14 Things Ridiculously Successful People Do Every Day
Co-author of Emotional Intelligence 2.0 and President at TalentSmart
Having close access to ultra-successful people can yield some pretty
incredible information about who they really are, what makes them tick,
and, most importantly, what makes them so successful and productive.
“Whenever you see a successful person, you only see the public glories, never the private sacrifices to reach them.” –Vaibhav Shah
Kevin
Kruse is one such person. He recently
interviewed over 200
ultra-successful people, including 7 billionaires, 13 Olympians, and a
host of accomplished entrepreneurs. One of his most revealing sources of
information came from their answers to a simple open-ended question:
“What is your number one secret to productivity?”
In
analyzing their responses, Kruse coded the answers to yield some
fascinating suggestions. What follows are some of my favorites from
Kevin’s findings.
1. They focus on minutes, not hours.
Most
people default to hour and half-hour blocks on their calendar; highly
successful people know that there are 1,440 minutes in every day and
that there is nothing more valuable than time. Money can be lost and
made again, but time spent can never be reclaimed. As legendary Olympic
gymnast Shannon Miller told Kevin, “To this day, I keep a schedule that
is almost minute by minute.” You must master your minutes to master your
life.
2. They focus on only one thing.
Ultra-productive
people know what their “Most Important Task” is and work on it for one
to two hours each morning, without interruptions. What task will have
the biggest impact on reaching your goals? What accomplishment will get
you promoted at work? That’s what you should dedicate your mornings to
every day.
3. They don’t use to-do lists.
Throw away your
to-do list; instead schedule everything on your calendar. It turns out
that only 41 percent of items on to-do lists ever get done. All those
undone items lead to stress and insomnia because of the Zeigarnik
effect, which, in essence, means that uncompleted tasks will stay on
your mind until you finish them. Highly productive people put everything on their calendar and then work and live by that calendar.
4. They beat procrastination with time travel.
Your
future self can’t be trusted. That’s because we are time inconsistent.
We buy veggies today because we think we’ll eat healthy salads all week;
then we throw out green rotting mush in the future. Successful people
figure out what they can do now to make certain their future selves will
do the right thing. Anticipate how you will self-sabotage in the
future, and come up with a solution today to defeat your future self.
5. They make it home for dinner.
Kevin
first learned this one from Intel’s Andy Grove, who said, “There is
always more to be done, more that should be done, always more than can
be done.” Highly successful people know what they value in life. Yes,
work, but also what else they value. There is no right answer, but for
many, these other values include family time, exercise, and giving back.
They consciously allocate their 1,440 minutes a day to each area they
value (i.e., they put them on their calendar), and then they stick to
that schedule.
6. They use a notebook.
Richard Branson
has said on more than one occasion that he wouldn’t have been able to
build Virgin without a simple notebook, which he takes with him wherever
he goes. In one interview, Greek shipping 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 minds by writing everything down as the thoughts come to them.
7. They process e-mails only a few times a day.
Ultra-productive
people don’t “check” their e-mail throughout the day. They don’t
respond to each vibration or ding to see who has intruded into their
inbox. Instead, like everything else, they schedule time to process
their e-mails quickly and efficiently. For some, that’s only once a day;
for others, it’s morning, noon, and night.
8. They avoid meetings at all costs.
When
Kevin asked Mark Cuban to give his best productivity advice, he quickly
responded, “Never take meetings unless someone is writing a check.”
Meetings are notorious time killers. They start late, have the wrong
people in them, meander around their topics, and run long. You should
get out of meetings whenever you can and hold fewer of them yourself. If
you do run a meeting, keep it short and to the point.
9. They say “no” to almost everything.
Billionaire
Warren Buffet 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 Kevin this tip: “If
something is not a ‘Hell Yeah!’ then it’s a no.” Remember, you only have
1,440 minutes in a day. Don’t give them away easily.
10. They follow the 80/20 rule.
Known
as the Pareto Principle, in most cases, 80 percent of results come from
only 20 percent of activities. Ultra-productive people know which
activities drive the greatest results. Focus on those and ignore the
rest.
11. They delegate almost everything.
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.
12. They touch things only once.
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 e-mail 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 deal with it
right then and there. It reduces stress, since it won’t be in the back
of their minds, and it is more efficient, since they won’t have to
re-read or re-evaluate the item again in the future.
13. They practice a consistent morning routine.
Kevin’s
single greatest surprise while interviewing over 200 highly successful
people was how many of them wanted to share their morning ritual with
him. While he heard about a wide variety of habits, most nurtured their
bodies in the morning with water, a healthy breakfast, and light
exercise, and they nurtured their minds with meditation or prayer,
inspirational reading, or journaling.
14. Energy is everything.
You
can’t make more minutes in the day, but you can increase your energy to
increase your attention, focus, and 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 breaks as
opportunities to recharge in order to get even more done.
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