#076 – Mining & Limits

Good morning everyone,

Hope you’re having a great week!

Let’s jump in.

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read time 3 minutes 

#076 at a Glance:

• Quote: General ambition vs specific ambition.

• Podcast: What rich people do differently with their time.

• Deep Dive: IMARC 2024.

• Hack: Set time limits on your social media apps.

• Tweet: Victory is assured.

Quote I’ve been thinking about:

Wow.

Podcast I listened to:

Modern Wisdom #831 - Dan Martell - What Rich People Do Differently With Their Time

Dan Martell is an entrepreneur, investor, and author.

This is one of the most tactical podcasts that I’ve listened to in a while. Two guys at the top of their game. Chris definitely did a fantastic job in approaching this chat from the everyday person’s perspective to ring out as much practical advice as possible.

Here are some of the most tactical lessons I took away:

• Buyback principle: you don’t hire people to grow your business, you grow your business by buying back your time.

• Audit your calendar fortnightly → which things sucked your energy and time?

• When outsourcing tasks, you need to hire people after you know what you’re going to do with that additional time.

• Analyse/consider the weird time wasters that you don’t even think about. Dissect your calendar in immense detail.

• Administrative tasks are the first thing that should be taken off your plate (adopt the 10/80/10 rule when first starting to outsource admin tasks to others):

  • First 10% of the task: you explain the task to the individual and ‘set it up’ for them.

  • Second 80% of the task: the person you have hired does the task.

  • Last 10% of the task: you finish it off/approve.

• You’re not going to love everything that your employees do. That’s just the cost of doing business. Accept that and be fine with it.

• How does someone get past the ‘no one can do it as well as me’ trap?

  • 80% done by someone else is 100% awesome.

• Structurally incorporate ways to make your employees feel seen, heard, and appreciated.

• 3 final interview questions to ask anyone that you’re hiring:

  • What are some of the things you went through as a kid that shaped who you are as a person?

  • What are the two toughest things you went through in your life that shaped who you are as a leader?

  • Pretend we can’t work together. Five years from now, what is your dream life?

Listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or YouTube.

[Podcast Length: 2 hours 34 minutes]

Deep Dive:

International Mining and Resources Conference + Expo (IMARC) 2024 

Last week, I was very fortunate to attend the 2024 International Mining and Resources Conference + Expo at the ICC here in Sydney.

Attracting over 9,000 attendees and over 800 companies from more than 120 countries, IMARC is where the most influential people in the mining industry come together to connect and discuss some of the most important topics in the space.

It was a real eye-opener for me and it was super fascinating to dig into the weeds of Australia’s most significant industry.

These were some of my biggest takeaways from the 3-day event:

• Electric vehicles require 6x the number of critical minerals compared to regular combustion engine cars.

• There is a massive shortage of young talent in the industry; there has been a 60% decline in enrolments in mining-related studies such as mining engineering and geology.

• In the second quarter of this year, mining exploration companies spent more money looking for lithium than iron ore.

• When it comes to the circular economy, there are big opportunities at the macro level but also on the micro level with specific assets and projects to be more self-sufficient.

• It is not possible to transition to a circular economy without the technological capabilities of Industry 4.0.

• Industrial waste is a huge opportunity within supplier ecosystems to build the circular economy.

• China is ahead of the curve when it comes to recycling and is currently the largest smelter and refiner of critical minerals in the world.

• Tasmania has not only achieved ‘Net Zero’ but it is actually ‘Net Negative’ and has been for over nine years in a row – one of the only jurisdictions in the world to boast that statistic.

• German car manufacturers and producers are very interested in Australian critical minerals but ESG is on the top of their list when deciding on suppliers.

What are your thoughts on the industry and where it’s headed?

Hack I’ve been using:

Set Time Limits On Your Social Media Apps

I can honestly say that since I’ve been back from overseas, the single biggest source of improvement that I’ve noticed in both my productivity and quality of life has been setting a 15-minute time limit on Instagram from Monday to Friday (and sticking to it).

I seriously cannot believe how much time was being wasted in retrospect just by being easily sucked into the vortex of social media algorithms.

3 minutes here, 5 minutes there, 10 minutes over here…

It really adds up.

For reference, this was my screen time last week:

Down 41% in just one week.

And I know that a lot of people have already set time limits for certain apps on their phones but struggle to stick to them…

To those people, I’ll say this:

Your phone is holding you back. That little brick in your pocket that is meant to be helping you is arguably one of the biggest forces working against you.

If you can just break that habit of clicking ‘ignore’ when your time limit is reached, it is such a huge win that will spill-over positively into almost every other area of your life.

Sometimes I even try to trivialise the use of my phone and social media by thinking to myself, “There’s no way that emperors and great leaders throughout history would ever waste a second on this type of thing. Not even out of choice, they literally just wouldn’t allow themselves to have the time.”

That thought usually works for me as well.

Let me know how you go.

Tweet I liked:

Victory Is Assured

Thanks for reading! Grateful for your support.

Stay hungry, stay humble, stay curious. ⚡

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