Tips on How to Manage Your Time Without Burning Out

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Are you a busy attorney who is prone to burning out? In this episode of the Maximum Lawyer Podcast, Tyson Mutrux chats about insights on effective time management. 

To avoid burning out, you need to be productive with healthy habits. For Tyson, this involves working out, eating healthy and getting enough sleep. It is so easy to get into bad habits which will affect how you do your work and will affect your body. It is important to incorporate different ways to practice good habits in your day to ensure you are performing at your best.

Tyson provides a few methods on how to focus on a few top tasks each day. It is best to focus on the most important tasks so you are not overwhelmed. At the beginning of each week, determine which tasks you will focus on to tackle all of your goals.

Listen in to learn more!

Episode Highlights:

• 3:05 The importance of working out and getting enough sleep for productivity
• 8:37 The effectiveness of time blocking 
• 12:01 Methods of focusing on a few top tasks each day 
• 13:39 The importance of keeping all tasks in one place 

• Ask us a question about starting your own law firm here!

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Transcripts: Tips on How to Manage Your Time Without Burning Out

Tyson Mutrux (00:00.706)
Welcome back to another Saturday episode. This is Tyson Mutrix. I have, I think an awesome one to share with you today. It is how I manage my time without burning out. was thinking about this because to be honest with you, I have a lot going on. have, I in the last few years, I picked up flying. So I'm a pilot now, as most of you probably know at this point. I've got two businesses that I help run.

maximum lawyer is one of them. and you know, mutual firm is the other one, obviously. both of those are obvious to most of you. If you've been listening for more than a couple of weeks and then I've, I have also started jujitsu in the last year. So that's, that's a big one for me. I work out. I coach two soccer teams, my two youngest kids, which we call our littles, and

So I've got a lot going on and that's among many other things. And, I'm sure that many of you are busy as well. So some of these tips might help you. Now here's the thing. I'm not going to give you all my tips. I don't, I don't have time. These are supposed to be short episodes. I, I cherry pick some of these. Not all of these are going to work out for most of you or for some of you. so pick what you want. as my wife likes to tell me.

Amy she says and I think that this came from someone else I think it came from Someone that does yoga She it's a lady that does online videos. I can't cannot remember her name, but Damn it. I can't say that now. I want to least sound like I prepared

Tyson Mutrux (01:48.256)
Adrian.

Tyson Mutrux (01:55.64)
So I'm gonna pick up where Amy… As my wife Amy tells me, and I think that this came from Yoga with Adrienne, take what works for you and leave the rest. Or some variation of that. But take what works for you and leave the rest. And so let me go through these. Before I do though, just a couple reminders. If you want to leave us a video,

Asking a question about anything from starting your firm to running a firm I would love to hear from you all you have to do is go to maximum lawyer comm forward slash ask so it doesn't matter if You're daydreaming right now working for someone else and you you want to ask a question about how to start or It could be that you're you knee -deep in the trenches and you're running a court every day and you don't have time for anything or anywhere in between those just

submit us question and what we'll do is we will play that live on the air. It won't be live. It'll be recorded on the air. So you'll actually we'll play that and we'll answer your question. So maximum lawyer dot com forward slash ask. All right. The other thing I love hearing from you all. So if you would text me, I would really love it. We get lots of texts and I just I like reading them. So three one four five zero one nine two six zero three one four five zero one nine two six zero. Sheme text.

and I'll get back to you. All right. How I manage my time. Some of these might seem counterintuitive. Some may not. I don't know. But the first one, working out. OK, so working out is a big one. I it reduces my stress. There are tons and tons of studies on how working out increases your productivity. You are sick less often. You have more energy, yada, yada, yada.

But I'll even say working out and eating healthy. can, I can tell you whenever I, and I've got a sweet tooth. I've got a massive sweet tooth. Okay. and I, I will do well a lot and then I will kind of have my days where I will just kind of, I wouldn't say I'm binge, but I go pretty darn close. I go hard. I go hard on the sugar and I can feel it. I feel it real bad. so, working out and eating healthy, both of those.

Tyson Mutrux (04:24.898)
have done tremendous wonders. it's, you know, the next one I'll get to, and I'll talk about these kind of those three together, sleeping, getting sleep. And that's one of those ones where you're counterintuitive because we're so used to sometimes at least early on I was, where you get up really early, but you also stayed up really late because you had to get that thing done, whatever that thing is. But sleep, working out, and then eating healthy, those three things.

do a lot. So a few weeks ago, and I'm a little late in recording these episodes because I missed my recording day because I got code a few weeks ago, but I had been sleeping just over five hours a night, which was not good. And that wasn't typical for me. I injured my shoulder in a car crash, so I got to have shoulder surgery. So I had not been working out like I had wanted to. I'd been doing some workouts, but they weren't.

They were nowhere near as rigorous as they needed to be. and so I, I got COVID and it hit me hard. it was something that it put me down. You can, I don't know if you can hear my voice, but my voice is still not all the way back and I was down for a week. I, I'm convinced that if I had been eating healthy and if I had been working out as just like, like normal, and if I had been getting the sleep, it would not have affected me nearly as bad as it did.

I'm convinced of that because usually I can fight this stuff off pretty easily when it comes to being sick and this that one put me down and So those things they do that those are really really important and those are at the top of my list I am going to I'm gonna skip down to my list and this is gonna seem a little odd to throw in here But this is about this part a big part. This is about making sure you're healthy Okay, and that's my whoop band and I gotta thank Jeremy Danielson for

Recommending this he's a he's a guild member The reason why I knew exactly how much time I had been sleeping it gives me time in bed and then actual sleep my time in bed was under six hours and My my sleep was just over five hours meaning I was basically getting in bed and then crashing okay, and I was I was I was able to see all these different things about my sleep patterns over the previous month and so

Tyson Mutrux (06:51.234)
It gives me a lot of data whenever I know I'm off. It tells me when my stress levels are high. It tells me when I can push harder. It tells me whenever I need to recover a little bit more. So the Whoop Band, does help me keep track. And this is not some sponsored ad or anything. This is just something me helping you out like Jeremy helped me out. This is something that's going to keep you in the game. Okay. You're going to want to stay in the game. That's going to help you.

stay in the game. Okay, so let's get into, actually I've got one more, think, let me look at my list, got one more health related thing and then we'll get into a little bit more hands -on practical things. Now I do think what I'm just talking about is practical, but these are, know, a people, they overlook their health so much and it is so important. I overlooked my health for years.

But this is the last thing I'll say and then we'll get into the less of the health related things. And this one is, I got this as a tip from Jim Hacking. No, no, no, this was Jeremy Nicolason. I started getting monthly massages. we got paid monthly, we get monthly massages. the reason why I got them, wasn't really a stress thing. was more of a…

I'd been working out quite a bit and it was more so that my muscles were loosened up and I was kind of working out any kinks that I had. it is also, that was obviously was great for that. But then on top of that, lowering of the stress too, both of those two things, huge advantage. And so whenever I am less stressed, I can think better and I can think faster. OK, so you might think, well, how has this helped me when it comes to, you know,

Getting more done. It's because it's gonna like it like I just said I am less stressed so I can think faster I am I'm healthier so I can get more done I'm not down because I'm sick or I have a cold or anything like that I have more energy so I can work longer Okay, and I can whenever I'm at full steam. There's no one that can work as hard as me Just I'm just I'm telling you you can tell me all day long that you're gonna outwork me I'm just gonna tell you it's not gonna happen. Okay, and it's because

Tyson Mutrux (09:15.598)
I'm healthy. I'm working on all cylinders when I'm not working on all cylinders, you'll crush me. Okay. and so monthly massages, those, that's one of those things that, tremendously helpful. Okay. So let's get into, so the next thing, and I, and I talk about this as an individual item. So if you want to talk, if you want to hear more about how to do these, some of these things, listen to the other episodes, but time blocking time blocking is one really,

It's a really effective thing and you can you can time block in a variety of different ways, but time blocking is really really good. So if you want to hear more about how to time block, listen to that episode. I'm not going to go into detail here, but time blocking really, really important to keep your calendar structured. next thing is I have someone else that checks my email. I will rarely go into my actual my email. Okay. So someone else goes into my email. Her name is Jacqueline. I call her JQ Jacqueline.

She goes into my email, she checks my email, we meet daily, and then she relays to me what I need to know. Everything else gets forwarded to the people that need to deal with it. Okay. if, if I, if it needs a response, she'll respond. If I need to go in there to actually respond to it, I will, but that's rare. She does everything for the most part. and what that does, it prevents me from going in there and getting distracted by a thousand other things. And, and so she, you she organizes the email, she'll

She'll code it properly, she'll archive it, so if I need to find it later, it'll be there. All that's done. But having someone else do that saves me a tremendous amount of time. It's no different, and I heard this from someone else, but it's no different than having someone answer your phones. Okay. It's extremely helpful. The next thing. I have learned, I don't know if it's the hard way, but it's taken me a long time. I've learned over the last few years to let go.

and let the leadership team solve problems and or the teams in general just solve any issues that need to be solved, allow them to get the work done, allow them to make mistakes, all of that. That took me some time, okay? I will admit, but I just want you to think about for just a second, all of those tasks that have piled up

Tyson Mutrux (11:42.912)
over the last days, weeks, months, maybe years. Okay. I doubt any decades, but I'm sure that there are several tasks that have piled up. So you've thought about all those tasks, right? Just think if you would let, you know, other people help you out and do those tasks. Those things would have gotten done. At least they would have gotten most of the way there and you could have helped, you know.

get it over the goal line if you had to, but for the most part, they would have gotten done. And I've learned to do that. And then I've realized that, you know, we have a lot of really talented people in our firm that can get these things done. It is like I said, it took me some time to get to that point, but it is it changes things quite a bit for you where you can you can rely on them and they can get those things done with that. I have also this is I can't say I'm great at this yet.

I'm learning to ask for help. I am very stubborn when it comes to asking for help. I don't like to do it. It is something that I know I need to do sometimes, but it's something that I have struggled with for all my life. So I'm learning to ask for help. And so that's another one. It's somewhat related, but it's not. It's different. Sometimes pride gets in the way and we don't want to ask for help and sometimes we need it. And that's something that I've learned to do.

The last two are task related things. I have I deal with my top tasks every single day. And I know in the past, I've talked about top three, I've talked about top five. John Fisher's talk, but you at this point, if you're listening to this podcast, you've probably heard about, your top three pop top five or whatever for the day. I've gotten to the point where now it's not necessarily I don't have a, you know, a top, you know,

whatever, I don't have a specific number. It's a small number. So I've got my, it's no bigger than five, but I'll have my top things for the day and that's all I'll work on. And I'll work on the most important one. But I now have a little paper tablet that's got all my tasks, you know, for each day. So everything's on this tablet. I've got, it's for the entire week. So.

Tyson Mutrux (14:03.21)
It has you know my top for the week the things that I've got to get done. So each day it's got it divided There's a you know a note section There's a section for me to do I have you know to kind of list to do items But each these things are broken down and I and I focus on those things for the week So that's kind of my game plan for the entire week and that's how I how I focus on things and Getting having it handwritten has been Pretty helpful for me. I've tried a lot of different electronic options

But whenever I'm focused on my top things for the week, it's got to be handwritten. Okay. I have done it. I've built stuff out that was pretty effective for the most part, but this is for me, handwritten, but do whatever works for you. But have a, have a place for your top items that you're going to deal with for each day and for the week, whether it's, know, you have your top one for the day, top three, top five, whatever it may be, but don't, don't have it more than five. Five's a lot. And then the last thing,

This is really, really important. Okay. This is from the book, Getting Things Done. And by the way, my last tip, I don't want you to confuse these two. The last one was about my top tasks. Okay. My top tasks. The other one is, is all tasks are in one place. Okay. So,

I have all of my top tasks and those are the things you're going to You can think of these as kind of like action items. So these are the things that I'm going to do that day or that week. But you probably have a bunch of other tasks that are piling up in your personal life, your business life, whatever. Your church life, if you go to church, all that, you know, all these different tasks, get them all into one place. Okay. So get all of your tasks into one place.

All right, so I work off that top tasks sheet on that. That's not that's not what I call it, but you know the handwritten list that's that's built off of that master list of tasks. OK, in the firm what we have is we've got we have a lot of tasks boards. All of our tasks are in task boards. I put all my tasks onto a task board, my own private task board. And it's all of them. I've got my business and personal all of them in one place because what will happen is if you have separate lists.

Tyson Mutrux (16:23.718)
one of them will inevitably get ignored. It'll just get ignored. That's what will happen. You know what I'm talking about. But if you have them all in one place, okay, you're going to one place all the time. That place, that place, that place. And so I'll build my top list off of that master list, okay? So you want to get them all into one place. Really, really important. That is one that has been one of those game changers, is getting them all into one place that way.

I know where to go when I need to figure out, know, you know what I need to do it next on an item or how do I move this task forward? I can go to one place. That's that's pretty helpful. So alright, so this was a longer one longer episode. Sorry about that, but it's an important one. I hopefully You got something out of it. There are more tips Maybe I'll write a book on my time management, but I don't necessarily have time for that at the moment

But hopefully you got something from these things that have helped me manage my time over the years. With that, we're going to wrap things up. I would love to hear from you. So text me 314 -601 -926 -0. 314 -501 -926 -0. Shoot me a text. If you want me to cover something, I'm happy to do it if I can. So make sure you do that.

And until next week, remember that consistent action is the blueprint that turns your goals into reality. See you, everybody.