5 Ways to Be More Productive In Your 24 Hour Day

Do you ever wonder why some people can get so much more done in 24 hours than you? Or how is it that Elon Musk is able to seemingly run three companies (Tesla, SpaceX, and Solar City) and we can barely find time to get to five things on our to do list in the same allotted time? The secret to all of this is in your approach. 

1) Be selective with where you spend your time. 

Those who are ultra successful limit the number of tasks they take on. They are looking for the biggest bang for their buck. Basically, tasks that will help them learn something new or seeking to take on the next challenge. If you are doing the same tasks over and over again with few new challenges, you aren't going to learn. If you don't learn then you'll be stuck in the same place you are right now. 

 2) Shoot for the stars but set up your micro goals. 

When you set a goal, you do so because you haven't accomplished such a goal before. Otherwise why would you even bother setting that goal? Since it is something you haven't done before, it is important for you to break down your goals into micro goals that are specific, measurable, achievable and realistic. In other words, come up with an action plan. If you do that, then the minute you get started on a task, you'll know what needs to be done. There is no waiting or being wishy washy when you come up with micro goals. So remember, be specific with the baby steps you need to take to reach your goal.  

3) Run narrations and visuals in your head

Top performing athletes envision success on the field prior to stepping into it. Close your eyes and picture yourself going through the tasks to reach your final goal. Often times, if you can see it in your head and think out the steps for reaching the goal, you'll have a greater chance of succeeding.    

4) Train yourself to be comfortable with the unknown 

In order to grow you must face your fears. Just as the saying goes, to get what you you've never had, you must do what you've never done before. Successful people find ways to get outside of their comfort zone and be comfortable with being outside of their comfort zone. How you do that is by being more confident and self-assured in yourself. So that no matter what the situation is you are confident enough in your ability to figure out what needs to be done and how you should properly react. Having a hard time doing that? Well fake it until you become it. 

5) Follow your inner compass 

Everyone's path in life is different and unique in itself. What may be good for your friend may not be the right fit for you. Trust in yourself and follow what you truly believe. Make your own decisions. Just because someone has been noted to be an expert in the field does not mean he or she can not be wrong. Come to your own conclusions and forget about following the crowd. 

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Five Tips on How to Most Efficiently and Effectively Use Email

Nowadays, email is the primary form of communication in business. Email has replaced in many respects the use of a phone as it is much easier to send emails than to pick up a phone and call someone. Though these are two different methods of communication, there are some people who expect an immediate response from an email much like a SMS text to a friend or an update to social media. There is certain business etiquette that comes with using email as a form of communication and if you use it wrong it can come off as unprofessional. People spend a fourth of the day reading, writing, and replying to their email box, don't contribute to each other's email clutter.  

Here are a number of email etiquette and guidelines that can go a long way in helping minimize email clutter and actually will help your chances in getting your emails read.

1) Email shall not be used to scold or discipline people

Consider a situation whereby your coworker just dropped the ball on a project and now you are suffering the consequences for something you didn't have full control over. Your first instinct is to rip your coworker a new one. Tell him or her off and then flip the bird perhaps. You decide to draft an email with all your anger directed towards that individual. Wait a second. Before you do that, cool down and step away from your desk. Remember that email will be stored on the company server somewhere. Refrain from sending out that email.

2) Send relevant email content to your recipients

The last thing you would want is to receive an email that has nothing to do with what you are doing or related to you in any way. Make sure if you are sending something to someone, it is relevant to them. Have an objective, actionable point, and make sure to address your recipient personally.

3) Limit the number of emails you send related to a discussion

Sending an email should not result in playing email tag. In a professional setting, emails should not be used to banter back and forth or left to right. Be concise and offer solutions in your email, which will help keep long email chains at bay. If your "discussion" ends up going past three emails, perhaps you should pick up the phone or schedule a conference call.

4) Add the email address last

How many times did you accidentally send an email that was not ready to be sent? Maybe on second thought, you didn't mean to send out that email. Take your time to write the email, proofread it, make any changes and attachments, add the recipients, and then fire it off.

5) Only expect the 'to' recipients to respond

Common practice has been those who are CCed typically will not respond to the email or they may merely skim over the emails. If you want a response from someone, make sure you address them in the 'To' field or direct the email towards them. For example, "Jim, will you please take a look at this? In the meantime, Barbara, if you could help set up a call regarding this with Jim, myself, and you that would be helpful." In this case I would still send the emails 'to' Jim and Barbara rather than 'CC' them.

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Holy Grail to Making Better Decisions (Part 3 of 3) - Revisit and Manage Your Decisions

Step 3 of Decision Making: Revisit and Manage Your Decisions

Now you've analyzed your options and made a decision. Now what?

You aren't out of the woods just yet. 

There is a good chance that what you decide may ended up better than what you expected. But there is also the possibility that it may end up worse than you had expected. But if you've prepared yourself for the possibilities, you will be better prepared to pivot and adjust your decision accordingly.

What Do I Need to Do After I Make My Decision?

1) Prepare yourself for what will and could happen. 

There is a good chance that what you expect to happen as a result of your decision may not actually come into fruition. Assume the best and worse case scenarios and have a contingency plan for what to do should these scenario pan out. Humans are not as good at predicting the future as we think we are. Just look at the stock market, where the majority of traders lose money.

Consider likely possibilities and what your actions will be should the possibilities become realities. Imagine yourself 10 minutes, 10 months, and 10 years from now. If you make the decision and it goes against you, would you regret it 10 minutes from your decision? What about 10 months or even 10 years?

2) Set a deadline to evaluate your decision 

After you make a decision, give yourself some time to have the decision pan out before you decide to pivot.

A friend of mine had just quit working at a Big 4 Accounting firm to work at a computer gaming company. He wasn't sure if he had made the right decision, but he decided that he would reevaluate after a year.

After a year, he determined that the gaming company wasn't a good fit for himself and has since move on to another company. By setting a deadline to reevaluate a decision, it keeps you from staying content. Instead it forces you to get out of a rut if you are in one.

Ask yourself, what happened to your decision? Did it work out? A year has past since your decision, was it a success? Why or why not?

Missed the other parts? 

Holy Grail to Making Better Decisions (Part 2 of 3)
Holy Grail to Making Better Decisions (Part 1 of 3)

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Holy Grail to Making Better Decisions (Part 2 of 3) - Analyze Your Options and Decide

Step 2 of Decision Making: Analyze your Options and Decide

So now you have all your options. Now what?

Now it's time to analyze your options and make a decision. There are three ways you can do this and they are the following:

1) Find someone who has dealt with a similar decision. 

It is very rare that you are the only person in the entire world to have faced the decision you have before you. Chances are someone might have already written about his or her experiences and even documenting steps they took to make a decision. Understanding that person's thought process and how they went about making a decision could help you make a better decision.

If you look at your immediate network, you may find people that have had to weigh similar options. Ask them how they made a decision. Also, find out their opinion on whether or not they would choose the same option again.

2) Look at your options under a microscope and from 2000 feet above.  

Again, the key is to keep an open mind and look at your situation on a more detailed level and also from a wider perspective.

For example, suppose you are making a decision on whether or not to watch the new comedy movie that just came out over the weekend. You may visit Rottentomatoes or IMBD to look up actual reviews from viewers like you. Additionally, you may also ask your friends who have watched the movie what they thought about it. These are examples of looking at your issue through a microscope.

From a wider perspective, you may ask a couple experts in the movie business about how well the movie performed at movie screenings or how well they fared with other industry specific statistical measure. Taking a look at how well it did at the weekend box office is also another measure you can consider.

In certain situations, looking at it in a microscope is sufficient, but in more uncertain situations it helps to look at it from 2000 feet above.

The key is to consider all angles of your option and learn from the experiences of others and determining the odds for situations to play out. In the movie example, you may ask yourself, "what are the odds of me enjoying the movie?". Looking at your options under from varying perspectives will help you estimate your odds.

3) If possible, sample test your options.

There is no written rule that says you have to pick one or the other. Why not test your options in real life? Sometimes you can over-analyze your options. If what you are deciding between doing does not have a lot of statistical data or has not been done by enough people, just test it.

For example, suppose you are interested in starting your own eCommerce business. You've heard stories that if you start a new business, you should put 100% of your efforts on it. That means giving up your job to focus on it. But, you realize that you will need some way of supporting yourself after your savings runs out. One of your options could be to test the eCommerce business and see how well it does for a few months, before deciding whether or not you should quit your day job.

Still can't make a decision? If all else fails, ask yourself how you will feel about the decision 10 minutes from now, 10 months from now, and 10 years from now.

If all three time frames align then you have a no brainer. Looking at it from three different time frames helps you take out the short-term emotions that may initially sway your decision one way or the other.

Missed the other parts?

Holy Grail to Making Better Decisions (Part 1 of 3)
Holy Grail to Making Better Decisions (Part 3 of 3)

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Holy Grail to Making Better Decisions (Part 1 of 3) - Make a List of Your Options

Step 1 of Decision Making: Make a List of Your Options

What is the hardest part of making a decision? Certainly it can't be making a list of your options are, right?

Consider the following:

You receive a job offer from a big company. The first question you ask yourself is whether or not you should take this job. By doing this you immediately pigeon holed yourself into thinking you only have two options. One is to take the job and the other is to not take the job.

When faced with a decision, it is very easy to think in binary terms. Most of the time we tend to think in terms of "EITHER" "OR". What do I mean by this? Do the following questions sound familiar?

a) Should I break up with my partner or not?
b) Should I buy a new car or not?
c) Should I quit my job at my current company or not?

In actuality you might have more choices than you think. Along with the aforementioned questions, consider the following:

a) What if my partner and I were to take a break & reevaluate later?
b) Is there the possibility of purchasing a used car or leasing a car?
c) Are there ways I can move within the company into a different role?

The first rule of decision making is to keep an open mind. If you do that, you may find yourself with more options than you were initially led to believe.

How Do I Determine My Options?

1) Consider the opportunity costs

In other words, consider what you would be giving up by making one of your choices. For instance, you could be spending the time or money elsewhere.

For example, suppose you are trying to decide between a $500 plain laptop or a $1000 fully-loaded laptop. If you go with the fully-loaded laptop you will have $500 less to purchase games.

2) Take away all your existing options

Suppose you didn't have any of the options you've considered. What else would you be able to do? This helps you think of other options that you hadn't thought of before.

For example, if you had focused on only whether or not you should quit your job; you left out the possibility of staying with the company and moving around within.

3) Keep the number of choices within reason

Try and narrow your choices down to three or four. Studies have shown that having more than two choices helps you make better choices, but having too many choices can do the opposite.

For example, if you have 24 choices, you might be flip flopping between all the choices and get overwhelmed.

As always, when life presents you with a choice of "this or that", consider whether the right choice might be "both". It's a common misconception to think you can't have your cake and eat it too. In some cases, you actually can.

Missed the other parts?

The Holy Grail to Making Better Decisions (Part 2 of 3) 
The Holy Grail to Making Better Decisions (Part 3 of 3)

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26 Time Management Hacks

26 Time Management Hacks for the Intelligent 

These are the top 26 time management hacks that we wished we knew at 20 years old. Though they are still all applicable for any age group. Initially, I had thought to go down the list and pick my favorites, but as I started going down the list, I realized all of them were very good.  

1. There's always time.  Time is priorities. 
2. "Only plan for 4-5 hours of real work per day."  Days always fill up.
3. "It's normal to have days where you just can't work and days where you'll work 12 hours straight." Work more when you're in the zone. Relax when you're not.
4. "Your time is $1000/hour, and you need to act accordingly." Respect your time and make it respected.

5. Single-treading and home at 5pm Stop multi-tasking. It merely kills your focus. 

6. Set up a work routine and stick to it. Your body will adapt. 

7. We're always more focused and productive with limited time. 

8. Work is the best way to get working. Start with short tasks to get the ball rolling. 

9. "Doing is better than perfect." Work iteratively. Expectations to do things perfectly are stifling. 

10. More work hours doesn't mean more productivity. Use constraints as opportunities. 

11. "Separate thinking and execution to execute faster and think better." Separate brainless and strategic tasks to become more productive. 

12. Organize meetings early during the day. Time leading up to an event is often wasted.

13. "A single meeting can blow a whole afternoon, by breaking it into two pieces each too small to do anything hard in." Group meetings and communication (email or phone) to create blocks of uninterrupted work.

14. Keep the same context through out the day. Switching between projects/clients is unproductive.

15. Work around procrastination. Procrastinate between intense sprints of work (Pomodoro).

16. "Break the unreasonable down into little reasonable chunks. A big goal is only achieved when every little 

thing that you do everyday, gets you closer to that goal."

17. No 2 tasks ever hold the same importance. Always prioritize. Be really careful with to-do lists..

18. "Only ever work on the thing that will have the biggest impact." Always know the one thing you really
need to get done during the day.

19. Break tasks into hour increments. Long tasks are hard to get into; feels like it all needs to get done.

20. "If something can be done 80% as well be someone else, delegate!" Delegate and learn to make use of 

other people.

21. "Yesterday's home runs don't win today's games." Turn the page on yesterday. Only ever think about today and tomorrow.

22. Set deadlines for everything. Don't let tasks go on indefinitely.

23. Set end dates for intense and stressful activities. Everything ends at some point.

24. "Get a reminder app for everything. Do not trust your own brain for your memory." Always take notes.

25. "Write down anything that distracts you- google searches, random thoughts, new ideas, whatever. The 

point is, if you write them down, they'll stop bubbling up when you're in the zone."

26. Take breaks. Sometimes.


 

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Tips for Maintaining Productivity During the Flu/Cold Season

Tips for maintaining productivity during the Cold/Flu season

We may just be entering summer, but it won't be long before 2013’s cold and flu season comes back with a vengeance. Not only does this leave many people suffering for a week or longer, but it can also have a direct impact over the productivity of businesses. There is never a better time than now to prepare your business for the worst eventuality during this year's flu season, staff shortage, workload management and putting in place any policies that will help both your business and your staff during tough times.

The most important item that needs to be in place is a way to ensure staff that are infected stay away from work, to get healthy and also to stop the spread of infection, but that they have access to their work during this time. It may be that they are well enough to work from home and they are staying away for the sake of other employees. This is the type of situation is where having protocols in place in the first place will ensure that workload doesn’t over stretch your other staffs capabilities.

Here are some examples of clever ways you can keep the productivity up and make sure your employees are happy and healthy.

Install a Remote Desktop Protocol

It wasn’t all that long ago that if you were off work due to sickness there was very little work you could do from home, unless you had all the documentation, access to emails and other important data. As illnesses cannot be planned, the majority of employees would have to rely on their colleagues to cover their absence. Luckily, these days are gone as technology has lead the way to a world where we can access our desktops from wherever you may be by using an RDP system like ericom.com for example.

RDP systems let you access your desktop computer at work from your home, using the internet as a means for your two devices to communicate. This allows you to work as normal, checking emails, working on projects and making sure that you are up to date for your return to work. Even if you staff can’t work full time at least the option will be there, especially if someone needs to access their work during their absence. All your staff will need is a device to access their desktop, a laptop or tablet and an internet connection with good bandwidth.

Make Sure Your Employees Have Mobile Devices

Many businesses are now supplying staff with a mobile device that they can use at home for work purposes. Now this may sound like an expense that you could surely do without, but the benefits of knowing that your employees are contactable at home will outweigh the initial cost. This is never more important than if you also have staff travelling for work, without access to the RDP system, or their emails you cannot ensure work productivity to be maintained.

  

Cloud Computing Can Help Your Business Productivity

One of the most important things for the staff that are in the office is that they have access to the work of employees unavailable due to sickness. Having documents saved on internal servers is all well and good, but difficult to access without passwords etc. By turning to cloud storage/services such as Google Docs, you can make sure that your workforce can access all the information they need to cover someone’s priorities.

Not only can this reduce stress levels for staff in the office, but create a happier atmosphere for all. Plus it will lead to a greener environment in general with extra layers of security should there be a flood, for example in your business building.

Finally, whatever choices you make as to how you will manage the loss of staff due to the flu seasons arrival, you need to make sure they are easily accessed by all staff. This could be in the form of an employee’s health policy that is handed out to existing staff and part of new staffing introduction packs. This way everyone will know exactly what they are expected to do if you are unlucky enough to catch a cold or flu.

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