How to Increase Productivity
With that said, here’s a list of 5 things you can do to MAJORLY improve what you get done. This is for your business, but also for your life. They seem obvious, but I can promise you that most people reading this are guilty of one if not all of these. I certainly used to be.1. Prioritize. Then Do Something Important First Thing In The Day.
For most people in the working world, prioritization is easy. You get told what to do, then you go do it. You have discreet work tasks, you know when you’re finished, and your boss applauds or lashes you accordingly. But you’re not some cubicle monkey, you’re an entrepreneur! No boss, no one telling you what to do, no discreet clock in and clock out time, and no end to the myriad of possible strategies and tactics you could try to execute on to grow. Cue the sleepless nights and hair loss. So how do you deal with this? It’s simple really – prioritize, then execute. Step 1.) Make a list of every single thing you’d love to do for your business if you had limitless time to work on it Step 2.) Rank your list based on each task’s expected value Step 3.) Break each task down into ~1.5 hour discreet sub-tasks Step 4.) Complete your top two tasks each day. Complete task one as soon as you wake up. Now some of you are thinking “Only two tasks each day?! That’s only 3 hours of work! You can’t build an empire like that!!!” Forgetting for a second that building an empire is a bad primary goal to have. You’re always going to end up working more than this during your day. Emails, maintenance, fighting fires, things come up when you run a business that you don’t expect. But even if your list is 100 items long, if you just keep hacking away at two items a day, you’ll be done in less than two months! Why do them first thing in the morning? As Mark Twain said, “Eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.” Why listen to Mark Twain? Because he is awesome.2. Create Sacred Space For Work (WITHOUT Facebook or Email)
Okay, so you’ve created your to do list and you’re ready to get cranking! But first, let’s check email for just one second and see if anything interesting came in… …An hour later, you come out of an email induced blackout, no sense of accomplishment and no major steps taken in the business. This one is going to sound familiar to anyone who’s read anything by Tim Ferriss, yet how many of us do it anyway? I certainly didn’t. After all, I’m a smart guy, I’m focused, I won’t fall into the email blackhole for an hour. I’m really just checking Facebook for a few minutes. But those few minutes cost you more than you think. It used to take my business partner hours to write a new article. But once he implemented this system, we realized he could get a high quality article out in a single sitting. He literally DOUBLED his productivity by putting a hard stop on Gmail and Facebook during his 1.5 hour work windows. Again, some of you are thinking “But Ben, that’s just an anecdote! Plus you guys could just be lazy, stupid, and ugly!” Wow, words hurt folks. But putting that aside, you want research? Bam! Research.3. Stop Drinking Excessively
Stop drinking. A drink or two is fine, but no more fifteen drink benders (or at least save them for a special occasion). Not only will this potentially save you a ton of money, but the lack of hangovers will totally transform your weekends. Now instead of rolling around in bed all day feeling sorry for yourself and watching re-runs of How I Met Your Mother, you’re up at the crack of noon and being productive! If you’re still not convinced, read this.4. Cut TV
I’m going to give you Time Miracle-Gro.See also Inside Success Studios: Pioneering A New Era of Mainstream Media for Brands & Entrepreneurs
