Entries Tagged 'Productivity' ↓

It’s not often that I feel compelled to share a blog post with you right after I finish reading it.

This is one of those times.

If you are involved in online marketing as a student or marketer, take five minutes to read this timely message from Rick Butts:

==> Unsubscribe from Whomever Emailed You StomperNet

-Ryan M. Healy

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I shut off my computer on Friday night. I disconnected my Wi-Fi. And I didn’t turn on my computer or check my email until this morning.

Felt great.

That’s a full 58 hours without email or Internet.

Instead of sneaking to my computer to peek at email or blog comments every few hours, I played with my kids, went to the park, vacuumed the garage, put together a puzzle, bought a new pair of shoes, did some reading, and did a little bit of list-making and writing in my notebook.

Not much different from what I might normally have done; the difference was a feeling of clarity. A feeling that I wasn’t chained to my laptop. A feeling that I was living in the real world.

I’m sad to confess that until this past weekend it had been months since I went two days or longer without checking email.

It’s my fault for letting down my guard and allowing my own busy-ness to consume my time.

Note to self: Turn off my Wi-Fi more often.

-Ryan M. Healy

Popularity: 51% [?]

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Nearly everybody deals with inertia at some point. The law of inertia says this: things at rest tend to stay at rest; things in motion tend to stay in motion. Nobody is immune to this law.

Maybe this is why whenever John Carlton writes a sales letter, he imagines his prospect as a fat slob sitting on a couch. He is watching television. And he is the type of person who’d probably not even bother to get up if his house was on fire.

While most folks aren’t quite as extreme as this imaginary prospect, we all have to fight the urge to “stay at rest.” With that in mind, here are three things I do on a regular basis to overcome inertia.

1. Write to-do lists by hand.

This may sound old-fashioned, but it works like magic. Simply get a spiral notebook, write the date at the top of the page, then list everything you need to do in a numbered list.

I’ve been using this technique for years. It has probably contributed to my productivity more than any other single activity.

Here are a few tricks I’ve learned along the way that can make your to-do lists even more effective.

First, write your list in order of urgency and importance. What needs to be done first, second, third, etc.?

Second, whenever you complete a task, cross it off the list. The more items you cross off, the more momentum you build… and the more eager you are to get more done.

Third, get in the habit of rewriting your to-do list. Once you’ve crossed off 30% to 50% of the items, rewrite the list. Any task that has not yet been completed will then be rewritten on the next list. You may add new items as well.

This process of rewriting goes to work on your brain in ways that I can’t even explain. Rewrite a certain task enough times and you’ll do it… just so you won’t have to rewrite it again!

In terms of timing, I find it’s best to rewrite my to-do list at the END of the day. This sets my subconscious mind in motion. I usually wake up in a state of intense focus, ready to tackle whatever is first on my list.

(Hat tip to Brian Tracy for teaching me these tricks. They really work!)

2. Work on short deadlines.

As a copywriter, I have the tendency to budget too much time for copy projects. But too much time can actually be a bad thing. Why? Because Parkinson’s Law says this: Work expands to fill the time allotted for its completion.

In real life, this means you’ll probably do most of the work required to complete a project immediately before the deadline. Remember cramming before a test? That’s Parkinson’s Law at work.

The fact is, you don’t need as much time as you think. So give yourself shorter deadlines. You’ll get more done faster, build momentum, and literally be amazed by how much you are able to do each day, week, and month.

3. Take time to rest.

This last one is counterintuitive. How can you get things done when you’re resting?

The answer is, you don’t. But you have to take time to rest to recharge your batteries. Otherwise, you may burn out and start to engage in avoidance behavior (like mindless surfing so you don’t have to start that project you’re dreading).

I view work as a series of sprints and rests. When you work, you work hard. When you rest, you rest hard. By working hard, you rest better. And by resting hard, you work better.

When you don’t allow this natural rhythm to run its course, bad things happen. Example: You ever meet a “muscle head”–one of those guys whose got to be in the gym lifting almost every day of the week?

Guys like this who are addicted to weight-lifting are actually hurting their bodies and reducing their potential muscle gain. They constantly rip their muscles, but never give their bodies time to rest and repair the muscle. This is a recipe for suboptimal performance and even injury.

True story: I saw one of these guys a couple weeks ago at my gym. His entire left arm was bound up in some weird-looking contraption. I overheard him explain the injury. His bicep had literally ripped off his arm and bunched up at his shoulder… a result of lifting too much weight and, I imagine, not allowing his body time to rebuild.

So the lesson is this: rest is critical to achieving peak performance and productivity.

In my own life, I like to start work early around 5:30 a.m. But if I feel my body needs rest, I’ll sleep in. That’s because I know I’m always more focused and productive when I’m fully rested. So I refuse to be dogmatic about getting up early. It’s simply counterproductive.

Of course, there’s much more you can do to maximize your productivity. But I’ve found these three things to be the most effective for me. Perhaps they will prove to be effective for you, too.

-Ryan M. Healy

Popularity: 40% [?]

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According to an experiment published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, just one act of self-control depletes your ability to have self-control in another unrelated area.

For example, when subjects were told not to eat chocolates sitting right in front of them, their persistence in puzzle-solving deteriorated. When they were told to suppress an emotional reaction to a movie, they had problems solving a solvable anagram [source 1, below].

This is the overwhelming reason why will power only works in the short-term. You only have the conscious resources to exhibit will power on one or two fronts at the same time.

This is also why it is so difficult to stay disciplined with eating right, exercising, goal-setting, and similar “uncomfortable” activities.

Any conscious self-regulatory strategy has unavoidable costs that deplete a person’s general resources for self-regulation [source 2, below].

Here’s good news…

While your conscious mind is only able to process approximately 50 bits of information a second, your unconscious mind processes approximately 11 million bits per second [source 3, below].

This means your unconscious mind processes information about 220 THOUSAND TIMES FASTER than your conscious mind.

Much of the time, your conscious mind is actually the bottleneck that stands between you and true change. This is because its main role is getting you through the day in the here and now AND setting long-term goals. (Researchers call this ”Executive Control.”)

So what’s the solution?

The trick is to have the triggers for your desired behaviors deeply embedded within…

Your unconscious mind.

For example, if your goal is weight control, you would naturally want your unconscious mind to automatically desire healthy green foods, water, smaller portions, exercise, etc… without having to think about it consciously.

If, on the other hand, your goal is to be more productive, you would want the habits of goal-setting, taking immediate action, and laser-like focus to be automatic.

If you have to consciously think about these actions all the time, you will exhaust your resources.

These are just two examples, but I think you get the picture.

This is one of the reasons why tools that help you develop unconscious (and positive) behavioral patterns…

Are so powerful.

The only method for making changes that bypass the conscious mind that is approved and validated by mainstream scientific organizations like the American Medical Association and the British Medical Association is hypnosis–and only when performed by a licensed health care provider (like a medical doctor or psychologist).

Get this… at the University of Iowa they are doing MRI studies where you actually see the brain following instructions under hypnosis.

People are actually shutting off the feelings of pain, and you can see the pain gateways in the brain being blocked…

All under hypnosis.

If you can control pain under hypnosis, you can certainly control the way you think about food, stress, and your personal productivity.

Hypnosis can stop stress-induced eating, pain, procrastination and more–but make sure you get the real thing.

Did you know that 99% of “Certified Clinical Hypnotherapists” do not even have a psychology degree or a license to practice mental health? Pretty scary.

More disturbing is that most hypnosis training requires only 150 hours to get a certificate.

To put this into perspective, most professional barbers have to take more than 1,000 hours of training. (150 hours is less than 4 full-time work weeks.)

You wouldn’t go to a mechanic with 150 hours of training, or even 500 hours of training… that would be crazy.

For hypnosis to work, you want the therapist to have an advanced degree in psychology (for a doctorate it is typically 4-7 years post undergraduate).

So, ultimately, you are looking at eight-thousand hours of training! Not to mention, at least one year of supervision afterward.

And that is before the hypnosis training!

Here’s the story.

A couple years ago, I was hired by a company whose whole philosophy is to bring you the real thing. They choose the best therapist for every issue for which they publish audio hypnosis programs. They more than meet the criteria above.

What’s more, they actually record their sessions so that people can listen to them at home. Many people find these to be very effective and affordable (including me).

I especially like and recommend their audio program that helps you to be consistently productive and master the art of…

Getting things done.

Anyway, I asked the publisher (The Hypnosis Network) if they would give my readers some type of discount on the programs and they came through.

So if you would like to accelerate your productivity without having to read another “how to” book, then I strongly recommend you get their program created by Dr. Neil Fiore:

==> http://www.DrNeilFiore.com (affiliate link)

-Ryan M. Healy

P.S. By the way, I wrote the sales letter that promotes this audio program. I wrote it two years ago… and it’s still being used today. I have personally listened to the entire Productivity Engineering audio program and believe it’s a worthwhile investment for anybody who wants to program their subconscious mind to be productive.

P.P.S. Sources cited in the this article:

Source 1: RE Baumeister, E Bratslavsky, M Muraven, and DM Tice. “Ego Depletion: Is the Active Self a Limited Resource?” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, vol. 74, 1998.

Source 2: Moraven, M., Tice, D. M., & Baumeister, R. F. (1998). “Self-control as a limited resource: Regulatory depletion pattern.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74. 774-789.

Source 3: Zimmerman, M. (1989). “The nervous system in the context of information theory.” In R. F. Schmidt & G. Thews (eds.), Human Physiology, pp. 166-173. Berlin, Germany: Springer-Verlag.

Here is the link again:

==> http://www.DrNeilFiore.com (affiliate link)

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