ARE YOU STARVED OF TIME?
LEARN HOW THESE 12 PRODUCTIVITY TIPS CAN HELP YOU DO LESS AND ACHIEVE MORE.
How Super successful, super busy people organize their day to achieve more.
Personal productivity is a key
differentiator between those who succeed in their chosen field and those
who do not. Leaders, Executives, Employees and Entrepreneurs who are at the top of their game know how to achieve what
they want in less time than others. We can learn a lot from the tactics
of these successful, and incredibly busy, individuals on how to better
organize our own days. Here are 12 top tips worth trying out:
1. Have a single purpose focus.
One thing many successful entrepreneurs have in common is the ability to focus on what matters most.
Eric Schmidt,
Google's executive chairman, says, "I keep things focused. The speech I
give every day is: 'This is what we do. Is what we are doing consistent
with that, and can it change the world?'"
Jason Goldberg,
CEO of Fab.com, has this piece of advice: "Pick one thing and do that
one thing—and only that one thing—better than anyone else ever could."
We can derive a great deal of power from developing a laser focus on our
top business priorities. It's one of the attributes that sets apart the
average businessperson from the more successful one.
2. Ruthlessly block out distractions.
Tennis legend Martina Navratilova says, "I concentrate on
concentrating." For those of us who don't have the willpower to be
self-accountable, there are several technology solutions for blocking
out distractions. For example,
Rescue Time
is an application that runs in the background of your computer and
measures how you spend your time so you can make better decisions.
Get Concentrating
is another useful tool that will help you focus on important tasks by
temporarily blocking social media sites. (Are you easily distracted? If
so, here are
six more popular programs to block distractions.)
3. Set a strict time limit on meetings.
Carlos Ghosn,
CEO of Renault and Nissan, is strict on the timing allotted for
single-topic, non-operational meetings: He allows a maximum of one hour
and 30 minutes. Fifty percent of the time is for the presentation, and
50 percent is for discussion.
Gary E. McCullough,
former U.S. army captain and now CEO of Career Education Corp., gives
people half of the time they ask for a meeting or appointment. This
forces them to be brief, clear and to the point. "By doing that, I am
able to cram a number of things in the day and move people in and out
more effectively and more efficiently," McCullough says. People
generally don't need as much time as they ask for. Meetings are time
vampires. Be ruthless in managing this endemic productivity drain so you
can focus on high value tasks.
4. Set up productivity rituals.
Tony Schwartz, CEO of The Energy Project, provides
four tips
for setting up rituals to automate behaviors that will make us more
productive, without depleting our energy reservoir. One of them is
prioritizing one key task to accomplish per day, and starting your day
focused on that task. "Force yourself to prioritize so that you know
that you will finish at least that one critical task during the period
of the day when you have the most energy and the fewest
distractions," Schwartz says.
5. Get up earlier.
Research shows that mornings can make or break your day. It's not
uncommon for successful CEOs to start their day well before 6 a.m. In
27 Executives Who Wake Up Really Early,
we see how incredibly busy people—from Jeff Immelt, CEO of GE, to Indra
Nooyi, CEO of PepsiCo—use their mornings to seize the day. Use the
mantra "mind over mattress" to motivate yourself to get out of bed to
pursue your goals. As Laura Vanderkam says in
What Successful People Do Before Breakfast: A Short Guide To Making Over Your Morning—And Life,
while many are sleeping in, successful people are already up and
getting a lot done. If this is not your preference, Vanderkam advises to
start with small steps, such as getting up just 15 minutes earlier
every day and gradually increasing the time.
6. Group your interruptions.
This idea comes from restaurateur
Danny Meyer.
He has his assistant group all questions that come up during the day in
one list so she doesn't have to interrupt him repeatedly during office
hours. Take a cue from this and see how you can ask others on your team
to group questions, requests and other non-urgent inquiries so you're
not distracted by interruptions that don't add value.
7. Outsource personal chores.
Highly productive people are selective about how they expend their
energy. They don't waste it on tasks that others can do. For example,
Alexis Ohanian, founder of Reddit, uses services such as
Fancy Hands, an army of virtual assistants. Others automate grocery shopping with sites such as
Amazon's Subscribe and Save, or
services that deliver groceries to your doorstep. Others even use services such as
Plated,
which delivers perfectly measured ingredients for chef designed meals
at home. Do a cost/benefit analysis of how you spend your time and see
if it's worth offloading some repetitive tasks so you can focus on what
will bring value to your company.
8. Set up email rules to maintain sanity.
Katia Beauchamp and Hayley Barna,
founders of Birchbox, insist that team members indicate when they need a
response in all emails. This simple tip helps with prioritization.
Designer
Mike Davidson
has set up an email policy that limits any email he sends to five
sentences. As he explains, many email messages in his inbox take more
time for him to answer than they did for the sender to write. Analyze
your email habits and institute time-saving policies that work for your
particular situation.
9. Capture all creative ideas.
The world renowned scientist Dr. Linus Pauling once said, "The best way
to have a good idea is to have a lot of ideas." Most leaders and
entrepreneurs are visionaries who generally don't lack good ideas;
however, capturing all these ideas is often a challenge for busy people.
Evernote is a popular, free program for collecting ideas. (Here's a
list of other tools to consider.)
10. Increase your effectiveness through technology.
There's a wealth of programs to make a small-business owner more
effective in increasing productivity. A few popular tools—some of which
are free—include
Dropbox to store files online;
Any Meeting to host a webinar;
Basecamp for project management;
Trello for keeping track of projects and deadlines, and
Hootsuite or
Buffer to schedule your social media postings.
11. Don't lose it: Read it later.
Don't miss out on important information because you're in a rush and
have no time to read. Two programs help you scoop information to read
later.
Get Pocket
allows you to put articles, videos and any other information into a
virtual pocket, saved directly from any site. Another worthwhile program
is
Instapaper, which allows you to save long Web pages to read later when you have time.
12. Learn from others.
Consider subscribing to Lifehacker's
How I Work
series, which asks highly successful people to share their best
time-saving tips. For example, Eric Koger, founder of ModCloth, shares
his nerdiest way to save time: His keyboard layout is
Colemak.
Learning Colemak is a one-time investment that allows for much faster
typing. This site provides an abundance of advice on how super busy,
successful entrepreneurs salvage time.
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