One of the greatest challenges for an entrepreneur is time. But if you think about it, each of us has 86 400 seconds per day….no more, no less. As one can’t manage time- it is what it is- how does one manage yourself and your busy-ness daily?
I want to share some of the most powerful productivity insights and tools with you.
Let’s dive right in…
1. Get Your Habits Right
We all daydream about being rich and successful. Dreaming is powerfully attractive. It allows you to create any possibility without fear of failure or judgment. Unfortunately, the problem with dreams is that they are nothing more than a contemplation of a possibility of doing something.
And no one has ever become rich and successful based on a possibility of doing something. In order to become a high achiever, those dreams must become grounded in growth. Intentional growth is what separates high achievers from those who simply daydream.
Some of the most successful people in the world intimately understood that to achieve their dreams, they must grow, in self-awareness, character, skill set and relationships.
Inspiration isn’t some random event. It is an organized result…
2. Value Suffering
I know this one won’t be popular with most people. But whoever said you’re playing at “most people level”.
We live in a society that sells us easy.
Anything that seems hard or uncomfortable or messy is called bad.
And the quick-fix, pleasurable and fast is considered good.
But here’s the thing: every master suffers. And to become the single most productive person you know, you’ll have to accept some pain along the path.
Van Gogh remained mostly anonymous his entire life, only reaching fame after his death. Yet, he kept on producing his art.
Steve Jobs was considered a misfit, eccentric and oddball. Yet, nothing stopped his monomaniacal pursuit of world-class.
What I’m suggesting is that every visionary is initially ridiculed and later revered.
Every artist, chef, manager, athlete, entrepreneur and scientist committed to mastery faces criticism as they pursue originality, cynicism as they hunt their passion and condemnation as they chase their commitment.
3. Do Real Work Versus Fake Work
Really important distinction here.
Average producers confuse activity with productivity.
They think movement equals effectiveness.
And they get trapped into spending the best hours of their best days climbing mountains only to realize that at the end of the day they scaled the wrong ones.
Peter Drucker said it beautifully:
“There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which shouldn’t be done at all.”
Checking email first thing in the morning, pushing paper, doing senseless meetings and engaging in administrivia when you should be creating remarkable value are all examples of doing fake work…
The kind of work designed to make you feel like you’re getting big things done but actually dig you deeper into the hole of mediocrity and overwhelm.
Allow me to share Robin Sharma’s “90/90/1 Rule” that has created huge breakthroughs for so many people. For the next 90 days, spend the first 90 minutes of your workday on your #1 opportunity.
Just stop doing any fake work first thing in the morning. Check your email after lunch. Make your phone calls in the afternoon. Surf the Net in the evening.
4. Be an Incrementalist
Massive productivity isn’t the result of one revolutionary act.
Instead, it’s actually the result of supertiny daily wins.
5 little acts of progress on your key plays every day deliver 1850 wins in a year.
“A small daily task, if it is really daily, will beat the labours of a spasmodic Hercules,” observed British novelist Anthony Trollope.
Beautifully said.
The things you do regularly are 100X more important than those things you do rarely.
5. Understand that Elite Productivity without Deep Refuelling Causes Dramatic Depletion
Try carrying a heavy load for a long time and you’ll be forced to stop in a short time.
But take rest breaks every little while, and you can go farther than you’ve ever dreamed…
Old-school performers think that the best way to get more done is to work harder. But research shows that’s actually the way to get less done.
Pushing yourself relentlessly without regular periods of renewal has actually been proven to deplete your key assets of focus, energy, and productivity over time.
The smarter move? Work in intense bursts of total focus for 90 minutes and then take 10 minutes to rest, refuel and relax. Run these cycles through your workday and watch your energy and overall performance rise to breathtakingly great levels.
6. Know The Power of The 3 S’s
Here’s a valuable idea: exceptional creativity and uncommon productivity need a space to present themselves.
Ordinary producers are always so distracted and busy being busy that there’s no opportunity for their best ideas and performance to come out and play.
Ultra-productive performers get that time alone to allow the brain to shift to the realm where their personal genius resides.
With quiet time, your brain waves shift into an alpha state. And you receive the insights and reflections that truly can move you to change the game within your industry and inside of your life.
The best of the most successful business-builders and entrepreneurial titans on the planet, understand the value of a period of daily Solitude, Silence, and Stillness. They’d carve out time to think, plan and visualize. Every 24 hours. Without fail.
And ironically, by making the time to reflect, the actions that followed were vastly more focused, productive and excellent.
By “doing nothing”, you achieve everything.
7. Practice Spectacularity
Ok. This is a made-up word.
But the principle is this:
Practice being spectacularly productive long enough and being spectacularly productive will become your way of being.
Recent science confirms it’s easier to act your way into a new way of thinking than think your way into a new way of acting (super important idea here).
By behaving like the most productive person you know (for 66 days says the habit-installation research of University College of London) even when you’re not there yet, you’ll rewire your brain patterns to the point where world-class productivity soon becomes automatic. Your default. And your new normal.
And this is my great wish for you….a new normal.
7 of the best tactics for seriously amazing productivity that have helped so many people produce epic results and become legendary within their fields.
This writing is based on the work of Robin Sharma – A leader without a title.
Annemarie Ross is a business and life coach and founder of MindSkillsCoach. She has a passion and focus to add value to peoples lives through helping individuals and business owners to optimise themselves and their businesses. The core of her coaching methodology lies in nueroscience and the impact of thoughts on the brain and neurochemical activation.