15 secrets duccessfyl people know about time managment Kevin Kruse-2024 Flashcards
10-2024
Richard Branson’s Secret Productivity Tool (29-9-2024)
How can you get your brain to quiet down? How can you always remember your great ideas?
Branson singled out one item as being most important. In a May 5, 2006, interview he said: It may sound ridiculous, but my most important is to always carry a little notebook in your back pocket. I think the number one thing that I take with me when I’m traveling is the notebook…I could never have built the Virgin Group into the size it is without those few bits of paper.
“If you have a thought but don’t write it down, by the next morning it may be gone forever.”
Always carry a notebook. Write everything down. When you have an idea, write it down. When you meet someone new, write down everything you know about them. That way you will know how much time they are worth. When you hear something interesting, write it down. Writing it down will make you act upon it. If you don’t write it down you will forget it. THAT is a million dollar lesson they don’t teach you in business school!
If you’re serious about becoming a wealthy, powerful, sophisticated, healthy, influential, cultured, and unique individual, keep a journal. Keeping a journal is so important. I call it one of the three treasures to leave behind for the next generation… The first treasure is your pictures. Take a lot of pictures… The second treasure is your library. This is the library that taught you, that instructed you, that helped you defend your ideals. It helped you develop a philosophy. It helped you become wealthy, powerful, healthy, sophisticated, and unique… The third treasure is your journals: the ideas that you picked up, the information that you meticulously gathered. But of the three, journal writing is one of the greatest indications that you’re a serious student.
The act of taking notes by hand involves active listening, cognitive processing, and finally recalling it to record it. People who take notes with a laptop tend to just robotically record spoken words, without doing the mental work to process it. And don’t forget, if you want to keep a digital, searchable archive of all your notes, you can always scan them
Write the current date on the inside cover so you can quickly locate the notebook in the future if you are trying to find notes from a specific meeting or event. Some people like to use a Sharpie to write the start date on the edge of the pages, so it can be seen without even opening the notebook.
Jot down everything and anything you don’t want to forget. Record random creative ideas you have: new ideas for books you want to write, companies you want to start, products to invent, new marketing tactics, gift ideas for your family, future vacation destinations, restaurant recommendations, a great bottle of wine, names for your baby, whatever! Write everything down, and you’ll never worry or stress out about forgetting something again.
Whenever you encounter great advice or an inspirational quote— whether someone says it or you read it—write it down in the back of the book. Reserve pages in the back for these nuggets of wisdom so they can all stay together and be easily reviewed in the future.
When you have filled your notebook, write the end date on the inside front cover, again to help you locate the right book in the future when you have a whole row of them on your bookshelf.
Put the book up on the shelf next to the previous journals. Here
will be a detailed record of your entire life!
Every New Year’s Day, make it a new tradition to thumb through your old journals from the previous year. You’ll be amazed at how much you’ll re-learn from your notes, and it will remind you of all your progress. For any thoughts or ideas that you’ll want to revisit in the current year, just rewrite them in your new or current notebook.
Master Your Email Inbox With 321Zero (29-9-2024)
Only process email three times a day, using the 321Zero system. Schedule three times a day to process your email (morning, noon, night), set the timer on your phone for 21 minutes, and try to get to inbox zero in that time. Make a game out of it. 21 minutes is intentionally not enough time, but it will keep you focused, ensure that your responses are short, and that you don’t start clicking links out onto the wonderful world of internet distractions.
How do you create an effective work routine? Simple: by choosing what you want it to be, rather than letting others dictate it for you. Except that most people do exactly the opposite, through one simple (terrible) habit: they check their email first thing in the morning…This means that their focus and energy are going where others are directing it, rather than where they stand to make the greatest impact
Keep emails short—really short. Realize that being brief isn’t rude; it’s a sign of respect for the other person’s time (in addition to your own). There is even a movement that suggests we consider email messages to be similar to text messages. The website five.sentenc.es suggests you limit all your emails to five sentences or fewer and then add a footer message that directs people to the website for an explanation.
Email is a great way for other people to put their priorities into your life; control your inbox.
Meeting Hacks from Google, Apple, and Virgin(29-9-2024)
Sit-down meetings were 34 percent longer than stand-up meetings, but they produced no better decisions than stand-up meetings.
One of my favourite tricks is to conduct most of my meetings standing up. I find it to be a much quicker way of getting down to business, making a decision and sealing the deal. When given the opportunity I often like to take things a step further – literally, with a walking meeting
It’s very rare that a meeting on a single topic should need to last more than 5-10 minutes.
Keep your daily huddles to 15 minutes! If they start to run longer, people will be less likely to show up. Force people to be brief, and any “stuck” items that can’t be solved immediately should be taken offline.
One Little Word That Multiplies Success(30-9-2024)
“The difference between successful people and very successful people is
that very successful people say ‘no’ to almost everything.”
They say that in the distance, even giant elephants at first look small.
Unfortunately, many small things turn into big things when they actually arrive.
But I share this story as an extreme example of how we mistakenly think we’ll
be less busy in the future than we are in the present.
This is a lesson I even try to teach my kids: every yes is a no to something else.
It’s not that they should say no to everything; it’s that they should think it
through.
Understanding that there is always an
opportunity cost will make you hesitate and really be careful about what you are
agreeing to put on your calendar.
Say no to everything that doesn’t support your immediate goals.
The Powerful Pareto Principle(30-9-2024)
80 percent of results will come from just 20 percent of the action.
I accept that I cannot do everything so I work only on things that are vitally important using the 80:20 rule.
She taught me that if you just read the first and last paragraph of each chapter
as well as the first sentence of each paragraph in between, you’ll understand 80
percent of the message of the book. I learned that it might not get you straight
A’s, but it can get you solid B’s.
It’s more important to have a mindset of identifying the few things and
activities that will give you outsized returns. You want to:
*Look for shortcuts.
* Do the most important things exceptionally well, and the rest
just “good enough” or not at all.
* Develop your skills to be exceptional in a few targeted areas;
don’t try to master everything.
* Realize that you can work less, stress less, and increase your
happiness by figuring out the 20 percent of goals and activities that
are most important to you.
Eighty percent of outcomes are generated by twenty percent of
activities.
The “3 Harvard Questions” That Save 8 Hours a Week (30-9-2024)
They found that 41 percent of knowledge workers’ time is spent on discretionary activities that weren’t personally satisfying and could also be done by others.
To put this into practice, make a list of all the tasks and meetings you worked
on during the previous week and follow these steps:
1. Ask, “How valuable is this task to me or to the company?
What would happen if I just dropped it completely?”
2. Ask, “Am I the only person who could do this task? Who else
in or outside the company could accomplish this?”
3. Ask, “How can the same outcome be achieved but with a
faster process? How could this task get completed if I only had half the time?”
And so my view is I don’t do anything that someone else can do better, and I don’t do anything that isn’t the highest and best use of my time.
Always try to spend as much time as possible using your unique strengths on your highest leverage activities.
The bottom line is you should try to outsource everything you can unless:
1. You enjoy doing it and it’s part of your rest and recharging process.
2. It’s part of your values to continue doing the task.
3. It costs you more per hour to outsource it than you want to makeyourself.
Focus your time only on things that utilize your unique strengths and passions.
Why Twitter Co-Founder Jack Dorsey Themes His Days (30-9-2024)
The only way to do this is to be very disciplined and very practiced. The way I found that works for me is I theme my days.
We’re always delivering; we’re always showing where we were last week and where we’re going to be the following week.
Having themes for our days makes it easier to plan ahead, and easier to stay on track. Having an entire day set aside for a theme creates a bigger space in which to accomplish things, and a smaller chance that you’ll “just set it aside” until tomorrow.
Focus Days: “Game days” are to focus on our most important activities,typically revenue-producing activities. These are also the days when we should ideally be using our unique talents; do what you do best.
Buffer Days: These are days to catch up on emails and calls, hold internal meetings, delegate tasks, catch up on paperwork, and complete any training or educational activities that are related to work.
Free Days: These are days without any kind of work. These are days for vacation, fun, or perhaps charity. No work-related emails, calls, or thinking should be done on these days; it’s a time to rejuvenate.
Batch your work with recurring themes for different days of the week.
Don’t Touch! (Until You’re Ready)(30-9-2024)
Highly successful people take immediate action on almost every item they encounter. They know that to be efficient, they want to expend the least possible amount of time and mental energy processing things. In short, they practice a “touch it once” mentality.
Whenever I have a small task that needs to be completed (that takes less than five minutes), I should complete it now, rather than putting it off. This ensures that I do not have a long list of tasks that I have to complete later at the end of the day.
A messy environment can be mentally taxing, increase the time it takes to find stuff, and eventually demand scheduled time to “clean the house.” A touch-itonce mentality can go a long way to keeping your environment tidy all the tim.
If a task can be completed in less than five minutes, do it immediately.
Change Your Morning, Change Your Life(30-9-2024)
Imagine if you could have a solid hour of daily “me time” that could drive higher levels of happiness, productivity, and creativity throughout the day.
It is far too easy for us to wake up, feel the pressure of our never-ending todo list, and immediately begin to react. React to overnight email messages, react to social media, and react to the first item on our calendar
Highly successful people design an empowering and energizing morning routine and stick with it.
I wake up fully rested, spend 30 minutes in meditation and then go to my workout area. While working out physically, I take advantage of the rich audio programs available so that I fill that 45 minutes with physical exertion combined with mental input and expansion. I never check the news or look at my iPhone first thing in the morning, no matter how important it may seem to know the latest news…I carefully protect that first hour of the day, making sure that all input is positive, clean, pure, creative and inspirational. Many of my most creative ideas have come from this protected time of the day, often when I am in a full sweat. By 9:00 AM I am invigorated, motivated and ready to face anything the day may bring.
Obviously, successful people don’t all follow the exact same routine, but it is amazing how you can easily identify consistent themes.
Most wake up early—6 a.m. or earlier.
They hydrate by drinking a lot of water.
They eat a healthy breakfast, although each has a different definition of healthy (e.g., fruit and oatmeal, green smoothie,
protein, slow carb).
They exercise.
Many meditate, journal, or read.
Energy is everything. We have a certain amount of willpower allotted to us every day, and we burn through it quickly if our energy is low. I like to do most of my creative work in the morning
The premise of The Miracle Morning is to wake up and start each day with the discipline of dedicating time to personal development, so that you can become the person you need to be to create the most extraordinary life you can imagine, and do so faster than you may currently believe is possible. While most people focus on “doing” more to achieve more, The Miracle Morning is about focusing on “becoming” more so that you can start doing less, to achieve more. Through Elrod’s research and own experiences, he developed a system he calls Life S.A.V.E.R.S.
S is for Silence (quiet, gratitude, meditation, or prayer)
A is for Affirmations (purpose, goals, priorities)
V is for Visualization (of goals or ideal life)
E is for Exercise
R is for Reading (a self-improvement book)
S is for Scribing (journaling)
Elrod makes a compelling case that no matter what level of success you already have, using your first minutes of each morning to invest in yourself will take you to an even higher level
Invest the first 60 minutes of each day in rituals that strengthen your mind, body, and spirit.
Energy Is Everything (30-9-2024)
What if the ultimate time management secret isn’t about time at all? You can’t “manage” time—no matter what you do, you will have the same 24 hours tomorrow that you had today. When people talk about “time management,” what they really want is to get more stuff done with less stress. And the real secret behind this is that you need to maximize your energy.
you can personally understand that our physical and mental energy varies—and that it has a direct effect on our productivity.
Don’t sacrifice your sleep. Sooner or later, it will catch up with you. You won’t perform at your best, and you will get sick.
It is important to schedule time for yourself, to rest, or to refocus.
research shows that humans naturally move from full focus and energy to physiological fatigue every 90 minutes. Our body sends us signals to rest and renew, but we override them with coffee, energy drinks, and sugar or just by tapping our own reserves until they’re depleted. Schwartz suggests that we need to purposely take short breaks every 90 minutes throughout the day to drink water, walk, or to eat healthy snacks. His mantra is, “Pulse and pause.
In the examples above, we see recommendations to sprint for 25 minutes, 52 minutes, or 90 minutes, all followed by breaks. The important point isn’t the exact length of the sprint or the break, it’s to figure out what “pulse and pause” cycle works best for you. Our cognitive capacity declines throughout the day; you must build in frequent mental breaks to recharge and maintain productivity.
Set a timer for everything you do. When you have a deadline you are more productive. I use the Pomodoro technique…
The biggest way to increase your overall energy levels is of course to take care of your health. You already know this, but keys to productivity include: * Getting enough sleep * Minimizing alcohol * Minimizing caffeine, especially late in the day * Eating more whole foods and fewer processed foods * Maintaining a healthy weight * Drinking a lot of water * Exercising daily (a 20-minute power walk counts!) Productivity is about energy and focus, not time
The E-3C System: Putting It All Together (30-9-2024)
into a simple system that I call E-3C. The E stands for Energy, and the three C’s are Capture, Calendar, and Concentrate.
Energy The first step—the most important part of my E-3C system—is “E” for Energy. You can’t make more time, but you can increase your productivity. Increasing your energy and focus is the most important secret to achieving 10x productivity in the same amount of time. Highly successful people get enough sleep. Highly successful people eat energizing foods and exercise consistently. Highly successful people maintain morning rituals—like meditating, journaling, hydrating, practicing yoga—that establish a foundation of energy, clarity, and alertness for the entire day. Highly successful people pulse and pause throughout the day to maintain peak performance.
Capture The first “C” in my E-3C system stands for Capture. You must “capture” everything and anything into a notebook instead of trying to keep things in your head. In a best-case scenario, trying to remember to-dos, to-calls, and to-buys leads to a higher cognitive load and unnecessary stress—worse, it can lead to incomplete tasks. Highly successful people keep a notebook with them at all times and write down everything they want to remember. In addition to capturing to-do items, they also record notes from calls and meetings, new ideas, lessons learned, favorite quotes, and other things that might need to be referenced in the future.Additionally, this practice improves your effectiveness, as you no longer forget important things to do, can hold other people accountable, and can learn from your accumulated written experiences
Calendar The second “C” in my E-3C system stands for Calendar. What is implied with this step is don’t use a to-do list! If you want “to do” something, immediately schedule it on your calendar. Highly successful people have clearly identified values which lead to top priorities and their Most Important Task (MIT). You must time block MIT time on your calendar. Time for other activities that support your top values (e.g., health, relationships, giving back) should also get blocked on your calendar on a recurring basis.Highly successful people protect their calendar, knowing and feeling the reality that nothing is more important than time. They say no to anything and everyone who does not align with their priorities and are especially wary of “distant elephants.” They do something only if they aren’t able to drop it, delegate it, or redesign it. They spend time on the 20 percent of things that contribute 80 percent of the value—and they drop the rest.
Concentrate The third “C” in my 3C system stands for Concentrate. Highly successful people proactively work from their calendar; they don’t react to stimuli like incoming email, social media messages, or “got a minute” meetings. Highly successful people don’t multitask; they concentrate on one task at a time. Highly successful people concentrate on their MIT and other priorities during times of peak energy, typically in the morning. Highly successful people pulse and pause to maintain concentration and productivity throughout the day. Most take 5-minute breaks every 30 to 60 minutes.
20 More Time & Productivity Hacks(30-9-2024)
The 15 secrets shared above are the principles that are most likely to get you massive gains in productivity. Below are even more tips and tricks you can use to save time.
- Always cook more than one meal at a time.
- Off-load your memory with your camera phone.
- Mute your phone and shut off all notifications.
- Drink a healthy protein shake for breakfast.
- Never watch live TV.6. Don’t watch TV at all!
According to Nielsen, the average American spends 158 hours each
month watching television! That’s 1,896 hours per year. Damn. That
would be enough time to write an awesome book or start a company. You
want a six-pack? Exercise instead of watch TV. Eliminate television and
you gain nearly two thousand hours a year. Imagine what YOU could do - Use your drive time wisely.
- Never call people without setting an appointment ahead of time (unless it’s social, of course).
- Avoid busy times out in the real world if at all possible.
- Use dual monitors.
- Have a stop doing list.
- Remind people of the “end time.”
- Hang out with productive people.
- Tell people around you to leave you alone.
- Buy birthday cards by the dozen.
- Pay bills electronically
- Never answer a call from an unknown number.
- Get a business coach, mentor, or mastermind group.
- Release your content through multiple channels.
- Know that done is better than perfect.
Time Secrets of 7 Billionaires(30-9-2024)
I try to reserve the morning for doing “real work.” I find I can focus more in the morning
Do one thing at once. Stop multitasking!
Making time for yourself is essential to maintaining mental fitness and it goes without saying that mental fitness is inextricably linked to your success.For me, it’s a daily workout during my lunch hour that keeps me sane. On most days, by 1:00 p.m. I have already put in about seven hours of work.
I’ll just say that actually being disciplined about adopting these habits is, in my experience, a huge differentiator of successful people. I often meet people who seem smarter than me yet are less capable because they don’t have the self-discipline and/or self-confidence to introspect on their ability to do what they think they’re going to do and find ways to iteratively improve. Amazingly, I think it’s as simple as that. It’s kind of a sore spot for me because I can’t understand why more people don’t take it seriously
Time Secrets of 13 Olympic Athletes(30-9-2024)
Grabbing a power nap to facilitate recovery instead of wasting an hour online. Focus on those things that bring you further to your goal each and every day. Every moment counts!
focus is absolutely essential to achieving anything worthwhile. At the highest levels of achievement whether it be athletic, academic, or business.
One of the most important parts to managing your time well is having an agenda, meaning you have a focus each day and a goal each week. When you are an athlete and constantly training and competing, rest is incredibly important so that you are able to be at your very best physically and mentally. It is important to also schedule time for yourself, to rest, or to refocus. Also, when you are in a competitive sport you have to be able to adapt and overcome the obstacles you face. At the end of the day it’s how well you accomplish the process as a whole, not the long term goal, and how adaptable you are to change because processes evolves and is never perfect. The key to discipline is striving for perfection but understanding perfect isn’t attainable. To strive for it means you’re willing to learn and overcome challenges; therefore creating solutions. It’s a day-by-day process and if you walk in the light and focus on each step, you can see the imprint your footstep makes.KATIE UHLAENDER
When it comes to training, I guess I have just always prioritized it so it was easy to make time for. It has also allowed me to put other things off because training is more important at the time.
Find someone whose work you trust and admire and who has already done specifically what you want to do. Ask them for help and then filter their advice for your own situation. It’s not about saving an hour or there. It’s about saving you potentially years to get to goal. I had some great water polo coaches throughout my career. Each had strengths and weaknesses. My realization though, was that if I had a specific challenge, then I needed a specific answer.
It all seems pretty obvious but being specific about the challenge you face and then finding the specific person best in a position to help you accelerated my learning enormously. It would be nearly impossible to quantify how many hours this saved me over my career as an athlete, student and now in business.
Start every day listing off your five MITs (Most Important Things) and get those done first.
Time Secrets of 29 Straight-A Students(1-10-2024)
do one thing, and one thing only until it is finished, then move on.
“What can I do now so I won’t have to do it on my most busy day,because there might be days in which there are six hours to do homework after school, and some days when there might only be one or two.
I make sure that every night I dedicate at least one hour to myself. Whether that is just watching a television show or going to the gym, it is a key factor in decompressing each day.
Give yourself play rewards. Time management is mostly about staying focused–when we’re playing a game we like, we’re not tempted to be distracted. Knowing that we have a reward coming up, like video games, a show, or social time, is not only motivating, but it gives us a clear light at the end of the tunnel that keeps us from the malaise of feeling like we’re trapped in work.
When it comes to reducing distractions, I don’t listen to music or watch television while I’m doing my homework. I find that this helps me push through my homework at a much quicker pace.
—but I don’t give myself more than a ten minute break, because it will feel like you have a lot more homework than you do if you take multiple breaks.
Set realistic small goals. I call them daily quotas, a term that got some attention on Quora. By daily quota I mean a small goal that seems insignificant, but when repeated day after day gets daunting tasks done. For example, 20 words in a foreign language a day (using a flashcard system, for instance) means 3000 words after 5 months. That’s almost complete fluency.
Setting incremental reminders of upcoming due dates and when different parts of your project or assignment should be done helps to keep you on track and minimize procrastinating.
When studying, depending on the subject, I break up my time with one 15-to30-minute break for every 90 minutes to two hours of studying. During my breaks, I leave my study area and walk around, grab a snack and usually just check social media for five minutes. Doing something fun that takes your mind off studying helps you stay refreshed and refocus when your break is over
Combine multiple tasks together. Sometimes, there literally aren’t enough hours in the day to do everything. Find an opportunity to combine several things at once - maybe you do homework or study while on the bus, or you listen to an audiobook for class while cleaning your room. You have to do all four things eventually, but this way you can maximize time that you might otherwise have spent being idle (such as a bus ride). That way, you cross two things off the list at once!
Second, there is an extraordinary amount of idle time in our lives. Instead of letting that time pass underutilized, it is best to maximize productivity by taking advantage of it. This includes ANY waiting time. For example, waiting for the bus, in the airport, in between classes, etc. Use that time to complete short tasks that would otherwise accumulate and become a larger burden, such as responding to emails or studying. Another option would be to use that time to become productive in short bursts on a larger project. This will allow the project to be completed sooner, with less perceived pain and stress. In addition, short bursts are more effective than slogging at something for hours. Third, perform tasks that require a lot of cognitive energy during times of the day that you are most productive. This time will vary for each person, but use that time toward creative tasks, and tasks that require problem-solving. Perform tasks that don’t require a lot of mental energy during times of diminished energy. These tasks include things like cleaning, organizing, responding to emails (things that can be done on autopilot).
Learn how you work, what time you work best, and where you work best; whether you work best right after school or at midnight, do what you need to do to do the best work
Take notes by hand marking the important points. Then at night type the notes into your computer. This is good review and it makes sure you have a backup of your notes. Make a one page study sheet of the items you think are the most important in the class. In other words guess what is going to be on the test - hint if it was in the book and the teacher talked about it in class there is a good chance it will be on the test. Carry your one page study sheet around with you everywhere you go and check it when you have free time. IT’s easier to learn a little at a time then it is to try to cram the night before. I never got less than an A in a class I made a one page study sheet.
Know when to put in all your effort and know when to ease back.
If you aren’t sure what to work on first, just pick something and get started. Once you get tired of one assignment, either finish it out or move to something else. A lot of time is wasted deciding where to start or avoiding an assignment you don’t like.
A key part of staying focused is keeping your standards high.
Time Management: If it’s important, then you’ll find time for it. School is important to me so I make time to have all school related things in order before anything else.
I am a procrastinator. I always have been, and I always will be. It’s so easy to say, I can do it later, and then forget to do it. So rather than making later the next day or in a few hours I use the timer function on my phone. If the time is 11:13 and I need to study but want to put it off, I give myself 17 minutes. Although it doesn’t seem like much time, this routine satisfies my procrastinator personality.