The One Word that Will Boost Your Productivity | Jack Canfield

Hi there, I'm Jack Canfield and today I want to talk to you about the one single word that can boost your productivity. Our world is highly competitive and overstimulating place and more and more concentration is needed every day just to stay focused on completing your daily tasks and pursuing your longer term goals. And because of the explosion of communications technology, we are more accessible to more people than ever before. Complete strangers can reach you by telephone, cell phone, text, faxes, regular mail, email and social media. They can reach you at home, they can reach you at work. They can reach you on your mobile phone. And if you're not there, they can leave messages on your answering machine or your voicemail. And if you are there, they can even interrupt you with call waiting. We suffer under project and productivity overload at work. Taking on more than we can comfortably deliver in an unconscious desire to impress others, to get ahead, to keep up with others expectations. Meanwhile, our top priorities go unaddressed. Now, to be successful in achieving your goals and creating your desired lifestyle, you will have to get good at saying no to all of the people and distractions that would otherwise devour you. Successful people know how to say no without feeling guilty. To them, no is a complete sentence. You heard correctly. The one word that will boost your productivity and even your income is no. If you're going to increase your results in your income, as well as increase the amount of free days for your family, for fun and for recreation in your life, you're going to have to eliminate those activities, requests and other time stealers that don't have a high payoff. You're gonna have to structure your work so that you are focusing your time, your effort, your energies and your resources only on the projects, opportunities and people that will give you a huge reward for your efforts. You're gonna have to create strong boundaries about what you will and what you won't do. Now why do we find it so hard to say no to everyone's requests? Well, as children, many of us learned that no was an unacceptable answer. Responding with no was the cause for discipline. Later in our careers, no may have been the reason for a poor evaluation or failing to move up the corporate ladder. Yet highly successful people say no all the time to other people's projects, to low priority projects, to crazy deadlines, to questionable priorities and to other people's crises. In fact, they view the decision to say no as equally acceptable as the decision to say yes. Now, being able to say no is a relatively simple concept. Yet you'd be surprised how frequently even the world's top entrepreneurs, professionals, educators and civic leaders get caught up in projects, situations and opportunities that are merely good, while the great are left out in the cold, waiting for them to make room in their lives. In fact, concentrating on merely the good often prevents the great from ever showing up or prevents us from taking advantage of them simply because there's no time left in our schedule to take advantage of any additional opportunities. Is this your situation? Constantly chasing after mediocre prospects or pursuing misguided schemes for success when you could be holding at bay opportunities for astounding achievement? So how can you determine what's truly great so you can say no to what's merely good? Well, here are four steps I recommend. First, start by listing your opportunities one side of the page for good and the other side for great. Seeing opportunities in writing will help you crystallize your thinking and determine what questions to ask, what information to gather, what your plan of attack might be, and so on. It'll help you decide if an opportunity truly fits with your overall life purpose and passion, or if it's just life taking you down a side road. Second, talk to advisors about this potential new pursuit. People who have traveled the road before you have a vast experience to share and hard headed questions to ask about any new opportunity you might be contemplating. They can talk to you about expected challenges and help you evaluate the cost factor. That's how much time, money, effort, stress and commitment are going to be required. Third, test the waters. Rather than just taking a leap of faith that the new opportunity will proceed as you expect, conduct a small test, spending a limited amount of time and money. If it's a new career you're interested in, first, seek part time work or independent consulting contracts in that field. If it's a major move or a volunteer project you're excited about, see if you can travel for a few months to your dream locale or find ways to immerse yourself in the volunteer work for several weeks before committing 100%. And finally, number four, look at where you spend your time. Determine if those activities truly serve your goals or if saying no would free up your schedule for more focused pursuits. Now, I want to leave you with a bit of homework to complete after you're done watching this video. Instead of a to do list, I want you to make a Stop doing list. Make a list of some of the things that you can stop doing immediately. List of things that are stealing your time, things you can cut out completely, or things you can delegate to others on your staff or in your family and to hold yourself accountable. Leave a comment below of two of the things you chose to stop doing and I'll be sure to follow up with you. Thank you for watching and remember, nothing will change for the better until you do. Now, if you found this video helpful, make sure you like it, share it with a friend who may need it and and subscribe to my channel for more videos like this one, and for some additional resources on how to elevate your success and your happiness, visit my website@jackcampfield.com.