6 things that successful people do every day

Have you ever felt like you weren't doing enough? Do you know how many days a week you are truly productive? Americans work 45 hours a week, 16 of which are considered unproductive. We could all do so much more - but no one wants to be a workaholic. Is it possible to achieve a balance between work and the rest of your life?

Фото: Depositphotos

Eric Barker from Time decided to get answers to this question from experts who are considered successful and productive in their field of activity. The first of them was Tim Ferriss, author of the international bestseller “4-Hour Workweek”.

1) Manage your mood

Most productivity systems operate like robots—they forget the enormous importance of feelings. If you start the day calmly, it's easy to achieve the right results and focus. But if you wake up and the battle immediately begins—the phone rings, the emails come in, the fire alarm goes off—you spend the rest of the day twitching.

This means that you are not in charge of managing your own priorities. You only respond to what happens to you, whether it is important or not.

Excerpt from Tim's book:

I try to make the first 80-90 minutes of my day the same as often as possible. Routine is necessary to feel control and not to react emotionally, it reduces anxiety and makes you more productive.

Studies show that how you start the day has a huge impact on performance, and you color much more when you are in a bad mood. Happiness, according to scientists, increases productivity and makes a person more successful.

As Sean Achor describes in his book The Advantage of Happiness:

... positively-minded doctors, before making a diagnosis, show almost three times more intellectual abilities than doctors in a neutral state, and make accurate diagnoses on 19% faster. Optimistic salespeople outperform their pessimistic colleagues by 56%. Happy-tune students are far superior to neutral-minded peers in the process of mathematical calculations. Our brains work better when we are in a good mood.

Think a little less about how to deal with the work, and a little more about your mood.

So what needs to be done for this first after waking up?

2) Do not check email in the morning

For some, this is complete nonsense. Many people cannot imagine the morning without checking emails or viewing tapes on social networks. I interviewed many very productive people, and none of them said, “Spend more time on email”.

Why is checking your email in the morning a sin? You are setting yourself up to react. An email arrives and you're already spending your best hours achieving other people's goals, not yours. You don't plan your day and priorities, you allow your morning to be hijacked by those who randomly decide to get into your inbox.

From Tim's book:

...if possible, don't check your email for the first hour or two. This is hard for some to imagine. "How can I do it? I need to check my email to get the information I need to work on my most important tasks.”

You will be surprised how often this is not true. You may need to log into your box to complete 100% of your most important tasks. But can you do 80 or 90% before you go to Gmail and explode your brain with excitement, dopamine agitation and cortisol panic? Yes.

The study shows that checking email:

• Leads you into a state of stress.
• Might turn you into a stupid person.
• May be more addictive than alcohol and tobacco.
• A frequent email check is equivalent to reducing IQ by 10 points.

Is this really what you want to start your day with?

Great, you know what not to do. But the question arises: what does one have to do?

Фото: Depositphotos

3) Before trying to do something faster, ask if you need to do it at all?

Everyone wants to know why it is impossible to do everything. The answer is amazingly simple: you do too much.

Want to be more productive? Don't ask how to do something more efficiently until you answer the question: “Should I even do this?”

Tim advises:

The fact that you are doing something well does not make this task important. I think this is one of the most common problems with time management or productivity recommendations: they focus on how to do things quickly. The vast majority of the things that people do quickly should not be done at all.

It's funny: we complain that we have so little time, and then we set priorities as if time is infinite. Instead, do what is important ... and nothing more.

But is this true in the real world?

Research shows that managers don't get more done by working more hours. They get more done when they follow a carefully thought out plan. Planning doesn't mean spending more time in meetings, although meetings with employees do correlate with higher sales. The fact is that a manager's time is a limited and valuable resource, and planning how it should be allocated increases the chances of using it effectively.

Now you will have to face one of the biggest problems of the modern era: how do you sit still and focus?

4) Focus is nothing more than eliminating distractions.

Ed Hallowell, a former Harvard Medical School professor and bestselling author of Driven to Distraction, says we have a “culturally generated attention deficit.” Has modern life permanently damaged our ability to pay attention?

Not. We have much more teasing, easily accessible 24 / 7, attractive things than any man has ever had. The answer is to seat yourself somewhere where all the flashing, humming, distracting factors disappear.

And here is Tim:

Focus is a function primarily of limiting the number of opportunities you give yourself to procrastinate... I think many people think of focus as a magical ability. But that's not true. The idea is to sit yourself in a quiet room with a problem you need to work on and close the door. That's all. The degree to which you can reproduce it and organize it is the degree to which you will be focused.

General managers are distracted on average every 20 minutes. How do they manage to cope with everything?

Working at home in the morning for 90 minutes when nobody can disturb them.

One study found that none of 12 executives could work continuously for more than 20 minutes at a time—at least not in the office. Only at home was there any chance to concentrate. The only one of the 12 who did not make important long-term decisions “on the knee” and being sandwiched between unimportant decisions, calls and numerous crisis situations was the manager who worked from home every morning for an hour and a half. And only after that I went to the office.

Some of you think: I have other responsibilities. Meetings My boss needs me. My spouse is calling. I can't just hide. That's why you need a system.

Фото: Depositphotos

5) Develop a personal system

I talked to a lot of incredibly productive people. Do you know what they don't say? “I do not know how to do it. I just hope for the best. ”

No one said that. Your daily routines may be formal, academic, or personal—but either way, productive people have them.

Tim says:

Forming routines and systems is more effective than trying to rely on self-discipline. I think self-discipline is overrated. Allowing yourself to do something you didn't plan for is a recipe for failure. I encourage people to design systems so that decision-making is about the most creative aspects of their work or the use of their talents.

Personal systems work because you perform actions automatically, and it does not require willpower. What do we see by studying the way of life of the great geniuses of all times? Almost everyone had personal routines that worked for them.

How do you start developing your personal system? Apply the "80 / 20" principle:

• What part of your actions is responsible for a disproportionate amount of success?
• What part of your actions completely absorbs your productivity?
• Review your schedule to make more #1 and eliminate #2.

How do you make sure you follow the plan tomorrow? Very simple.

6) Define your goals the night before

Wake up already knowing what is important today, even before the pseudo-emergencies of the day appear in your life come into your life and the mailbox scream about new letters.

What does Tim say:

Determine one or two important priorities the next day before dinner the day before.

Bestseller Dan Royce gives similar advice:

Establish the final ritual. Firmly know when you should stop working. Try to finish each working day in the same way. Clean the desktop. Make backups on your computer. Make a list of what you need to do tomorrow.

Studies say that you are more likely to follow your goals if you spell them out and write down them specifically and accurately. This will reduce anxiety and help you not only calmly enter the next day, but also enjoy the evening tonight.

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