Episode 455: How Builder CEOs Get Sh*t Done (Without More Willpower or Fixing Your ADHD Brain)

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Before we jump in, I’ve got a quick invitation for you. If you are tired of being the bottleneck for every decision in your business, you need to be at our Construction Leadership Advance in Nashville, Tennessee on October 22nd and 23rd, 2026. It is a live in-person hands-on event where you and your leaders will get clear on who owns what, on how to delegate results so you don’t have to take work back, and how to make decisions without everything running

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through you. We’ve only got a few seats left. Prices go up soon and registration closes on September 22nd. Again, the construction leadership advance, October 22nd and 23rd, 2026. Go get the details at the link in the show notes, or you can go straight to constructionleadingedge.com forward slash live, L-I-V-E. Grab your seat and a seat for your key leaders. Now let’s jump into the episode.

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Do you ever start the day or the week with really good intentions, knowing exactly what you want to work on, but somehow the important stuff just doesn’t get done. You stay busy, but you’re not focused. You answer questions, you handle problems, you put out fires, but you get distracted easily. And the meaningful work, the process you need to build, the decision you need to make, the hire you need to make, the time that you want to focus on sales and business development, the stuff that really moves the needle just keeps

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getting pushed off. You have these big ideas that haven’t progressed past the idea phase for months, maybe years. And if you’re waiting for more discipline or willpower to fix that, you’re probably going to keep getting the same results. In this episode, I’m going to show you a simple system that will help you stay focused and actually GSD get shit done without depending on willpower or even things like electroshock.

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therapy. So you’re listening to the construction leading edge podcast from construction leading edge.com where it’s all about systematizing your construction business to maximize freedom, impact, and wealth. My name is Todd DeWalt and my team and I have helped hundreds of construction business owners over the past 10 years now put systems in place so they can eliminate chaos, grow their profits, build stronger teams and get their lives back. So

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You probably already know what you need to work on. There’s this process that needs to be created, a recurring problem that needs to be solved. You want to go build a network of architects, realtors, or referral partners, or clients. You want to spend more time on business development. There’s this responsibility that really needs to be delegated. Or there’s this important decision that you just keep pushing off. But every time you try to work on it, something happens.

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Maybe you feel like if you’ve ever been in a swimming pool and you’re trying to swim and catch a beach ball, it’s like the harder you paddle toward it, it just keeps floating in front of you. And every time you try to work on this thing, the phone rings, somebody walks into your office, the customer sends a text, somebody needs an approval, the problem comes up on a job site, you have to just answer one quick email, maybe run out to a job site and suddenly an hour or more is gone.

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Recently, I saw these Instagram posts about business owner. I’m just going to stop by the job site on the way to the office. And then it says something like four hours later, 77 emails, a job site inspection with the clients and a walkthrough with the drywall guy. never made it to the office. Maybe that’s you. You have good intentions. You stay busy all day, but the important work just doesn’t get finished.

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You keep handling the urgent issues while problems that create those issues, the underlying problems just never get solved. So if you’re like a lot of people that we work with, and this is a topic we talk about a lot in our CEO Alliance, it’s not just frustrating. It’s expensive. There’s a cost of inaction, right? Because every problem that you fail to solve,

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permanently keeps charging you interest. Do you ever think about it that way? This recurring problem, every problem that you fail to solve keeps charging you interest. It keeps creating more interruptions, more mistakes, more rework, more delays, puts more work on you, more profit bleeds, and your team never becomes more capable because you’re always there to rescue them.

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The systems never improve because you’re too busy working around those missing systems and your most valuable works keeps getting pushed to tomorrow. relationships that you want to build with your ideal referral partners, the people who can send you work, they just keep getting pushed off and those, the work that they could be sending your way keeps going to somebody else. And if you’re like a lot of people, you are, you’re a visionary.

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Right. You have these big picture dreams and visions for your business and the things you want to do, but your brain feels like more like a golden retriever, constantly chasing squirrels and tennis balls, lack of focus struggle with distraction, but really busy. So I want you to imagine this. Imagine that somebody set up a time-lapse camera in your office and it showed you working. How many times.

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If they did a time lapse video over the course of a day, how many times would they see your door open and somebody stick their head in and ask you a question? How many times would they see you pick up your phone, switch screens, go to your laptop, answer a call, respond to an email? In other words, how many interruptions would they see? And maybe if you’re in your truck, maybe you have to run out to a job site or wherever you’re at, how many interruptions would you see?

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There’s this metric that I came up with last year that I think is really indicative. It’s, tells a lot about what’s going on in a business. It’s the OIC, the owner interruption count, the OIC. And this is some total of all of the interruptions you have over the course of a day, emails, the text messages, phone calls, job trade notifications.

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people sticking their head in your office, unplanned meetings, approvals, decisions that reach you during a normal business day, all added up together. Think about that. What is your average OIC? Is it under 25? Again, you’re looking at phone calls plus emails you respond to plus text messages, job trade notifications, in-person conversations. Is it between 25 and 50? Is it 50 to a hundred? Is it?

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Over a hundred, I’ve spoken with some people who have told me it’s 200 plus per day. And your owner interruption count is a hidden metric that tells a lot about your business. A really high number can reveal one of the root causes of your productivity problem. Right? So if you do the math, let’s say you have 100 interruptions per day.

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You’re working 10 hours a day. So if you do the math, that’s 100 interruptions divided by 10, that’s 10 interruptions per hour. On average, you’re getting interrupted every six minutes. And it’s really hard to get anything done if you’re getting interrupted every six minutes. So here’s what I would tell you. If your OIC is 75 to a hundred or more, your problem is not personal discipline. You don’t.

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need time management, it’s a business design problem. And what I would say, what the OIC over 100 tells me is that your business has been designed so questions and decisions and problems all flow to you. In other words, your business has been unintentionally designed to fail without you. If that’s you, you

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She probably goes schedule a business evaluation call with my team. There’s a link in the show notes, or you can go to construction leading edge.com forward slash apply by the way. Oh, I see also stands for, I see what the problem is. Or, Oh, I see why I can’t get anything done because of all the interruptions. So now I want you to imagine something different. Imagine having one or just one or two protected blocks of time every week.

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when nobody interrupts you. You’re not checking email, you’re not answering questions, you’re not putting out fires. Just one or two protected blocks of time each week where you’re working on one specific issue that will really move the needle, that will have a measurable effect on the business. Maybe you finally create that process that eliminates that recurring mistake. Maybe

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You clarify ownership so decisions stop coming back to you. Maybe you solve that bottleneck that’s been slowing things down on every project. You figure out your pre-construction process that’s really holding up your projects. Maybe you build a plan so you can delegate something that allows you to take something off your plate. Or maybe you can actually spend one or two hours a week doing business development sales, the thing that’s really going to move the needle in your business.

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And after a few weeks, a few months, just imagine consistently spending one to two hours or more a week of focused time on the things that will really move the needle. Imagine that what that would do to your business, right? Imagine that what, that would do for your team and the amount of problems that you have to deal with and the problems that that happened. And you start to feel like you have more control over your time and over your week.

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And you finally have time for the work that only you can do, right? This is what an effective deep work session can create for you. We’re going to talk about, I’m going to give you 10 tips to stay focused and get shit done with work, deep work sessions. Okay. But before we get into that, I’ve got to help you reframe the way you think about time. And before we even jump into that, if you already know you need to get better at time.

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If you know you need to get better at focusing, I want you to go grab the builder CEO weekly operating system that I put together for you in about 15 to 20 minutes a week. helps you take control of your calendar, focus on your top priorities, be able to delegate things with confidence and create more space to lead. So you can get the link to the builder CEO weekly operating system. Grab the link in the show notes and get your hands on that.

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So I want you to think about time differently in three ways. All right. So first of all, lot of construction business owners undervalue their time. They think, oh, I can do this thing myself in two hours and it would cost me 50 bucks an hour to pay somebody else to do it. So by doing it myself, I’m saving the company a hundred bucks. The truth is you’re costing your company $900 minimum. If you’re doing something you could pay

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somebody a hundred bucks. You’ve got to understand that the value of your time is not determined by what it would cost to replace you on a task. It’s determined by the value you can create through high level decisions and actually operating like a construction business owner. I’m here to tell you your time as a business owner is worth minimum $1,000 an hour. And if you’re doing something, if you’re spending time on tasks that you could pay somebody less than a thousand bucks an hour to do, you’re losing money.

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You need to stay focused on the thousand dollar an hour tasks. Right. So think about what could happen if you spent 10 focused hours working on one issue. One thing that’s really going to move the needle. You might fix a profit bleed that saves the company $50,000 a year. For example, years ago, I was running a company and we were buying hundreds of tons of gravel a week.

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And we were paying a pretty high price on that. And then we were using our own trucks and we had to hire truck drivers for this. And there was a rock quarry literally within 300 yards of our shop. I was told we, didn’t use that quarry because they were too expensive. So I spent a couple of hours doing some research and I contacted the rock quarry and I negotiated and I said, Hey, wait.

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We’ll pay you X number of dollars a ton for gravel. We’re going to use a certain amount every month. And they said, deal. So they cut their price and we were able to eliminate the cost of all of these trucks that we kept on the road, the truck drivers that we had to keep busy. And we saved tens of thousands of dollars a month because I spent maybe two hours negotiating a better deal.

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on gravel, right? So think about if you could spend time landing a big project, if you could spend 10 hours of your time to land a big project that generated $100,000 of net profit, right? Maybe you could spend your time and create a pre-construction system that would prevent costly delays and rework. You might spend time training and developing a leader who would take

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things off your plate, maybe even help scale the company. So if you have to think about your time as being worth $1,000 an hour, there are some activities that are $10,000 an hour activities. So you got to rethink the value of your time. And then the other thing you have to think about is there are things you can spend your time on that just cannot be measured in dollars, right? There’s an old saying that not everything that matters can be measured and not everything that can be measured.

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matters. And that applies here because we’re talking about things like time with your children or your grandchildren. Unfortunately, I had calls with people who were later on in years and they say things like, I’ve watched my life just pass me by. My kids are grown up now and they’ve left the house. Maybe they’ve, they’ve had marriages, had a marriage that went south or they, their parents.

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Our grandparents have passed away and they, all they’re left with is regret because they didn’t have time to focus on the things that really matter. And here’s the deal. You can find more leads. You can find more projects. You can make more money. Those are all, money is a renewable resource. Projects are renewable. There’s always more of that coming along, but time is

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a non-renewable resource. You don’t get any more time. Once that day is gone, you can’t get it back. So protecting your time is not just selfish, it’s responsible. It allows you to invest your time in the business, invest your time in your relationships, invest time in your family and your marriage, your health, physical health, mental health. And

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It allows you to invest in the people in the parts of your life that really matter the most because you can’t get any more time back. Now, the third way I want you to re to think about time is imagine you walk into the woods and you’re going to go camping and you need to build a fire, right? And the firewoods there, it’s all scattered around. Some of it’s standing up, some of it’s dead wood that’s laying down. Some has to be cut, whatever. It’s there.

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but it’s not useful to you in its current form, unless you want to just build a forest fire, which is not what you’re going for. It’s there, but it’s all spread out, right? The wood is all spread out and you have enough wood to build a fire, but in its current state, it’s all scattered out. It’s useless too. So to create a fire, have to gather the wood and arrange it in a structured way. So it’s actually useful. So you can actually burn it, right?

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And your time works the same way. You may technically have these little pockets of time. If you’re getting interrupted every six minutes, you may have five minutes, 15 minutes here and there, but it’s all scattered out and scattered time does not create meaningful progress. It’s useless. You can’t solve a complex business problem in little five minute fragments here and there while being interrupted constantly because

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There’s this thing called attention residue. When you switch from one task to the next, your brain has an attention residue. So if you’re dealing with issue number one, and then you have to switch over to issue number two, your brain is still ramping down. There’s this residue. It’s still working on issue number one while you switch over to issue number two. And then you switch to issue number three.

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It’s still working on issue one and two, and you could see how it all stacks up. So you have to put your time together in these structured ways. have blocks of time that are long enough for you to think, solve, and actually finish things. All right. So that’s how you need to sort of thinking about time differently. Now let’s get to these, these 10 tips. I’ve got top, my top 10 tips to GSD. All right. Top 10 tips to get shit done.

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This is something we work with our CEO Alliance members on. We’ve talked about this. it’s foundational to systematizing your business. Your ability to scale your business is directly proportional to your ability to control your time. If you can’t control your time, if you can’t, if you can’t do this, you’re not going to be successful. You’re really going to struggle to be successful growing a business. So here’s number one, I’m going to give you 10 tips.

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on how to focus so you can get shit done. These are proven tested over hundreds of people. Number one, deep work session, put it on the calendar, schedule your deep work session in advance and treat it like an appointment with your most important client. You would never blow off an appointment with your clients to just scroll through email and you need to treat yourself the same way. So don’t tell yourself, yeah, I’m going to do that. I’ll get to it when I have time.

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You will never suddenly discover two extra hours in the middle of a busy construction business. Something’s always going to fill up the space. Something’s going to happen. So you have to put it on the calendar and you need to choose a repeatable rhythm. Figure out the right time of the day, the right day of the week that works for you. Monday mornings, Friday afternoons, bad for deep work sessions. You need to figure out, are you a morning person? When is your mental energy the highest?

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Is it early morning, mid morning? I don’t know anybody whose mental energy is the highest right after lunchtime. So I would recommend avoiding that, but pick a time when mental energy is highest, put it on the calendar, treat it like an appointment. Okay. Hey, Todd here in a quick break to tell you about something. If you’re a construction business owner and you’re still the answer key for every important decision in your business, and you want your team to own more, maybe all of the day to day.

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This is for you. We’re hosting the Construction Leadership Advance in Nashville, Tennessee, October 22nd and 23rd, 2026. It’s a two-day live in-person curated experience designed to do one thing for you. Turn you and your key people into a real leadership team that owns the day-to-day so you can focus on strategy, key relationships, high leverage decisions, and actually being the CEO of

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your business. two days together, you’re going to get clear on who’s accountable for what, how decisions can get made without you, and how to delegate results so work actually gets done without micromanaging. And maybe the best part is you’ll be doing that work in a small room full of like-minded construction business owners and leaders just like you from all over the US and Canada who are dealing with the exact same stuff you are. Not a local

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Home Builders Association Breakfast full of competitors who keep all their best ideas to themselves. Frankly, the relationships you’ll walk away from this event with could be worth the price of admission. Here’s the deal. Registration closes September 22nd. We only have a few seats left. By the time you listen to this, we may not have any seats. So if you want your leadership team to carry more of the weight and take over the day to day, go get your seat.

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for the construction leadership advance at constructionleadingedge.com forward slash live L I V E or go click the link in the show notes to get the details and grab your seat and a seat for your key leaders. We’ll see you in Nashville. Number two, when you have your deep work session on the calendar and it’s time, when it’s go time, you need to have a specific outcome that you’re working toward. Okay.

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Never begin a deep work session by asking, what are we going to do today? We could do this, we could do this, we could do this. If you sit down without a target, without a specific outcome, you’ll spend a quarter to half of the time trying to decide what to do. You might get overwhelmed and just bail, right? Or you’ll just drift into easy work like, oh, I’ll just check email or I’ll clean up my to-do list, or maybe I’ll straighten out my desk or do some stuff that doesn’t really matter. So before the session begins,

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Define a specific outcome. Complete this sentence. By the end of this session, I will have fill in the blank. Okay. Figure it out. If you’re wondering what should I, how should I determine what I should focus on in my deep work sessions, I’m going to give you a handful of questions in a few minutes that you can use. So the finish line should be concrete. You should know whether you crossed it at the end of 60 minutes or 90 minutes.

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You have a target that you are working toward a finish line and categories are not specific enough. What you can’t say, I’m going to work on marketing or that’s not a specific outcome, right? What a specific outcome would be. I’m going to draft the referral follow-up process and assign an owner.

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I’m to focus on staffing. That’s a category. That’s not a specific outcome. A specific outcome would be define the role outcomes and the first three steps for hiring a project manager. Those are specific outcomes. The clearer the finish line, the easier it is to focus. right. Number three, this device right here is your worst enemy for a deep work session. are billions of dollars spent trying to distract you. live in a distraction economy. So what do you do?

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You put this phone, you put your phone and do not disturb or even better yet in airplane mode. All right. You cannot do deep work while remaining to everybody, remaining available to everybody else. can’t notifications and dings and things going off. You’ve got to understand that your phone is one of the most powerful interruption devices ever created. Every text, email, call.

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app notification, vibration pulls your brain away from the problem you’re trying to solve. And even if it’s in vibrate mode, when it vibrates, what are you thinking? Oh, I wonder what that is. So you pick it up and you just get sucked right in. Same goes for smartwatches. Personally, I think smartwatches are a terrible idea. Why would you want to be distracted constantly? My phone is enough of a distraction. Why do I want my, my, an Apple watch or a Garmin interrupting me as well? So.

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Before the session begins, put your phone and do not disturb or airplane mode, silence all text messages. Heck, even tell your team members you are off the grid for 60 to 90 minutes. Okay. This is not about becoming unreachable all day long. It’s about being deliberately unavailable for a protected block of time. Most things can wait 60 or 90 minutes. And if they can’t, that may reveal a bigger systems problem in your business. And what I found is maybe you’ll find the same thing is if you’re not available,

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for 60 or 90 minutes and somebody does call you with a problem, there’s a pretty good chance they’ll figure it out on their own in that 60 to 90 minutes. All right, tip number three is all about location. Get out of your office. So the normal office, your normal office may be optimized for reacting and distracting, not for thinking, right? Phone rings there, employees walk in.

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There’s a refrigerator full of drinks and snacks. You have two or three computer screens. looks like a CSI scene. Normal responsibilities are everywhere. Sometimes the easiest way to change how you think is to change where you think. Go to a coffee shop, go to a public library, a coworking space, go to a hotel lobby, go to a private rented office.

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Or go, go sit outside. We have clients who one guy likes to go to a white water rafting or kayaking place. And he hangs out there and puts his headphones on and does his work there. Another option is here’s something I use. have an office membership that gives me access to a private office for five days a month, 10 days a month. That’s a few hundred bucks a month. And that gives me a place to go when I need separation from my normal work environment. So when I go there.

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I’m in a quiet office. Nobody there knows who I am. White walls, good wifi, no distractions, no stocked refrigerator with snacks, no pantry for me to go raid. And what I found is the change in location creates this mental boundary. It signals, I’m here to get you done. I’m here to get things done. here to get work done. I’m here to work on the business.

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You don’t need a fancy office membership. could be the best few hundred bucks a month that you spend. You just need a place where the normal interruption patterns do not follow you. And then eventually your monkey brain may start to realize, Oh, we’re in GSD mode. We’re at the library or we’re at the, the deep work office or we’re at the park. It’s time to actually get shit done. Number five is to create a protected focus block.

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All right. A deep work session needs a beginning and an end. It should be long enough to get past surface level thinking and get really get into the real issue. So for most people, 60 to 90 minutes is a good place to start. Avoid the temptation of saying, I’m going to do deep work for four hours. Probably ain’t going to happen. Okay. So while you’re in that block, again, work on one outcome, one specific outcome that you’re focused on.

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Don’t switch projects, don’t check email, focus on the things that really matter. A good idea to maintain that protected focus block is have a parking lot list nearby. There are going to be ideas that pop up and you can put them in a parking lot, jot these things down. If something unrelated comes up, write it down, return to the work. You can also use a timer. This is one of my favorite tips is to use a focus timer.

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have a timer that can be set for five, 15, 30 minutes, 45 minutes or 60 minutes. And I just set that. And my monkey brain is good working for 15 minutes or 30 minutes. And I just say, I’m going to work on this until the timer goes off. And then I can take a break and look at something. So remember the goal is not just to stay busy doing stuff. The goal is to produce a defined result.

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A 60 or 90 minute session with email and random tasks is not deep work. A focused 60 minute session that really gets to the root cause of something or gives you a solution can be incredibly valuable. right. Tip number six. This is something that one of our CEO Alliance members shared recently is to leverage your virtual assistant. So your virtual assistant or executive assistant.

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can help make your deep work session time, your deep work sessions actually happen consistently and make them more effective. So what this looks like is ask your virtual assistant to schedule the recurring session, put it on the calendar, protect the time, prompt you the day before to choose the topic. They can do research together with the information you need. They can prepare a simple agenda. They can join you on Zoom.

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and help you work through things. And they can capture decisions and action items and then follow up after. So when you do this, your deep work session becomes a legitimate meeting instead of an optional appointment with yourself. So your VA or your executive assistant can ask you the day before, Hey Todd, what’s the one thing we want to solve tomorrow? We have a deep work session coming up at 10 a.m. tomorrow. That one question.

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forces some clarity before the session begins. And also it adds a layer of accountability, which we’re going to talk about this more in a minute. So if you do not currently have an executive assistant or a virtual assistant, or you’re not sure how to use one effectively, it doesn’t make sense. There’s a pretty good chance that the answer is you should have one. This is a really high leverage move. So I put together a remote assistant playbook for construction business owners.

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links going to be in the show notes. You can go find out what could an executive assistant or virtual assistant help you with. And you can also visit our trusted partners page, go to constructionleadingedge.com, go to the trusted partners page. You can get in touch with a couple of agencies that we have vetted and have had great success with. So use your executive assistant or virtual assistant to help you out. I mentioned accountability. Tip number seven is to add external accountability.

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All right. The key to results is implementation of the key to implementation is layers of accountability. So the more layers of accountability you can add on, the more likely you are to succeed. So a lot of you are like, Oh, I just got to get better at time management or man, I wish I had better willpower. need to be more disciplined. Now, this is a math problem. You just need to stack the deck in your favor and layers of accountability. So if you’re like a lot of people,

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you perform better when another person is expecting an outcome, right? You are much more likely to follow through with something if you tell somebody else you’re going to do it, right? For some reason, we’re likely to let ourselves down, but we’re less likely to let somebody else down. create external accountability. A couple of ways to do that. One, you can commit to sharing the results with your team. You might say,

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I’m going to present the new change order process at Friday’s meeting. You haven’t created the change order process, but now you have a deadline. You have created some external accountability. You can schedule the implementation meeting before the plan is finished. You can work alongside an accountability partner. You can ask another business owner to check in with you. You can join a peer group like the CEO Alliance. This is a program we have for our clients and one of the

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biggest things they get out of it is accountability. They don’t want to show up to a meeting and not do what they said they were going to do. You can also ask a coach, a colleague, a team member to follow up. There are, there’s even a service. There’s a company called Focusmate, focusmate.com. It will pair you with another person for a scheduled live virtual coworking session. This is a real thing.

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The beginning, you briefly tell each other, this is a stranger by the way, you tell this other person what you plan to accomplish, then you both work independently while staying on the video session. At the end, you check in and report what you’ve completed. So this other person does not need to understand anything about your business. They don’t need to collaborate. They’re not gonna ask you questions. All they’re doing is providing their presence. They’re just there to provide accountability.

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And the point is not that you need somebody watching you forever. The point is to stack the deck in your favor. All right. Stop trying to get more willpower. Stop trying to get more disciplined. Don’t make this a test of getting more focus. Create a structure. Stack the deck in your favor. This is a math problem. How do you add more accountability to increase the likelihood of results? So create.

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a structure and a process that makes follow through more likely. Number eight, one of the best uses of AI is you can use AI as a deep work thinking partner. You don’t have to conduct deep work by sitting silently at a desk quietly. A lot of you do better walking. So put your earbuds in, open up chat GPT or Gemini on your phone. Have it scheduled, have the clear outcome.

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and start talking through your one specific outcome. Walking can help shift you out of operational mode. It’s going to get you out of the office. It’s going to get the blood flowing. It’s going to get, it easier for you to think. And you can lean on AI sort of like you would with your virtual assistant to help you clarify the problem, challenge assumptions, come up with a solution, right? But the quality of the session depends on the clarity of the prompt. You can’t say,

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Hey chat, how can I improve my business? It’s garbage in garbage out. You need to ask very specific prompts, right? So use AI to think with you, not to replace your judgment. Obviously you still know the business, the people, the context, just tell AI what you want it to do and let it help you. Number nine, when you start thinking about solving problems, my ninth tip is to solve the problem systematically.

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Don’t use your deep work session to fix today’s version of the problem that’s going to return tomorrow. One of my favorite things, favorite pieces of advice I ever heard was to take a post-it note and write, how can this be the last time I solved this problem? Put it on your wall or on your computer screen. So instead of asking, what do we do here? How do we deal with this issue on a project? Ask, why does this keep happening and how do we prevent it from happening again?

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How can we solve this problem one last time? So look for the missing systems, the unclear ownership, the weak handoffs, the undefined expectations, the missing checkpoints, the decisions that unnecessarily depend on you and focus on the root cause of solve problems systematically. So the purpose of the session, one of the best uses of a deep work session is to solve recurring problems one

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final time. Get to the root cause, come up with a solution, and then implement that solution. You may not create the perfect solution in one sitting, but you should make the next occurrence less likely and less dependent on you. And tip number 10, you’ve got to understand this is, you’re not going to change the world in one

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deep work session, just like you’re not going to lose 50 pounds by tracking your food one day. You’re not going to get a six pack by going to the gym once. So don’t judge this habit based on one perfect session or your first session. First deep session, deep work session may feel awkward. You may struggle to focus. You may choose a target that’s just too large and you have an outcome that’s just.

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ridiculous, maybe it’s too small, you may get interrupted, you may fail to finish. That doesn’t mean it’s failed. It doesn’t mean it’s a failed work session. Okay, this is about continuous improvement. It’s not what you do once it’s what you do consistently. So choose a simple format that you can repeat, try things, you don’t really know what’s going to work until you try it. Schedule the session, select one outcome, protect the time and the location.

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Use accountability and support and then produce one meaningful results and then do it again the following week. Some may go well, some will not go well, but you have to get it going and avoid the temptation of not starting until you get it perfect. I talked to some guys a few months ago and they had been talking about their CEO schedule and they wanted to do three or four hours of deep work sessions.

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And they never started because they could never find three to four hours. And they didn’t want to start until they could do it perfectly. So as a result, they just never did anything. Sometimes perfection is the enemy of progress. So keep your expectations low and start somewhere 30 minutes, 60 minutes. You just have to get it going. You don’t have to get it perfect. You don’t even have to get it right. You just have to get it going. So.

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Consistency matters more than building the perfect routine, right? One thing that we discussed in our CEO alliances that people often don’t recognize how valuable these deep work sessions are until they stop doing them. So when they are doing their deep work sessions consistently, what they’ve told us is the business feels more controlled, problems get solved.

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priorities move forward, the needles, needle moves. But when those sessions drift a few weeks later, they feel scattered again and they realize, ah, I’m not doing my deep work sessions. I’m drifting. So this is why it should become a keystone habits, not just a one-time productivity trick. This is how CEOs operate. This is how CEOs do it. In fact, eventually CEOs spend all of their time.

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on deep work sessions. They don’t get involved in the operations of the business. So let’s get into one of the questions that I hear a lot, which is what, what should deep work sessions be used for? What should you use them for? So let’s talk about what you should actually work on during these sessions. I’m going to give you five questions you can use to identify the outcomes of the topics for your deep work sessions. All right. So number one,

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What problem can you solve one final time with a system or a process? This involves looking for something that keeps happening, keeps creating repeated questions, mistakes, profit bleeds. Don’t just solve the problem again, build the process that prevents it from ever happening again. Another question you can ask is what two or three activities create the most value when you personally do them?

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What are the two or three things you spend your time on that create the most value? These could be high level sales conversations, building strategic relationships, developing leaders. This helps you determine what are the activities that you should spend your deep work sessions on. Number three involves the 80-20 principle, which if you’re not familiar with that, 20 % of your problems create 80 % of the chaos.

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You don’t have to focus on all the problems. Not all problems are created equal. Not every problem deserves equal attention. There are a few recurring issues that probably create a disproportionate amount of frustration. So the question to ask is what are the 20 % of our problems that create 80 % of the chaos? On the flip side is what are 20 % of the activities that yield 80 % of the results? And you want to focus your deep work sessions on the 20%. Number four,

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Here’s a good question. What problem are you solving repeatedly that the team just accepts as normal? What problem are you solving over and over every month or maybe every project that the team just now accepts as normal? Right? Every company has its workarounds. People stop questioning and they say, that’s just, it’s just the way it is. And that always happens. So ask that question. What are the problems that you’re solving that the team accepts as normal? Right?

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And then the fifth question you can ask is what does the team depend on you for that they should depend on a system for? What does your team depend on you for that you should depend on a system for? What do they have to call and get approval for? What decisions do they have to get from you? What are the things that only you can do? Right? Maybe everybody depends on you for a certain approval. Maybe you’re the only person who knows how to price something.

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Maybe the team needs you to remember critical details, right? Ask what could be replaced by a clear process, standard decision rule, a checklist or something else. So those five questions will give you plenty of high value topics for your deep work sessions. What should deep work sessions not be used for? They’re not to be used for email. They’re not to be used for routine day-to-day operations.

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They should not be used for the 80 % of tasks. Somebody else could perform just as well as you, and they should not be used for things that are urgent, but not important. Okay. Deep work sessions are the time to solve issues that keep creating the workload or put new things into place that will really move the needle for your business. Okay. To summarize step one, protect the time, put it on the calendar.

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Choose a different location, silence the phone, create a protected block. Step two, choose one high value outcome. Use one of those five questions we just covered. Choose a recurring problem, a valuable activity, a source of chaos, something that you want to focus on, something that’s going to move the needle. And define what you will have completed by the end of that session. Step three.

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Stop trying to get better at willpower and discipline. Stack the odds in your favor, add support and accountability. Use a VA, an accountability partner, your team, a peer group, an AI tool or focus made, something like that. Create the structure that the session actually happens and produces a result. All right. So if you’re tired of starting every week in reactive mode and putting out fires and wondering where all your time went and then getting to the end of the week,

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say, we didn’t get anything done. I am no further along on the stuff that really moves the needle. Then I would encourage you to go get the Builder CEO weekly operating system. It gives you a simple plug and play weekly rhythm so you can take control of your calendar, identify your five most important priorities, be able to delegate with confidence and then create the space to be able to think and lead. It takes about 15 to 20 minutes a week to use.

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So you can go to the link of the show notes and install the builder CEO weekly operating system today. It’s not software. doesn’t depend on any kind of software. It’s super simple, low tech. And it’s your first step toward building a construction business that does not need you to run it. So go get your hands on the builder CEO weekly operating system right now.

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Hey, before you hit stop and skip on to the next episode, let me ask you something. If you’re building custom homes or big renovations and you’re starting jobs before scope, subs and selections are completely dialed in, how long can you keep scaling like that before something cracks? That’s exactly what we’ll unpack on your free business evaluation call. In about 45 minutes, my team will help you do a few things. Grade your current handoff from office to field.

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Put some real numbers to the hidden profit bleeds that could be in your business. could be hidden profits in your business. Sketch out what a repeatable operating system would look like in your business from sales to pre-construction through completion. And if it looks like we can help, we’ll book a follow-up call to talk about the right implementation program for you. If it’s not, you’ll still leave with clarity and next steps. We will leave you better than we found you. So to book your call and be

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sure that you qualify for that call, to constructionleadingedge.com forward slash apply, A-P-P-L-Y, or click the show notes. There’s a link in the show notes and book your business evaluation call.