Ultra-productive people don't ask, "How can I do this task?" Instead they ask, "How can this task get done?" They take the "I" out of it as much as possible. Ultra-productive people don't have control issues and they are not micro-managers. In many cases good enough is, well, good enough.

 

 

Highly successful people often theme days of the week to focus on major areas. For decades I've used "Mondays for Meetings" and make sure I'm doing one-on-one check-ins with each direct report. My Friday afternoons are themed around financials and general administrative¹ items that I want to clean up before the new week starts. I've previously² written about Jack³ Dorsey's work themes, which enable him to run two companies at once. Batch⁴ your work to maximize your efficiency and effectiveness.

 

 

How many times have you opened a piece of regular mail -- a bill perhaps -- and then put it down only to deal with it again later? How often do you read an email, and then close it and leave it in your inbox to deal with later? Highly successful people try to "touch it once." If it takes less than five or ten minutes -- whatever it is -- they'll deal with it right then and there. It reduces stress since it won't be in the back of their mind, and is more efficient since they won't have to re-read or evaluate the item again in the future.

 

 

My single greatest surprise while interviewing over 200 highly successful people was how many of them wanted to share their morning ritual with me. Hal Elrod, author of The Miracle Morning, told me, "While most people focus on 'doing' more to achieve more, The Miracle Morning is about focusing on 'becoming' more so that you can start doingless, to achieve more." While I heard about a wide variety of habits, most people I interviewed nurtured⁵ their body in the morning with water, a healthy breakfast and light exercise. They nurtured their mind with meditation⁶ or prayer, inspirational reading, and journaling.

 

 

You can't make more minutes in the day, but you can increase your energy which will increase your attention, focus, decision making, and overall productivity. Highly successful people don't skip meals, sleep or breaks in the pursuit of more, more, more. Instead, they view food as fuel, sleep as recovery, and pulse and pause with "work sprints⁷".

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