbox, I need to block an hour on my calendar. And I'm gonna get a lot of email done in that time, but I'm gonna block an hour. And you know what? I want to be supportive of my team. I'm gonna give them 30 minutes every afternoon where they can come ask any question they want. And I'm gonna ask them to hold their question till that time if they absolutely can, so that they're protecting my ability to focus and I'm making sure that their need is getting met. And let's say I wanna grow my business by 25%.

Todd Westra (08:40.376)Right.

Todd Westra (08:50.723)Right.

Todd Westra (08:57.592)Right, right, right.

Andrew Hartman (09:01.904)Well, first thing I'm gonna do is I'm gonna break that down into how do I actually, what are the milestones? And now once I get to milestones, what are the discrete series of tasks that are the leading indicators are gonna lead me to that milestone? I need to block in two hours a day of business development calls or partnership calls. And so you'll see, we go from these fuzzy, fuzzy things that feel really challenging to manage, and we break those down into assets or units of time that are simply deducting from that. portfolio of time that we have and now all we're doing Todd is we're just making a bet. We're just making a bet on what is the best use of that time.

Todd Westra (09:36.77)Well. Right. And this is true in so many different parts of your business because it, you know, in marketing, know, marketing is kind of my jam. And when I, when I look at a good campaign, it always spells out the pain, like what you just described, but then it also, you know, Hey, my time is fuzzy. Here's a three step process to actually do that. And all of a sudden our mortal brains, like we just think like, there's a process. Okay. I can follow three steps, right?

Andrew Hartman (09:53.198)Right, right.

Todd Westra (10:09.774)And three steps is kind of the key. And so what you're saying is like, everything feels fuzzy until you have the time allotted. And you're covering all the things that you have to get done by saying, look, I'm not available for you to just ping me on Slack every time you wanna ping me on Slack. But if you come to me between this time and this time, I'm gonna give you my time, I'm gonna give you my mind, and we are gonna work through it together. And that clears overwhelm, definitely.

Andrew Hartman (10:28.848)Right.

Andrew Hartman (10:36.912)Exactly. It's part of the process for sure. So now what happens is you could probably imagine, is so let's say we got it. It is a repeatable system, six step process. We run it on a weekly basis. One of the steps is getting it out of your head into a system. Another step is prioritizing. Another step is breaking it down into those units of time that we talked about. And you and I both know, as soon as I load up my calendar, I have buffer in there to deal with reality because I know I can't perfectly predict everything.

Todd Westra (11:03.832)Share, share.

Andrew Hartman (11:05.518)You and I both know we're going to run out of time because our problems and our things to do well exceed the time that we have. And so we're infinite. And so where we feel overwhelmed is this. That's where the house feels like it's on fire. How can I stop and sit still when I know that room is on fire? I need to go put it out. We have to meticulously deal with those items that don't fit because in no world are we ever going to get to them anyways, right? It's not, we can't multiply more time.

Todd Westra (11:11.927)Infinite.

Todd Westra (11:21.752)Right. Right.

Andrew Hartman (11:34.126)And so we have to meticulously go through that list and say, can I just defer it? Can I literally take a vacation for a week from that task and not think about it and no one's gonna die? Yeah, no problem. I wasn't gonna get to it anyways. Because what do we do, right? Pull up the yellow notepad of paper, start write down tasks, flip it over, write them again, and we are literally dragging these guilt anchors through life with us that we're never gonna get to anyways. So in my system, in Timebox, we're simply giving ourselves permission to not think about it. Or,

Todd Westra (11:43.0)Right, right.

Andrew Hartman (12:03.308)Do we delegate it? Is there someone on our team that could take it? And we could certainly talk about how to actually delegate in a way that's effective. Can an AI? Yeah, go ahead.

Todd Westra (12:09.356)All right, so what are you doing with TimeBoss then? Is this a matter of like, are you sitting down and helping people work through this? Is it a software tool? it, like what is the executional that you do?

Andrew Hartman (12:21.412)Yeah, I love it. Yep. So it's training and development. So we are, we are equipping people with mental models to think about time. And then we're going with that team. We're mapping it onto the software that they already use. The most valuable tool is the one you will actually use. And it's probably the one you're already using. And what do we all think, right? We all saw ChatGBT and we're like, ChatGBT is going to change my life. I'm going to work two hours a day. And it's helpful, right? But it's, but the next step fallacy is so real. We think the next app is going to solve our problems.

Todd Westra (12:33.294)Love it.

Andrew Hartman (12:51.598)And I believe what solves our problems is us thinking clearly about how time actually works and then mapping that into whatever tools we're already using. ClickUp, Monday, Asana, Microsoft Plan, or Google Tasks. It doesn't matter. It's the way you think about those tools that's going to give you the freedom to get your best results and get it without overwhelm.

Todd Westra (13:12.194)I love it. It's such a radical mindset shift of like, people always feel like, I've got so much to do, I've got so much to do. hear your kids will say, I've got so much to do, and you're like, really? Like really? You guys, it's all relative. So how do you get people to, what is the process you've walked people through to kind of get everything brain dumped out into a.

Andrew Hartman (13:21.626)Right.

Andrew Hartman (13:27.664)It's all relative, yeah.

Todd Westra (13:38.254)a whiteboard or someplace where they can see all the things and then walk us through that.

Andrew Hartman (13:39.982)Yeah.

Yep. Yeah, for sure. So the first thing I encourage people to do is to set up a weekly planning meeting. Most people have this. Most people will look ahead at their calendar and think about that. I just have a very specific agenda that I suggest. So first is committing to that time, with the whole idea being this, that I am the boss of my future self. That's where time boss comes from. We have to think of our future self as an employee that we're setting up to be successful.

Todd Westra (13:58.467)Okay.

Todd Westra (14:04.236)Makes sense.

Todd Westra (14:08.876)Right.

Andrew Hartman (14:09.036)And we don't want that person to be overwhelmed. want them to the right amount of work. We want them to be able to focus all the things. So in that weekly planning meeting, the second step is getting it out of your head and into a system. And my encouragement to people is to commit to a single system because what people typically do, there's probably people listening to this podcast now that have post-it notes all around them. Our brain can only hold five to seven things in active memory. The second we feel number eight, we become afraid, meaning I don't want to lose that thing.

Todd Westra (14:14.616)Right.

Todd Westra (14:22.552)Yeah, yeah.

Andrew Hartman (14:38.148)because it's connected to a result that I want, I need to do that thing, or it's connected to a relationship I care about, I wanna show up for that person. And those two feelings creep, they create fear. And so we'll either do one of two things, we'll either start hot swapping out number seven and number eight, number seven number eight, right? Because we think we're working on it when we worry about it, we're not, we're just worrying. Or we start writing things down on pads of paper, on Post-it notes, and...

Todd Westra (14:46.146)Love it.

Todd Westra (14:55.118)Right, right, right.

Todd Westra (15:00.354)Right.

Andrew Hartman (15:04.621)When we do that across a variety of venues, we actually make the problem worse because now we're spreading all that crazy in our head into a variety of locations. So my encouragement to people is to choose a single list. I call it the backlogs. Choose a single list that you will commit to. And the second you think about something, it goes into the backlog. And that becomes that place you trust. Now, if you just did that, you're going to overwhelm yourself because that thing will be 120 items long and you're going to feel incredibly guilty. So you just have to continue in the process. the net and I'm, and I'm happy we can, we can go as far as you want, Todd. can show you the whole process, but that key step is get it out of your head, get into a system. Doesn't even have to be pretty. When I, when I do our workshop, I lead this, it'll be things like I hate our PTO policy and what should I do about AI? Not actionable at all, but these are those fuzzy, these are those fuzzy mental models that people are dealing with that you just need to get it. You just need it out of your head into a system where you can see it.

Todd Westra (15:33.069)Right.

Todd Westra (15:46.274)Yeah.

Todd Westra (15:58.307)I get it.

Andrew Hartman (16:02.02)These things are there. Yeah.

Todd Westra (16:02.616)Well, and you have to block that time to be able to just like, hey, you know what, need a couple hours to figure this out. Like, do I need to be thinking about this? Or should I be thinking about this? But I can't get it out of my mind that I should be thinking about it, so I should probably block a couple hours and do that. I know that there are physiological differences between men and women, and I know that some men are able to focus on maybe two or three main tasks a day. My wife can somehow miraculously be able to channel like,

Andrew Hartman (16:09.935)Yeah.

Todd Westra (16:32.821)eight elements of herself to be able to do eight things really, really well. I can't do that like she can. And so like, how do you encourage people to block their time? are you like, hey, make sure you've got three hours of creative time doing X, make sure you've got, you know, this much time doing Y, like, how do you help people kind of do that effectively?

Andrew Hartman (16:36.698)funny.

Andrew Hartman (16:55.438)Yeah. So I'm really as a, as a owner of the framework, feel very sensitive to the amount of steps because, cause you know, w with any product, someone owns the complexity, either the customer using the product owns the complexity or the person that creates it on this complexity. I'm trying to own the complexity. So I, I stray away from intense rules about that. And really what I'm trying to create is a platform to start.

And what happens when you have a weekly planning meeting is every weekly planning meeting, you come back and there's a reflection moment where you say, what should I keep doing? What should I start doing? What should I stop doing? And so if I'm you, Todd, I might say, I need three hours of focus for creative time every day. This next, I didn't, I didn't do it next week. This next week, I'm going to opt adjust my time to do that. And James clear talks about an atomic habits, the power of tiny changes. They create exponential opportunity over time. So if you return every week to a weekly planning meeting,

Todd Westra (17:23.971)Gotcha.

Andrew Hartman (17:52.015)make that tiny adjustment for you or your wife wakes a different adjustment for her, every single week you return to that habit and make that tiny adjustment. It's gonna be marginally better next week. It's gonna be exponentially better six months from now, because you're tuning your time to work for you. Now, base rules I suggest to anyone, don't block less than an hour. If you wanna do significant work that matters,

Todd Westra (17:55.927)Right.

Todd Westra (18:05.473)Interesting.

Andrew Hartman (18:16.464)In the book deep work. Oh, it's right here. His name is Cal Newport. I forgot his name for a second Cal Newport talks about You need at least 20 to 30 minutes to settle into a task to really have good context where you can bring creative thought and we do this all the time, right like when we go to meetings we have 30 minutes an hour meetings because it takes us a little bit of time to establish context and discuss and get to the end So my encouragement to people is to block at least an hour on the low end four hours on the high end

Todd Westra (18:27.168)Interesting.

Interesting. Yeah.

Todd Westra (18:37.39)Yeah. Yeah.

Todd Westra (18:45.975)Interesting.

Andrew Hartman (18:46.102)simply because we tend to be pretty poor estimators. We have a pretty poor idea of what we can get done in a day. About a half day is about the most that we can estimate. And it's about the most that we can protect. It's hard to protect long stretches of uninterrupted time for a lot of, especially for scaling businesses where there's a lot of people involved. That's very challenging. So I would say that is the fun that, God.

Todd Westra (19:01.419)Interesting.

Todd Westra (19:05.162)Right, right, right, right. And mind you, is like coming from the perspective of an administrator or someone who's managing or having to be the creative. I talk to a lot of guys that are like salespeople, for example, and in their case, they don't need to block time for that. They just want to, as soon as they're on, how much time do I need to take prospect from here to here, from A to B, and then from B to C?

Andrew Hartman (19:32.09)correct.

Todd Westra (19:33.568)And so how do you kind of customize this? It sounds like it's really just a use case, every use case a little bit different than the other and how they become more of a time boss.

Andrew Hartman (19:46.734)Yes, the rules at a fundamental level are all the same. It's that my future self is responsible for some outcomes and I want to set that person up to be successful. Someone in a recurring world, like a sales role, where they're doing less strategic initiatives, it's more about how do I architect my week for success? And so I know I am at my finest from 8 a.m. to 11 a.m. and I know my prospects are most likely to answer the phone.

Todd Westra (20:01.506)Right.

Todd Westra (20:05.292)Right.

Andrew Hartman (20:12.922)come hell or high water, eight to 11, nothing else is getting in there. I'm only doing sales calls. So you're architecting your week. Someone that's more strategic, meaning this is often more with senior leaders, visionaries, their value is in thinking. Their value is in nonlinear activities that have exponential results. And so they need to be more thinking about, when am I at my best for thinking? Where do I need to block that into my calendar? What are the specific activities this week?

Todd Westra (20:16.014)Yeah, yeah, right.

Todd Westra (20:26.754)Yeah. Yeah.

Andrew Hartman (20:38.98)that are going advance the mission that I need to make happen. And so it is a little bit different, but again, the fundamental rules are the same. Our calendar is an expression of our goals and values via the choices we make with those hours. And so we're simply mapping those hours to map back to our goals and values.

Todd Westra (20:44.621)Right.

Todd Westra (20:55.938)Not to mention if you are an administrative where you are required to block times to think and to strategize and to build those things, if you don't block it, that time's gonna get gobbled up by somebody. Somebody's gonna walk into your office, somebody's gonna book a time on your calendar, and boom, you just lost creative time for the week, right?

Andrew Hartman (21:09.004)Absolutely.

Andrew Hartman (21:14.992)Yep, you're 100 % right. Yeah, and it'll happen sporadically, right? It's not, you'll, I only got 20 minutes here, 10 minutes there. You're not, you're not going to make exponential step level decisions for your business in 20 to 30 minutes here and there. It's not going to happen.

Todd Westra (21:18.658)Yeah.

Todd Westra (21:22.167)Right.

Todd Westra (21:28.054)Right, right. Literally, you just described my day, yeah, today. So I had a couple of blocked hours that just turned into crap. So I feel ya. So this is honestly some of the most powerful stuff that every small business owner, in particular small business owners, struggle with the most is how do I control my time? How do I control my overwhelm? How do I get these feelings of balance in my life where

Andrew Hartman (21:32.09)Hahaha!

Andrew Hartman (21:38.254)Yeah. Yep. Yep.

Todd Westra (21:57.75)My wife is seeing me periodically and my children know my name and I know their name. it's like, you literally, if you don't block it, you're not gonna make it happen. I remember in my early 20s, I had a business partner and we were always just trying to outwork each other. We were just stupid 20 somethings trying to build a business. And literally it was like, who showed up at the office first? And then...

who was their longest and who was the one that went to go grab lunch that day and who was the one, like our wives started teasing us like how's your spouse? know, and because we never saw our wives and they're like hey, if you want to like be with your business partner, that's great. We'll go, we're outta here. And it was a subtle hint and it was a joke, but we did have to start blocking family time.

Andrew Hartman (22:35.876)Wow. Right.

Andrew Hartman (22:44.602)Right.

Andrew Hartman (22:50.32)Right. Yep.

Todd Westra (22:51.316)And for us, it made a huge difference when from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. became unobstructed, just focus on the family and make our wives feel special and they make us feel special, right? And when you block that and they know what to expect, it also decreases the frustration of I never see my husband anymore, right?

Andrew Hartman (23:10.786)Absolutely. You just, you just keyed on such a key insight. I was saying earlier that you can work 80 hours a week and not feel overwhelmed. And it comes down to two things. One is, does it work for the stakeholders in my life? And so when I was, when I was going sideways, it was the exact reason you talked about it was working late and my wife saying you're working late again, you know, or my kids wanted to have time with me I wasn't there. I felt overwhelmed from that. Cause I felt like I was living inconsistent with people that I care about with the stakeholders in my life.

Todd Westra (23:23.234)Yes.

Todd Westra (23:31.149)Yeah.

Todd Westra (23:38.402)I love that. Yeah.

Andrew Hartman (23:39.288)So if you can align it to stakeholders, get permission, and that's not just outside of work, that's even inside of work where you might, you may think like, you know what, I only want to work 40 hours a week, but your business partner is like, dude, we got to put in 60 or we're not, we're not going to be successful. You're going to feel that tension unless you work through that expectation. So it's got to work for the stakeholders. And the other one it has to work for is the story you tell yourself. So if you tell yourself, I'm constantly behind, there's not enough time. I'm letting people down. I'm failing.

Todd Westra (23:41.976)Yeah.

Totally.

Todd Westra (23:53.666)Right. Right.

Todd Westra (24:08.792)Right, right.

Andrew Hartman (24:08.996)You're gonna be overwhelmed. It's how it is. But if you create a realistic plan for yourself, again, that time-boss time once a week, I'm creating a realistic plan that's hard but achievable, and you crush that a week over week, you are gonna feel like a conquering hero. And again, you can crank that time up as much as you want, provided it works for the stakeholders in your life, if that story you tell yourself is empowering versus that story you tell yourself is failing. And it's really up to you. It's really up to you.

Todd Westra (24:24.14)No doubt.

Todd Westra (24:29.678)Yeah.

Todd Westra (24:36.686)Love it. Now, honestly, this is a therapy session. I teased about it earlier. This is fantastic. But I know that I found doing this podcast that the things that really resonate with me do resonate with the people hearing the show. And this is such a powerful, powerful topic. I used to talk extensively about this when I would coach. I do a lot of mentoring of small business owners. And in that...

I have found that time management is one of the key components of their being able to produce and perform. so, how does someone engage with someone like you and with you? And how does what you do, how is it replicatable in a system and process that people can adopt?

Andrew Hartman (25:23.15)Yeah, absolutely. So best thing they can do, go to timeboss.us, they can reach out. We'll spend 30 minutes with you, do a strategy session, just talk about what might be possible, what are the opportunities. Actual engagements are as high touch as one-on-one. They can be in group coaching, either with their specific team or with other leaders from other companies. So we have public courses that people jump in, super powerful, great ways to change if you're just looking to change. And then we also do workshops as well for teams.

Todd Westra (25:32.482)Love it.

Todd Westra (25:45.966)Cool. Cool.

Todd Westra (25:52.642)Love it. Love it. Well, I love it. I would imagine that you'd be a good plug-in to any company's workshops and conferences that they're hosting to have you come in and do a workshop in there with their teams, but I'm just gonna let them come up that on their own. But Andrew, I really appreciate the time you spent with us today, and I know time is valuable, but closing this thing off.

Andrew Hartman (25:52.644)That's simply how we engage. Yep.

Andrew Hartman (26:10.84)Hahaha

Andrew Hartman (26:17.711)It is.

Todd Westra (26:22.222)What's the last kind of final step that you would suggest to somebody who's listening to this saying, holy crap, I'm a mess, I'm a disaster, I'm not organized, I don't have a system like he's talking about, I don't use ClickUp Asana, anything else. What is that first step for them to kind of like just get the load off of them?

Andrew Hartman (26:42.212)Love it.

Yep. Best thing, best thing I recommend to anyone is just separate out your reactive and your intentional time. So right now you're working on your most strategic thing and someone comes interrupts you and you work on that thing and you work on that for a while. Then you go check your email, then you call somebody, then you get back to your strategic thing and you're overwhelming yourself by, by the constant switching across those items.

So have proactive time set aside scheduled. So maybe it means you don't go into the office until 11 a.m. Or maybe it means you go to Starbucks for a couple hours in the afternoon. Like you decide, but protect focus time like it is the most precious commodity you have. And then when you have reactive time, just be open. Treat any additional strategic time you get as bonus, but if people need help, help them. Reply to emails, reply to phone calls. But just separating out the expectations of those two times can be so helpful to turn down overwhelm.

Todd Westra (27:08.471)Okay.

Todd Westra (27:16.525)Yeah.

Todd Westra (27:23.522)Love it.

Andrew Hartman (27:37.868)It doesn't solve for the fact that the list is infinite. Like we can do that next, but at least start making a thoroughfare for you to make progress on your most strategic priorities and then take that hot off, put your reactive hat on and be available to other people to help them. Cause you know you want to do that as well.

Todd Westra (27:38.221)I love it.

Yes. Yes.

Todd Westra (27:48.557)Right.

Todd Westra (27:54.444)Right, well this interview is very important to me. I have been a huge proponent of managing my time better over last four years, five years. It's been a big focus for me. And I've seen a major difference in my life by blocking and also intentionally designing multiple calendar types. For me that's helpful. I have specific calendars that are family things. I have specific calendars that are travel. I wanna kinda know how much of my time is blocked each week for.

Andrew Hartman (28:04.549)awesome.

Todd Westra (28:23.778)driving to appointments or getting on a plane. And so I think that those kind of things can be helpful. It doesn't mean everyone has to do the same thing, but Andrew, I feel like your message is very powerful and I feel like those listening are likely struggling with overwhelm. And so I highly encourage all of you to reach out to Andrew and figure out what you can be doing to be the time boss of yourself and make your business happen.

Andrew Hartman (28:27.269)Great.

Andrew Hartman (28:50.66)There we go. Love it. Thanks so much, Todd. Great to spend time with you.

Todd Westra (28:54.072)Hey, thank you so much. And boom, Andrew, how did that feel,

Andrew Hartman (28:59.248)There we go. It was great. I loved it. Yeah, it was fun. I just love good dialogue. It's good conversation. So fun.

Todd Westra (29:05.366)It's it's great. I could see doing this.