Do you think it is possible to double your productivity as early as this month? If you think this sounds impossible, just think about this: As you are reading this, people who are no smarter or harder working than you, are making millions of dollars a year, or even a month!This means that the only thing possible is that they know a few secrets about productivity that enables them to do a whole lot more in a whole lot less time. Let us look at seven secrets that you can start using today.
1. Smart Outsourcing
Most of the time, wasters in your life or your work are probably things that could be better handled by someone else. These are all things that you need to consider outsourcing. Even if you have to pay the person, consider the cost of the time that you would be spending doing that task yourself. If something is taking you 5 hours to do, and that's 5 hours you could be spending making $200, you would be better off paying someone $50 to do it for you so you can focus on more tasks that bring in more income.
2. Selective Ignorance
How much of your time is wasted consuming information that you will never use? For example, surfing the web, reading and responding to emails, reading the news etc., are all activities that can easily become time wasting information addictions.
Not to mention that much of the information you are exposed to is trying to either take MORE of your time (or your money) or be very negative in nature. Cultivate the art of selective ignorance and see just how much more time and concentration you will save as a result.
3. Batch Processing
Set aside time blocks where you
can complete all of your tasks in batches. For example, emails between 2pm and 4pm on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, spending the last 20 minutes of the day organizing for the next day. In other words, instead of multitasking, focus on one job at a time until it is completed for the day. This is REALLY effective...
A recent University Study revealed that people that are interrupted by phone calls and emails scored LOWER than people who were stoned. So create time blocks for completing tasks in batches and eliminate the distractions from your life.
4. Prioritizing Your Daily Activities
Every time that you start out your day, it is crucial that you have it written down on paper first. Write down your daily tasks in order of priority and according to your larger long-term goals, then use the above batching process.
This will help you keep first things first and keep you from being bogged down in what Steven Covey calls "the thick of thin things." For best results, make your priority list at the end of each day, so that you will be fully ready before the next day even begins.
5. Develop a Sense of Urgency
A strong internal sense of urgency is what compels one person to finish a task in less than half the time that it would take someone who had no sense of urgency. Most people by nature allow a task to swell in complexity and size according to the time that they have to complete it, or they put it off and scramble to finish everything last minute. But a strong sense of personal urgency will compel you to start things as soon as possible and complete them long before your deadlines.
6. Start the Day Off Right
The way that you start the day sets the pace for the rest of the day. If you start out checking emails, organizing things on your desk, taking five trips to the bathroom, you lose more and more momentum with each task that isn't directed towards completing your "meaty" task of the day.
Better to hit the ground running with tasks that require a lot of energy and focus. This will also ensure that your later day tasks are easier, less dreadful and therefore less tempting to put off to the next day.
7. Recreational Time
Trying to go and go and go without taking any time off to rest your mind and your body is a certain way to stunt your ability to concentrate and to be as productive as possible. Take 15-20 minutes a day for meditation to clear your mind and make sure that one day a week is set aside for recreational activities.
