Time Management & Mental Health Strategies w/ Alan Lazaros | Growth Mindset & Leadership Insights

0:00 So I think the reason people squander time is they don't understand the downside. If I told you, you and me, man, in 50 years, I'm going to be 86. You're going to be How old are you? 33. 33, All right, so you're going to be 83 and I'm going to be 86. All right, I'm going to take weekends off. In this metaphor, I'm not really, but in this metaphor, and we're both going to get 0.1% better per day, OK.

0:21 And we're going to start investing. We're going to earn 0.1% more money per day for the next 50 years. I'm gonna take weekends off. You're gonna work the weekends, you're gonna work every week. You're gonna have $84,000,000 and I'm gonna have five $439,000. So you're gonna have 191 times the wealth that I have, and that works for health, wealth and love. That works for all goals.

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2:21 Relive, ladies and gentlemen, you once again welcome to the Kingdom's podcast and today I've got will be coming back for the heart trick fighting out of Boston, United States of America. Mac, welcome, I learned the next level. University hero. Lazarus Ali, your brother. I'm good man. Thank you for having me. I appreciate the the intense introduction and you and I talked about gratitude.

2:53 I'm grateful to be here man, I'm honoured. Gratitude is good attitude. I only see that. And of course, when a person shares their time with you, they share their life with you because the SI unit for measuring life is time. So welcome back to the Kingdom's forecast, probably ranked in the global top 2.5% on listen notes.

3:13 So today's conversation is about two things every leader, entrepreneur and dream tracer struggles with time management and mental health. These two are connected more than most people think. And I couldn't think of a better person to unpack this with me than my brother from another mother from Massachusetts, the Co founder of next level University, global top 100 podcaster and coach Alan Lazarus. Alan, welcome back to the show TIME. Management, baby.

3:47 Time management, Yeah. This time is life. It is. I'll open with this. If you are fortunate enough to live to 100 years, that is 100 years times 365 days. That's 36,500 days. When I give speeches at high schools, colleges, I gave a training to a group of 300 students last week. I said if you had $36,500 in a bank account and you could never make another dollar, how carefully would you invest that money? So as of right now, I have 16 minutes and 57 seconds on this podcast.

4:28 I am always tracking my time on my Apple Watch and or my iPhone. Time is life. You only have three resources in life. You have time, you have effort, and you have money. And the most important on there is time. Where you put your time and effort will determine how much money you earn and how much money you earn and where you invest it will determine how much money you earn. So it's time, effort and money.

4:47 That's the only three resources any of us have, and we all have 168 hours in a week. If you sleep 8 hours a day, that's 56 hours per week that you sleep. 8 * 7 is 56, and if you do 168 -, 56, you get 112 waking hours per week. So assuming you sleep well and consistently and you average 8 hours of sleep, you get 112 hours per week. 52 weeks a year, 520 weeks per decade. The average life expectancy in the US and I live in the US, so I'll use those stats is 80 for women, 79 for men and it's increasing fortunately.

5:29 But all you have is time and you can spend your time building or enjoying. And what I try to teach people is what if you enjoyed building? So building is you are taking the present moment to add value to others and build yourself, build the family, build the business, build something of value. So you're building or you're enjoying, but syntax matters. Some people build to enjoy, other people enjoy to build. Syntax matters.

6:02 And so building is I'm going to invest the now for a bread or tomorrow. That's me. I tend to be on the builder side. And so it's a percentage. I try to do probably 90% building, 10% enjoying, but I also enjoy building, so there's a way to integrate them. So is it building first for you or is it enjoying first for you? Because if you want to enjoy 1st and you don't like to build, you're probably not going to achieve very large goals. And I used to be bashful about this. I used to not talk about this.

6:34 But if you have big goals and dreams, you better learn how to build and you better start building quick. The people who achieve their goals and dreams are very future oriented and they they usually invest the now for a brighter tomorrow. They don't usually focus on quality of life. And ironically, the people who have the highest quality of life are usually the people that are willing to build more in the present at the expense of quality of life. And then ten, 20-30 years later you see them. I have a mentor who is a multi multi millionaire. He was the CEO and CEO of several different billion dollar tech companies.

7:08 And now he flies to the Bahamas private. He, you know, bought a house without even going inside of it. He he has literally millions of dollars and he's an investor. But the first 30 years of his career were grinding. And if you saw his life now, you'd say, oh, that must be nice. But what you don't realise is that his quality of life, you know, he drove a Toyota back in the day. So it's just really important to understand that. And I think that unfortunately social media makes it seem like you can enjoy now and build and achieve huge goals without a tonne of effort, which is just wildly untrue. Widely, widely untrue.

7:44 Quick 1. So I really appreciate you talking about the syntax. And of course, you know I talk about in communication, content and context are very, very important, right? Making it sync. Enjoy to build and beauty enjoy. Now I see why a lot of people think of me as unconventional or as a weird person because when I think about the percentages, I think it's a 5050 for me personally. I enjoy to build and I also beauty enjoy and like I found that equilibrium of both, both because I enjoy build in. I think about building this podcast, for example, as a while we're speaking right now, it's ranked global top 2.5%. And I think about the fact that I started November 18, 2023. You are a global top 100

8:37 podcaster and you know what it takes to build a podcast, right? And this is less than two years and I'm already in the global rankings. It it, it makes more sense to me when I look at people who actually started way beyond me, but before me rather. And when I see the rankings, I see the kind of forecasts that are on the same pedestal as me.

8:59 All of them started before me. And. When it wasn't making the money it's making now, like a lot of people were sort of discouraging me, telling me or why are you keeping up doing something that is not you then something, right? But for me, I was enjoying the process. I still enjoy the process and now that is bringing returns. Like I enjoy the returns.

9:22 So for me it's, you know, like well balanced. I enjoy the process and I also do the process to enjoy. But you know, back to time, most people mismanage that gift of time. Why? Because you share that sentiment with me that the SI uniform measurement life this time. But why would people waste their time? Is it because they don't know that time is life? I don't know.

9:49 There's a book by Lucius Seneca. It's one of the Roman Stoics called On the Shortness of Life, and it's a pretty intense read, but it basically talks about much we squander time. And you even mentioned 5050 there. So let's just do the numbers of that. So assuming you sleep an average of 8 hours per night, you have 112 hours a week. If you do 50, you know, divide that by two, 112 / 2 is 56. So that means you're working 56 hours a week, you're building 56 hours a week.

10:21 So most people think of full time as 40 hours. I if you have 112 waking hours per week and you're only building 40 of them, I think you're in some trouble and I'll explain why. If you want to build your physique, so fitness, how long does that take per day? If you want to build your intimate relationship, how long does that take per day? If you want to build a business, how long does that take per day? And so why do people squander time? The truth, I think unfortunately, and I'm, I'm a computer engineer and if you listen to the past episodes, you'll already know this, but everything in my mind is numbers.

11:04 And if you take a dollar and you put it in a financial calculator and you grow it by 0.1% per day for 50 years, that's 50 * 365. You end up with $84,000,000. It's 83 something. So I rounded up and if someone takes weekends off it's only 260 days a year. So 52 weeks a year times 5 is 200 and 62160 * 50. And if you do this, you can do this in a financial calculator. If you do it in ChatGPT make sure you correct it because ChatGPT is wonky with numbers.

11:44 But go to Google, look up a financial calculator, put $1.00 in it and grow it by 0.1 percent, 110th of 1% per day for 50 years. It's $84,000,000 if you take weekends off brother. And you don't get better on the weekends, you just coast. It's only 439,000. So someone who works and builds everyday versus someone who doesn't. It's not even close.

12:11 To answer your original question of why do people squander time, I think that we just don't understand what's possible. 10 years ago, I got in a car accident. I was 26 years old and I faced sort of mortality. My dad died in a car when he was 28, and that was 10 years ago. And I faced mortality and I was like, you know what?

12:30 I have wasted so much time and effort now, I didn't waste it all right? I got good grades. I got a computer engineering degree. I got my master's in business. I was very successful in corporate. But the amount of time and effort that I squandered on persons, places, things and ideas that I will never get back is insane.

12:50 And so I made a promise to myself, Alan, never again will you waste time and effort. And what you realise is that when you invest your time and effort every single day on getting a little smarter, a little stronger, a little better, a little better speaker, a little better communicator, a little bit better of a business owner, a little bit you, it compounds. So I think the reason people squander time is they don't understand the downside.

13:16 If I told you, you and me, man, in 50 years, I'm going to be 86, you're going to be how old are you? 33. 33, yeah. All right, so you're going to be 83 and I'm going to be 86. All right, I'm going to take weekends off. In this metaphor, I'm not really. But in this metaphor, and we're both going to get 0.1% better per day, OK.

13:37 And we're going to start investing. We're going to earn 0.1% more money per day for the next 50 years. I'm going to take weekends off. You're going to work the weekends. You're going to work every week. You're going to have $84,000,000 and I'm going to have five $439,000. So you're going to have 191 times the wealth that I have.

14:00 And that works for health, wealth, and love. That works for all goals. It's it's the math. You can literally Google this. It's the math and but people are like, well, I don't want to work every day. Listen, you don't have to work all day every day. 0.1% better is not that hard. Do you think you can get 0.1% stronger today? Absolutely.

14:26 If you go to the gym, absolutely. Absolutely, absolutely. And I'll just tell people I weaponize consistency, consistency as a weapon. Nice, and do you think you can get 0.1% smarter? Absolutely. Do you think you can get 0.1% better of a communicator? That simple, yeah. And This is why I believe so deeply in coaching and books and training programmes and investing in yourself.

14:52 The wealthiest people on earth are investors. They invest today for a bigger, better, brighter tomorrow. When Jeff Bezos went in 1994 to investors and he was going to give away equity for $20,000, they said, what's the Internet? And he said, well, the Internet is this place where you connect with other people globally on, on what's called the World Wide Web. And he's explaining it.

15:17 And now he owns 8.6% of Amazon.com, which is a company that's worth $2.44 trillion. I researched this last week. So he has a $250 billion net worth. Now, that does not mean he has $250 billion in his bank account, OK? It means he owns 8.6% of a $2.44 trillion company. So if the if the company were to go out of business, he would have $0.00.

15:40 But the point is, Jeff Bezos in 1994, which was 31 years ago, was just a regular guy, a regular guy with a really big dream who's really intelligent, who saw a trend. He saw that the Internet was growing at a ridiculous rate, and he decided to create and sell books online. And I think that that's what we all have the opportunity to do, whether it's starting a podcast or building company.

16:12 I think it's the little small daily disciplines showing up when you don't want to every single day and and. Time. Management, time management. Yep, time management is every unit of time is to just get a little better, a little smarter, a little stronger, a little more effective, a little more skilled.

16:28 And when you do that over time, it's unbelievable. Last piece I started this habit called Facebook Memory of the Day. So you're 33? I'm 36. So you remember Facebook when it was just college kids, right? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. OK. All right, So I just pulled up a photo of me from 13 years ago. I'll show it on YouTube. 13 years ago, this is me driving to Los Angeles and I, I wanted to work in show business.

16:58 That was when I was 20 years old. So 13 years ago, 23 I was 23 years old and 13 years ago I everything is similar and different. Let me explain. So 13 * 365, I've had 4745 days since then to invest. So where did I put those 4745 days? Did I get a little stronger? Did I get a little smarter? And back then, I wanted to work in show business. I actually had an interview at SpaceX, actually, which is an interesting thing because SpaceX is headquartered in California. And I lived in LA for like 3 1/2 months. I came home for some family stuff. My dreams are still there, but they look very different. I've evolved, I've adapted, I've changed. So the only wrong answer is to not have goals. Goals force you to use each unit

17:53 of time. If I had no goals, brother, I would have no urgency. If I have no urgency, I would have no necessity. If I have no necessity, if you have no goals, when you wake up in the morning, you don't even know what to do. Imagine if Michael Phelps's coach was like, yeah, man, just jump in the pool.

18:15 You swim around. It's called free wind optimism. You know, when I was a strategic class, you know, to become a chartered accountant, the guy who who was teaching us said if you, if you feel to plant, you plan to feel, right. We don't realise that failing to plan is a plan on its own because it's actually a plan to fill.

18:35 So you really can't blame the guys who don't have a plan because they actually have set that plan to fill. Yeah. So that is also a goal on its own. But you know, coming back to the whole time management theme, right? So let's link it with mental health. You know, high achievers, they, they feel every hour of the day, but stress, anxiety and of course, burnouts tend to creep in. So you are a coach, you know, you coach entrepreneurs globally.

19:02 So how does poor time management impact mental health? The first thing to understand is it's a conscious choice, so I'll share this with everybody. I was an achiever by nature and when I wasn't focused on my goals, I would have anxiety. And to me, in order to get out of anxiety, I would need to get my button gear because there's something called opportunity cost. If you sit around for the next three weeks and don't accomplish anything, don't do anything, you have no idea how much less your future just got.

19:43 It's called opportunity cost. It's like, it's like what I talked about earlier about taking weekends off versus working and building in the weekends doesn't mean you have to work 12 hour days every weekend. The point is, is you, you compound opportunity cost is your future gets smaller if you don't invest today.

20:00 So I had a lot of anxiety associated with not. Building so I think a lot of people do and they try to escape it. So for me, my escape was alcohol. So back in the day I would have these dreams that are pulling me. I would have these huge dreams that are just pulling me. They're calling me they're saying Alan you can do this.

20:21 My highest self was like, Alan, get it together man, you can do this let's go get off your ass. That's my highest self. OK, some people have a less intense highest self. Alter ego. You know, but instead of listening to that voice, I would drink and it would turn off. So if I took like four or five shots right now, my inner voice, my calling, my highest self would turn off and it would turn off for like a couple hours. But then the next day it would turn back on and it would say, hey, now not only am I louder, but now you're behind even more. That can be thrown in.

21:07 It's not good, man. So at the end of the day, I think when it comes to mental health, you got to figure out what your calling is. Do you have anxiety because you're not going to the gym and you're not keeping the promises to yourself and you know you're capable of more and you're not following through? Because if so, then you need to learn how to align with that calling.

21:28 Or are you overwhelmed on the other side where you're you, you've bitten off more than you can chew and you're grinding every day and you don't have any R&R and your, your struggle bus. So I like 8020, I think 80% building, 20% intentional recovery. Some people are overtraining and they go to the gym too much and they're doing 3 hours a day and they need to rest and recover. But most people are under training, right? So I want to pick your brain on the on the recovery side, you know, and what a great week to like segue into the fact that we now have a new brand partnership with Better Help, right? And Better Help is the world's leading online therapy brand. So what are your thoughts, you

22:12 know, on therapy, especially online therapy, and how it helps with, you know, mental health recovery? Unbelievable. So my beautiful girlfriend and future wife has a company called Evolve Ventures and I also coach her business partner Bianca. I've been coaching her for six years. I also have a therapist named Carol, so she's trauma certified.

22:37 My girlfriend, the other one, does CBT, cognitive behavioural therapy. I am the biggest proponent of therapy. I think coaching and therapy are two sides of the same coin. Has that too. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So therapy is is more about learning from the past and healing from the past and working on yourself. I think coaching is much more externally driven, goals, dreams, system structure oriented. Yeah, therapists also coach and coach coaches also do therapy. But ultimately I'm for it.

23:10 I think it's really good and I think the world desperately needs to work on their mental health. I think the world physical, mental, emotional, spiritual. Physical health is the most important, in my opinion. Mental health is next, emotional health is third and spiritual is 4th. Physical, mental, emotional, spiritual. If you are physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually fit, you're going to be a powerful human being. So I have a therapist.

23:32 Her name's Carol. I've been doing therapy for three years. It has been amazing and brutal because I had a particularly challenging childhood. But I'm all for it man, and thank you again for having me. I do get a jump because of time management. Of amazing, amazing and brutal. You have actually been amazing on the podcast today. Brutal.

23:51 We've had to work within time crunch and of course, you know, to my audience, check out Alan's work at Next Level University. Remember, therapy is a tool, not a weakness. Explore better help via betterhelp.com/kingthings. Thank you very much, brother. Love and respect to you. And of course, till you come again for episode 4 in our series. God bless you.

24:13 And of course, guys, go conceive, believe and achieve. Do take good care of yourselves. Bye.