Tales, Stories and Advice From Marketing Elite

Do you want to be more productive? Do you want to spend less time working and more time doing the things you want to do?

Productivity is a key part of every successful person. I have studied productivity and have spoken to many multi millionaires to find out how they get so much done.

I’m going to teach you what I’ve learned and tested over the years to help improve your productivity.

Secret # 1 Create a routine

I learned this from Eben Pagan in his Wake Up Productive program. Basically create a set of habits that you do every morning. Sort of a ritual…

For me, the first thing I do when I wake up is drink some water and then do 30 minutes of exercise. Then I have breakfast, get ready and start work at 9am. See what works for you.

Id highly recommend doing exercise in the morning. It allows you to start your day out right, keeps your mind active and it keeps you in a peak state for the day.

Secret # 2 – To-do lists

To-do Lists improve productivity by at least 25%. I always do my to-do list before I go to bed, that way as soon as I start work the next day I know exactly what I need to do.

I never have to waste time thinking about what needs to be completed.

Just a tip with to-do lists… Also put the list in order. A couple questions to consider are:

• How important is it that I do this task immediately?
• Which are the tasks that must be completed as soon as possible?

I actually use basecamphq for my online to-do list. If I have a huge set of tasks to complete I will even create a daily to-do list, for each day of that week.

Secret # 3 – Set intentions

One of my coaches really drilled into me the importance of setting intentions. I dont want to go all ‘woo woo’ on you so I’ll keep this section short.

Set an intention for tasks and your day. For example, with the timer I mentioned say to yourself “I am only going to focus on this task and complete it”. That is setting an intention.

Maybe the intention for the day might be “Today I am going to remain super productive and complete everything on my to-do list.” Intentions are powerful, use them.

Secret # 4 Eliminate distractions

It’s amazing what happens when you focus on a task without any distractions. Eliminate all distractions – email, skype, put your phone on silent, even put a sign on your door to stop people coming into your office. ( I have a sign that I put on my door saying “Important work in progress, keep out”)

Eliminate all distractions, when you get distracted it actually takes about 20 minutes to get back to the same amount of focus you had before you were interrupted.

Secret # 5 Dont multitask

Multi tasking is a silent productivity killer. It seems like you’re getting more done, when you compare your results from focused time on one task it’s obvious multi tasking reduces productivity over time.

Personally I loved to multi task – on my pc I had 2 monitors, heaps of windows open doing so many different things at once.

It was a hard habit to break, once I finally did I found I got more done and I was so much more focussed and clear on what I was doing.

Now that I travel the world I have a laptop, I miss the 2 monitors but the laptop allows me to do less multitasking as I only have one screen

Secret # 6 – Take breaks

I’m sure you’ve heard ‘less is more’. Take short every 1-2 hours. Eben Pagan recommends the following:

50 Minutes work, 10 minutes break x 2
30 Minute break
50 Minutes work, 10 minutes break x 2
60 minute break
50 Minutes work, 10 minutes break x 2
30 minute break.

During the breaks make sure you do something that takes your mind off work. You’’ll most likely find you come back with a fresh mind and are more focussed on your task.

Secret # 7 Use a timer/stopwatch

When you use a timer a weird thing happens. When you set time limits, Parkinson’s law begins. For those of you who dont know, Parkinsons Law is basically – however long you expect something to take, that’s how long it will usually take.

For example back in high school students are given like 3-4 weeks to complete an assignment. Most of those assignments wont be complete until the day before. Why? Because you’ve set that time frame for it to be completed. Even if you leave it to the night before it still manages to get done on time…

So set smaller time frames, I like to set my timer to 50 minutes. I then say to myself, during the next 50 minutes I will only do this task and will complete it.

I dont always complete it, but it has helped me work faster by setting timeframes and using a timer.

So there you have it! 7 secret productivity tips that I have learned from multi millionaires. Try it out, change things up, even if you only implement one of these tips it can make a huge difference in your productivity.

Use these tips, have fun with it and get more done!

Ben Brandes

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