We all look for the magic formula, for the spell or secret that will make us more productive. We watch others handling their everyday issues, facing flood of emails, distractions of phone calls, social media or despondency. How can you invent something revolutionary and really make a difference in that chaos we all experience? While genius clearly is an individual question, many top performers share common habits.
1. Reading a lot
Not only if you do a creative job. Warren Buffets spends 80% of his worktime reading. Of course, passive, thoughtless text consuming won’t do, also your reading matters. Try not to lock up in one genre. If you limit yourself within your discipline, you will get bored and unable to think up new solutions. Texts from outside of your area of expertise allow to look at the problem from different angle.
Also limiting yourself to one narrow field deprives you from one of the crucial experiences of reading – misunderstanding or difficulties in grasping the point. When you read similar texts all the time, you grow a false sense of comfort: great, I get it, I get it all. But working harder, exercising your cognitive forces and imagination, attempt to get other perspective will truly expand your intellectual capabilities.
So go, read some classics, maybe even poetry!
2. Utilizing productivity window
There are times of the day when you’re most productive. Observe yourself and try to spot that moments. After morning coffee? Before going out of work? Around lunch? Recognize that period and try not to waste it. Dedicate that time to difficult, more complex or creative tasks. Instead of cherishing a belief that you can be equally productive all the time, focus on getting to know yourself.
Most of us submit to common schedule, dictated by school and then 9-to-5 workday, while our individual efficiency might not exactly follow that pattern. Give yourself a chance to learn that. Pay attention to how you work, make notes. Try to modify your schedule and see how it works.
3. Knowing that mistakes make you grow
Carol Dweck writes that what distinguishes great people is how they treat mistakes. Misteps do not determine the outcome of your efforts – you can learn from them. As many pieces of advice, that one might also sound cliché, but deep inside there is a lot of truth to it. See how easy we get trapped into exaggerating our small problems or slips, how we get discouraged and turn failures into excuses (“I’m stupid, I can’t do anything right, why to try if I will fail, I’ll better just sat on the couch with a nice, nonjudgemental bar of chocolate”). Everybody makes mistakes. Some of us just try to take lessons from them and don’t let them stop you.
4. Resting
The idea of working like a machine might be charming, but from realistic point of view you need to rest, your body and mind need to relax. As you sit in one position, focused on one task, all your body gets tense and shrunken. http://personalexcellence.co/blog/productive-people/
You can use your breaks for some sports activity – Kurt Vonnegut did pushups and sit ups or swimming when having a break.
5. Getting up early
Yes, we get it. There are larks and there are owls, and you are an owl, and have always been. Going to bed around 11 P.M. sounds to you like a good idea for your grandma, but definitely not for you.
But statistics speaks for themselves: most famous entrepreneurs claim that they prefer to start the day early. Thanks to that they have time to do everything they need to and have most of their schedule ahead around 10.
From evolutionary standpoint, humans used to get up early as they were determined by natural sunlight and that biological clock hasn’t evaporated after electricity was invented. That’s why we work more efficiently during the day, not in the night (when we can be productive fueled with stress, anxiety and caffeine). That explains why that habit is so widely spread: from Ernest Hemingway to Steve Jobs.
***
All these 5 are very simple and extremely hard at the same time, utilized far less than recommended online. Why do we find them so difficult? Or maybe they don’t actually work? Do you adopt any of these?
Follow
