The longer you blog, the more hacks you need to collect in your proverbial bag of tricks.
In order to maintain a family life, social life, and professional life you need productivity hacks.
Today’s guest author provides 13 effective time management activities that the most successful people routinely do.
After reading this post, you’ll be on the road to success as well.
13 Time Management Activities Insanely Successful People Do That Can Boost Your Production Level
Balogun Owomide
We all love to watch a certain person or group of people on reality shows, TV, or read high authoritative blogs on the internet.
After watching series of programs, interviews, and videos on athletes, entrepreneurs, motivational speakers, celebrities, business owners etc., you begin to wonder how these people turned out to be such successful people in their respective fields.
If you take a bold step to study such names closely, you will discover a good number of great habits you too can apply to become truly successful. Also, it provides the answer to your question: What is the secret recipe for success?
Truth be told, there is really no shortcut to success, only self-management and hard work combined positively and put to effective use will get you the best of results.
Are you ready to discover some of the most effective habits highly successful people possess that made them successful and productive beyond their wildest dreams?
Read on:
What is the Recipe for Success?
1. You must start emphasizing minutes, rather than hours
Many a time, you and I often take a day as a 24-hour box in which we have to complete every one of our personal and professional duties. But, a lot of successful people take a day to equal 1,440 minutes, in which each minute is treasured, to be spent maximized.
You can afford to make, spend, or lose money (that is fine) but losing time (that is bad as time lost is irrecoverable). The trick here is to utilize most effectively every minute of your day. You will notice an increase in productivity within a day without comprising on quality and effort.
2. Focus your attention on only one thing
Successful people are fully aware that the focus is of high importance. This is why they spend hours at the beginning of each day without any distractions. They start their focus meditation by asking questions such as:
- Will the tasks at hand make a greater impact on your goals?
- What actions do you need to take to achieve a promotion at your workplace?
Ensure at the start of each day, you are able to recognize the most highly prioritized things so that you can spend more time focusing on your primary goals internally and externally.
3. A to-do list is more than enough
Have you ever seen any highly successful or productive person carry a long to-do list in his/her pocket every day? Chances are your answer is going to be a “No”. Instead, they mark everything on their calendar (you too can do this). It has been noted that only 41% of items stated on the to-do list ever get done. This leads to anxiety and stress. However, when you use a calendar, you will be told and reminded everything that needs to be achieved within the day you have specified. It plays the role of a constant visual in your home and in your workstation.
4. You must war procrastination with time travel
If you truly want to execute your present or future plans, then you must stop procrastination and begin to take bold steps of faith instead. Successful people understand the bad effects of procrastinating so they counter it with effective time traveling (making moves as soon as they think of them). They know that it doesn’t do much good to postpone actions that can be done immediately. Also, they make sure that whatever they are doing presently will be of good benefit to their future self. You need to start being consistent with the current time as well as the future.
5. Don’t just try, but ‘make’ it home for dinner
Successful people know the thing that’s worth value in their life. I mean things totally different from professional commitments. These are things that you make time for no matter your level of busyness. You should squeeze out time (if you have to) to give attention to things that you value above all. Things like cooking, eating, spending quality time with family and friends etc.
6. Attend to less and fewer emails throughout the day
You need to avoid spending most of your days writing and reading endless emails in your workday that won’t amount to anything in the end. Successful people would never do this neither would they allow themselves to be distracted by their phone with each vibration it makes in their pocket. However, these people are intelligent and smart enough to only process relevant email correspondences as quickly as possible. Irrespective of the kind of job you do, you need to be very efficient and straightforward when you are doing email management.
7. Be ready to say ‘no’ to almost everything
Warren Buffet, an American entrepreneur, once said, “The difference between successful people and very successful people is that very successful people say ‘no’ to almost everything. “ Never hesitate to say a “no” if you do not consider something valuable enough to spend at least a few minutes out of your precious 1,440 minutes a day. Make sure that you maximize productivity in each day by not investing time in everything that comes across your way.
[click_to_tweet tweet=”“The difference between successful people and very successful people is that very successful people say ‘no’ to almost everything. “” quote=”“The difference between successful people and very successful people is those very successful people say ‘no’ to almost everything. “”]8. Avoid long, boring and irrelevant meetings
I would advise you to avoid meetings as much as possible. Why? Because most times, a larger time spent on the meeting agenda will often be on discussions involving irrelevant things like inappropriate attendees and discussions on things totally different from the main agenda.
Not all meetings are futile; some can be really helpful to you in many ways. The way to find out if a meeting is worth attending or not is by staying well-informed as to which meetings genuinely require your presence and what to do to stay on track.
9. Quickly apply the 80/20 rule
The Pareto Principle, states that only about 80% of the outcomes are generated from the 20% of activities completed. In simple terms, this means that super highly productive people rightly identify the activities that drive the lion share of revenues of the business. You need to heavily invest your time and efforts in such activities and totally ignore the ones that require none or less of your attention at all.
10. Make sure to delegate most of the tasks
Most times we tend to ask questions like:
- How can I do this work?
- How can this work be done?
These questions look similar but are different in every manner and approach. A lot of intelligent and highly successful people make things happen by taking off the “I” element and instead delegate the work as much as possible. Doing this gives you the ability to gain control over day-to-day activities.
11. Access things only once
Let’s be honest: almost everyone repeatedly goes through things over and over again all in the space of 24 hours, for example, some personal emails, highly prioritized announcements, etc. This can quickly become a problem for us; this is what the majority of successful people ask us to refrain from.
Every day, they tend to touch on important things once and never again. It doesn’t matter if it’s taking you 5, 10 minutes or forever. You need to only go through any type of correspondence patiently without needing to go for it again. If you continually check things repeatedly, you are prone to encounter an increased stress and you get repeatedly hit by the constant feeling of leaving things misunderstood or incomplete.
12. Be consistent with your morning routine
You will be surprised at the result you will get when after you are done interviewing a good number of people for their morning routines. The answers you will get from every one of them will vary. But successful individuals morning habits that are usually mutual. Their routine is built around the same exercise and training. You need to learn from them by waking up the same time as you have set your alarm the night before. Then take a refreshing bath, have a healthy breakfast and do some meditation to clear your head.
13. Focus on Positive energy
It is a known fact that you cannot add a second, a few minutes or hours create to a day. However, you can re-sharpen your focus, attentiveness, and productivity.
People often misjudge intensely successful people as workaholics, but these people spend their time practicing very powerful self-management techniques, and totally avoid skipping meals and compromising their sleep, health, and personal lives.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Balogun Owomide has a huge passion for spreading motivation, business, and personal finance. I often write on my How to make money, a finance blog on topics ranging from motivation, startup ideas, to small business financing and loans, business plans, marketing, and franchise opportunities. You can reach me on Facebook at Balogun Owomide.
Time Management Activities: Wrapping Up
Are you ready to take the road to success and follow Balogun’s recommendations for effective time management activities?
Which will you try first? Are there any additional time management activities you can recommend? I look forward to your views in the comments section.
Readers, please share so other bloggers and entrepreneurs can follow these time management activities and become more productive.
