The best social sharing snippet from this interview… “If you wanna be more productive, start being more active.”
In this episode, I interview Mr. Productivity himself… Mark Struczewski. We talk about his running routine and its impact on productivity. He shares his journey from starting daily runs after Hurricane Harvey to maintaining a staggering 2,532-day streak. He discusses the physical and mental discipline gained from running, how healthy habits contribute to productivity, and the importance of personal responsibility. We also explore Mark’s views on proper pushups, disciplined morning routines, and the difference between being busy and truly productive.
Resources
Mr. Productivity website
The Runner’s World article that Mark references
Listen On Apple Podcasts
Listen on Spotify
Watch the Podcast
Read the Podcast
I am here today with Mark Struczewski. Mark, how are you doing? Well, I’m in Houston, Texas. It is like a million degrees, but I’m happy to be here to serve you and your audience. Excellent. Excellent. I’m so I’m not, I’m going to say it. I’m so excited about this podcast. I know that word is totally overused, but I think we have a lot to talk about in terms of productivity and even running, we both have running involved and I’m all about improving and business and personal, so I’m going to be excited to talk about all the things today.
Let’s start with running because I want to talk shop a little bit. We talked a little bit before and I’m curious about how productivity and running or did running spur productivity productivity. Is there any correlation between the two? What started it all was just being honest with you.
Mark’s Background on Running
What started it all. We had hurricane Harvey come visit us back in the end of August, 2017, and it got 51 inches of rain over three days. My wife and I house did not get that flooded, but during that, I read an article on runnersworld.com. I don’t know why I happened to see this article, but it said, what I learned from running one mile a day for 250 days.
And I thought to myself, Hmm, I could do that. And on August 29th, 2017, I went for my first run. Now I had been running before that, but not every single day. And now I’m at, well, as of today, we’re recording this in August 8th, 2, 532 days. In a row. I’ve run during the winter storm in February 2021 when it was 15 degrees for a couple days here in Texas.
And I remember I was running at 5 o’clock in the morning in my house. I’m not crazy. I’m not going to run. It’s 15 degrees outside and the lights went out. The power went out. I grabbed my finish flashlight and actually finished running in the house. I’ve run with back pain. I’ve run with knee pain.
I’ve run with something very painful called a thrombus hemorrhoid. It’s as painful as you think it is, but every day means every day, no excuses. That is so incredible. That is a lot of days running. I can’t, being a runner myself, I cannot even imagine because I like having at least a down day or two, especially after a long run.
Do you run the same all the time or just a mile or? Yeah. Oh, it’s between one and two miles because I can’t, I can’t do a marathon because I run every day. I can’t take a day off because I have to start over at one. So the minimum is one mile. Okay. And I generally do about two to three. Miles takes me about 20 minutes, but if I do more than that, then I may not be able to run the next day.
Okay. All right. That takes a lot of commitment and a lot of oomph. And that is amazing. So congratulations on that. Well, thank you. And I will tell people that some days I probably look like a drunk zombie, but you know what? I still go out. I still go out. If I don’t sleep well at night, I still go out because a lot of people All the stars have to align.
They have to have no pain. Everything’s got to be right in the world before they go out for a walk or a run or go to the gym. And I’m like, you have to adopt the mentality. I don’t care what happens. I’m going out for this run, or I’m going out for this walk, or I’m going to go lift weights because too many people are letting the least tiny thing Keep them from living their best life, right?
How Running Relates to Productivity
I would definitely agree with that. Actually. I want to go into that because that mentality, how does that relate to productivity? Well, I’ve been saying that people, healthy people are productive people. How happy people are productive people. And it’s all comes down to discipline. People ask me, how 30 and five o’clock, seven days a week, including weekends?
How old days and vacations. I said, because I choose to, it’s a discipline. I don’t go to bed with my fingers crossed and go, I hope I wake up in time. No, I don’t need an alarm. I wake up naturally. Now the night before I go screens off at seven 30 and I’m lights out at eight 30. So I, I don’t think anything happens that good happens after eight 30 at night.
So I go to bed and I wake up early, but it comes to discipline, whether you want to get control of your procrastination, your email inbox, stop spending so much time on social media, it boils down to discipline, which is tied directly into personal responsibility. Something very few people are talking about these days.
Everyone’s saying, well, it’s not me. It’s barb. It’s mark. It’s steve. It’s stanley. It’s john’s no I I think gary vanichuk says it right if you take personal responsibility for everything in your life Life is so much easier. Mm hmm. I 100 percent agree with that and I think talking about the the 5 30 to Get up time or the 4 30 and then you start with the going to bed at night There is a, a direct correlation with that because when I started doing that on a regular basis, it was so much easier to get up in the morning rather than when I was just kind of going to bed whenever I wanted to.
It was kind of like, okay, well, what did I feel like the next morning? And it felt like crap half the time. So when I got back on track and doing the same thing every day, it was much easier. I think sometimes people call it like that. It’s like a airplane hangover or like a jet lag, but it’s like a sleeping jet lag type of thing.
If you don’t keep it continuous every single day. Did you ever feel like a drunk zombie when you got up? Well, I think half the time, maybe depending on what year it was, I was probably still drunk.
But yeah, you just don’t like you wake up and you’re yeah, you’re just fuzzy. And you’re like, you don’t know what’s happening. And it takes a while to get going. And once I started getting more consistent, it was a much easier to like, start the day and, and that kind of thing. I did hear on your podcast, you were talking about your morning routine, slash ritual.
The Proper Pushup
And you talk about the perfect pushup. Could you share a bit about that? Well, it’s actually called a proper pushup. See a lot of people do cheating pushups. So they may have their knees on the ground or kind of get halfway down. I do a proper pushup, which is a military pushup, which means you’re, you’re like in a plank position.
You do one pushup. People go only one. I said, when’s the last time you did a proper pushup? No cheating, not halfway down, not knees on the ground. I mean a full pushup. Now, eventually I want to get to two pushups and three pushups and four pushups, but I want to get a streak long enough where I am doing a proper pushup.
Now, my biggest challenge is not the pushup is my dogs. They want to come and give me licks and loves it. Like, Hey, Hey, I need to focus here. But yeah, so I do a proper pushup every day. It’s something I’ve, I’ve been doing. I’m 59 and people go, no, you’re not 59. I actually have to pull up my license to show people that I am 59 because partly I shave all the gray off.
The other part is. I could talk about what else I do in my morning routine, but I take good care of myself because I wanna live and run on my 110th birthday. Mm. That’s a, that’s a hefty goal. I feel like that’s 110. Well, nowadays it feels like people are living to a hundred more often, right? Not the people who don’t take care of themselves.
Busy vs Productive
True. But the people who stay active. Yeah. Getting to a hundred, 110, I believe 120, 130 is not too far away from most people. Yeah, all right. And when people say they are productive, what do you think they mean versus what you think productive means? Most people think being productive is you’re busy. Okay.
Are you busy doing the right things or are you busy being busy? So there’s a saying that just cause you’re busy doesn’t mean you’re productive. Here’s the way I see it. You can be busy being productive, but just because you’re busy doesn’t mean you’re productive. Now the listeners probably thinking that’s a riddle.
It’s not. Listen to what I said. You can be busy being productive. But just because you’re busy doesn’t mean you’re being productive. In other words, are you doing the right things? What are the right things, Mark? So glad you asked, audience. The right things are, what activities are moving you towards your goals?
Okay, if you’re spending hours on end scrolling on TikTok or Instagram actual YouTube, is that pushing you toward, pulling you towards your goal or pushing you away from your goal? We all know, I mean, we’re all smart people, smart people listen to your podcast. They know if what they’re doing is moving them towards their goals or away from their goals.
And so I just want people to think about when you’re spending your time is what you’re working on moving the needle. Now you will spend time does wasteful. If you’re human, it’s going to happen. But when you’re intentional saying, I’m going to spend 30 minutes on Tik TOK, I’m just going to scroll through stupid cat videos.
All right. Now you’re being intentional about it instead of letting technology rule you. Very good. Do you feel like the, we can talk about apps, but I don’t really care about the different apps. I think those are out there. People can find them, but in terms of, do you think those are even helpful or do you think it, or I’ll just leave the question at that.
Productivity Apps
Do you think apps are helpful in productivity? Yes. And no, here’s what I mean. There is a. I’m trying to think of a word for it. There is a symptom where people, if I tell them, so I don’t like giving apps, I don’t like giving names of journals I use because they’ll go search for the perfect app, which doesn’t exist or the perfect journal or the perfect notebook.
That’s called procrastination. So if you don’t have a journal, go get a notebook, go get some blank piece of paper, because we all get that junk mail and it’s printed on one side. I always save that junk mail. If it’s blank on the other side, you got a piece of paper to write on. So stop making excuses.
What I want to encourage people to do is don’t worry about the apps or the journals or the notebook. Use what you got and get really good at that. Then upgrade people think, well, when I get the perfect planner, I’m going to be a journaler. No, you’re not. You’re not one. Now, when I get the perfect calendar app, then I’m going to use my calendar.
No, you’re not. You’re not using the one you have. So I think it’s a mistake to pause your attempt to be more productive until you find the elusive non existent productivity app or journal or notebook or whatever. Do you, how do you tell people to. Not feel ashamed or guilty about not being productive. Oh, that’s a good question.
Can I be brutally honest, please? Okay, get over it get over yourself. Okay, because when people come to me and they say Man, I wish I was like you man. I I don’t have enough time in the day And the first thing I ask them is how much time do you spend on social media?
Confront Your Demons
What does that got to do anything? Five, six hours, seven hours, eight hours a day. So you got to confront your demons and This is not this is cliche, but it’s true If you don’t acknowledge a problem, you’re never going to be able to solve it if you’re spending so much time on social media Well, don’t come to me and say I don’t have time because it’s not a question of not having time You have time what you do is you lack discipline you lack priorities and i’m telling people.
Hey, take a look at your life Your life not your friend’s life not your co worker’s life look at your life Am I really being productive? And most people here, here’s a, a real life demo. Here’s the thing that’s current. So don’t you want to get a planner? At the end of the day, put this down in front of you and go, okay, what do I want to do tomorrow?
Get Actionable with Notes
Take one of these things. It’s called a pen. If you’re listening to audio podcasts, I’m holding up a pen and write down what you want to do tomorrow. But I work at a corporate job, write it down what you’re going to do tomorrow. Because then when you look at the list the next day, you’re like, Oh, I had six things on my list.
Got four done. It’s not a bad day. And I wouldn’t encourage people to take it to another level. Give yourself an old school grade, A, B, C, D, F, incomplete. And for you nerds out there, yes, you can do plus and minus if you want. But when you see it, when you see it like, oh, I had seven things, got one thing done.
What did I do? Because you spent the hours someplace. And when you take the time to gift yourself, wow, man, what did I do? Then you, then you start thinking and you won’t remember. So then I tell people, okay. On the back of the piece of paper or the index card every time you do something write down tick tock one o’clock Stop tick tock five o’clock now.
Now You’ve Got the Data for Unproductivity
You got proof now. You’ve got data now you can say Okay, I need I need help and that could be Reaching out to me finding a podcast whatever But most people don’t really realize they have a problem because they don’t document anything So they rationalize in other words, they tell stories themselves. Oh, i’m really very pretty I’m getting a lot of stuff done Really then you should be able to tell me what the big things you did today are and most people can’t Yeah.
And I feel like a lot of us, and I say a lot of us, and I’m saying me, when I realized what was happening, especially it was like as soon as last year, I started documenting to get some eyeballs on it, and it was very eye opening, and I just, I was like, okay, that didn’t make sense, like, why did I waste all that time, and then there was all the in between time that I realized that was kind of like down time, and I would waste that, but I also did, Learned when I started doing that like I was really scared about documenting because then I would have to face What I wasn’t doing or what I was doing and that was a little bit scary in and of itself We like most people’s default is due to do the easy stuff So you may have nine or ten things on your list and let’s say ten It’s a nice round number but nine of those things took you 10 minutes But the one thing you really needed to do to move the needle forward is that 10th thing and you look at your card and go, well, I got nine out of 10 things done.
Well, no, you weren’t productive. I would, I would argue because you didn’t do the one thing you really needed to do. You did the easy things. So I don’t even put easy things down on my list. If they’re going to take me a couple minutes, yeah, you get a quick dopamine hit, but is it moving the needle? Most cases it’s not.
Yeah. Is there a magic number to put on the list? Of how many things to do for the next day. Okay. No, I, I’ve heard three, five, seven, nine, 12, two, one, you know, what needs to move, what you need to do to move the needle forward. So if like my wife works with me, so she does all the post processing for my podcast.
She’ll take old podcast episodes from like six years ago and take the transcript and have AI create a new newsletter and she’ll tweak it and stuff like that. My job is to build relationships. Coach clients and create content and help others like you create content to get my name out there. That’s it.
So I don’t mess around with my website. Okay. I do. Sometimes my wife will call me out on it, but my point is, I know what I should be working on. We all know what we should be working on, right? Everyone knows we should work on like for news. Okay. A lot of people say, don’t watch the news. I don’t say don’t watch the news.
To Assist Productivity, Stay Informed, No Obsessed
I say, stay informed, not obsessed. So don’t have the news on the background all day long. There’s a news program I watch every day. My wife and I watch it at lunch. We have lunch in front of the TV. We get our hit of news. So we know what’s going on in the world, but you don’t need to know everything about everything.
You just need to know what’s going on in the world. And someone goes, Hey, did you hear it? New Zealand’s on fire. Oh yeah, I heard about that. I don’t know all the details, but I know New Zealand’s on fire or there’s this thing called a pandemic or whatever. You should know it’s around, but you shouldn’t know everything about everything.
Does that make sense? Yep, absolutely. I would agree with that too. I think limiting, especially just around the mindset of it, like limiting the things that maybe don’t make you feel as good or that take away from the energy that you have. So I, I believe in that for, for sure. With productivity and relation to motivation.
Motivation Does Not Fuel Productivity
I want to hear your perspective on how those kind of go together because and also in particular with like motivation and how it comes from either physical or emotional and how that plays a role into being productive. You can be productive and not be motivated, but it’s more difficult. I mean you could hate your job, but you don’t want to lose your job So you’ll do enough at your job to make sure you don’t get fired So you are being somewhat productive But when you are motivated like I identify as ticker from Winnie the Pooh Shout out to all the people who know what Winnie the Pooh is if not go google it I am that annoyingly optimistic.
I love my life and I’m not Elon Musk. I’m not Bill Gates. I don’t have billions of dollars. I’m not even a millionaire yet. Okay. But I love what I do. I wake up every day excited for the, for the day. I look at it every morning as I did when I was a little child waking up on Christmas morning to see what Santa brought me.
Unfortunately, there’s not a tree full of presents every morning that would rock, but it’s not because that is my love language presents. But I think people need to be excited About what they do. And we were talking about procrastination earlier. When you’re doing what you love, you’re far less likely to procrastinate, but everybody on this planet procrastinates.
Everybody. Elon Musk procrastinates very little. Bill Gates procrastinates. Very little, because here’s the deal we’re human. We all have things we have to do that we don’t want to do. And if you, my definition is if you don’t do what you need to do, when you should do it by you procrastinated. Now the high performance people in our lives, they procrastinate very little, but they still procrastinate.
And as you go down the so called food chain, we tend to procrastinate more. And they’re like, well, I hate my job. All right. Someone got a gun to your head. What do you mean? Well, if you don’t like the job, go get another job. And people have to say what? And they go, Oh, I got benefit. They got perks and vacation.
Like, okay. So you get good pay, lots of benefits. But you’re miserable. Is it really worth it? I wouldn’t you’d like to go someplace else Maybe make a little less money but be happy and people look at me like what are you talking about? And it’s all about the motivation because it trust me your employer If you are motivated and you come to work on fire, you don’t think you’re not going to get promoted You don’t think you’re not going to get accolades and rewards and thanks and appreciation.
Of course you will so you Talked about Doing the, trying to bring my train of thought back to the taking account of what you do during the day to find out where your time is going. Is that what you would recommend to a step to getting productive? If one feels like they’re not being productive or is there a different flow to go to, to figure that out?
Track Where You Spend Your Time
Oh, time tracking or doing a time audit is such an easy thing. You don’t need a special app. You don’t need a special notebook. All you have to do is get like an Indus card. And every time you do something right down what you did and how long it took you. And be honest, this will not work. If you’re like, I spent four hours on Tik TOK.
I won’t write that down. If you had, if you ate a dozen donuts, Just because you didn’t write it down or record it in your app. You still ate the dozen donuts, okay so be honest with yourself because once you see the truth like Yeah, when I said that I thought of I love lucy. She did this one thing. Oh, yeah.
Yeah. Another another oldie but goodie, you know because when you see the truth and you wrote it down in your handwriting you’re like, oh man, I did all what You I watched the news for three hours. I spent four hours on Tik TOK. Now you’re going to start addressing the problem. And I got news for you.
When a client comes to me, the first thing we talk about is how they’re spending their day. They think they’re coming to be better planners, but I’m like, well, tell me how you spend your day. And I’m like, no, I want to become a better planner. No, I need to know where you are now so I can get you to where you want to go.
And a lot of people don’t like to talk about it. It’s like going to the doctor and you, you, you tell him lies and he draws your blood. He’s like you didn’t tell me the truth about your diet. Did you? Cause he’s going to know by the blood. Okay. So when you hire a coach, just. Tell the truth. It’s going to be a lot easier and they’re going to be able to help you a lot more than if you try to hide the truth because they’re going to find out a good coach will find out right.
That makes sense. So is there anything that we haven’t covered that you think we should cover? That’s very important to know around productivity and how it relates to us as small business owners. Yes.
I want to talk about health and wellness because healthy people are productive people. And we need to be far more active than we are.
So I mentioned earlier, I’m 59 years young. Here’s my morning routine. I wake up between four and 35. I do a proper pushup. I do a four minute squat. This is something I learned from a book called built to move. And a lot of people say AIDS that become sedentary. And we all seen those kids when they, when they sit down on the ground with their feet in the ground, their butt almost touched the ground.
Can you do that? As you get older, those hip flexors get really tight. So I started doing these hip flexors, the squatting every day. The first day, my body goes, no sweat. The second day, my body’s going, Whoa, we doing this every day. So I do it every day. Then I do, I started doing farmer’s carries. I carry two 20 pound weights in my house, down my hallway through the library in the, in the living room back, do that for six minutes.
I do two 45 second kettlebell swings. Okay. Then I will walk. briskly walk up and down my hallway while reading a book. See multitasking here. If it’s a weightlifting day, I will lift weights for five to 10 minutes, then do the walking. Then I go out and ground for five to 15 minutes. And then I go off for my run.
Then I take a cold shower. Well, as cold as a shower can get in Houston in the summertime. And that’s my day. Now to most people, they’re going to like, wow, that’s a lot. But I don’t feel 59. I feel like I’m 42. mm-Hmm. . And that’s because I’m intentionally taking care of myself. I would feel even better if I could stay away from the sugars.
I, I love sugar. I got a sweet tooth, so I’m not perfect. But I’m telling you, if you wanna be more productive, start being more active. My wife for our anniversary got me a rebounder, which goes right behind our couch in our living room, so I can watch TV while I’m rebounder a rebounding. You can go outside and you, this is something nobody talks about.
Take off your shoes and socks. You wouldn’t want to do it up in the you’re in Minnesota, right? Yep. You wouldn’t want to do this in the winter time when it’s like four degrees. The coldest I’ve ever grounded outside was 27 degrees. I put blankets over my feet, but it does ease the inflammation. Okay. And then like about an hour before I was on your show today, I was outside just my shorts, taking them the hot sun, you know, cause.
There’s an old, there’s a joke on online that in the summertime, it goes the sun, Texas, and then earth. So put that visual in your mind. So I got sun for about 30 minutes while I’m grounding and I was doing some reading on my Kindle. So I just implore people, take care of yourself. If you have young kids and they go to bed at seven 30, don’t stay up until 11, go to bed at eight o’clock and get rest.
Because people always tell me they have little kids that can’t go to, they can’t sleep in because the kids are up early. Well, then go to bed when they do like what you don’t need to watch what’s on TV. It’s all streaming anyways. Watch it tomorrow. Right? Yup. Good, good, good, good. Okay. So if somebody was listening and they were like, okay, that’s a lot of great information and they can only have one thing to take away from it.
The Takeaway
What would you recommend they take away? I want to go back to what I just said. You’ve got to take care of yourself because when you take care of yourself, I’m talking mentally, physically, and spiritually, you’ve got to be maybe not Tigger like me, but when did the pool just wear pants or maybe Christopher Robin, but you gotta have a positive attitude and you can’t have a positive attitude.
If you’re like smoking a lot and drinking, getting high all the time and abusing your body, it’s not going to work. It’s not sustainable for the long term. So please take care of yourself. Right. I love that. Awesome. Awesome. Okay. And if somebody wants to find out more about what you do and tune into your podcast and all the things, can you share how is best to reach you?
Yes. Go to my website, misterproductivity.com. There you can sign up for my free email newsletter. And you can actually get a free, no obligation coaching call with me. Details are on my website. If you’re in the podcast, obviously you’re listening to Barb’s podcast. Just go look at it.
Listen, go look for a Mr. Productivity podcast on Spotify, Apple podcasts, wherever you listen to podcasts. My mission is to help as many people as I can be more productive and live a more richer life. Well, thank you for that. I do appreciate it. And thank you so much for your time. My pleasure. Thank you for having me on.
All right. And that wraps up this week’s episode with Mark Struczewski and productivity for you and your small business to help your business thrive online. We’ll see you in the next sweet spot. Cheers.
