AC H I E V E M O R E BY D O I N G L E S S

5 PRACTICAL
AND PROVEN WAYS
TO 10x YOUR
PRODUCTIVITY AT WORK

a step-by-step guide
 INTRODUCTION
Very often productivity is associated with the hard work. The more you work, the more
tasks you get done. The harder you work, the better quality you produce. Is that really true?
Work harder, get up earlier, stay up later — those have been considered to be
prerequisites of better results and incredible productivity for a long time. In reality these
advice very often appear to be completely misleading.
This formula doesn’t prove to work out. More often the results of hyperactivity are
lowered motivation, extreme tiredness, and zero headway. The eagerness to do as much
as possible is likely to make you burn out more quickly than achieve anything.
Embrace the truth: Work is never done. It consists of tons of tiny things that constantly
pile up and never finish. Eventually, you barely notice how work burns your time. The more
you feed that monster the hungrier it gets.
Being busy and telling everybody about your lack of time have nothing to do with your
productivity and overall performance. Very often you are involved in activities of the
minor or no value for your success. These are the activities that make you busy. They don’t
necessarily make you productive.
Often, the desire to achieve massive results transforms into the desire to do everything
and be everywhere at the same time, trying to take every opportunity available.
This approach is not likely to let you achieve incredible productivity and reap huge rewards
for your work. Instead, it is going to lead you to burnout.
Productivity is not about working harder, it is about working smarter.
The secret weapon that was employed long ago by the most successful people is the
ability to achieve more by doing less. It might seem controversial, but the truth is it works
perfectly well.
It is crucial to get it crystal clear which things matter for goals you want to accomplish and
which don’t. Make sure you don’t mix them up. You need to learn to distinguish those that
do matter and concentrate on their proper execution.
Every time you are engaged in some task, ask yourself whether its completion matters.
If not, abandon it right away.
It makes no sense to work hard unless you know what you work for, why you work for and
where you are going to go. Moreover, the abolition of such actions will only provide you
with additional precious time and let you focus on the things that count.
Do less with full concentration and commitment.
Make sure you do the right things instead of doing some random things right.
Being effective matters more than being merely efficient. Being productive is what
reflects how well you attain your goals. Being busy is what reflects your inability
to filter out trivial tasks.
Know where you are going and why you are engaged in some particular activity.
 Here are five tips to help you double your productivity at work:

1. DEFINE YOUR GOALS

Clarity matters! You have to be crystal clear what you want to achieve within
a day, week, or even within your lifetime. You need to have a vision of how
and via what means you can execute the tasks you set out to do. Get your path
towards your goals clearly determined.

Write down when, why and how you are going to get there. Once you have
defined your goals, you can get down to work.

The very reason why every once in a while you’re involved in so many tasks might
be that you don’t know what you want. As a result, you try to do as many things
as possible in order to justify your productivity somehow.

Without a clear vision of the things you want to accomplish and, last but
not least, the reason why you want to achieve them, you are likely to enter
a busyness mode and keep floating along without any progress.

Define your goals and eliminate the tasks that have no value. Do less with full
concentration and commitment.

It’s not only fine to do less, but it’s a strong prerequisite of attaining goals faster.

Rule #1: If the tasks you’re executing don’t contribute to your goals, there’s no
sense to keep on doing them. Focus on those that take you closer to the
things you want to accomplish.
 2. CUT YOUR TASK LIST IN HALF. PRIORITIZE
Having defined your goals, you’re now able to realize what tasks and activities
have the biggest impact on your progress. Identify the critical tasks that are vital
for success. Build a road map that you can refer to every time you doubt what to
do next. No doubt there are things on your list that you need to get done, but
it’s possible that you also have a lot of tasks sitting there that you can get rid of.

Before you start the day, take a look at your task list. Scan through it. Now cut it
in half.

That might seem crazy, however, this is what you have to do to make your day
much more productive.

Most of the times, your task list consists of the things that belong to one of the
two categories: important or urgent.

It’s crucial to be able to distinguish them when it comes to prioritizing

• Important activities have an outcome that leads to us achieving our goals,

• U
 rgent activities demand immediate attention, and are usually associated
with achieving someone else’s goals. They are often the ones we concentrate
on and they demand attention because the consequences of not dealing with
them are immediate.

Needless to say that some tasks can be found somewhere in between two
categories what makes it difficult to define how high they should appear in your
prioritized list.

Think about each activity and put it into one of four categories:

1. Important and Urgent

2. Important but not urgent.

3. Not important but urgent.

4. Not important and not urgent.

You need to have a clearly defined vision of how you’re going to reach your
goals, so having a blueprint is crucial. Otherwise, you risk jumping between
random activities that’ll do nothing but consume your time and distract you
from the things that matter.

First, postpone the tasks that aren’t urgent. This will relax some time constraints
and let you work at a normal pace.
Second, delegate. Identify the tasks you know you’re not good at (but still ended
up on your list), and delegate them to a person that has exceptional knowledge
in that field and will enjoy working on the assignment. Remember, you don’t
have to do everything.

Third, find those points on your to-do list that could simply be deleted. Yes,
seriously—there are always things that don’t have any weight, and the absence
of their completion is not going to harm your overall progress. Remove them
from your plate and move on.

Rule #2: S chedule the tasks and activities based on their importance and urgency,
giving the highest level of priority to Important and Urgent. Also focus on
important but not urgent, because they help you achieve your personal
and professional goals, and complete important work. Try to delegate the
not important but urgent tasks. And completely avoid the unnecessary
distraction in form of not important and not urgent tasks.
 3. ENTER YOUR ALONE ZONE
High productivity is never achieved in the crowded, noisy places that are full
of distractions. These places are meant to interrupt you all the time and steal
your focus that, in its turn, takes up to 30 minutes to restore.

Learn to escape such places in order to enter your alone zone — time and place
where you can abstract from the external world and focus on the things that
matter. This is where and when you can analyze your mistakes, prioritize your
tasks, think over new ideas, consider the opportunities and so on. All these
actions require laser focus that is impossible to maintain outside the alone zone.

Choose place and time.

It should be a place where you are going to work day after day. This is where
you will get inspired and tuned for fruitful work. It shouldn’t be the place where
you can easily get distracted by a friend or a colleague who wants to start yet
another meaningless conversation. It shouldn’t be a place where constant bustle
doesn’t let you keep a laser focus for a long time.

Make sure the place you choose is where you can indeed stay alone with your
thoughts, ideas and inspiration.

The time solely depends on your personal regime and cycles. Choose the time
of a day when you feel yourself fresh and up to work. Dedicate a certain amount
of time every day to working within your alone zone.

Get back to that place at the set time and get down to work.

Last but not least important step is to make sure you won’t be interrupted.
Go offline and put your phone on airplane mode. The messages and
notifications are rarely urgent and don’t require your immediate reaction. They
can wait. Because the work you do is far more important for the goals you want
to achieve.

Your concentration is crucial. Don’t let anyone destroy it. Enter your alone zone
and get the things done.

Rule #3: T
 he interruptions are toxic. They are the enemies of high efficiency. When
it comes to productive work, it is all about attention. Don’t let anyone or
anything steal it.
 4. FLEX YOUR “NO” MUSCLE
Let’s be honest. We all suck at saying “NO” to people, the reason usually being
we don’t want to seem rude.

But eventually, after saying “YES” several times, you end up showing your
commitment toward things that matter most to other people and not to you.
As a result, you spend your most precious asset–time–doing things that have
nothing to do with your own goals. You undertake the tasks that weren’t initially
on your list, thereby putting off the execution of tasks that can take you closer
to the things you want to achieve.

Learn to value your time and be ruthless when it comes to choosing what
to focus on. Your own tasks have the highest value. Treat them properly.

It’s crucial to learn to say “NO.”

It’s not rude if you say that you already have another commitment and don’t
have time to help. You’ll be surprised to see that people don’t perceive this
as a rude rejection. Instead, they respect your honesty and a strong desire
to concentrate on your own tasks.

This magic word is going to save you a lot of time to complete your own tasks
and accelerate towards your goals.

Rule #4: M
 ake sure you don’t chase every opportunity that appears on the horizon.
Stay focused and be ruthless with the extra commitments. Say NO more
often and avoid unnecessary busyness.
 5. DON’T OVERWORK
Staying up late often seems like a great way to do some extra work and take
a leap in your progress. Regrettably, in the long run, this strategy is going
to harm your productivity and make you more vulnerable to stress and failure.
The pace you attain your goals with is not measured in hours spent struggling
over tasks.

Treat your journey towards major goals like a marathon, not a sprint.

You shouldn’t accelerate too much. Otherwise, you risk quitting the race midway
because of exhaustion. You’d rather keep moving gradually along the way
and keep the consistent pace till the very moment you arrive at the desired
destination.

Don’t overwork and make sure you stop after the day’s done.

A few additional hours of work will do nothing but make you feel tired, and ruin
the entire next day. Work a decent amount of time per day and then let your
brain and body rest.

Rule #5: Y
 ou don’t need to be a workaholic to get the things done and deliver the
results of the highest quality. Manage your time wisely so you finish all the
tasks you set out to do during the day and have a decent rest later.
 SUMMARY
Insane productivity isn’t about working harder — it’s about working smarter.

Make sure you do the right things instead of doing some random things right.

Organize your work in such a way that you always know how each task
contributes to your progress and what it means for each of your ambitions.

Gradually move toward the things you want to accomplish bypassing all the
destinations you don’t aim for. Don’t let trivial things invade your workflow and
distract you from the things you really care about.

Do what matters!