We are already one month into the new year! As a lead-in to my 2020 predictions, let’s look back and do a little recap of the Productivity methods that we have talked about, here, over the past few months. You will find that these strategies are crucial for your business as we roll into 2020.
Productivity Methods
In my series on Productivity, we talked about multiple different ways in which you can increase your productivity. For example, increasing your specific knowledge, your work hours, your output and obstacles, like money. These are all things you have control over.
Productivity, in a nutshell, is getting more output for the time, money etc. that you put into something. We talked about ways to accomplish this, for instance outsourcing where, for little money, you can get virtual assistants who will work for you for 20, 30 40 hours a week for only a few hundred dollars a month. You can even outsource experts to work for you on a per project basis.
We discussed list making strategies like Warren Buffett’s Two List strategy where we make a list of 25 items with five items on one side and 20 items on the other side. If you recall, the 20 Item List is the avoid at all cost list. Another list strategy we covered is the Ivy League Method where you make a list of six items working on the first item, and completing it, before you start on the second item.
Focus
Another Productivity method we covered was to focus for only 15 minutes at a time. This was the strategy used by the gentleman who wrote 47 books, 12 non-fiction books, numerous essays and two plays. He did it by only laser focusing for 15-minute periods. Anyone can do that. If you stretch that out to a slightly longer time period, you can combine it with the “Pomodoro” technique where you work for 25 minutes then take a five or six-minute break. You repeat this four times and then take a longer, 30 minute break.
The idea of going from light bulb to laser is something I want you to remember. Because that is the central key to getting things done. You need to laser focus on one task for a specific amount of time before moving on to anything else. Throughout those articles we talked about various ways to do this. Some of you might like a digital method like todoist.com to keep you on task.
In all this productivity talk, we always use the word work. For some people that’s a dirty word. Work is what you make of it. I love what I do. I love researching. I love doing work and creating something. When I’m working, I have to be dragged away from it to do anything else. I hope you feel the same way about what you do. Because if you love what you do, it’s no longer work.
The whole strategy of success is starting with one piece, staying focused and letting one step build upon the other.
Armand Morin
Will you have to make changes and adapt as you progress? Yes! You need to be ready to do whatever needs to be done to achieve your success. Remember you can’t put conditions on achieving your success. A long time ago I heard a story regarding a man who put conditions on his success. As a caveat, I don’t think it was true; I think it was just created to emphasize the fact that you can’t put conditions on success.
As the story goes, he wanted success and every day he prayed to God telling him he would do anything needed to achieve success. He said if God would help him become successful he would do anything God asked of him…anything except live in a mobile home.
He became very successful and grew an amazing construction business. And, true to his word, he did everything he thought God would want him to do. He went to church and gave money to it. He gave money to charities and volunteered at them. Then, suddenly, things stopped. His business went downhill.
He still kept praying the same prayer but his business kept going downhill. He finally hit rock bottom and said, “I’ll do anything you want me to do, even live in a mobile home”. He took the “conditions” off what he would do in order to become successful. And, as the story goes, he became successful once again.
Here’s a phrase that a lot of people, including me, say, “Whatever it takes.” I’ll do whatever it takes to achieve success. If it takes getting up at 5am, I’ll drag myself out of bed at 5am. If it takes staying up all night to complete a project, I will stay up all night.
You cannot put conditions on success, but you can define the rules and work within those rules.
Armand Morin
Getting More Out Of What You’re Doing
The whole idea of becoming productive and successful does not necessarily mean that you need to work longer hours or seven days a week…although sometimes you may need to. Productivity just means getting more out of what you are doing, getting more bang for the buck. We need to think about how we can do this. We need to think about what we can use to do this. Outsourcing and all the other techniques and strategies that we covered in this series of articles are all tools you can use to accomplish this.
Dwayne Johnson, The Rock, shoots a lot of exercise videos. As you watch his exercise videos, he will turn to face the camera and you will hear him yell out “FOCUS!” and continue with his exercise. It is very important to understand that you need to relax as well as focus. The key is knowing when to focus and when to relax.
Watch any sports event and see that there are not extended periods of intense focus. You will see short bursts of intense focus followed by periods of relaxation. Look at football as soon as they hike the ball there is a very short burst of intense focus, maybe 10 or 15 seconds and then the play is over and everything stops. In soccer, the action lasts a little longer…the individual who has the ball is focused on it for only a short period of time before someone else has it. In tennis,
you have a few seconds of intense focus as the ball heads towards you. Once you hit it you have a brief moment to relax a little. Every professional athlete knows that you must relax just as much, if not more, than you need to take action during an event.
It’s the same in business, as well as life. You have to know when to focus and take action and when to relax. You have a burst of action, then you relax. You have another burst of intense reaction and then you relax, etc.
Go back and read the Productivity articles again. Better yet, log into the member’s area and search on Productivity Secrets and watch the entire, two-day, training again.Then put the strategies into action. Try it for a week. If you don’t achieve more than you ever have, you are doing something wrong. Do it right, and you’ll get more done than you have yet this year – possibly more than you’ve ever gotten done!
Here’s my challenge to as we roll into 2020…take just one of the strategies and put it into action you’ll find you’ll get more done in that week than you believed possible. Even if you doubt me, just try it for one day. I believe you will be pleasantly shocked with as much as you accomplish that day!
