Productivity Unleashed: Powerful Strategies for Getting Stuff Done

1. Introduction: Welcome to productivity and least powerful strategies for getting stuff done. We live in a busy world today at work, multitasking is supposed to expected and considered normal. Coworkers and friends expect us to be available whenever they need us. We spend all day, every day moving back and forth between our own and other people's priorities. How do you navigate all that and get anything done or better? How can you ensure that you accomplished what matters as opposed to what doesn't and how do you know the difference? What about those big projects we take on? How do you approach those without being crippled by procrastination? How do you make hard work? Easy? Then there's meetings. Do we really need all those meetings that people invite us to? Or is there a better way to communicate? At least some of the time, if you've ever struggled with any or all of these things, I know how you feel. So who am I? My name is Frank McKinley. I'm a freelance writer, a published author, and an online teacher. I'm also a husband, a father, and a friend. In this course, I'll share the guiding principles that have helped me get stuff done. I like writing books and courses while working full-time. I've also shared what I've learned along the way so other writers can succeed. I believe the principles in this course are universal and we'll apply it to whatever work you had to do. Ready to get started. See you in the course. 2. The Project: There are a lot of techniques in this class for you to use in this project. Pick one thing that you'd like to improve right now, find a technique and use it for a week and make adjustments if you need to. The point here is we want you to see the change you want in your life and your productivity. My a week? Well, it could be five days to take the weekend off. Often it takes a few days to see measurable results. Also, if you do the same thing over and over, it becomes a habit. The better your habits are, the better your results will be. Don't worry about getting it perfect. You don't have to make a huge change. Movement is what we're after. When you're done, share what happened in whatever format you like can be a picture, a video, or just plain text. We want to hear your story. Thing you take action will encourage others to retire. I look forward to seeing what you did. 3. The Truth About Multitasking: The biggest challenge we all face at work is multitasking. Experts say we should avoid it. Science says our brains can only do one thing at a time. Even computer processors reflect this in their design. Problem is our employers often expect us to multitask. Here are a few examples. Teaching while you hand out assignments and papers. A restaurant service employee taking care of five orders at once, having to answer the phone while you complete other tasks or reports, writing an article, while doing research in verifying facts over the phone, speaking to a customer while taking notes or entering data, ringing up customers while bagging their orders. Unless you think multi-tasking stops at work. Consider these examples. Exercising while watching television or listening to music, reading a book, while eating dinner, talking on the phone, while you cook, building furniture, while reading the instructions. You may have noticed you can do simple things simultaneously. For example, you can sort through e-mails while listening to a podcast. But if you're doing something complex, you need to give it your own divided attention. How can you do that if you're expected to answer the phone all day at work. Here are a few things you can do. Ask your team if you can have a block of time to work on your project, ideally, schedule this when the phone doesn't ring so often. You can also take turns being the first to answer the phone. This allows everyone some time to work on harder things. Next, enhance your focus. You can do this by limiting the clutter on your desk. Some people say a messy desk can make you more creative. This is true to an extent, but most of the time it just gives you more things to be distracted by. If you must have paper nearby, make sure they relate to what you're working on. Other papers and folders, preferably in a drawer. If you have one. If you don't have a drawer, a storage rack will work. Another thing to do is to keep track of the test that you're working on. You can use an app to do this, or you can write it on paper. The biggest win here is that when the phone rings, you can stop what you're doing and come back to where you left off while you're on the phone or talking to her co-worker who just approached to you, make notes, then you can go back to what you were working on. Once the interruption is over. As you complete each task, mark it off. Keeping a list like this does two things. It reduces the load on your brain. And then you don't have to remember everything. You just have to remember to consult the list. This keeps you on track without worrying that interrupts and will reduce your productivity to 0. How can you expand your focus? When you're working on a complex project? Brachial large one, down into pieces, set a timer and work until it goes off. That way. When you get distracted, just remind yourself that you can come back to that. When the timer ends. Then at Pivotal times during the day review your progress. You need to rearrange your tasks. What needs to get done first? What can wait? Who can you get to help? Follow these guidelines? And you can multitask the way your brain does. In our next lesson, we'll look at how to plan your day. See you there. 4. Setting Your Daily Template: Every day as an opportunity for accomplishment. How do you plan your day for maximum productivity? One thing you can do is create a map for how you'll spend your day. A template, if you will. Why a template and not a to-do list? Because the template as a guide, you can use to schedule the activities that fill your day. The dictionary defines a template as a preset format for a document or file used so that the format does not have to be recreated each time it's used. Does that mean your template is written in stone? Not at all. It can and will be a growing document that suits you and your tasks. When your work changes, your template can change with it. As you learn your energy levels, you can pair your hardest brain heavy work with your highest energy levels. Routine, less cognitive work can be done when your energy levels are naturally lower, will probably take a week to set your template. Pay attention to your natural rhythms. Experiment with times for doing your work. Was what you did effective. Is there a time when you can do it better? You may be limited by our work requirements, but trying to be as flexible as possible within the constraints your workplace offers. First, organize your tasks. What surgeon or what isn't, what's important or not. Urgent tasks must be done first, important tasks should be completed before they become urgent. Tasks that are neither urgent or important or time waster. Group similar activities together, plan meetings at similar times. There are off-site scheduled limb, so similar meetings in the same town can happen the same day. Your finances in the same hour, every day. Regularly review them so you know you're on track and can catch problems before they get out of control. Make phone calls during a specific time frame. Put a smile on your face and it will show through your voice. Next. Add in Fudge time. You can use this to catch up, deal with the unexpected and fix mistakes. When you build a house or do any projects like that, you'll run into unexpected expenses. Materials can be delayed. Your team might not show up for work one day. Factor these possible costs into your overall time, money and mistake budget. Schedule, heavy thinking for when you have the most energy, non-cognitive, repetitive work should be done and when your energy level is lower, as it may be in the afternoon, plan regular breaks. The Pomodoro Technique is a great model for this. You work 25 minutes without stopping. Then you take a five-minute break. This cycle four times, and then you can take an extended break, 15 minutes. That could be when you have lunch, then do four more before you quit for the day. It may sound counter-intuitive, but breaks actually do make you more productive. Getting away from your work for as little as five minutes can give your brain enough time to pop out and a-ha moment. Finally, set a time to quit and never violated. Your life is more than work. Know when you plan to stop and leave, there will always be timed to do more work tomorrow and some tests are never finished. Make the best you can if the time you have, the rest will take care of itself. In our next lesson, we'll look at how to create a productive work environment. See you there. 5. Create a Productive Environment: How can you create a productive environment? First, there's external environment. We'll talk about that in a moment. Before we get to that, let's look at the internal environment that you need to be productive. You begin with a goal. What do you want to accomplish once you do your work? Take a few minutes and describe it in detail. What will it look like when you accomplish it? How will it help you? In other ways? What will it free you to do? When you ask questions like these? You see your work in terms of the bigger picture. That's the context that matters. When you see your work like this. You can also think about how you'll deal with setbacks before they come. The road to accomplishment isn't always smooth and straight. How committed are you? Decide before you start? And you won't be derailed later. Next, set some time blocks for your day. When will you be busy? When will you have quiet time? Schedule of the activities that require less concentration? When you expect more interruptions, keep a pen and paper handy so you can make notes when someone comes to you with a request. That way you won't have to burden your brain with the details. You'll just have to remember to come back to your notes. What do you do when you don't feel motivated to take a quick break and do one of the following. Get a drink of water, take a walk, chat briefly with a coworker, clean your desk, whatever you do, be sure it recharges you so you can come back to work with renewed vigor. Now, Let's take a look at some external productivity killers. First is meetings. How do you make them more productive? If possible, get the agenda in advance, then you can prepare any questions or comments you have. If you don't get the agenda until the meeting starts doing you can to keep the discussion on topic. If you can address the topic with an e-mail or a phone call instead of a mating, choose that option. The point of discussions at work is to move things forward, finding the most efficient way, and consider the needs of the people you work with. Here are some ways you can consider other people's needs. Get to know their personalities. While there are a ton of personality traits and profiles you can study, the simplest and most effective is the disc profile. Maybe the best thing is there are only four types to remember. Here's what you need to know. Is the other person more concerned with tasks or people? Do they want to move fast, or do they prefer to move slowly and deliberately? The four types correspond with the letters in disk. D is for dominance. These people want things to move fast and they're more concerned with tasks than people. So get to the point. Avoid small talk and promise quick results. I, it's very influential. These people love to chat, build rapport, and make people feel good. They are the ones you call when you need to sell your ideas fast. S is for stable. They love people. Every decision they make considers what people think and how the decision will affect them. They have lots of friends and usually say yes, when you ask for a favor. C is for conscientious. They only go by the book. Fact they're the ones that wrote the book. They don't want to chat or hear about what you did this weekend. They wanted to do things the right way and they'll go as deep as is needed to ensure they do. When you see these patterns in the people you work with, you'll know how to communicate effectively with them. Use these ideas, and you can have a productive day every day. In our next lesson, we'll look at how to set the right priorities. See you there. 6. Setting Your Priority: Wonder if you could do one thing that would make everything else goes smoothly. One is that one thing, your highest priority. What does it mean to set priorities? The word priority comes from a root word meaning earlier in time. It's also the root of the word prior. The dictionary definition states that a priority is something that you treat as more important than the rest. Therefore, it has the right to pre-seed and go before other things. In the book, though, one thing, Gary Keller suggests that you can't have more than one priority. Too many can dilute your focus. So today we'll answer the question, how do you set multiple priorities? When you can only focus on one important thing at a time. The problem with having multiple priorities is that nothing becomes more important than anything else. When that happens, you have to arbitrarily choose what to do when you're swamped. Or in a crisis situation. With one main focus, you can decide a guiding priority will give birth to and direct the rest of your activities. And easy way to do this is to ask, what is my motto or what is my mission? When you're defining here is your sense of purpose. Why do you do it? You do, What exactly are you doing? Are you doing it for? This may sound like marketing. And marketers do use mottos with the structure. For us, a motto or mission statement puts clearly defined boundaries in place. Then we know what to do when an unfamiliar situation comes. How does a good mission statement look? Maybe your employer has one on the wall somewhere. You may be familiar with some of these Dollar Shave Club, Shave time, shave Money. The Mosaic company, we help the world grow the food it needs, BMW design for driving pleasure. These statements accomplish several things with a few words. First, they describe their ideal customer. Some men shave regularly. Second is how Dollar Shave makes it easy by sending out what they need to their door automatically. That saves them time going to the store. It saves money because they're not buying gas or spending time, which also costs money. Third, their concentration is clear. They sell shaving supplies. They are selling it by subscription. That's it. These statements in part, a sense of purpose and set boundaries that exclude outside activities. By defining what's important. You also define what isn't important. If your company doesn't have a motto. Here's how to figure it out. Pay attention to what gets done and what does it. Do. You see a trend? Is there a particular type of person or company that you serve? What type of conversations do you have with customers and how are they carried out? Because it by phone or by e-mail or both? Have. So when do you use each of these? You use what you learn to craft your own mission statement. Once you have that, you can order your other activities in order of importance. As you do this, ask yourself, how does this contribute to my mission today? Then you can divide your tasks according to a time management model known as the Eisenhower matrix. It's shaped like a quadrant and it looks like this. You see it has two rows and two columns. It's pretty simple. Right? On the left column is urgent. Taft's, the right column has non urgent tasks. Appropriately, the top row has the important tasks, while the bottom row has unimportant tasks. So once you organize your tasks, where do you spend your time? Do what's important? Delegate, what's not important. Good to your mission statement, to decide what's important or not. If it's not important or urgent, you shouldn't be doing it at all. To wrap up, let's answer a few more questions you may have about setting priorities. How do you get excited about your top priority? Especially when you're tired? Focus on the benefits you'll get. When you focus on what matters. Chances are when you spend more time doing things that move you forward, you'll feel more energized and less tire. And then when you reach the end of the day, the feeling of accomplishment will help you sleep better at night. How do you make space for the unexpected? Let's face it, surprises happen. Build flexibility into your schedule. Ideally, you'll spend that time doing important things that aren't yet urgent. You can also take advantage of new opportunities that will help you accomplish your mission and use the time to get ahead unimportant things before they become IRT. How do you get back on track when you get distracted? Take a short break, step away from your desk if you can, and take a short walk, have some water or coffee. Posted a statement of your mission where you can see it that should inspire you to start a new. Once you go back to work, how do you attach fully, communicate your priorities to your colleagues, your friends, and your family? How did we get printed and hanging on the wall allows others to see it too. When you can summarize it in a sentence, you can use that sentence to reply when people interrupt you, say something like, I'd love to talk about that with you. Can we do it at lunch tomorrow? That lets them know that you care about your mission and you'll give them undivided time later when neither of you are involved with other things. How do you keep your zeal from burning you out? Remember there's a time for work and a time for play? Yes, I did at the beginning of the day. What time you'll start and stop your work. It's tempting to work overtime when you're under pressure. But we all have our limits. After eight or ten hours or productivity begins to decrease. Stop working before your body gives out. The people you serve and your own health are more important than being there. 24-seven, set your priorities before you go to work. If you don't, you can be sure others will set them for you. In our next lesson, we'll look at some effective ways to get your hardest work done. See you then. 7. Make Hard Tasks Easier: When I was in school, this advice was on the hall bulletin board. Do the hardest work. First. That's good advice, but it's not good enough. It doesn't take into account why the work was hard. What comes to mind when you think of hard? Maybe you see something that's not easily broken, like a giant rock next to the ocean. Or maybe you see someone running a marathon. A task that takes a Herculean amount of effort. Hard work, requires a lot from us, maybe more than we have to offer. It's natural to resist, but the task off and do something fun instead. Part of the problem is in the words we use to describe the task. We say it's difficult, taxing, or even impossible. These words invoke negative imagery in our minds. One thought leads to another and another. This can make us tired and depressed before we even start. What if we were placed those words with positive ones? Instead of saying it's difficult, say it's challenging. A challenge invites us to play. They give our best and go after a possible reward. Instead of saying the work is taxing, say it's invigorating. That way energy flows to you instead of draining away from you. Instead of saying Impossible, say the project is full of possibility. That opens the door to creative solutions that help you accomplish more than you imagined. You may feel like you're lying to yourself. And maybe you are. Consider this. What if you're lying to yourself when you say it's difficult, taxing and impossible. Using the right words when you talk to yourself about your most challenging projects lays the foundation for all the other strategies to count. That in mind, let's look at two more challenges that hard projects present us. The first is analysis, paralysis. Have you struggle with perfectionism? You know this one. You want to do the right thing, give your work your absolute best, and polish it until it's shines. But do you really need to invest that much effort? The clock is always ticking. Figure out what you need to accomplish. Often a project comes to looking like a Lego set while it's still in the box, the picture tells you what success looks like. And if the box is large, you know, there's a lot of work between that pile of pieces and the finished masterpiece. You also know you need to make adjustments when the instruction map doesn't resemble the territory in front of you. While there may not be a hard deadline, you can be sure there was a point where enough is enough. Take time to describe the outcome and enough detail that you know when you've achieved it. Make a list of the resources you have on hand and those you'll need. Once you know these details, you can easily plan and measure your progress without going around in circles. Seth Godin suggests you thrash early in a project. That means you brainstorm and adjusting the beginning. But once you're moving, keep moving. The only adjustments at that point, our course corrections. The second barrier to overcome that is the size of the project. How long will it take from start to finish? What are all the parts of the project? Chunk it down into bite-size pieces. Allocate the resources required for each piece. Create a calendar so you can check off each piece as you get done to help you stay motivated, reward yourself at predetermined milestones along the way. It doesn't have to be anything huge, just make it something outside your ordinary routine. If you'll use these strategies, you'll make the most of any hard task. And our next lesson, we'll look at how to make the most of unstructured time. See you there. 8. Add Margin To Your Schedule: Every day has its rhythms. Maybe in the morning you spend time on the phone while the afternoon is project time. Whatever your day looks like, does it include some margin? Margin confuses you in the late. Here's an example that may help my wife and I built a house several years ago. We expected it to take a year. It really went from one winter into the neck and into the following spring. Construction projects have lots of moving parts. You probably can't do everything yourself, and chances are good. You don't want to. It's smart to budget for delays, cost overruns, and bad weather. If you don't, you'll get behind and you'll never be able to catch up. Margin is contingency time. Some common ones people experience at work are surprises. Your computer crashes, the Internet connection drops for an hour or more. A customer who just place a huge order changed her mind and wants her money back. You can't know everything in advance, so it's wise to budget for the unexpected delays, but would you need for your **** is out-of-stock for a month. What else can you work on in the meantime, is there an alternative supplier that you can use? You'll need time to figure these things out. Problems. Sometimes you encounter a situation that is totally new and you don't have a clue what to do first. You don't have to find someone who knows the answer and you may have to wait for a response, delays your partner hasn't collected all the data you need to move into the next step in your project. You'll need time to contact them and find out what's going on. At the worst, you may have to collaborate with someone else, costing you even more time. Interruptions. Your coworker needs an answer right now. But you're in a meeting. You handle the requests, but it takes you a few minutes to get back on track with what you were doing before. Maybe it's better to reschedule the meeting for a better time. These are some of the costs that margin helped to cover. Unless you think margin is only for negative events. Here are some positives. You can use the time to do the important but not yet urgent work. This will keep your prepared more often. If you do this regularly, you may find that you rarely spend time doing anything urgent. You can also use margin to take advantage of new opportunities. You can't do that if you booked yourself every hour, all day long. Flexible time blog to forge you time to think, observe, and study your marketplace. You can generate new ideas and new sources of income. Then your co-workers and supervisors will rise up and call you blessed. And a crucial part of margin is breaks. Scheduled time to do nothing. It doesn't have to be long, five-minutes here and there, we'll keep you fresher than staying at your desk for ten hours straight. Taking long breaks may sound counter-intuitive. But consider this. The longer you stay at a task, the more likely your mind is to get bored and consider the task. Less important. University of Illinois study found that brief differs from a task dramatically improves one's focused on the task for prolonged periods. So how do you know how much margin to add? Here's a simple way to figure it out. Keep a time log of everything you do for a week should be long enough to gather the data you need to spot trends and your schedule. Take note of how much time interruptions take from you. Count the minutes and divide it by the total minutes that you worked. Now we'll give you a percentage to work with. For example, if you get interrupted 30% of the time, don't schedule anything that will take more than the remaining 70%. These figures will give you a starting point for adding margin to your schedule. If you need time to catch up, consider that. When you set your time blocks, schedule flicks time that can be used for anything you need. That might be 10% of your time depending on how things are going. The point of doing this is to avoid working longer, use the time you have as well as you can. And you won't have to give up more of your home life to get your work done. When you add some margin to your day, you can say yes to what matters and no to what distracts you from it. And our next lesson, we'll look at how deadlines can make you more productive. See you there. 9. Deadlines as Motivators: Work today is filled with deadlines and other people often set them for us. The wrist, we set ourselves either on purpose or by the clock. Have you ever wondered where the word deadline came from? Originally, it was the line drawn around the prison where inmates would be shot if they went beyond. Most of our deadlines today don't have heavy consequences like that. But the word is instructive, isn't it? When the window of opportunity closes, your chance of taking advantage of it is gone, violated enough deadlines and probably won't have a job. Maybe that's why approaching deadlines make us nervous. In this lesson, we'll minimize the fear and learn techniques that will help you use deadlines to make you more productive. The most important thing deadlines do is set limits. If you struggle with perfectionism, you know how true Parkinson's law is. Whatever time you will allow for our project, we will get filled with activity related to the project. Perfectionism isn't all bad. If you can aim high and do your best work, That's great. On the flip side though, it can get you stuck analyzing something for way more time than it's worth. Either way, the clock is still ticking. The best way to overcome the temptation to spend too much time on one part of the process is to break it down into time blocks. Let's take writing a blog post for example. Let's say you have five hours to write and publish it. First, list the parts of the process, research, writing, the draft, editing, polishing, and publishing. Next to you. From the time you have, you decided how much each part will take. Let's say, devote the first hour to research the secondary, or you'll spend writing a draft. The third hour you'll make revisions. The fourth power, you can edit and polish those revisions. The final hour, you'll spend formatting the article and uploading it to your website. What makes us work is you have built-in mini deadlines to keep you from getting stuck in any one part of the process. While the clock is ticking, you've got to keep moving. If you think you'll run into trouble along the way, budget time to ask for help. This leads to another principle we touched on in an earlier lesson. You need to set a goal for how you'll spend your time. What is it you want to accomplish in our blog post example, you may want to raise awareness for our product that new visitors to your website will see. You get as specific as you can, then you won't waste time on irrelevant activities. If there's one thing, deadlines demand of us this, they force you to focus on being effective and push you away from pursuing perfection. What that means is often good enough and delivered is better than perfect and unreleased. If you're in a field that requires absolute perfection, spend time on activities that lead you to that result. Anything extra is a distraction. Keep first things first and secondary things can derail you. Now, let's look at what to do when your deadlines involve other people. When you work in a team, you'll need to collaborate with others to get your work done. The first thing you'll want to consider is how fast your teammates generally respond to your request. This is important because you'll need to budget that amount of time into your project. A good rule of thumb is to build an extra time to account for unexpected delays and surprises. Now, here's an example from everyday life. You have a relative that is late. Whenever you have a party. If you're planning to eat at one, you tell them that'd be there at 12, knowing there'll be an hour late anyway. If you have a project that is due on Thursday telling your colleague you need her report my Tuesday, then you'll be less likely to find your backup against the wall when it's time to turn the project. And it also gives you time to make any last minute adjustments. But the time pressure on the front end of our project, then you can impose that pressure on yourself rather than feel it from others. You'll be more in control and less stressed. Knowing time is working for you rather than against you. And our next lesson, we'll talk about how to make the most of meeting time. See you there. 10. Maximize Meetings: Stephen raga bargain as colleagues did a study at the University of North Carolina. They found that the way workers felt about the meetings they had to attend affected the way they felt about their jobs. They surveyed 182 managers from different industries. 65% of them said that meetings kept them from finishing their work. 71% reported that meetings were unproductive and inefficient. 64% said meetings prevented deep thinking. Sixty-two percent claim meetings failed to bring the team closer together. What these statistics tell us is over half of the meetings we have are at best a waste of time. It worse, they destroy morale and kill productivity. In this lesson, we'll look at why you should have meetings, how to run them effectively, and what did you do when meetings are not the best option? Why are some meetings unproductive? First, they lack a clear focus. Asked yourself, why do we want to accomplish here? What is the best possible outcome? What can we do or discussed to help us get there? Anything that falls outside your chosen focus should not be discussed. Schedule another meeting or another time to discuss it. Another thing to remember is to keep the meeting under control. Appoint someone to lead or do it yourself. Share the agenda before the meeting or make sure that everyone knows what you'll discuss. Set time limits for each item. And if you need more time, have a backup plan. Ask people to think things over and schedule another time to discuss their insights. It's always better when things are well thought out. If you need a brainstorming session, scheduled one, but don't combine it with another meeting. Second, decide what time you'll start and what time you'll end the meeting. Otherwise, the negative side of Parkinson's law will come into play. If you're not familiar with Parkinson's Law here it is. Work expands to fill the time you give it. Start on time and end on time. If you reach your outcome early in the meeting, the longer a meeting goes, the less productive it becomes. An hour is usually long enough. Can you do an hour's work in 45 minutes if you move with purpose, can you do 30 minutes and 20? When you end early, you free your meeting participants to proceed with their purpose. Third, and invite the right people. Decision-makers should be involved in the process leading to a decision. Subordinates can be consulted before the meeting. If you have too many people in the room, some will try to take over, others won't say anything and still others will tune out while they wait to go back to their desks. Were the right people in attendance. You'll cover your agenda quickly and more effectively with fewer interruptions, distractions forth. Don't have a meeting when an e-mail or a call will do. When there's a status update to announce, don't call a meeting unless you anticipate people will have questions. And even then, you can ask people to email their questions. If the issue is more complex, schedule a one-on-one with those who need it. What are some alternatives to meetings? We mentioned e-mail for short messages. Here's one thing to keep in mind. Keep the email short and cover one subject. If you have another topic, send another email. This will help people to keep track of your messages by topic. It also allows space for extended conversations on the same thread. Record a video message to make it fun announcement. Sometimes it's good to celebrate and have a good time. If you're collaborating on a project, share a Google Doc, or you can share a document on Microsoft 365. This gives you a central location for your team to collect their thoughts and contribute and they can do it at a time that works for them. Meetings can be useful if you need them. If you don't find another way from the tips you've learned to get things done. Respect other people's time and there'll be more likely to respect yours. In our next lesson, we'll learn some effective ways you can monitor your progress. See you there. 11. Review Your Progress: Popular motivational speaker Jim Rhone said, you don't get paid for the hour and you get paid for the value you bring to the hour. We all have the same number of hours each day. How we choose to spend those hours determines what value we bring to them. You can't just assume you're doing your best work all the time. You need to review your activities so you know if you're making progress or just keeping busy, start by asking yourself three questions. What's working? What isn't, and what can I improve? Remember the priority you said in a previous lesson, compare your activities and the results they bring to your priority. Are you moving forward or spinning your wheels are going backwards. Start with what's working. Celebrate it. Then ask, can I do this even better? If so, how right now? Only adjust one part of it. Can you make one more call a day or reduce the amount of time it takes to make a call. The reason you want to adjust one thing at a time comes from the scientific method. If you change two things at once, You won't know which one made the difference. Try and change long enough to see how it affects your outcome. That may mean you do it for a few days or even a week or two, get enough data to make an informed decision going forward. Now, move on to what isn't working. Why isn't it working? How is it moving you away from your desired outcome? What are the factors that prevent you from getting the results you want? If you're not sure. Again, test one thing at a time and see what makes the difference. Doing it long enough to gather useful data that can help you make an informed decision. You may wonder why I'm suggesting you do the good before the bad. Doesn't matter. When you examine what works and celebrate it, you'll have more energy to tackle what isn't working. Your sense of possibility will guide you as you consider alternatives to what didn't go as well as you hoped. The main element of productivity is time. When things are going well, you can trim the waste from how you spend your time. Can you move a little faster? And if so, should you? You don't want to sacrifice accuracy for speed. Sometimes moving a bit slower allows you time to look at something wants, which is usually a long enough to get it right. Often, when your activities are unproductive, it's because you're spending your time being busy instead of getting results. There, any busy work you can eliminate or delegate to someone else. Maybe procrastination is the problem. And our bestselling book, The Five Second Rule, Mel Robbins describes how she gets all sorts of things done. Here's how it works. When you feel the urge to do something, you know, you should count down from five to one. Counting backward. You're getting ready a definite end. Once you get to one, jump in to whatever it is you need to do. The beauty of this approach is you bypass the time you spend getting scared, dreading the task or telling yourself a million reasons why you can't do it. Instead, you just do it. Communication expert Gary Goodman has a similar approach before he gives a speech. When he starts to feel his nerves tents up, he tells himself, It's okay. You can get tense later. Closer to kickoff time. He keeps at it until it's time to give the speech. He says, it's really helped him to relax like nothing else he's ever tried. You may still feel nervous or afraid while you're working. That's okay. Consider this fear and excitement. Feel the same in your nervous system. So think of the nerve wracking experience as a wonderful opportunity to shine. How often should you review your progress? The answer is, it depends. Do it every day for routine work, do weekly. If you're working on a big project, you might assign the frequency two markers, you said along the way. For example, when you have a big project, you break it down into daily tasks. A quick review at the end of the day is a good time to evaluate your progress and catch any deviations early. The sooner you make needed course corrections, the better. And you'll find that the adjustments are smaller than they might be if you wait to review your work, regular reviews and sure you do your best work every day. Make them a part of your daily routine. And you can achieve your goals more often and with more precision. In our final lesson, we'll look at how you can get everything you want and discover one critical reason why you haven't. I'll see you there. 12. How to Get What You Want: If you've ever wondered why you can't get what you want, sometimes you might set goals January as a popular time for that. We want to lose weight, run a marathon or clean out or messy inbox. It sounds good, sir. But after a week or two or maybe even a few days, we fall off course back into our old ruts. Why does this happen? I was having a conversation with my son and we talked about this. I then repeated something ever others say time and again, you may have heard it too. It goes like this. If you want to do something, you'll find a way. If you don't want to, you'll find excuses. Let's unpack that and see what's it worked for. Hearst. If you really want to do something, you'll consider what it will cost you to do it. Well, it caused physical pain or discomfort. Well, it put you into uncharted territory for awhile. Well, it make your brand's walk on the other side of the street. Wear a mask so you won't see them. If the cost doesn't scare you, you will find a way to get what you want. If the cost is too high, you'll find that you can't have. Second, ask yourself what needs you're trying to meet. Underneath everything is some emotion waiting to be satisfied, identify, and you will know how to deal with it when the inevitable disappointment greets you along the way. Third, consider the reward you get for your time and effort. We don't pay for something without expecting something in return. It's the same with your goals. If the return doesn't exceed the investment. What trips us up is not that these things are part of the deal. That we don't consider them. When we realized, we want some awareness if the key that unlocks the doors to opportunity. Remember these three things. And you can get everything. 13. Conclusion: Congratulations. You've reached the end of the course. When students have graduation ceremonies, they call them commencement exercises. School may be over, but your education continues to commence, is to begin a new chapter. You've learned strategies for setting priorities, navigating distractions and interruptions, and making sure you stay on course until the end. You can use what you've learned to succeed at work, to find more balance in your life and achieve any big goal you want to set for yourself. I hope you'll review and apply this material regularly to keep these ideas fresh in mind. Use them, tweak them, make them your own. I wish you all the success you want, and I'd love to hear how it goes. Fine me on Amazon medium and social media.