Here are some tips to help you become a Productivity Warrior.
1. Know your prime hours. Once you know the hours that your energy is highest, jealously hoard and protect those prime hours. Those prime hours are your fundamental currency for high performance. All hours are NOT created equal.
2. Work like an athlete during your prime hours…that means working for short, focused periods of time within your prime hours.
3. Get enough sleep. We say this over and over again…you can’t “make up” sleep over the weekend. Get consistent, needed sleep to be able to think and act proactively, empathize and maximize your emotional IQ.
4. Your attention span is a muscle…use it. Cal Newport, a Georgetown professor and expert on expertise, believes that the ability to stay focused is and will be the super-power of the 21C. Newport also believes that distractions and multi-tasking make us stupid.
5. Work in a place where you usually get things done. Environment can serve as a cue to activate behavior, according to Wendy Wood, a professor of environmental sciences at USC. Wood believes that context matters and that “habits emerge from gradual learning of associations between action and outcome.” If you can get things done at a Starbucks, keep working there. If you can’t, leave and go where you can and do get things done.
6. Believe in what you’re doing. Working at a job is one thing. Working at a calling is another. Working at a calling will stimulate you to become more engaged, more thorough and more happy.
7. Never underestimate the power of the “right” attitude.
8. Seek measurable, enduring results such as averages, percentages, victories, year-end results. All the rest of it is only talk.
9. Time your meals and snacks to maximize your prime energy hours.
10. Create and utilize your rituals strategically.
11. Schedule evening and weekend activities that vitalize and recharge you.
