Photo courtesy of Allyson Lewis

The number seven has always had a unique place in the human experience. We have the seven seas and the seven wonders of the world, and there are rumors of a seven-year itch.

Of course, it’s also associated with luck. Who wouldn’t smile seeing a row of sevens on a casino slot machine?

In business, however, you can’t rely on luck alone. You have to be strategic and intentional in everything you do to succeed. To that end, productivity guru Allyson Lewis has taken the concept of lucky number seven and turned it on its head with her 7 Minute Life system, which emphasizes dedicating only a few minutes each day to achieve maximum impact—both in business and in life.

Thriving yet lacking

The twentysomething version of Lewis might be surprised by this mindset makeover, considering her immediate success. Born and raised in Arkansas, Lewis graduated from William Woods University before breezing through her licensing exams and being hired at a financial services firm at age twenty-one. This led to a prolific thirty-one-year financial career, including twenty-four years at Morgan Stanley. “I ended up in the top 11 percent in sales nationwide at Morgan Stanley in a town of 46,000 with two people on my team,” she shares.

Yet, at forty-three years old, Lewis felt lost. “I just woke up one day and felt in my gut that I wanted more out of life,” she reveals. “I had a great job and family, but there was so much more out there. So I embarked on a quest to understand how I could use my time and talents to experience new things—to thrive like never before. And I wanted to help people and businesses do the same.” To reach that goal, Lewis created her system, which aims to encourage people to reach their full potential daily. “We only have twenty-four hours in a day, even though as business owners, we usually think we have way more,” she explains. “If you break that down, it’s 1,440 minutes. With the 7 Minute Life, I’m teaching people to take 1 percent of their time—seven minutes in the morning to do five tasks and seven minutes at night to deconstruct their day—to geometrically improve the other 99 percent of the time they spend living.” In other words, by creating simple, repeatable daily habits, 7 Minute Life practitioners can significantly increase their focus and productivity while also reducing stress.

Practicing what she preaches, Lewis says she has followed her system for years and swears that it has changed her life. Here’s how you can likewise transform your life and your business.

Seven-minute morning routine

1. Think
“People have lost the ability to dream,” Lewis says. “But imagine if you could step out of the noise every morning and ask yourself what you really want out of life. So the first thing I teach people to do with their morning seven minutes is to think: dream of possibilities and come up with ideas. It’s all about being intentional with your time and directing your life instead of letting life come to you. In business, that’s going to make your revenue and your company grow.”

2. Clarify
Piggybacking onto that is defining what Lewis calls your “north star”—the driving factors behind what you do. “You need to put into words who you are, what your talents are, and which mindset you need to succeed,” she states. “At the end of the day, when you can confidently say, ‘This is what I want to do,’ ‘These are the lives I want to touch,’ and ‘This is how I want to do it,’ people will be drawn to you and want to take the journey with you, and your business will skyrocket.”

3. Plan
To help gain clarity, you must put a plan in place, which requires the simplest of tools: a planner and a pen. “We don’t have time to do a thousand things every day, so your plan has to state the really important ones,” Lewis says. “We ask you to brainstorm everything you could feasibly do and write those tasks down in a planner. This allows you to reflect, stay tethered to your purpose, maximize your time, and accomplish more.” What type of planner should you get? It can be a simple notepad, or you can use the 7 Minute Life daily planner, a comprehensive tool that comes with not only tracking pages but also helpful lists and encouraging words.

4. Prioritize
Next, rank the items on your to-do list in order of importance, and then select the five you’ll complete before 11:00 a.m. “We call that our 5 before 11 list,” Lewis explains. “If you focus on doing five important things for the next seven days, a week from now you will have accomplished thirty-five high-value tasks and ninety days from now 450 tasks. Besides moving you toward your goals, engaging in this process means you’re taking care of yourself and doing things that matter, which makes life more meaningful.”

5. Choose
You now have a plan of action and a vision of what the day could be like. But it’s all for naught without your final morning task: choosing to do it or not do it. “Many people need to learn how to create these disciplines,” Lewis admits. “A lot are in what we call cow paths. Here in Arkansas, someone may own thousands of acres, but when they go back to their barn, they take the same path every day: the cow path. People instinctively use such defaults, especially negative ones—waking up late, having no plan or purpose—because they’re familiar. But people can decide to create new assumptions and new mindsets through these morning disciplines.

Seven-minute evening routine

By instilling the seven-minute morning disciplines, you’ll better maximize your time management and have more productive and meaningful days—but it doesn’t end there. Every night, you’ll take another seven minutes to contemplate your day and, if need be, tweak your processes. Lewis advocates asking yourself questions such as the following to gain deeper insights.

Gut check
How did I feel today? Was I mentally strong? If things were bothering me, am I going to let them continue or am I going to take action?

Task evaluation
Did I do what I said I was going to do? Could I learn anything? What could I do differently?

Perspective
What am I most grateful for? Did today matter? What did I do really well? Can I envision a tomorrow that’s bigger and better than today?

Age-old wisdom

The secret to all this is actually centuries old. Lewis credits Aristotle’s theory of eudaemonic living as an influence for her belief that true happiness necessitates focusing on others, using one’s gifts and skills to make the world a better place, and striving toward a higher meaning. “When was the last time you woke up and really strived for something?” Lewis asks. “That’s what I want people to do. Eudaemonic happiness will lead to your highest human good, especially in the totality of your life. Ultimately, that’s why I’m sharing the 7 Minute Life.”

In the end, it all comes down to living in the present. “During this journey over the last couple of decades, I’ve tried to wake up every day and say, ‘Today is all I have,’” Lewis says. “That’s something anyone can embrace, especially when it comes to time management. Every minute matters. When you see every day as your most valuable currency and recognize it for the resource it is, you’re living your best life. If you don’t, you’ll blink and today will be gone or a decade will have flown by. A mere seven minutes can get people there and make such a difference, bringing meaning to what they do and how they go about it both in and outside of work.”

For more info, visit the7minutelife.com