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#014: 

The Unparalleled Triple Threat of 

Getting Things Done  

September 30, 2013 

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Introduction 

 

● The 5 am Miracle - Episode #14 

 

[Short Intro Song: start 

talking at 15 seconds] 

 

● Good morning and welcome to the 14th episode of 

The 5 AM Miracle. 

● I am Jeff Sanders and this is THE podcast dedicated 

to dominating your day before breakfast. 

● My goal is to help you bounce out of bed with 

enthusiasm, create powerful lifelong habits, and 

tackle your grandest goals with extraordinary 

energy. 

● The 5 AM Miracle is not necessarily based on your 

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ability to wake up at sunrise, but rather the true 

miracle is the intentional development of fruitful 

habits that lead to the achievement of what you 

want most out of life. 

● Here on the The 5 AM Miracle Podcast, we discuss 

early mornings, and we also dive deep into the 

topics of daily habits, productivity, personal 

development, and plant-based health and fitness. 

● When you excel in these areas, you establish a 

strong foundation for a more purposeful start to your 

day, which compounds into a highly successful life. 

 

● In today's episode I discuss my personal productivity 

system that I adopted earlier this year. 

● This is a productivity process that allows me to get 

more done now than ever before and I think you’ll 

find it very valuable as well. 

 

● But first, let’s begin with the Tip of the Week! 

 

[Musical Interlude] 

 

The 5 AM Tip of the Week 

 

● Today’s tip is a physical fitness strategy to stay 

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strong without injuring yourself. 

 

● Three weeks ago I was on a long training run for a 

marathon I am scheduled to run in November. 

● I had planned to run 10 miles on the trails of Percy 

Warner Park here in Nashville but I only made it 8 

miles. 

● Honestly, I should have stopped after 3 miles, but I 

thought I was tough. 

● I say I should have stopped early because my right 

foot was in severe pain.  

● This wasn’t new to me. This foot has hurt me 

before, but never with this intensity. 

● For the next three days I could barely walk. I 

hobbled around as if my foot were broken. 

● After a few days though, the pain basically went 

away. 

● However, I realized that I needed a professional 

opinion. 

● If you ever find yourself unable to walk for multiple 

days in a row, that’s a sign that something is 

definitely wrong. 

 

● So, last week I went in to see a Podiatrist, also 

known as a foot doctor. ● The doctor took x-rays and examined my foot. 

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● His conclusion was that I did not have a fracture or 

tendonitis, but I did have inflammation and possibly 

the very beginning stages of stress fractures that 

weren’t yet visible on the x-rays. 

● He recommended I wear a strong arch support in my 

shoe and run very short distances, like only a few 

hundred yards to start with. 

● Then, if the foot feels better I can slowly begin to 

increase the miles over the course of many months. 

● This wasn’t exactly the diagnosis I was expecting, 

but honestly I was just glad I didn’t need surgery or 

a cast on my foot.  

 

● So, what caused this bizarre injury to my foot? 

● It seems to be that the likely culprit was my shoes. 

● I have been running in very thin-soled trail shoes for 

a while and my body has never quite adjusted. 

● A few years ago I read Christopher McDougall’s 

book, Born to Run and I became fascinated with 

barefoot running. 

● In the book, McDougall talks about a tribe in Mexico 

that runs barefoot or on very thin-soled shoes up and 

down mountains. 

● The people in the tribe are phenomenal athletes and 

they rarely, if ever, find themselves with any 

injuries at all. 

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● I immediately bought a pair of Vibram Five Fingers, which are the toe-shoes you have likely seen 

everywhere in the last few years. 

● I LOVE the Five Finger shoes and I wear them 

everywhere. 

● I even ran in them for a while, but I experienced 

severe lower back pain from that, so I quickly 

stopped. 

● The trend for me in the last few years has been that 

I have quickly adopted barefoot running, without 

giving my body the time it needs to adjust. 

 

● If you talk to any running experts, most will tell you 

that it takes months or even years to adjust to 

running without any cushion under your feet. 

● Most runners have grown up with shoes that have 

large amounts of padding to protect against rocks, 

glass, or other objects on the ground. 

● The problem is that large cushions prevent the many 

muscles, bones, ligaments, and joints in your feet 

and ankles from working to their full potential. 

● Ultimately, you end up with weak feet because they 

never get exercised the way nature intended. 

● So, the solution has been a transition to barefoot 

running in order to activate the muscles in the feet 

and return runners back to their roots. 

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● The biggest problem here is exactly what I 

experienced firsthand, you can’t switch overnight. ● Your body needs a long time to adjust, and in some 

cases, you never will. 

● Many people have feet that are just not shaped well 

for running without a sole or cushion of some kind. 

 

● So, what does this mean for you? 

● My recommendation is to embrace barefoot running 

AFTER you have personally met with a running 

specialist, trainer, and/or doctor who can let you 

know how your feet are shaped and what kind of 

shoes would be best for you. 

● Then, you can begin the slow transition to barefoot 

running. 

● I believe it’s worth it, but you definitely need to 

take it slow and get some professional advice before 

you jump in feet first and end up with an injury. 

● Believe me, if there’s anything any athlete hates 

more than losing a race, it’s being injured so they 

cannot race at all. 

 

● And Now it’s time for a Special Success Story 

Segment! 

 

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[Musical Interlude] 

 

Special Success Story Segment 

 

● Before I jump into the main content today, I wanted 

to take a minute and read a few amazing 

testimonials that have come in from a few podcast 

listeners. 

 

● This first one comes in from Jacob Nicholls: 

 

● “I listened to your podcast and was inspired! I have 

habitually been an early riser for a few years now, 

and I love it. The feeling of getting up and starting 

your day while most of the world is still sleeping 

gives me the feeling that I can get a leg up on the 

day.” 

 

● And here is a comment from Andrew Whitty: 

 

● “Listened to a few of your podcasts and they are 

great! That's what brought me to your blog. I'm just 

starting to get up early now, currently on day 2 of 

sleeping midnight-6am! It’s hard but with the steps 

you provided I'm full of energy so thank you! Just 

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heard your podcast about standing up and will be 

putting this into practise as well.” 

 

● Finally, here is a great testimonial from Mandy 

Rhoden: 

 

● “First, you have inspired me to get up earlier! For 

me, it was making the connection that getting up 

earlier is a driven decision to tackle the day with 

intention. It makes me feel important! Its as if I'm 

exclaiming to the universe that I get up early 

because I have to, because I have important things 

to accomplish. Having the extra 2-3 hours in the 

morning has made a tremendous impact on my day 

and my productivity. Its not always easy. But it has 

made a huge difference for me.” 

 

● Wow, aren’t those great success stories? It’s always 

awesome to get this kind of feedback because it 

validates the fact that beginning your day bright and 

early (and with a plan) can make a huge difference. 

 

● If you haven’t yet taken the plunge and started your 

day at 5 am yet, you still can. 

 

● I will also mention here that you can get a Free copy 

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of my eBook, The 5 AM Miracle, when you sign up for 

the email newsletter at 5amMiracle.com.  

●Now, let’s jump into the feature 

segment.  

 

● I have been looking forward to diving into this topic 

for a long time now. 

● Productivity is one of the core pieces of The 5 AM 

Miracle and it seems to be one of the biggest 

challenges that people face on a day-to-day basis. 

● Now, whether you are incredibly overwhelmed with 

your life and work at the moment, or even if you are 

simply looking for a way to make small adjustments 

to your already well-oiled machine - today’s 

introduction to my personal system should help you 

advance to the next level of getting things done. 

 

● Let’s begin with the foundation of a My Top 7 

Beliefs About Productivity that I ascribe to that 

help make this system function. 

 

● First, I am NOT perfect. My system is not perfect 

and neither my system nor I will ever be perfect. 

● Perfection is not the goal. 

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● This is a journey and embracing that reality upfront 

will save you many headaches as we move forward. 

 

● Secondly, productivity is subjective. You will have 

to make your own decisions in the present moment 

as to what needs to get done, regardless of what is 

on your calendar. 

● This may sound like a cop out because I preach all 

the time about planning your day in advance. 

● However, I am not naive to the reality that much of 

life is unpredictable and we all deal with other 

people who directly influence our day-to-day choices 

and actions. 

 

● My third belief about productivity, you have more 

control than you think. No, this is not a 

contradiction to my previous point, but it needs to 

be said anyway. 

● Believing that your day is out of your control will 

only lead to reactive behavior instead of proactive 

movement toward your goal. 

● As every business expert has said many times, the 

goal is to move up, and to the right, over time. Every day is different and unique, but the big 

picture needs to paint a scene of forward 

momentum. 

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● Belief #4, I am a HUGE fan of “Inbox Zero.” This 

means I process every single email, every single day. 

● That could mean I delete it, delegate it, schedule it 

for later, or respond to it immediately.  

● This same principle applies to physical paper and 

stuff around my office. 

● If anything is out, it needs to be dealt with. 

● I never go to bed without everything being addressed 

or scheduled to be addressed at a better date and 

time. 

● I’ll get to the practical implementation of what this 

means in a just bit, but for now, understand that at 

the core of staying productive is addressing every 

stimulus and communication in your life. 

 

● Belief #5: Saying No is better than saying Yes. 

● Steve Jobs, Warren Buffett, and many other wildly 

successful people have attributed their success to 

the things they DON’T do, more than the things they 

do. 

● One of the best ways to increase your productivity is 

to be LESS productive! 

● Stop doing so much stuff and narrow your list down 

to the bare essentials. 

● I will be the first to say, that this is a non-stop 

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battle. You will always have people, pings, emails, 

requests, opportunities, and possibilities arriving at 

your doorstep - BUT - you need to get in the habit of 

turning them all down. 

● It really is the only way to maintain sanity and focus 

on your top priorities. 

 

● Belief #6 about Productivity: Balance is a myth. 

● If you want to spend equal amounts of time on all 

areas of life every day, you will never succeed. 

● For example, if you want to work on your health, 

relationships, career, finances, spirituality, social 

outings, special projects, and relaxation - every day 

- you will fail. 

● The goal is not to do a little bit of everything every 

day in order to stay balanced. 

● The goal is to decide ahead of time how much time 

each of these areas need over the course of year, 

and then creating a calendar that allows for this to 

be possible. 

● I could do an entire podcast on this topic, and I 

might, so for now just realize that balance is a 

long-term process - not a daily challenge. 

 

● My 7th and Final Belief about Productivity: getting 

things done is not the final frontier. 

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● When I am on my deathbed, I am not going to care 

how many tasks were checked off my list. 

● I am going to care about people, relationships, and 

the overall value I created in the world while I was 

here. 

● So, try not to get overwhelmed with the goal of 

getting as much done as possible.  

● Life is meant to be enjoyed - at least a little. 

 

● Now, let’s breakdown my personal 

productivity system. ● First, my system is entirely digital. The only paper I 

use includes the occasional post-it note reminder. 

● Other than that, everything is web-based. What I 

mean by web-based is that I can access my system 

from any Internet Browser on any computer. 

● I don’t have to be on my personal computer or have 

my iPad or iPhone with me to keep track of my tasks 

and projects. 

● I do use computer applications and mobile apps - but 

those simply access the same data that I can access 

in the Internet Browser. 

 

● Okay, NOW for the first, and arguably more 

important, piece of my productivity system: 

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Evernote. 

● Evernote is an online portal where you can store just 

about anything. 

● Evernote’s tagline is “Remember Everything” and I 

think that fits. 

● From emails you store on their servers, to articles 

you find on the web, to pictures you don’t want to 

lose, to notes you write yourself, and even 

document attachments, you can include just about 

anything digital inside of Evernote. 

● And then, you can search and find whatever you 

have stored in a matter of seconds. 

● If you wrote a note about a new house you want to 

buy, you can find that note in seconds. 

● If you scanned a post-it note you wrote about that 

same house, you can search for it also because the 

paid version of Evernote will scan your images and 

PDFs and store the text just like text is stored from a 

document or an email. 

● By the way, the premium version of Evernote is 

only $45 per year. 

● It’s really a stellar price considering I would pay 

much more for this service because I use Evernote 

for hundreds of projects, files, and notes that I want 

to create or recall every single day. 

 

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● Like many Evernote fanatics, I signed up for the free 

version, tried it out a little, and then didn’t use it 

for over a year. 

● It wasn’t until I heard Michael Hyatt talking about it 

that I decided to give it a second look. 

● I signed up for the premium service two years ago 

and I haven’t regretted it one bit. 

 

● The way Evernote works is that you create a new 

Note and then you can put whatever you want in the 

note: text, pictures, emails, articles, or anything 

else. 

● Then, you can store that note inside a notebook you 

create. 

● If you have many notebooks with a similar theme, 

you can combine those into a stack. 

● At the moment, I have 592 individual notes in 127 

notebooks that are stored amongst 25 different 

stacks.  

● That may sound like a lot, but I’m only scratching 

the surface of what I can hold in Evernote and I will 

likely have a much larger database as time 

progresses. 

 

● There are many other awesome features that 

Evernote has including reminders, easy sharing of 

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notes, presentation mode for speaking engagements, 

and of course Evernote is available on the web, on 

the Mac or PC, on iPhones, iPads, and Android 

devices, and probably even more since I the last 

time I checked. 

● It may take awhile to adjust to Evernote, but once 

you start adding in all your projects and begin 

creating your own new notes, you will quickly see 

just how powerful it really is. 

 

●Okay, the Second piece of my 

personal productivity system is 

Google Drive. 

● Google Drive works well as a companion piece to 

Evernote because Google Drive does things that 

Evernote cannot do. 

● The first is easy storage of documents. 

● Even though Evernote lets you store documents as 

attachments, Google Drive works just like a 

computer hard drive, so most people are used to 

accessing files inside of folders.  

● It feels intuitive and there’s no learning curve. 

● The other key piece that I love is that you can edit 

live documents if you convert your documents to the 

Google format, just like you would edit a note in 

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Evernote. 

● This works really well for maintaining resumes, 

recipes, or shared documents you have with other 

people. 

● On that same note, I don’t use Dropbox because of 

its lack of ability to edit documents in the 

browser. 

● I do use Dropbox as a backup storage device and 

for syncing a few apps on my phone, but other 

than that I stick to Google Drive for all of my 

traditional documents. 

● Also, in Google Drive, if multiple people need access 

to the same document, Google Drive makes that 

really easy. 

● For the most part, I use Google Drive for all 

traditional documents that I want access to 

everywhere I go. 

● All of my files that used to hang out in the 

“Documents” folder on my home computer are now 

stored in Google Drive and they sync with my 

computer so I always have a local backup copy. 

● Ultimately, everything will be in the cloud, so this is 

just a logical step, if you haven’t made that step 

already. 

 

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●The Third and Final piece of my 

personal productivity system is 

Nozbe. 

● Nozbe is a tool I have discussed before and I have 

written a few blog posts about it.  

● The best one to check out is at 

JeffSanders.com/nozbe. N-O-Z-B-E 

● I was very hesitant to switch to Nozbe because I 

thought I would be wasting my time.  

● Fortunately, it turns out that, excluding Evernote, 

Nozbe is the smartest purchase I have made online in 

a long time. 

● Nozbe is not free. The current price is $96 per year 

for an individual license and it’s totally worth it. 

● There are also versions available for teams as well. 

 

● So, what is Nozbe? 

● In a nutshell, it is a powerful task management 

system. 

● It is based on David Allen’s Getting Things Done 

philosophy, so if you have read that book, you will 

understand how the website is structured. 

● Nozbe is available on the web, on the Mac or PC, on 

iPhones, iPads, and Android devices. 

 

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● What I love about Nozbe is the simplicity to add 

tasks that I need to complete and then easily 

schedule them and organize them by project. 

● In fact, because of Nozbe, I no longer use a Calendar 

of any kind. 

● There is a calendar-like feature built into Nozbe and 

that is what I use to figure out what I am doing on 

any given day. 

● When you really think about it, all items on a 

calendar are tasks, meaning that they are events or 

reminders of things to do or places to go or people 

to meet. 

● All of those could be considered tasks, and that is 

why I don’t use a calendar, but instead rely on 

keeping track of every idea, task, project, and event 

inside of Nozbe. 

 

● Before I used Nozbe, I tried the To-Do list built 

into iCal on my Mac. 

● I tried Reminders - the iPhone app from Apple 

● I tried Wunderlist, the very popular app on multiple 

devices. 

● I even tried going back to using a paper day planner. 

● Ultimately, Nozbe has worked better than all of 

these and I am sticking with it. 

● The conversion process wasn’t as easy as I hoped but 

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not because of Nozbe. 

● It was mostly because I was hesitant to commit. 

● I was scared to ditch my old systems and dump 

everything into Nozbe. 

● However, the only way to see the power of Nozbe is 

to write down every single task, event, recurring 

task or event, and any other random idea of things 

you want to do in your life - ever. 

● Once you have all of it in the system, you can begin 

to organize your tasks and events by project to help 

better understand how your life fits together. 

 

● On a daily basis, I live out of Nozbe. Every thing that 

I need to do on any given day is stored in this system 

and it reminds me to stay focused. 

● Even though Evernote’s tagline is “Remember 

Everything” I think Nozbe does a much better job of 

keeping me focused on what needs to happen next. 

● Whenever I ask myself the question, “What 

important now?” - Nozbe always has the answer right 

in front of me. 

 

●Wow! That was a ton of content. 

● You may need to listen to this episode twice, but 

that should help out a lot. 

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● My recommendation, if you want to get started 

today with revolutionizing your own productivity is 

to sign up for the free version of Evernote. 

● Nozbe offers a 60-Day money back guarantee and 

Google Drive is free. 

● All you need for it is a Gmail account. 

● The links for all of these services are in the show 

notes. 

● As always, if you have any questions about anything I 

discussed here, feel free to send me an email: 

Jeff@JeffSanders.com OR record a voicemail 

message that I will play here on the show. 

● Don’t forget you can always leave a comment at the 

bottom of the show notes page: 

JeffSanders.com/014.  

[Fade In Music] 

 

Announcements 

 

● Just 2 quick announcements here at the end of 

this episode. 

 

● The first, if you have not yet joined The 5 am Club, you can easily do so today for free. 

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● When you join the club you will get a free copy of 

The 5 AM Miracle eBook, which shows you exactly 

how to wake up each morning with vigor and make 

enormous progress on your biggest goals. 

● To join The 5 AM Club AND jump start your morning - 

visit 5amMiracle.com.  

● My 2nd announcement is that my next podcast 

episode will be an interview with New York Times 

Bestselling author, Dan Miller. 

● If you have a question about personal growth or 

creating your ideal career path, please leave me a 

voicemail message at 

JeffSanders.com/podcastquestion.  

Final Thoughts 

 

● Also, I would be grateful if you would rate my 

podcast in iTunes with a full 5 stars. 

● That helps tremendously with keeping my podcast 

visible so that people who have never heard of it can 

discover it. 

● Just head on over to JeffSanders.com/itunes 

 

● Also, if you would like to see all of the resources I 

mentioned in this show, please visit the show notes 

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page at JeffSanders.com/014, as in Episode 14. 

● The show notes of every episode provide a written 

description of everything I discuss in the podcast, 

complete with websites, announcements, and links 

to the best resources. 

 

● Well, that's it for this episode of The 5 AM Miracle. 

● Until next time remember, you have the power to 

change your life, and the fun begins bright and 

early. 

 

[Fade Out Music Quickly]