A colleague of mine, Meggin McIntosh, Ph.D, asked me to put together a list of top 10 productivity tips on how to move from a “Culture of Now” to a “Culture of When.”
A “Culture of Now” says that everything needs to be done right now, it needs to have an immediate response. The “Culture of Now” is terribly unproductive.
“Other people are making me unproductive. Help!”
One of the top questions I’m asked by inherently
organized individuals is how to prevent the
disorganization of OTHERS from making them
productive.
In this special 8 minute video, I answer this question
in great depth.
You’ll learn how to:
P.S. After you watch the video I’d like you to share
your experiences. How are your co-workers or employees
making you unproductive? What have you tried that’s
worked so far?
I was speaking with an executive coaching client fairly recently and he asked me about what I thought about the 4 hour workweek, and I am going to give you my candid response to that. What I told him that I think there are some great, great principles in the 4 hour workweek. I think it’s a catchy title, it got a lot of attention.
The problem is most people aren’t even working a 40 hour workweek! How many people do you know that are working a 40 hour workweek regularly? (And I include your work week time, travel to and from work and time spent thinking about work at home.) How many people do you know that are working in that kind of a schedule?
In my experience in going out and speaking to companies worldwide and promoting my book and talking to people most people are working long…long hours especially when they include the time they are spending thinking about work at home, they are just they are trapped in a never ending cycle. They are working 50…60…70 hours a week.
My suggestion is start with a 40 hour work week. That is the big part of what I do with the Get Time program, because I am helping people make strategic decisions about how much time they are going to spend in a week working.
If you are not taking control of your calendar, if you are letting your week control you, then you are not living the 40 hour workweek. If you make a commitment to yourself that you are going to end work at 5 o’clock or 6 o’clock everyday, but you are finding that there is another task, another task and another task and—well, it just kind of goes on and on—then you are fooling yourself. And starting with something like the 4 hour workweek and out sourcing your work is just the wrong place to begin.
You need to start with yourself with your personal systems. Build a strategy to take control of where you are spending your time and what your most valuable activities are. You need to focus on your Most Valuable Activities. You can only do that if you begin to limit the amount of time that you are working and really become realistic with yourself about the truth of time, how much time there is in a day.
That is why I put together the Get Time Boot Camp. It helps people manage their time and how much time they want to work. It helps to take control of their schedule and take control of the information that is taking…that is flowing through their day. That is what I can help you do. I can help you get the 40 hour workweek or even the 30 hour workweek. I can help you get to that point where you are actually in control of what is going on in your week, instead of letting your week control you.
“Little did I know when I was a young girl who loved playing the old board game “Password” that in future years that same word would become such a significant part of daily life.
Logging in to the programs at work requires five passwords, I do believe. There are more to pay each bill, look up college accounts, log on to Internet classes, check your sons’/daughters’ latest grades and test scores, check out a library book online, order pictures from my digital camera, buy music from iTunes, and check e-mail accounts.”
http://www.tennessean.com/article/20090711/OPINION03/907110307/1008/OPINION01/
Ubiquitous+passwords+tax+our+multitasking+brains
Tim Mai and his brother escaped Vietnam on a fishing boat in 1986. Tim has become a master of helping people automate their Real Estate businesses. He built a substantial empire starting from literally nothing, so he’s very careful about how he invests his time and his money.
He tells people my Get Time coaching was one of the best investments he ever made in his business.
He is truly one of the happiest people in the world. It’s nearly impossible to spend any time with Tim to not start smiling yourself!
He’s smiling even more after completing my Get Time Coaching. Watch this video to see why.
IMPORTANT NOTE: These results ARE typical!
Learn more about my Two Day Productivity Miracle by CLICKING here.
I once overheard a business owner say that he felt more productive
when he took a vacation, though not for the reasons one might expect.
He explained that he worked in a whirlwind just before the vacation to
make sure everything was taken care of before he left. Then, when he
returned, he had to work even harder to catch up with all the things he
missed while he was away! He then jokingly suggested that perhaps he
should take a vacation every week.
Are you prepared to take a vacation? As we enter the holiday sea
son
this is a critical productivity question to consider. While many people
vacation is a nice, relaxing break from routine, for others vacation is
extremely stressful and is more a nightmare than a “dream come true.”
Consider the following action steps to help make your next vacation time a blessing instead of a curse:
I sometimes tell my clients 
something that raises a few eyebrows: procrastination can actually be a good thing. In fact, I encourage
clients to procrastinate as much as they possibly can.
First, let me explain when procrastination obviously doesn’t work. If
you do not have solid personal systems for calendaring and dealing with
the flow of information into your life, then when you procrastinate you
are depending on your mind to remind you of when it is time to do
things. This is a problem because your mind will remind you of things
at inappropriate times and inappropriate
places. You will miss appointments and miss responsibilities. For those
who do not have solid personal systems, procrastination is a very, very
bad idea.
However, for those who have a solid
calendaring system and the accountability to follow through on that
schedule, procrastination is a very valuable and necessary tool. The
person who doesn’t procrastinate or schedule low priorities into the
distant future ends up running headlong into what we call the Truth of
Time.
The Truth of Time says that there are only 24 hours
in a day. If you do not procrastinate low priority items by scheduling
them into the future, you will always be short on time and find
yourself stressed out at the end of every day wondering if you really
accomplished anything at all.
You must have three things in place in order for procrastination to be your ally:
While I do not consider myself a “computer professional,” I often find myself poking around my clients’ computers. Since productivity is so closely tied to technology, I’m often investigating the little hiccups that are costing business executives big money.
Sooner or later, I hear some form of this question: “Why has my computer been running slow?”
This is not an insignificant issue. If computer slowdowns rob you of just 2% of your overall work time, and you work 40 hours per week, then you are losing an entire work week (41.5 hours) every year just twiddling your thumbs waiting for your web browser to start up!
There are many potential problems that can make your computer have a case of the doldrums. However, here are the top five culprits for you to examine:
