Activities High Performers Avoid

Being productive is a decision. Productivity is essentially successful decision-making at its core. The people who make the best decisions tend to be the most productive, not the smartest or most skilled persons in the room.
“The secret is to schedule your priorities, not to prioritise what’s on your schedule.” (Stephen Covey). Over the past few years, I’ve produced over a million words, and throughout that time, I’ve seen a number of really busy people fly. The following are the 5 habits of highly productive persons.

1. Put a lot of effort into routine duties – Not all tasks are made equally. While certain occupations need a full commitment of the mind, others call for little thought but consume a great deal of time. The productivity benefit of task segmentation. How to approach tasks is as follows:

Type 1: deep-thinking assignments (writing, contemplation)
Type 2: routine duties (such as email and calendar planning)

The goal is to automate or outsource type 2 tasks while optimising for type 1. It makes little sense to conduct repetitious things like scheduling your schedule or looking through your emails when your energy is high in the morning.

2. To lose sight of your motivation Success requires both time and effort. Even if you maximise both aspects of productivity, it will still take you some time to reach your goals. This is why it’s crucial to turn your attention to enjoying yourself. “Your work will take up a significant portion of your life, and the only way to truly be satisfied is to accomplish what you think is wonderful work. And the only way to produce outstanding work is to enjoy what you do. Steve Jobs

Success typically comes gradually and steadily:

• Martha Stewart didn’t become a household name until she was in her fifties.
• Julia Child didn’t release her first cookbook until she was fifty.
• Only one of Vincent Van Gogh’s paintings was sold during his lifetime.

The secret is to love what you do so much that success happens naturally. I did this wrong for years. On Tuesday, I made the decision that by Friday, I would have amassed a million dollars. After two days of diligent work—which, clearly, failed—I gave up. In recent years, I’ve changed, and the following suggestions have been helpful to me:

• Reflecting on what I genuinely want out of life
• Seeing the task as a source of fun, and
• Not expecting things to materialise right away.

A key component of increasing productivity is to enjoy what you are doing. Try to enjoy the day instead of attempting to become the next millionaire; it will be far more successful.

3. Be patient and wait for inspiration. Expectations are the one thing that kills productivity the quickest of all things. It will be a disaster if you think it would be simple. Due to the fact that you will become trapped when you start the work and discover that it is actually rather difficult. What I do know about productivity is as follows:

• There are days when you simply lack the energy to get out of bed.
• There are some days when you believe everything is useless and impossible to achieve.
• You’ll occasionally find yourself staring blankly at the screen.

However, consider this. You have come to the right place if you are experiencing any of those things. The secret is to teach oneself to push through such feelings. Amateurs wait around for inspiration, while the rest of us simply get up and work. Steven King. But we’re all struggling to find inspiration. A strategy I’ve used to get through tough times is telling myself that this is why so many people give up. Most people give up when they experience this emotion every seven days or so. If I simply sit here and type something, I will succeed.

4. They fail to make it enjoyable – Gamification is gaining a lot of attention in the startup community, and for good reason. Because they are enjoyable and encourage continued play, games are effective. How do you accomplish that? You adjust the risk-reward ratio, you add levels, an enemy, and multiplayer. You may achieve all of that through your effort. Since three years ago, I have been engaged in it. It will alter your productivity if you make your work into games. What I do is as follows:

• I transform my to-do list into a game by crossing things off as I go.
• I study my weekly data and find it interesting to understand what works.
• I conduct tests and place bets with myself about what will work.
• I set a timer to write to and see if I can finish my work before it stops.

5. Failure to glance up – Although it’s fantastic to maximise production, if you’re moving quickly in the wrong direction, all you’re doing is speeding up the process of going where you don’t want to be. You shouldn’t do that action. Effectiveness means doing the right things, not only the right things effectively. (Peter Drucker). You may be working on the wrong things if you have to push yourself to be productive. For many years, I did it. I was pushing myself to launch a drop-shipping business or an online brand because I believed that was the only way to become wealthy (I know, shudder). It wasn’t until I discovered writing that I understood how much more effective it was to just engage in activities you enjoy. It’s strange. But picking the right game is most important.

Hello Everyone, finally published my new book “Focus”. In this book, I took a poetic licence in considering the spiritual aspect of focus, which has rarely been done. Other books focus on the practical aspect and tell you to do this and that, but in my book, I discuss how we can find focus within ourselves without relying on an action-oriented approach. Any purchases or KDP reads will be greatly appreciated. If you like my books, do leave a review. Here’s my author page on Amazon – https://amzn.eu/d/aKbYysx