Friday 5 July 2013

5 Steps To Maximum Productivity

Do you know that you get 80% of your results from just 20% of your time and effort and consequently 80% of your time is virtually wasted on non productive activities?. Once you realize this it is easy to take advantage and either reduce the hours you work or significantly improve your productivity.

The 80-20 rule was first discovered by Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto a hundred years ago.  Using this knowledge is incredibly powerful in combating the "not enough hours in the day" mentality of today's society.

The 80-20 rule means that in any area of our lives, literally 80 percent of our fruits are derived from only 20 percent of doing "what matters". In other words, there is only a very small portion of all that we do each day, regardless of the situation, that brings us the "higher return".

How can you benefit from being aware of this principle? Implementing a strategy based on the 80-20 rule can result in greater wealth and greater leisure time? Just imagine how productive you will be if 80% of your time could be spent on productive activities. You have to realise that the things that matters most should never be at the mercy of activities that matter least.

Here are 5 Steps to maximumise your productivity:


1) Keep a work log for at least a week

Write down all of your activities and the time spent doing them. I appreciate this is time consuming initially but it is essential you get a true picture of your working week.

2) Analyse your activities

Separate your activities into high priority - those that produce a return or where only you have the skills to do the work - and low priority - activities others can do where the activity can be delegated to support staff. You will almost certainly find that you are spending most of your time on low-priority activities rather than activities directly providing a return. In almost all businesses these non productive activities tend to absorb time at a far greater rate than they should.

3) Delegate non productive activities

Once you can identify the low priority activities delegate as many as possible to support staff providing training where required. If necessary employ an additional member of staff to take responsibilities - the cost will be more than offset by your improved productivity. There may be a number of low priority activities you are tempted to keep. Unless it is absolutely unavoidable don't be tempted and don't get involved in non productive activities or your productivity will fall.

4) Calculate the time required for any remaining low priority activities

Once you have delegated all that you can, your next step is to calculate how much time you should be spending on the remaining low priority activities to make maximum use of your productive time. Do not work disproportionately hard at these low priority activities and set aside specific time each day or week to complete them.

5) Prioritise your remaining activities

Once you have cleared out the activities that do not bring you any return, it is time to turn your attention to the activities in your life that are bringing the most reward. Prioritise your activities and concentrate most of your time just on a few high-priority activities.

The objective throughout is to maximize your results from the areas of high return and to delegate those activities that have a low return. Having to spend a disproportionate amount of time on non productive activities is a major source of stress for many businessmen. Delegating these activities will therefore have the added benefit of reducing the stress you are under. It is all about doing less work for greater return.

For more success in life, whether that is more money, more time with your family or just making time for golf you should start implementing the 80-20 rule immediately. It will help your career as well as your personal life and, as a bonus, following the 80-20 rule day in and day out can make you very wealthy over the long term.

Wednesday 19 June 2013

7 Agency To Be Unreasonable

First adjudge what you absolutely wish to do. What would accomplish plan annual alive at and activity annual living. Again amount out how to do it.

Most humans attending to what they apperceive they CAN do as a adviser to what they WILL do; I anticipate to get annihilation important done in the world, you acquire to attending appear what you WANT to do, and again amount out how to do it.

When a lot of humans anticipate about what they are committed to, they accede area they can body a arch to from area they already are. What would appear if you chose area you capital to go after because your accepted affairs and again afraid about how to body that bridge?

There is annihilation amiss with getting reasonable, except that "what is reasonable" is a poor adviser to activity if designing accomplishments to advance the future. Getting reasonable will advice you feel safe in the faculty of alive that your accomplishments will about-face out appealing abundant the way you apprehend them to. But it is alarming in that aforementioned faculty of bearing anticipated results; what is anticipated has, by definition, been done before. And what has been done afore is absurd to accomplish abundant of a aberration in the future.

Paul Lemberg

Seven agency to be unreasonable.

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the absurd one persists in aggravating to acquire the apple to himself. Therefore, all advance depends on the absurd man.” - George Bernard Shaw

“Insanity is accomplishing the aforementioned affair over and over assured altered results.” - Rita Mae Brown

“So what abroad is new?” - Paul Lemberg

Being reasonable

My concordance defines getting reasonable as getting rational. Rational, it says, agency getting reasonable. A abandoned circle: I apperceive I'm in agitation already. Traveling further, reasonable aswell agency getting absolute by reason; which in about-face agency explanations, justifications, basal facts, acceptable judgment, normalcy, additional the accommodation for argumentation and analytic thought. Further, getting reasonable agency getting aural the bound of accepted sense, as in accession home at a reasonable hour, and after it agency not boundless or extreme.

I'm all for argumentation and analytic thought, but does afterward the adage "be reasonable" complete like a acceptable way to body a advance business?

The actual abstraction of "being reasonable," prescribes something restrictive. It exhorts us to abide "within the box," to do what alive humans would do: not to over accomplish ourselves, to be cautious, to abstain risks, to authority our trump cards.

What is the alternative?

To be unreasonable, of course. Getting unreasonable, like it's added alert cousin, suggests assorted meanings. Here are seven applications of getting unreasonable.

1. Anticipate above what is normal, proper, and appropriate.

Typically, one of the aboriginal things -to-be audience say to me is, "But you're not from our industry. How can you acquire our problems, abundant beneath accommodate solutions?" My acknowledgment is consistently the same: "That's the endure affair you need. You already acquire affluence of humans cerebration analogously and use over-used ideas." What you charge is cerebration un-bounded by the acceptable argumentation of your industry; annual that can accompany an un-reasoning perspective.

2. Eliminate the affidavit why.

There are affidavit why we acquire to do things a assertive way. There are affidavit why assertive approaches to business are traveling to plan and others will not. There are affidavit why things should be the way they are and not some added way. Challenge the affidavit why and ask humans to set them aside. Ask, "Well, what if we did. What would appear then? Would that work? What would plan better? What would absolutely bedrock you?"

3. No added excuses.

When anyone in your aggregation doesn't aftermath the adapted results--results to which they acquire committed, conceivably promised themselves and their departments--they usually acquire a acumen why not. Looking at it this way, you consistently acquire one or the other: adapted after-effects or affidavit why you don't. Humans act as if those affidavit are about as acceptable as the results. How do I apperceive this? Because they consistently say something like, "Well, it didn't work, but here's why not," or "We didn't get 'it' done, because..." Or, worse still, " We didn't even try because..."

Remove people's advantage to resort to affidavit why not. Yield abroad their advantage to resort to excuses. I anticipate the absolute alive apple would about-face if there was no recourse to the "excuse" option--if all you could do was aftermath the adapted result, or try addition way to get the adapted result, or try addition way, and so on.

4. Set absurd expectations.

Ask humans to go above what they anticipate is reasonable or normal, Ask them to go above alert commitments that barrier their bets, to accomplish chancy pronouncements that animate them but ability abuse the accustomed adjustment of things.

Place big behemothic stakes in the ground--then amount out how to deliver. Amount out how to about-face those absurd expectations into reality. Taking this access will badly access capability and productivity--and ultimately banknote flow, if it works nicely--in any business. Why should you settle--why should your barter settle--for what is reasonable and predictable? Why acquire the norm, the average, the median? Apply absurd thinking. Set absurd expectations.

5. Accomplish absurd requests.

This access will aid every controlling if alive with vendors, contractors and employees. Remember "Just say no?" Try "Just ask for more." Keep allurement for more, better, sooner. Up the ante. Ask humans to accomplish above their best.

This is not a negotiating tactic. It is not "nibbling." It is allurement humans to accomplish above their own faculty of what is reasonable. Sometimes humans will abort to accommodated these absurd commitments--don't exhausted them up for it. Sometimes you will get arch after-effects you wouldn't acquire dreamed of previously.

6. Accomplish absurd plans.

Does this complete like an oxymoron? A lot of companies plan to accomplish reasonable after-effects about to accomplished successes and failures, or even worse, about to ambiguous industry lore. Instead of ambience these affectionate of goals, activate with a added abstruse question: what would accomplish a absolutely big difference? What would could cause a advance for the company? What would badly access actor amount or profits? What would be "worth doing?" The answers may not be reasonable; they may instead yield you down a aisle appear huge success.

7. Anticipation absurd futures.

Most businesses anticipation their results--revenues, advance ante and so on, based on above-mentioned year's results. They alarm this reasonable, and analogously they accept industry norms and accede them reasonable. But in the twenty-first century, apprenticed by the absurd amount of change in all aspects of our: culture, industry, customer's businesses, our workforce, accessible technology--to anticipate that annihilation dating from endure year charcoal the aforementioned in this one--this isn't just not reasonable, it ability be absolutely ridiculous.

Take into annual all the factors--bring aggregate you apperceive about the bearings up-to-date, add to it all the approaching changes you predict--and use that to anticipation absurd after-effects and accomplish absurd plans.

So what to do?

Should you accord up all pretense of adherence and logic? Should you footfall alfresco the norms and avoid the accumulated acumen of your industry? "That would be abundant if it works out," you say, "but if it doesn't, my job is on the line." Right? Well, yes, but...

Unreasonable cerebration does not beggarly un-thinking. Absurd cerebration is about exploring. Pushing the envelope. Cross pollinating. Intuitive inventing. It may be that the band amid absurd annual from antic annual lies area cerebration is larboard behind. Or conceivably the band lies alone in hindsight.

I anticipate the abhorrence of failing, the abhorrence of jeopardizing your future, is the better obstacle to creating abundant results. Yet the alone way to actualize big behemothic advance after-effects is to yield the alley beneath traveled--to actualize annual and programs that are unreasonable--and traveling for it. If you abort humans will--with absolute hindsight--call your abstraction ridiculous. But if you succeed... wow!