How To 3x Your Productivity In 10 Minutes A Week

How to 3x your productiveness in 10 minutes per week | By Mitchell Harper To say I’m obsessed with productiveness and time-ROI might be an understatement. For so long as I can bear in mind I’ve been fascinated with the art and discipline of objective setting. Over the final 10 years I’ve probably tried each system there is. And none of them labored. So I determined to construct my very own hybrid method which I’ve been using since 2011. There are hundreds of articles that talk concerning the influence of objective setting so I’m not going to go there. What I do know, though, is there’s nobody-dimension-fits-all approach. By hacking collectively one of the best approaches from varied techniques and mentors, I’ve created one thing that I would estimate has helped me to be 10x extra productive over the past four or so years. I take it to the acute, although, so I’d say you possibly can no less than 3x your productiveness by following this simple system firstly of every week. What do I imply by productive? I imply getting more leverage from the sources I actually have and accomplishing extra whereas exerting much less private effort. I mean defining a transparent roadmap for the next 12 months that’s balanced throughout the necessary areas of life: well being, enterprise, relationships and contribution. I mean understanding what to say yes to â€" not because it sounds interesting, but because what you say sure to is in context and a part of the roadmap you’ve defined for the coming year. Before any goal setting or productiveness system will work, although, you’ve obtained to have the right people on your team. That means the right leaders (when you own a company), the best associate (when you’re married), etc. Fix your folks problems first in any other case they’ll sluggish you down massively. That lesson is tough to be taught however simple to offer. So the system I’ve been using for a while is fairly fundamental and there are 4 elements. I’ve shared it with perhaps 20 folks I know (staff, friends, family m embers, etc) and it’s changed their lives by dramatically boosting their focus, productivity and readability. Basically it will make you outcome focused so you cease doing stuff simply to be busy. #1 â€" Goals categorized by space of focus Every 12 months starting on December 1st, I spend about a month brainstorming targets for the completely different areas of my life. I scribble these objectives down â€" even when they aren’t clearly outlined but. I come again to them every time a new goal comes to mind and add it to the unsorted, messy record. Once the list is completed, the targets are moved into areas of focus which might be essential to me. Those areas are: It’s no mistake family and marriage are at the top of the list. The areas here come from Ted Leonsis’s great book The Business Of Happiness. His e-book will change your life and is a should-learn. Ted is a private mentor of mine and is part of Revolution Growth, by way of which Steve Case sits on the Bigcommerce boa rd. He can be owner of the Washington Wizards NBA team, which makes flights to Washington thrilling. After you move your goals into the areas of focus, you prioritize them. Most essential objectives at the prime of the list, least necessary on the bottom. Easy. #2â€"12 month timeline The next step is to use something like Google Docs, Photoshop or Trello to create a horizontal timeline of the calendar yr. You then go about roughly putting your targets across varied months of the yr â€" about where you’d anticipate to complete that aim. For instance, should you plan to hire a head of marketing early next year, put that goal in February. If you plan to take a trip to Japan later in the year, place that goal in October. After you’ve placed all of your objectives on the timeline, you end up with something like this: This is the timline I created final December for this year (2014). For privacy causes I’ve blocked out a lot of the goals, however you possibly can see that I categori ze goals by color as they’re laid out on the timline. As you progress every week, you move the inexperienced bar throughout the timeline to represent where you at present are within the 12 months. As you achieve your targets, you grey them out, like this: This is my precise timeline that I updated this morning. Again, I’ve simply blocked out the main points. You can see I’ve achieved all however one objective for the 12 months. Goals that have been actually important for the year are marked with a magenta colour as they’re completed â€" just to remind me of their significance as I look again on them. You would possibly think it’s weird to place your goals on a timeline like this, nevertheless it’s unimaginable what it does to your unconscious mind. By writing one thing down and giving it a completion date, you discover your targets are nearly mechanically completed inside a few days of that date. Your brain works behind the scenes to figure out the assets, staff, advisor s, communication, planning, etc you need to get one thing accomplished. #3 â€" Draft look back statement You can’t predict the future. Or are you able to? Once I’ve laid out my objectives on the timeline, I then write a 2â€"three page look again assertion. I begin by asking myself this easy question: It’s December . Knowing you’ve achieved all your targets, how would you describe the 12 months if you look again? I look throughout all of my areas of focus and the targets I’ve set, and I write a narrative that talks in regards to the success I’ve had in the course of the 12 months. Now you must remember I’m scripting this earlier than the 12 months has even began. I write this on December thirty first of the earlier yr for the upcoming 12 months. Why do this? It comes again to your subconscious thoughts. The energy of writing one thing down can’t be underestimated. If you’re a visible learner, the timeline locks the targets in your head. If you’re an audible or kin esthetic learner, the look again statement locks the objectives in your head. So how do you write a look back assertion? Organize your list of targets not by space of focus however by general precedence. Start on the top of the record with the most important goal you will achieve subsequent 12 months and work your way down. Then just write a paragraph describing what achieving that objective means for you right now(bear in mind, you’re standing a yr sooner or later from now) and why attaining it was so necessary in your life. You must write these paragraphs in past tense, as in, you’ve already achieved them. This is one other way to trick your mind and unconscious mind. Your brain has no concept if what you’re telling it's true or not and it assumes every thing you say is true and works to make it so. This has been confirmed time and again by science. #4 â€" Wheel of life I’ve borrowed the wheel of life from Tony Robbins. It’s a easy construct that helps you grade each spa ce of focus every week. For areas where you grade your self low (on a scale of 1 to 10), you dedicate some time and focus to spice up your score â€" say from a four/10 to a 7/10. Your wheel of life is structured as a circle and the areas you wish to concentrate on are included as spokes on the circle, like this: Areas you’re doing nicely in get a score of 8, 9 or 10. Areas the place you’re doing OK get a 5, 6 or 7. Areas where you’re struggling get a ranking of 1, 2, three or four. The analogy Tony uses for the wheel of life is a tire on a car. If you take a look at the way you connect each of the spokes on the wheel â€" and if that have been a tire on a automobile â€" how would the automotive drive? A excessive efficiency tire is spherical, so if you look at the instance wheel of life above, you’ll see that the spokes are related with lines which might be jagged. If this was a tire on a automobile, the car would barely drive. And that’s the idea. You need a focused strate gy to all of the areas of you life which are necessary to create a nicely-rounded tire. If you fee your business progress a ten and household a 2 then your wheel will be off â€" and your automotive (your life) gained’t drive (perform) nicely. See the three highlighted areas of focus in yellow? Those are the 3 areas you select to focus your efforts on over the coming week. Generally you choose the 3 areas the place you’ve self-rated the bottom. You then take these areas and look at which of your targets you possibly can work on in the coming week to drive those rankings up. In the example wheel of life, those areas of focus are: To improve each of those, you’d take a look at your goals timeline (part #2) and pencil time in your calendar to work on progressing towards the goals you’ve selected. It’s OK to add new targets to your list if you should as well. The thought is that a system is just a system. It’s there to provide construction and to assist you, but it’s not se t in stone. You should evaluation all 4 components of the system at least as soon as every week and pencil that point into your calendar as a recurring event. I like Sunday afternoons or Monday mornings for an hour. Once you’ve determined what you’ll concentrate on for the week, be sure to block out that time in your calendar as properly. It’s a pressured self-discipline that allows you to “set and neglect” so you end up with no less than 50% (ideally 70%) of your awake time accounted for. And that’s the time where you’re making progress on the goals you’ve decided are essential to you. That’s it It’s a pretty easy system that works. The thought is that your yearly goals outline your quarterly focus which defines your monthly and weekly priorities which are what you work on to enhance the areas of focus which are necessary to you. I don’t believe you could be happy when most of your areas of focus aren’t performing nicely. With this method, you’re compelled to provide consideration to the things you’ve determined matter to you, so it keeps you progressing on all fronts all year long. Like all systems although, it only works if you keep it up. Once I came up with the system it took me a few weeks to get used to it, however now I can’t stay with out it. I don’t assume it’s a fantastic system if you’re planning incremental features in your life subsequent 12 months. For those, you need to use Clear, Omnifocus, Google Tasks or another primary system. But if you wish to 10x your productiveness, objectives and progress then maybe give it a shot and see the way you like it. (Article initially appeared on Medium) Enter your e-mail address: