Richard Branson has said on more than one occasion that he wouldn't have been able to build Virgin¹ without a simple notebook, which he takes with him wherever he goes. In one interview, Greek shipping² magnate Aristotle Onassis said, "Always carry a notebook. Write everything down…That is a million dollar lesson they don't teach you in business school!" Ultra-productive people free their mind by writing everything down.

 

 

Ultra-productive people don't "check" email throughout the day. They don't respond to each vibration³ or ding to see who has intruded⁴ their inbox. Instead, like everything else, they schedule time to process their email quickly and efficiently⁵. For some that's only once a day, for me, it's morning, noon and night.

 

 

When I asked Mark Cuban to give me his best productivity advice, he quickly responded, "Never take meetings unless someone is writing a check." Meetings are notorious time killers⁶. They start late, have the wrong people in them, meander⁷ in their topics and run long. You should get out of meetings whenever you can, hold fewer of them yourself, and if you do run a meeting, keep it short.

 

 

Billionaire Warren Buffet⁸ once said, "The difference between successful people and very successful people is that very successful people say ‘no' to almost everything." And James Altucher colorfully gave me this tip,"If something is not a "hell, YEAH! Then it's a "no!"

 

Remember, you only have 1,440 minutes in every day. Don't give them away easily.

 

 

Known as the Pareto Principle, in most cases 80% of outcomes come from only 20% of activities. Ultra-productive people know which activities drive the greatest results, and focus on those and ignore the rest.

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