Got a few minutes to spare? Tune in to this week’s podcast for easy tips that will make your workday more productive. Listen now!
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Tommy Beringer:
What's up you data-hungry Amazon sellers? This is your host, Tommy Beringer of the Sell, Rank, Win podcast for MerchantWords. In this podcast, we give you the answers to your most burning questions, actionable insights that you can take away and implement into your business today. So, let's go ahead and dive right into today's episode. What do you say? Let's go.
What's going on everybody? In today's episode of the Sell. Rank. Win. Podcast, I'm going to go over how to set your day up for success and how to be more efficient throughout your day. I have learned different methods from a wide range of people, from Buddhist monks, I mean, all the way down to CEOs of companies and also the wonderful people here at MerchantWords who are a lot smarter than I am, so very happy to surround myself with smarter people than me, because that makes me better, right? As you should, always surround yourself with successful people and smarter people that make you better.
So, I'm just going to go through my day and walk you through what I do, and hopefully, this will let you understand how to deal with stress a little bit better. So maybe some of you guys are doing the same exact things here, and maybe you can take something from my day or from one of the wonderful people here at MerchantWords, their day because they've given me some items that they do throughout the day to help them be more successful and more efficient. So, I hope this helps.
Just wanted to take a step back today instead of diving into the data and how to get your product up to number one and all this other stuff, you have to think about things like this, how to make your day saner and less stressed. Everyone needs this, okay? So, I'm going to take you through my day and then pepper out a few things that the people here at MerchantWords do as well. So let's go ahead and dive in, I'm going to go ahead and go over my day here. There's my dog.
So before I go to bed, this helps me set myself up for the next day. So before I go to bed, about 15 to 30 minutes before I go to bed, I look at what is my day like tomorrow. This is going to help me better understand what I need to do in the day, so I'm not as stressed right when I wake up before just rushing to my computer or rushing to my phone, seeing what is going on for that day.
So, that's why I always take 15 to 30 minutes before I go to bed to understand what is going to be going on the next day. If there's something I need to take care of before I go to bed, like maybe sending an email or something else that is needing my attention before I go to bed, so I'm better set up for the next day so I'm not stressing out on certain things, and so I can just focus on the priority tasks.
So, that's what I do before I go to bed. This sets up my morning for me. I wake up around 6:30 AM, and when I wake up, I do not look at my phone or my computer right away when I wake up, because this will stress you out, this will give you anxiety because say you open your phone, you see a Slack message needing your attention or an email or a text or something like that, this is going to start getting your mind going.
You don't need that right away when you wake up, I'm sure you know there are other priorities in the morning when you wake up that you need to take care of. Such as if you have kids, feeding your kids breakfast, getting them ready to get out the door to go to school, and you want to make sure that you aren't rushing to that right away.
Upon waking up, what I do is, before anything, I sit at the edge of my bed and I say three things that I'm grateful for. I promise that there are three things that you can be grateful for in your life. I promise there is. It could be the same three things every morning if you like. For example, for me, I say a lot of the time I'm grateful for my family, I'm grateful for being in 100% perfect health, I'm grateful for my success, I'm grateful for MerchantWords. Saying these things, being grateful, starting with, as everyone says an attitude of gratitude, is going to lead you to be happier throughout the day to keep peace of mind and to be more focused.
There are studies out there that show whoever implements gratitude practice into their daily lives has a reduced risk of heart disease and they're less stressed. So try it out, wake up, try to make it routine in the morning, being grateful for at least three things in the morning. You can write them down if you want to, but I like to say them to myself.
Then next, I will go out to the kitchen, put out breakfast for my kids. I'm usually the first one awake in my house, so I do that. Put out some breakfast for my kids, and then after that, I go outside to meditate for about 10 to 15 minutes, and that helps me calm my mind down. If you need to, meditate throughout the day or meditate when you get a moment. Even if it's five minutes, even if it's one minute, do it. This is going to help you be calmer and then become more focused throughout the day, I promise.
I go outside, I like to go outside because I want to get some sun to help wake me up to notify my body that it is time to stop producing melatonin. The sun hits your eyes, hits your skin, and now your body's in the mode of wake-up mode. Our president, Mark Liu, gave us that tidbit there, gave me that tidbit and I have been implementing it in my life ever since.
So it is good stuff to get you back on your circadian rhythm, your circadian clock, if I'm saying that right. But yeah, that's very important to do for myself. Go outside, do some breathing, get some sun, does not take a long time. Do it, it will help you throughout your day and it will make your day a lot more productive and a lot more efficient.
Then if there's time in the morning, I try to make time for it, if not, I try to do it in the middle of the day, but I like to do it in the morning is Wim Hof breathing technique. The Wim Hof breathing breathwork. So Wim, W-I-M, Hof, H-O-F. It's this guy, they call him The Iceman. If you've not heard of him, YouTube him, Google him. He is all over the place, he does some amazing things. I mean, I could do a whole podcast just on this guy, but look him up.
Anyways, he teaches you this breathing technique, breath retention, and it's helpful for stress, anxiety, inflammation, lots of other things. So I try to do this breathwork every morning, or at least some point throughout the day. I have his app, I downloaded his app. It's very inexpensive, and he does guided breathing on the app which teaches you how to do it properly.
Then from there, I take my daughters to school, drop them off around 7:45 AM, and then and only then is it time to get down to business. So from there, I then look at my phone, check for emails, Slack messages before I get to my office. I don't try to answer them at that point on my phone unless I can answer it quickly, because if it's a question that needs an in-depth answer, I want to sit at my computer and answer it properly.
So yeah, just wanted to see what's coming up. So as I get to my office, 10 minutes after that, then I can go ahead and be better equipped to answer that message. Then from there, I grab my coffee and you guys could grab your coffee, your tea, drink some water, always drink lots of water throughout the day. Then from there, get to my office, pop open my laptop. I pop open my yellow notepad that has my list of to-do items for the day.
I did ask around to everyone at MerchantWords and they gave me their feedback on what they do to make their day more productive, and one of the most common answers was creating a list, writing it down, writing down a list. There's something about writing it down on paper, for me at least, but mostly everyone at MerchantWords has a list that they refer back to throughout the day.
I also write down on that list, separate from the stuff I have to do for work, just some personal things, because you can't let personal things go into the distance. Maybe if you have to make a doctor's appointment, things like that, keep that number one. Of course make sure your personal items are a priority, as well as work.
So yeah, having that notepad, a list of all of the to-do items that I need to do for the day, making sure that those are checked off. If I have more time throughout the day, more bandwidth, then I'll get to other things that maybe I was going to push into the next day. So that's always very, very helpful to go to the list, check those things off, and then get those tasks done and move ahead.
Then another thing that they mentioned, the good people of MerchantWords here, the smart people of MerchantWords here is taking care of the most difficult task in the beginning of the day. I think there's a book out there called Eat the Frog. So meaning, eat that frog in the beginning of the day, take care of that most important thing or that most difficult thing that you need to take care of, right? If it's a big task, break it down into smaller tasks. So, what's the best way to eat an elephant is piece by piece.
Then another thing that I'll always say to myself is what's the best way to take down a mountain? Just piece by piece, little by little. Which our president's grandmother told him, and then now that's coming to me, and I even tell my kids that. So, that's a great piece of advice as well, make sure to break that big task down into little ones for sure.
Okay, so going back to my day. Now when I open up my laptop, I look at if there's something pressing, I also check my Seller Central account in the morning just to look at the different metrics, making sure that my listings aren't taken down for some reason, because we all know Amazon loves to take down listings at will. They have those bots that go out there and they will just take down your listing for random purposes, right?
So, always do that. Check my Seller Central account in the morning, make sure that my BSRs are where I think they should be, make sure all my listings are active of course, making sure my sales are where they need to be. Because if I wake up and I see zero sales, then I think maybe something's really wrong, right? I think everyone would think that as an Amazon seller, so you need to dig in. That could mean your listing's taken down.
So, usually, that's a quick thing to do in the morning, take care of that. Then of course I start digging into what I need to do for MerchantWords. Throughout the day, you want to always be able to refer back to your list to make sure you are always in line for what the tasks are for the day. Then the things that I do throughout the day, that's also very important, to make sure that you're not crashing, you have sustained energy throughout the day, sustained brain function sustained happiness throughout the day.
One thing I do is I have my Hydro Flask here, which I actually need to fill up, and I try to drink a lot of water throughout the day. Those that don't know how much water you need, it's roughly one ounce of water per pound or at least half of that per day. So, try to drink at least an ounce of water per pound if you can. Of course you might be peeing every 15 minutes, but it is good for you. Hopefully you're near a bathroom throughout the day, but yeah, drinking a lot of water always helps me to stay alert and stay more focused.
I try not to drink too much coffee throughout the day, just in the morning is good. That helps sustain me throughout the day. Doing breathing, I stop and I do a lot of breathwork throughout the day. This is very helpful in stopping and just doing small meditations for a minute if you need to as well. Focus on your breathing.
Taking your focus away from work is going to help you to sustain your workday and to get more done, because if you're just focused on continually just trying to chip away at that mountain or eat that elephant, then it could be detrimental to your day. So you do need to stop, you do need to take those breaks. In those breaks, do some breath work, drink some water, do some quick meditation.
For my breathwork, what I do throughout the day is I'll take five deep breaths, either in through your nose or through your mouth, and on that fifth breath, I hold it for about four to eight seconds. This is going to help you slow down your heart rate a bit and it's going to get you feeling better, and going to get you ready to jump back into work. Because there's always something, right? Always something. Which is good, you're busy and you want to make sure you take the time to keep your stress levels down and your health good.
I try not to eat until 11:00 or 12:00 to give my digestive system a break. I guess that's part of intermittent fasting. I don't know if that really is, but I just try not to eat until that time, I just drink water until then. But if I do get hungry, I have some fruit. Also, try to stand up. Don't always be sitting down, get yourself a standing desk. If you don't have a standing desk, Amazon has these laptop desks that you could prop up and they're very inexpensive, I think. 50, 60, 70 bucks.
So if you don't have a standing desk, get one of those, so you can be standing throughout your day, or at least for a good part of your day. Because standing at your desk is going to help you to increase productivity, it burns more calories and pumps more blood through your body to help increase brain function and focus, and you're going to get less back pain. I have really bad back pain, so that definitely helps.
Also going outside just throughout your day, maybe taking a walk, hop on your Peloton like I do. One of our developers says yoga. Meditate. For sure meditate, meditate, meditate. That is very important. Meditating does not take a long time. You can do that for a couple minutes, five minutes, and it really does help you throughout your day.
Another little tip that one of our developers gave to us was just finish up a small task in the morning, and this is going to help you to take the day on. Maybe just make your bed. I think there's a famous video out there, just make your bed and complete a small task. This is going to help you throughout your day and just help you set yourself up for success. I try to make my bed every day. I try to get my kids to make their bed every day, but they don't always do it, but that is okay, we are still learning and we're still progressing, as we all I do. Always be learning, right? Always be progressing.
Towards the end of the day, I like to meditate again, I like to do some breath work and then I go outside and just breathe and just be. This is going to help you wind down your day. Then at that point, me and my wife are taking our kids from dance to Kumon, and then coming back, making dinner. Especially when you have kids, it's a crazy day, you must do this.
Even if you don't have kids, you still need to do this to keep yourself sane and to be more productive throughout your day, and be more successful. Then the more successful days you have, the more productive days that you have, the more success you will have in your life. You will continue on and just make sure that you are having a good peace of mind while you get there to keep that stress level low.
So, I hope this was helpful. Just wanted to take a step back today. Instead of diving into the data and going over how to get your product to number one or finding the best product or what are the best ways to create a PPC campaign, just wanted to kind of go over how to be more efficient throughout your day. I hope these tips helped, I hope you can take some of these and add them to your day.
I would love to hear what you guys do throughout your day to help keep your stress levels low and to be more efficient, to be more successful. That's very important to get some feedback from you guys, I'd love to hear it. Until next time guys, if you want to reach out to me, you can directly tommy@merchantwords.com. Till then, stay awesome and be awesome, guys. Thanks so much.
All right, thank you guys so much for listening. If you got any value out of this podcast at all, please let us know at the place that you listened to it at. Whether it be iTunes, Stitcher, whatever it is, give us some love, give us an awesome review and let us know maybe some things you want us to talk about on the next podcast. Till next time guys, stay awesome and be awesome.