When it comes to productivity, some people seem to work twice as hard as others in the same amount of time; they have ability to complete things. While juggling multiple projects, they without fail, reach their goals.
11 Things Productive People do and You Don’t
Here they are:
#1 They focus on each minute, not each hour.
One of the things productive people do and you don’t is to default to hours and half-hour blocks on the calendar. Ultra-productive people know there are 1,440 minutes and there is nothing more valuable than time.
Money can be lost and made again; however, time spent can never be reclaimed. As legendary Olympic gymnast Shannon Miller said, he keeps schedule which is practically minute by minute. One must master minutes to master life.
#2 They focus on one work.
Ultra-productive people know multitasking is real productivity killer. Survey conducted at Stanford University confirms multitasking is less productive than doing single work at time. Scientists found people bombarded with streams of electronic information cannot recall information, pay attention, or switch from one job to another and those who complete one task at time.
However, what if some people have special gift for multitasking? Stanford scientists compared groups of people based on the tendency to multitask and the belief that it helps the performance. They found heavy multitaskers—those who multitasks lot and feel it boosts the performance—were worse at multitasking than those who like to do single work at time.
Frequent multitaskers performed worse as they had trouble organizing the thoughts and removing out unwanted information, and were slower at switching tasks. Multitasking decreases efficiency and performance as brain can focus on one work at time. When one tries to do two works at once, brain lacks capacity to perform both tasks.
One of the things productive people do is to realise the Most Important Task and work on it for 1 to 2 hours each morning, without interruptions. Tom Ziglar said, “invest first part of day working on number one priority which will help builds business”.
What task will have biggest impact on reaching goal? What accomplishment will get one promoted at work?
#3 They don’t follow to-do lists.
Throw away to-do list; instead schedule every work on calendar. It turns out 41% of items on to-do lists are ever performed. And all those incomplete items lead to stress and insomnia due to Zeigarnik effect.
Productive people put every work on the calendar and then work and live from calendar. Use calendar and schedule entire day into 15-minute blocks. It sounds like pain; however, this will set one up in 95th percentile, advised Jordan Harbinger.
#4 They beat procrastination with time travel.
Future self can’t be trusted as one is time inconsistent. One buys veggies today as he/she think to eat healthy salads all week; then one throws out green rotting mush in future. A guy bought P90x as he thought he is going to start exercising vigorously and still box sits unopened one year later.
What can one do now to make sure future self do the right work? Anticipate how one will self-sabotage in future, and come up with solution to defeat future self.
#5 They make it home for dinner.
The things productive people do is to know what they value in life other than work. There is no right answer, however, for several, values contain: exercise, family time, giving back. They allocate the 1,440 minutes’ day to each area they value and then they stick to schedule.
#6 They use notebook.
Richard Branson has said on more than one occasion he wouldn’t have been able to build Virgin without simple notebook, which he takes with him wherever he goes. Aristotle Onassis said, carry notebook.
Writing every work down is a million-dollar lesson they don’t teach one in business school! Ultra-productive people free the mind by writing every work down.
#7 They process email only few times day.
Ultra-productive people don’t check email throughout day. They don’t respond to each vibration or ding to see who has intruded the inbox. Rather, like everything else, they schedule time to process the email efficiently and quickly.
The things productive people do is to not allow e-mail to be constant interruption. Instead of only checking e-mail daily, they take advantage of features prioritize messages by sender. They set alerts for the important vendors and the best customers, and they save rest until they reach stopping point. Some people set up autoresponder which lets senders know when they’ll be again checking the e-mail.
#8 They avoid meetings at all costs.
Meetings are the biggest time waster. Ultra-productive people know meeting will drag on forever, so they inform everyone at onset they’ll stick to intended schedule. This sets limit which motivates everyone to be more focused and efficient.
Mark Cuban gave his best productivity advice; never take meetings unless someone is writing check. Meetings are notorious time killers. They start late, have wrong people in them, meander in the topics and run long. One should get out of meetings whenever one can, hold fewer of them, and if one does run meeting, keep it short.
#9 They say no to practically everything.
‘No’ is a powerful word ultra-productive people are not afraid to say. When it’s time to say no, they avoid phrases such as ‘we don’t think we can’ or ‘we are not certain.’ Saying ‘no’ to new work honours existing work and gives one opportunity to fulfil them.
Survey conducted at University of California in San Francisco shows more difficulty one have saying no, more likely one are to face stress, burnout, and depression. Learn to use no, and it will lift mood, and productivity.
Billionaire Warren Buffet said difference between successful people and ultra-productive people is ultra-productive people say ‘no’ to practically everything. James Altucher gave this tip, if something is not hell, YEAH! Then it is no!
Remember, one has 1,440 minutes in every day. Don’t give them away.
#10 They follow 80/20 rule.
Known as Pareto Principle, in most cases 80% outcomes come from 20% activities. Ultra-productive people know which work drive greatest results, and focus on those works and ignore rest.
#11 They delegate practically everything.
Ultra-productive people don’t ask how I can do this task. Instead they ask how this task can get done. They take “I” out of it as much as possible. Ultra-productive people don’t have control problems and they aren’t micro-managers.
Tying It All Together
One might not be an Olympian, entrepreneur, or millionaire—or want to be—however, the secrets might help one to get more work done in less time, and help one to stop feeling overworked and overwhelmed.
Do these 11 things productive people do and you will be in a better position to be successful in life.
Leave a Reply