PRODUCTIVITY HACKS I LEARNED FROM THE GURUS
I use these hacks to move my business forward, and you should too.
I been struggling with my business for a long time. The fact is that I only have a finite amount of time in a day. Everyone has 24 hours only. Bill Gates, Obama and anybody in this world is only given 24 hours a day. This is the great equalizer, but makes these people more productive than others?
Because they know what to do with their time.
We buy success with our time, some people say. But I argue, we buy success with what we do with our time. If you waste your time, knowingly or unknowingly, then I don’t think success will be in the horizon.
Let me explain.
We sleep 7–8, so you are left with 16 hours. I work 8 hours, and that gives me 8 hours to work with. Put in another 4 hours of family time, travel from work, picking up the kids, picking up groceries and you are left with 4 hours.
This is not an accounting article but let’s just be real, you only have four hours a day to move your business forward.
I have a co-worker before who quit his job to be a full time currency trader. His name is Mike and I envy him for risking all to go solo. He’s a chemistry major, just like me, but he is a newly graduate, so no family to support. He moved to his parent’s house back in South Florida to trade full time. The last time I checked on him, he’s learning programming to automate his trades.
If you are like Mike, working full time to move your business forward, then good for you. But for me who supports a family and at the same time working on my business , we approach the game differently.
When I was active in triathlon before, I structured my day with this idea of accounting my hours. I accounted all my hours and how much was left for training. Triathlon is a grueling sport. If you want to excel, you should excel in three sports: swimming, cycling and running.
My goal was just to finish the race, so I finished every races I went to, because I made sure I trained for each sports and I have enough pool time in swimming before swimming in the ocean (you don’t want to be rescued in the middle of the ocean and be in the 6 o’clock news).
Currently, my tasked is to move my business forward. I’m a soloprenuer. Four hours is what I got, and I know I need to be productive in that four hours, like my triathlon years.
THE ONE THING
The first book I recommend related to productivity is the book “The One Thing” by Gary Keller. The author I believe was a business consultant, who got frustrated with his clients. He would list tasks to finish for the week for his clients but in the end, nothing was accomplished.
He reduced the task to three but nothing worked. Then he just reduced the task into one, and this is the one thing. The “only thing” that his clients needs to do was the one only task. But this one thing is the most important thing, because this will move your business forward. The one task is the domino (one thing) that will topple the big domino (big goal) in the end.
MULTITASKING IS THE DEVIL
I learned from this book that multitasking is counterproductive. Multitasking is designed for computers but not for human beings. In my work and in my business, I try only to accomplish one thing, the most important one and nothing else, before moving to another task.
This is highly controversial because mainstream believes that you are more productive if you can multitask. Science, research from organizational psychology proves again and again that multitasking is very counterproductive.
I heard a story of a worker who was interrupted almost every minute in his cubicle that in the end, nothing was accomplished. So he booked the conference room, brought his laptop in the conference room and work there.
He told his co-workers, if it’s really important, they can knock on the door. But that’s the premise, if it’s really important, he can be interrupted.
Suddenly, the his co-workers worked around his schedule.
I try to set my home office this way. I tell my family I’m in the lock-down mode for the next three hours and can only be interrupted if it’s really important.
Facebook programmers, the early days of Facebook. They call it, what else, lock-down. Programmers will supply themselves with unlimited amount of caffeine from Sprite or 7-up and then work until morning until the problem was solve.
My water bottle, my food and some fruits are in my side when I do lock-down.
EAT THE UGLIEST TOAD IN THE MORNING
This principle came from Mark Twain, who said ““If it’s your job to eat a frog, it’s best to do it first thing in the morning. And if it’s your job to eat two frogs, it’s best to eat the biggest one first.”
Brian Tracy expounded in this idea to eat the ugliest frog in the morning. I think in my opinion, the idea is the same as the “One Thing” principle. Eat the ugliest and biggest frog in the morning, in that way, you have all the brain waves to finish the task.
Our brain is like a cell phone. The batteries drain after usage. When it’s drained, you have to recharge in order to use it again.
I eat the ugliest from in the morning, when my brain is fully charge. I may not finish the task, but I focus on the one thing and work on it again in the evening.
Currently, I am making a product/offer for my customers. That’s my ugliest frog and that’s what I do after meditation and exercise in the morning, just create an offer.
That’s my one thing right now, create an offer. Anything else is a destruction.
This is the same principle Brendon Burchard advocated in his book “High Performance Habits”. If your thing is to write a book, write a book. Don’t wait for inspiration or anything else in order to start.
Pen to paper, pen to paper, this is your one thing. If you don’t have a book in the end, you don’t worry about book promotion or advertising and everything else. Book promotions are just distractions in the current scheme of things.
WATERFALL
After listening to Stephen Larsen, a podcast I subscribed to, talk about his productivity hacks, I copied it.
Stephen Larsen discusses Sales Funnel in his podcast Sales Funnel Radio. I use Sales Funnel in my business. Steven Larsen’s productivity hack wasn’t his idea. Stephen adapted a productivity hacks from Alex Charfen’s waterfall method.
This method is like the method I used in triathlon training and marathon training (that’s right, I ran a marathon too, the Marine Corps Marathon in Washington D.C.).
In waterfall, and you may be familiar with this, you have one big goal. For example in the end of the year, I want to finish writing a book. The first three months, I may have a goal of finishing the first 3 chapters.
So for the first three months, that would be January to March, three chapters should be done.
What can you finish in a month?
You can finish the outline probably in January and draft of the first 1st chapter. I don’t know but you get the point. In the end of the first 90 days, you have three chapters, and you move on to the next goal.
In my business, I work only on the revenue generating tasks. In the “One Thing”, this will be your one task, the only one task that will push the other domino forward.
Using Brian Tracy or Mark Twain’s parlance, this will be the ugliest and the biggest toad.
So here’s my productivity hacks I learned from the gurus I follow. You can adapt one of them, use one of them or morphed it into what you are currently using, but these hacks are very useful to me and how I forward my business forward.
So, what’s you ugliest toad today?
