We build our confidence by keeping the commitments we make to ourselves in private.
Table of Contents
How CEOs Get More Done in Less Time
Most founders complain they don’t have enough time. The truth is, they’re not short on hours, they’re short on structure.
The top CEOs don’t rely on hacks or wishful thinking. They install systems and rhythms that make productivity inevitable. If you want to compress decades into days, these five rules will change the way you run your life and business.
1. Daily Non-Negotiables
High performers don’t negotiate with themselves. They hardwire commitments that compound over time.
Here are three you can install immediately:
Read 10 pages daily. Prime your brain every morning with new ideas to share and apply.
Work out before big decisions. Physical exhaustion creates mental clarity and energy.
Review your goals daily. Align your calendar with your top priorities. If it’s not in the calendar, it doesn’t get done.
Mini-checklist for founders:
Is your reading visible in your calendar?
Do you block workout time before key meetings?
Are your goals reviewed at least 3x per day?
At the end of the day we build our confidence by keeping the commitments we make to ourselves in private.
2. Plan the Play
Most people freestyle their day and wonder why they don’t win. CEOs operate differently. They plan the play, then play the plan.
Why this works:
A calendar filled with intentional actions creates freedom, not restriction.
Breaking goals into daily and weekly actions makes them inevitable.
Sequence matters. Success comes from putting the right blocks in the right order.
Tactical framework:
| Step | Question to Ask | Output |
|---|---|---|
| Define goals | What outcome am I chasing this quarter? | Clear targets |
| Break into actions | What must happen daily/weekly? | Playbook tasks |
| Schedule | Where do these live in my calendar? | Calendar blocks |
| Execute | Do I show up and do it? | Results |
A goal without a plan is just a wish.
3. Create a Cadence
Productivity isn’t about bursts of effort. It’s about consistency.
Here’s how to build cadence into your life:
Limit big trips to once per month.
Batch high-value activities (speaking, events, founder dinners) into short windows.
Set weekly rhythms for planning, working, connecting, and resting.
Think marathon, not sprint. Cadence removes burnout and makes success sustainable.
Don’t tell me what your goals are. Tell me what you’re willing to do every day consistently.
4. Curate Connections
Your biggest opportunities rarely come from close friends. They come from “loose ties” … the extended network you intentionally nurture.
How to do it:
Host founder lunches, dinners, or hikes.
Ask your community for introductions before traveling to new cities.
Plant seeds by sharing updates, progress, and insights.
Every new person you meet is a multiplier. The more seeds you plant, the more opportunities sprout.
It’s not who you know, it’s who knows you.
5. Intensely Integrate
Stop compartmentalizing your life. The highest leverage comes when work, play, and growth overlap.
When I fly into a city, I don’t just do one thing. I stack it all:
Keynotes
Book signings
Founder dinners
Masterminds
Even fun! Like driving supercars with my team
Integration isn’t chaos. It’s making every moment meaningful by aligning it with your purpose.
When your work is part of your life’s purpose every moment becomes meaningful.
Start Living Like a CEO
The reason most founders feel stuck is not lack of time, it’s lack of systems. Install these five rules, and you’ll compress years into months.
Stop waiting for more hours to magically appear. Build structure, commit to cadence, and create leverage with people and purpose. That’s how CEOs get more done in a week than most do in a year.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the top productivity habits that CEOs use to get more done in less time?
The top productivity habits that CEOs use include setting daily non-negotiables like reading, exercising, and reviewing goals, planning the day in advance, creating a sustainable cadence for work and travel, curating high-value connections, and integrating work with life to maximize every opportunity. These productivity rules allow CEOs to compress years of progress into weeks by staying focused and consistent.
How can daily non-negotiables improve productivity for entrepreneurs?
Daily non-negotiables improve productivity for entrepreneurs by establishing habits that build momentum and discipline. Examples include reading 10 pages every morning to spark new ideas, exercising to boost energy and focus, and reviewing goals multiple times a day to ensure actions match priorities. When entrepreneurs keep these commitments, they build confidence and create inevitable results.
Why is planning your day essential for CEO-level productivity?
Planning your day is essential for CEO-level productivity because it transforms goals into actionable steps. Without a plan, the day defaults to distractions, but with a structured calendar, every task is intentional. CEOs treat their calendars like playbooks, ensuring the most important actions are scheduled early and consistently, making success predictable rather than accidental.
How does creating a cadence help leaders avoid burnout?
Creating a cadence helps leaders avoid burnout by establishing a rhythm that is sustainable over the long term. Instead of sprinting and collapsing, CEOs operate like marathon runners, setting limits on travel, batching meetings, and prioritizing recovery. This steady pace ensures productivity compounds over time without sacrificing health, relationships, or performance.
Why do successful CEOs prioritize networking and building connections?
Successful CEOs prioritize networking and building connections because the biggest opportunities usually come through relationships. By curating founder dinners, lunches, and meetups, CEOs expand their circle and increase the chances of being introduced to key partners, investors, or collaborators. Networking is not about who you know but about who knows you and speaks about your work when you are not in the room.
More Resources
Tools Mentioned
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Never Eat Alone
A bestselling networking book by Keith Ferrazzi that emphasizes building authentic relationships through shared meals and meaningful connections. -
SelfPublishing.com
A platform for authors to find editors, publishing resources, and communities to successfully launch and market their books.
Full Transcript
How CEOs Get Sh*t Done – 5 Productivity Rules to Do More in Less Time – YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IW9pvH0oH14
Transcript:
(00:00) this is how CEOs get more done in a week than most get done in a year when I was in my 20s and 30s I wasted so much time traveling and I would use it as an excuse to fall behind on my commitments until I implemented these five CEO productivity rules that helped me compress decades into days so here’s how to compress time like a CEO number one daily non-negotiables the first CEO rule of productivity is keep your commitments if it’s in your calendar do it when I was starting my coaching program I sat down and I outlined all my daily
(00:32) non-negotiables that made it impossible to fail and then I followed them and it made my results inevitable so here are three non-negotiables that any person can use to absolutely accelerate their life number one read every day 10 pages without fail if you follow me on social media you will see me post about my morning reading why because a it’s accountability so I’m reading to find the gold nuggets I can share with everybody that follows me and two I’m feeding my mind I’m ramping it up so that I’m connecting these different
(01:00) parts of my psychology so I can be available for [Music] conversation why read it in the morning it’s literally a primer of the day it also I consider it an offering to the world cuz now I have this thing I can gift to the world this new thought this new quote this new idea y I’m like hey have you ever heard about this no yeah I write it this morning now you’ve got value to give walk around with a little secret number two work out exhaust the body tame the mind if you’re struggling with Focus struggling with creativity
(01:37) struggling with your energy it sounds crazy but if you go and work out you’ll have more energy when you leave L dude I don’t do anything that’s important without working out first you just feel your brain get better as you work out and that’s what a lot of people think is the opposite they’re like I’m going to be tired it’s like I’ve never left the gym emotionally tired I’ve left the gym physically tired and number three review goal goals I have 12 goals for the year 12 massive things I decided to do personal
(02:04) professional Community contribution revenue and I look at these goals three four times a day and I’m looking at my calendar and I’m asking myself does my time reflect these priorities I use my calendar to guide my actions to hold me accountable to set my priorities and when it shows up I do it it’s not a negotiation the opportunities that have showed up in my life in the last 12 months when people see that I speak on Tony Robin stage the book being number one wouldn’t happened and the coaches I get to work with wouldn’t happened none
(02:33) of that would happened if I didn’t invest in becoming pro at social media so your calendar is where I’ll encourage you guys all to consider when you look at the amount of time you put towards the thing you say is important if it’s not in your calendar like think about what a pro athlete does to decide to go gold in the Olympics they show up right I call it want Power not Willow some of you guys think you need willpower you don’t need willpower you need want you need desire you need drive if these are the goals I want to achieve this year
(03:00) have I properly allocated both my bank account my resources and my time to those goals if not I change something it allowed me to build the business as a byproduct of the daily non-negotiables that I committed to because I’m keeping them front of mine it’s impossible for me to fail at the end of the day we build our confidence by keeping the commitments we make to ourselves in private and that’s why I have these non-negotiables every day which leads us to number two which is plan the play I first learned this by watching Richard
(03:32) Branson the billionaire that every other billionaire wants to be like operate his dayto day I had the privilege of spending a week with them in his home in verb Switzerland and I watched him execute every day every minute there was no time that was unallocated now did he also allocate time to come skiing with us sure did but did he have time with his assistant in the morning so he could respond to the hundreds of people that want his attention yep he tries to squeeze as much life out of life see most people freestyle their day and they
(04:01) wonder why they don’t get anything done they literally don’t put anything in the calendar cuz that way it feels more freeing but the truth is is sometimes const strength creates Freedom knowing what I got to get done and doing those as early as possible in the morning means that I feel free for the rest of the day a goal without a plan is just a wish so many people say I have this goal this year to make a million dollars I’m like what’s the plan if you can’t back out your goal into weekly and daily actions and activities that make that
(04:29) goal inevitable then it’s just a wish everybody wants to be successful but success is where preparation and opportunity meet think about this most people would win in life if they actually just took a little bit of time in the morning to prepare for their day think of it this way we plan our work and then we work the plan if you don’t then life will happen by default if you do life will happen by Design the way I look at the world it’s like Tetris the blocks come down if we don’t set them up right to put them in
(05:01) that grid is your life and if you’re not optimizing using this framework then you might have a lot of blocks but you got a lot of white space cuz you didn’t do it in the right sequencing sequencing equals success which leads us to rule number three which is create a Cadence I used to travel 200 days a year my schedule was packed but the truth is it wasn’t efficient I used to think that because I was busy I was being productive couldn’t have been further from the truth what I realize now is my life is a marathon not a Sprint because
(05:31) if you sprint and then fall and Sprint and then fall you’re actually not making as much progress if you just set up your life to be this ongoing never stopping Marathon success is not achieved in burst people that do that to themselves in many ways is self-sabotaging behavior they burst into New Opportunities instead of saying okay what could I commit to every day that sustained effort over time that on that back end of that would make my goals and my dreams inevitable like they would just have to happen so what did I change in
(06:01) regards to my travel first off one trip per month maximum 7 days away from my family because I have that constraint and I have that Rhythm I’m very diligent about what goes into those 7 days I’m talking to people I’m coordinating I’m rep prioritizing because that is the one shot I have on goal for Facetime with people I batch all my speaking my podcast my founder dinners my events my book meetups all of it into as little time as possible and when I land in a city I make sure I take it over I see all the people I want to see I do all
(06:34) the things I need to see including the fun stuff like going to a comedy show but I make it part of the Rhythm so it’s sustainable over the long run all right if you have a question for Dan he’ll be right here q& a do when I set a goal no matter what it is financial personal health I then ask myself what is the daily Standard I’d have to maintain that makes that goal inevitable and you know what’s funny is some people win they can’t tell you how they won but if you watch the behavior it was that they just did this they woke
(07:10) up every day consistently consistently consistently consistently consistently and it turned out that it worked so don’t tell me what your goals are tell me what you’re willing to [Music] sacrifice I just look at what we do as like little mustard seeds planted every books on every handshake every conversation every question we’re building Title Wave which leads us to rule number four which is curate connections I first learned this strategy reading a book called Never Eat Alone by Keith farazi he talked about the idea of getting people together to
(07:46) break bread and I tell you as an introverted programmer when I started there was no way I was going to do this what value could I give them I had so little self-confidence that I convinced myself out of it for so long until I finally did it and I remember my first is with a guy named Larry in that meal it was just him and I I felt all this pressure but at the end of it I thought to myself that was the most valuable two hours in a long time I learned a lot about the industry I learned a lot about myself I realized I didn’t have to talk
(08:15) that much I just had to ask really good questions so now I always host either founder lunches founder dinners Founders hikes but connection for me is so valuable because you can’t get away from in person and goes guess what I bucked Hamilton Collection Studios magic and I didn’t even know they had a coing wow isn’t that crazy yeah that is hey nice to meet you Tommy good to see you dude we’re here cuz I have a bunch of event stuff in Chicago and I had you guys on my radar so this is my group going up this is Sam this is my
(08:45) creative director Todd Todd he runs a media company this is going to be an expensive [Music] visit when you see me get this car you’ll know the moment it happened I used to go to cities and then just stay in my hotel room and then I would leave feeling like man I didn’t see all these people that lived there here’s what I’ve learned the biggest opportunities will come into your life through loose ties of other people it’s not the people you know well your big opportunity is probably going to be introduced to you
(09:15) by somebody you haven’t seen in a while you just have to make an effort to see them invite them to a meal the more people that you know the more opportunities you create think of them like little seeds that you’re planting every time you see somebody and that’s what’s new and you tell them they go oh my gosh my buddy Mark needs a talk to you right if you think about it your number one job is to solve problems the best way to solve a problem is to know the person who’s the best in the world is solving that problem you have 50,000
(09:38) words so you wrote a book so far okay I want to get it all out though well I I mean it all depends your style like I like to collaborate with people so finding an editor that you can collaborate with dude we’re going today to self-publishing oncom like that’s where I’m doing my book meet out which is the number one Community for book editors so when we’re there I’ll you a Chandler we’re going to solve that right there and here’s the crazy part A lot of people talk about it’s who you know I would say it goes even further than that
(10:08) it’s not who you know it’s who knows you how would they know you because people will talk about you if you show up and you do good if you invite them to a meal and you share your progress and things you’ve been up to they’re going to be impressed they may mention you to somebody else that is the highest form of Leverage so the way I do it is I just ask my community when I go to a city who should I meet with send me some names tell me some people give me some ideas I’m always open to it and usually those recommendations are great there people
(10:36) that know me and incredible people to chat with which leads us to rule number five which is intensely integrate I used to go to a city for one reason and what happen is over the years I got more and more people reaching out there was more Demand on my time and there’s things I want to do there’s new companies I want to start people I want to invest in or just things I want to experience with other people so what I do now is I integrate it intensely I did the Jet Set Mastermind people applied to come hang out with me on my Jet and fly around I
(11:05) did team meetings and dinners people that are CEOs of my company I went and I hung out with them I did dinners I made sure I poured into them we did the SAS book signing and promo material shoot just in like a 15-minute window speaking at other events keynoting showing up and saying hi podcast opportunities even driving supercars when your work is part of your life’s purpose every moment becomes meaningful like is time give a warm welcome to Dan Martell what up go let me tell you a 5-day period in my life recently okay I got on my jet I
(11:44) flew to Florida uh hung out with John Maxwell the next day did Tony Robbins the next day hung out on memet’s Private Island and then flew home I want you understand as a kid that grew up in monton New Brunswick Canada that that happened anyone one of those would have had my head explode that was one 5day window how does that happen you think I sat there with a to-do list G chart and I’m going to sit there do no dude this is spiritual this has nothing to do with that that’s what I’m saying you go on this journey to figure out who you are
(12:14) that’s why goals are really important only to the degree that help you understand and guide you to figure out who you are if you do that work those magical opportunities will come to you and you will know that you’re doing the work I’m always trying to integrate every aspect of my life so I can show up for people it does require people around you but it is one of the most productive things I do and that’s how CEOs get more done in a week than most get done in a year if you want to learn how to schedule your day like a CEO click the
(12:40) link and I’ll see you on the other side