Life is too small not to always look for exceptional thoughts and things.
Let simple be the mantra:
I believe that living simply – the art of minimalism – is a basic human need.
[Read more…] about Minimalism (Added to notion)Here’s one of the most dangerous email habits:
We’ve all done it.
We pick up our phone, tablet, look at the PC and check through our emails for something… for what? To know that you’re important, wanted, needed?
What inevitably happens? That one email destroys any real change of true productivity for the whole day. STOP!
Wake up, go through your morning routine and then get one thing done.
Seriously, just one thing. Preferably your most important task. Then check your email.
Then if you go down the dark path of a very unproductive day, at least you’ve done one productive thing you can be proud of.
Ever had those days where you just said, “I’ve done nothing of worth at all!”?
Stop checking email first thing in the morning, and won’t have to say that again.
What should you do next?
Is it better to email an existing customer, send a brochure to a prospect or improve your product a bit? Should you tweet or post a new blog post? Should you have a meeting to coordinate your team or spend ten minutes returning phone calls instead? Here’s where a priority list comes in handy.
Knowing what to do next is an unheralded skill, something successful people do really well and others struggle with.
How do you decide what to do next?
Without a priority list, you can see how making intelligent decisions is impossible, so we resort to confusing activity with productivity.
Back to work: do you have a list? Have you figured out which metric you’re trying to improve? Can you measure the impact of the choices you make all day?
I see this mistake in business all the time. Assume for a moment that your goal is to maximize profit. Why then would you spend most of your time tweaking existing deals (looking for a 3% improvement in yield) instead of spending the same time and effort doing new, game-changing deals?
Inspired By Seth Godin.
Here’s how a simple guide on how to make Evernote your ultimate task management tool for getting things done (GTD).
[Read more…] about Evernote Task Management (ignored)In my mind, you should be doing one of two things at any given time in your life:
(remember: recreation = personal re-creation)
Every action you take today is either an advance to or retreat from the life you were born to live.
In most situations roughly 80% of effects come from only 20% of the causes. By using the Pareto Principle, we can decide how better manage our time and focus on the things on our task list that really make a difference.
Harvard Business Review notes that practically everything is unimportant. The Pareto Principle has been applied to almost every human endeavour, from software development to investing. (Two examples: 90% of Warren Buffet’s wealth is from just ten investments and, in sales, typically 80% of revenue comes from 20% of the sales team.)
Looking at our own productivity from the lens of this “law of the vital few,” we can cut the 80% of our tasks or projects that are unimportant or don’t contribute to our end goals.
When you make a “to do” list, prioritize each item by the amount of effort required (1 to 10, with 1 being the least amount of effort) and the potential positive results (1 to 10, with 10 being the highest impact.)
Now divide the potential results by the amount of effort to get a “priority” ranking. Do the items with the lowest resulting priority number first. Here’s a simple example:
See your new priority-based order? You do Task 3 first, Task 2 second, and Task 1 last–if at all.
This way, you ensure you do those important low-effort tasks that make up 80% of your success.