Craig Ballantyne

Craig Ballantyne is a Productivity & Success Transformation Coach from Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and the author of The Perfect Day Formula: How to Own the Day and Control Your Life.

On his journey to success, Craig had to overcome crippling anxiety attacks, and he beat them with his 5 Pillars of Transformation. Today Craig shows men and women how to use the 5 Pillars to lose 10 to 75 pounds, get a raise and make more money, find the love of their life, and overcome any obstacle in the way of success.

Expert session

Tactic that has had the biggest impact on Craig’s success

Wake up 15 minutes earlier

Result if you follow the steps in Craig’s session

Discipline and learn to set rules for yourself to become more successful

Full session with video, notes, audio and discussion inside EHQ Club. Learn more

Expert session snapshot

Transcript

Yeah, absolutely. And so, it came to me while I was reading stoic philosophy. And there was a really great quote from a book from Epictetus, you know, his teachings anyways. And it said, control what you can cope with what you can’t and concentrate on what counts.

And I loved how that can be applied to the three parts of the day so we can really control our mornings and that’s what gets us off to a start of a perfect day. And then we cope with what we can’t control, which is all the chaos in the afternoons.

And we have systems in place for overcoming that. And then we do all of that work and put all that structure into place so that we can concentrate on what counts at night, which is our family and our health and our hobbies. And that’s the way that we go morning, noon, and evening to really dial in those perfect days.

So in terms of, you know, the perfect day formula, you’re saying that people can improve their life by having more time to spend doing things they love?

Absolutely, it’s and it all comes down to having more structure in place so that you have more true freedom in your life.

All right, so how do we go about getting that structure? And how does it all work?

Well, you know, it’s planning and preparation. That’s my first pillar of success. And so we know that we need to start off the day, right. And in order to start off the day, right, we actually have to start planning the night before.

So we script our day, we identify our number one priority, we identify when we’re going to work on that we you know, schedule in our calls like this one, and we make sure that we have an endpoint for those calls so that they don’t go on too long.

Same with our meetings, and that way, we’re controlling our time. We’re doing the best we can to take ownership of our lives.

And that way we don’t waste time during the day because every minute you spend surfing the internet or reading email that you don’t need to steal time from your family you know causes you to work late and you miss out on dinner or you miss out on your children’s sports or recitals and it’s because you don’t have structure in place during the day so you need to get dialed in during the day so you can have that true freedom at night.

And true freedom at night I really like that spending time with your family is super important having just time away from from your business is vital for your your health and also even the health of your business too. And and you have this three c formula Can you can you tell us more about that?

Right right. So that’s the three see formula that I mentioned earlier control what you can cope with what you can’t concentrate on what counts and it really worked out well with the three parts of the day.

But the most important part is by far controlling your morning you control what time you get up. You control what you do first thing in the morning. You control those hours. You can control you have for breakfast so you can start off on the good foot or the bad foot. And if you start off on the right foot, you have an amazing day.

Okay, so if we’re talking about controlling, you know, the start of the day, your morning, what are some of the things that you recommend people should be doing to make sure that they start off the day? Right?

Well, the first thing that we should do is we should get up 15 minutes earlier than we normally are now. Now, I know there’s a lot of talk about, you know, getting up at 5am and joining this crazy 5am Club, but you don’t need to do that. It’s not about the time you get up. It’s not about the hour that you get up.

It’s about what you do with the hours that you are up. And so all I ask people is a 15 minute extra their day. So if you’re getting up at eight o’clock now get up at 7:45am go down to your kitchen table, pen and paper and you’re going to sit there and you going to work on your number one priority in life.

And when you do that seven days a week, that is over 70 hours of clear, uninterrupted thinking over the course of the year and that allows you to make big gains In success, it allows you to improve your health. It allows you to improve your relationships, whatever it is you focus on, you will improve. And it all starts with just 15 minutes in the morning.

All right, love that next 15 minutes in the morning. So just really structure your day and, you know, get make sure that you’re What are you doing when you’re struggling today, you’re actually sitting sitting a goal there are you just like writing out and things you need to be doing?

You’re identifying your number one priority. So what is the most important thing I need to do tomorrow morning, and you’re doing this the night before. And you’ve identified that number one priority, whether it’s write a chapter in your book, whether it’s do these calls, whether it is you know, work on reducing your debt, your credit card expenses, whatever is most important to you.

You’re going to focus on that first thing in the morning, and you’re going to get up and you’re going to go right to it. You’re not going to check your email, you’re not going to you know, go and turn on the telly you’re not going to do any of that stuff. You are going to focus on your number one priority. as Brian Tracy called it in his book, Eat That Frog.

You’re going to Eat That Frog, and you’re going to do that thing you don’t want to do, but you’re going to do it then because you have the greatest discipline, and you are going to focus on it. And if you do that, and you do nothing else over the course of the day, you have won the day.