Self-Improvement Archives - Page 2 of 2

How Are Some People So Productive?

The thing that impresses me the most about successful people is the sheer volume and quality of their work. How can someone accomplish so much in the same 24 hour days that you and I have?

Who are some of these people I’m so impressed with? Well how about Ryan Holiday, who was simultaneously Marketing Director at American Apparel, blogging extensively, and writing high quality books. Or James Altucher, who has started multiple successful companies, ran a hedge fund, spilled his soul on his personal blog, wrote several of books, runs a very successful podcast, and is also an angel investor. Or my good friend Justin Mares, who simultaneously scaled Airbrake as Director of Revenue (which led to an acquisition by Rackspace) and co-wrote Traction (which I highly recommend by the way). People like Ryan, James, and Justin inspire me.

I try not to even think about the productivity required by Elon Musk, who is CEO of both Tesla Motors and SpaceX. He’s Iron Man though so I guess he doesn’t count.

So how are these people so productive? Here is what I’ve observed:

Routine: Productive people have a routine that they use to get themselves in the zone. I’ll be writing a lot more about this in the future as it’s a personal interest of mine but for now let’s just say that getting “in the zone” is not random.
Time Management: By this I don’t mean OCD behavior like scheduling every second of your day including bathroom breaks. I’m talking about avoiding the endless Facebook/Twitter/Yahoo/YouTube/Quora/Buzzfeed time waste loops. They seem like short breaks but end up taking 15-20 minutes each time and eat up huge chunks of your day.
Inspired: Productive people simply don’t hate their work. In fact, it’s usually the opposite – they actually enjoy working on their craft.
Student Mentality: All these people have a certain humility about them and in spite of their success, maintain a humble student attitude. They are always learning and more importantly are always open to learning.
Gratitude: it seems counterintuitive but productivity requires being in a healthy state of mind, which means being thankful for your life while still striving for improvement. I’ve seen people I admire consistently practicing gratitude and adding gratitude to my morning routine earlier this year was the best thing I’ve ever done for my mental health.

Here’s some simple math: if someone has just 1 more hour of productivity per day than the average person, at the end of the year, they’ll have 365 hours of extra work. After 10 years, that’s 3650 extra hours. Over a 30 year career, they have a 10,950 hour advantage. According to Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers, 10,000 hours of practice is the key to mastery so based on the math, someone with an extra hour per day will be a master of 1 more skill than the average person. If that skill is something valuable – you can see why that makes a difference. I would make the argument that highly productive individuals actually have a 4-5 hour per day advantage over the average person, which would mean mastery of an additional skill happens in 6-8 years instead of 30. While I’m not a huge fan of Gladwell’s work and disagree on a few things, the conclusion is the same: the extra hours compound into a real advantage over time.

This is one of my favorite topics to learn more about so if you’ve observed any other techniques or use something yourself, definitely let me know in the comments or contact me directly.

Staying Mentally Stable On The Startup Rollercoaster

Lately, there’s been some much needed talk in the startup community about the mental health effects of the constant ups and downs that come with being involved in early stage companies. The toll can be especially taxing on founders – take a look at the notes Brad Feld received from founders after he wrote his illuminating “Founder Suicides” blog post earlier this month.

The media usually portrays famous founders as Supermen/Superwomen – which makes “regular” founders feel inferior and inadequate. This is very much related to the “crushing it” culture that has gotten so rampant. When founders are asked how things are going, it’s incredibly rare to hear an answer other than one of the many variations of “crushing it”. With more people like Brad Feld talking about mental health, I’m hoping that honesty will become more common, but maybe that’s wishful thinking.

Having been involved in a couple startups over the past few years, I’ve been through some awesome experiences and also through shitty, terrible things that I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. Staying mentally healthy in a rollercoaster environment like that is a huge challenge and to be honest, is something I’ve struggled with at various times in my life. Over the past few months, I’ve taken a more active approach to keeping a healthy mindset. Below are some scientifically untested techniques I’ve been using with success so far to keep my work problems in perspective:

Read Books:

I read a lot of books growing up but for some reason I pretty much stopped once I got to college. In 2014, I rediscovered my love for reading and it’s been great. Most importantly, I’ve found it’s a perfect escape for my overactive work brain. When I watch TV or a movie, my brain doesn’t have to do any work and continues drifting towards work. When I’m reading a book, my imagination gets involved and my brain stops thinking about work for awhile.

Stay Physically Healthy/Exercise/Go Outside:

When you’re already not in a great mental state and then something goes wrong physically, you’re just asking for disaster. Re-committing to my health after some issues in early 2014 has helped my mental game so much.

Going out into nature is really helpful to me as well. There’s something about being in nature that just gives perspective and makes problems feel insignificant.

Get a Hobby:

Doing something outside of work gives you two things:

Your brain gets a break from thinking about the same problems – which actually helps you solve them.
You make friends outside the startup bubble

I started taking acting lessons in April and it’s been great. I’ve met people who live in a completely different universe from the startup community, which is enlightening. It’s also given me insight on my own emotions and habits that I wasn’t previously aware of. I started this hobby so randomly: I took a four week Acting for Non-Actors class to improve my sales skills and ended up liking it so much that I started training more seriously. Most importantly, it lets me shut off the analytical part of my brain for awhile and do something different.

Stay Close With Your Family and Friends:

This is listed last but it’s by far the most important one for me. In most industries (including startup world), things work like this: when things are going well, you have a ton of people contacting you and it feels like you’re the most popular person ever. But when things are going badly, no one wants to talk and you feel like an outcast.

The good news is that relationships with your true friends and family don’t change when things are going great or when things are going terribly. They will be there for you. This is why it’s so important to not let your relationships die out of laziness or lack of time – something that happens too often. Friends and family are your mental safety net. When I’m having a crappy day, nothing cheers me up more than gchatting/texting/Snapchatting with friends or having a long phone conversation with my mom, dad, and brother. Invest time in your relationships and you’ll never feel alone.

Lastly, I just want to say that having struggled with some of these issues myself in the past, I’m always here if someone needs to talk or get things off their chest.

My 5 Minute Morning Routine

I know I’m not the only person who experiences this but I’ve struggled with negative thinking my whole life. I don’t mean that I always expect things to go wrong. It’s more like, when I have too much time to think about things, I get “down”, and when I get down, I get unproductive. When I get unproductive, I get more negative. So it becomes a cycle. And I mostly feel this way early in the morning right when I wake up and late at night right before I go to sleep, which led me to explore and experiment with my morning routine and night routine.

A few weeks ago, I started doing something that, so far at least, has gotten me out of the negativity cycle and allowed me to start my day feeling mentally at peace. I’m not saying this will work for everyone but it’s been working for me. I do the following things within the first 10 minutes of waking up:

Step 1: I write down what I am most grateful for that morning. I try to be completely honest with myself on this. If I’m honestly most grateful that I’m about to drink a cup of coffee, I write that down. If I’m grateful that a big project is over, I write that down. The key is being honest with myself. One thing I’ve noticed is that as time goes on, I’m more grateful for my problems – which sounds ridiculous! Sometimes things that seem like problems are actually blessings. I was recently struggling between a few different career moves and was really stressed out about the decision until one day it just hit me that I’m so incredibly fortunate to even have 1 opportunity, let alone several.

Step 2: I write down one thing that I want to accomplish that day. This is a lot different than a to-do list. I make sure I limit it to just one thing. We all usually have so many competing priorities that our brains can only process that there’s a ton of “stuff” to get done today. Unfortunately for most of us, there’s more “stuff” out there than we can ever do in 24 hours so we need to prioritize. Writing just one thing forces me to really figure out what my top priority is for the day.

Two steps seems too good to be true but I’m not arguing with the results so far! I may add things or tweak this morning routine as time goes on but for now, I’m planning to stick with it.